Fresh Perspective

My fingers nervously drum on the kitchen counter….tap, tap, tap.  If shouting or screaming would help, I would go for it.  But it doesn’t, so my fingers just tap or my foot.  Waiting for our visa’s since December (but they have been in process since September).  Waiting for news that our passports have been stamped and we are released to travel.  Tap, tap, tap.  Months drag by.  Trips are cancelled.  Suitcases are unpacked from trips that surely we could go on…..because surely our visas would come????  Tomorrow???!  Waiting. Waiting.  I don’t do it well.  Nor do people from my Western culture. We don’t like to wait for meetings to start or waiting for doctors or waiting on friends.  Nor do we like waiting on slow internet connections or waiting to hear about information that in our own culture we could find answers to right away. Clash that with people from an Asian culture.  Who are happy to wait or are at least rea...

A persistent invitation kept coming to me.  To join an Indonesian team of doctors and nurses, to do a free clinic day, as an outreach ministry.  Dr. Reni, a fun energetic female Papua doctor, really pursued me.  Calendar checked, I agreed to join, along with “my girls” and Kathleen (our Indonesian super nurse) and Erin (Darron’s super secretary and housemate to the girls).  We met at a Adventist church in Abe.  In typical fashion, we were 15 minutes late, but 45 minutes early.  If you don’t understand that last sentence…….welcome to rubber time, where flexibility is more important than timeliness.  People kept joining the group and gathering.  Many photos were taken of us girls, with lots of people who didn’t even introduce themselves.  They just kept asking for photos.  We kept smiling, in missionary spirit. In time an old bus groaned to a stop in the parking lot.  Soon it was clear that we could all ride along, which beat me hav...

Squats…..I dislike them.  Our workout instructor loves to have us do them. “”Go lower than ninety degrees,” she often encouragingly shouts.  But it is not these kind of squats that I want to talk with you about.  Nor is it squat potties.  Though this is definitely the country of them.  They have there positive and negative features.  The positive being, great posture for complete elimination.  Was that clean and clear enough?  haha.  The negative being, it’s hard to leave the squat pot room without wet feet and unclean hands. The squat I want to chat about is really a bit more plural than just one squat.  It is squatters.  People moving into abandoned or unused property and claiming it as there own.  Our ”new” neighbors of about two months are squatting.  The home they are squatting in is one of the original buildings on this property. Approximately 50 years old and in disrepair.  Their “home” sits facing our master...