...you finish up some random paperwork late in the evening then head up to your hotel room, excited to make dinner - excited because today, you bought a few little dishes {like a small frying pan and a cutting knife} and the ingredients that give you the freedom to actually, wonder of wonders, fry your own deluxe egg & cheese & ham sandwich. ...you set out the margarine {because missionaries aren't rich, after all, and butter is comparatively expensive} and eggs to be able to conveniently pop them right into the frying pan once the veggies are cut up.
...once everything is ready, you set the pan on the closest burner and, with much anticipation, turn the knob on the stove, ready to make one of the most appreciated sandwiches of your life.
...the knob turns with no problem, you smell the propane from the stove, but no flame turns on.
...and all those little joys of learning how to appreciate the little things {like owning your own pan and cutting knife, the ingredients to make a good sanwich, the dishes to put food on and eat with} seem to vanish as you remember - you live in a developing country. Developing countries' stoves usually need to be lit with matches or a lighter.
...the appreciation for the little things doesn't disappear for too long because along with the other purchases of the day, there is a little lone avocado in the small refrigerator just waiting to be eaten.
...the appreciation for the little things returns as you cut this delicious piece of fruit open with your newly purchased cutting knife {this is, of course, is assuming you love avocados as much as some missionries do - or at least one in particular who comes to mind}, sprinkle the yummy inside with some salt {also newly purchased}, and begin eating it with your newly purchased spoon {plastic - because a bag of plastic utensils makes more sense while living in a hotel than silverware}.
...the gratitude for the extra flavor salt adds may make you appreciate the little things more than ever, especially since the day before when you invented a new sanwich using avocado, mustard, and cheese {presliced - the knife had not been purchased yet} the only thing lacking had been salt!
So, the question remains - why didn't you just make another simple sanwich that didn't require frying and add salt to it? Oh well...maybe next time.
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Whether the above account is true or not will be left up to the reader.
In the mean time, go ahead and check out the few pictures I've had the chance to snap over the past 4 days. It's been a full schedule each day, ever since our pastor contact picked us up from the airport early Tuesday afternoon. My mind is full of legal references and details and my notebook quickly filling up with daily excerpts of information that need to be recorded in a more legible manner. Tomorrow, however, marks our first weekend and a chance to take a full day off. We're planning on visiting a nearby beach for a chance to relax our brains and recharge for another full(er) schedule next week.
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| Pastor P has a lot of contacts, including the manager of a hotel close to his church. Our rooms each have little kitchenettes that have already been fully used and appreciated! (as well as served as reminders of things to be appreciated ;) |
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| View of our town at night. |
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| The Dominican Republic in all it's beauty! (well, not all - but what do you expect when trying to snap a great picture from inside a car going 100 {kilometers an hour} down the highway?) |
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| We found the original pizza hut :D |
One of many things that I've been able to see up close and personal happened yesterday and I wanted to share it with you to help paint a small picture or idea of how real our life and work is.
After an appointment with human services' lawyer, our friend "Mani" took us around the area so we could get better aquainted with the town that will probably become our new home (granted we find a house with the right criteria). The town is set in just far enough from the beach so that we can't see the ocean without driving to one of the public beaches or nearby resorts. He took us to the closest access point that includes a lot of little shops and resturants set close to the water's edge and a wide open space where you can go swimming, lay in the sun or under the palm trees, or take a walk in the sand while watching the fishing boats. It's a beautiful place and full of families just taking the day off, tourists on a lower budget, or tourists who wander down from some of the larger resorts that are within walking distance. After spending a few minutes checking out the place, we hopped back in the care and drove for maybe 15 minutes to a part of town where Mani told us that a lot of the corruption takes place at night. "At night, it's like a different world." he said. "It's not a good idea to be there at night." Even just driving through during the day, we could easily see the difference between that part of town and the part we're currently staying in. The paved streets are broken up, the shops and houses worn and sagging - there's poverty everywhere. In Mani's words, "People just live one day at a time here." It's so heart-wrenching and almost difficult to grasp the concept of the reality of resort hotels and ransacked homes (ransacked by corruption and poverty) within near seeing distance of eachother.
And so as you close this page and go on about your normal life or whatever you have planned for the day, please, my friend, remember this truth:
~It's easy to overlook what is right below the surfice if we choose not to uncover it.~
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