Some days are like that…

Three weeks ago I was working on a blog that just didn’t want to get posted (or maybe written). At the time we were having power cuts on a semi-regular basis that kept interfering with my working on the computer and burned out a transformer in our house. (Interestingly, the regular power cuts seemed to stop about the time that the coup happened). I was going to write this last Saturday, but I had visitor after visitor that were in no particular hurry to leave. The added difficulty to this was I was trying to get some baking done because the boy’s school was to host an accreditation team. Unfortunately, that team was either sent back or not allowed to get on their flights because of the political problems here and never made it. Yesterday I went to write this again, but was interrupted by a number of meltdowns by little boys that belong to our household not to mention class work, bible study, carpooling and a number of other things. I mention all of this because I find it really funny that this is what I started to write three weeks ago:

I had a conversation a little over a year ago with another missionary that told me he didn’t believe in Murphy’s Law (anything that can go wrong will go wrong). His theory was that we as missionaries had faulty expectations, that we had the assumption that things should always run smoothly.

Well, whether I am prone to make those false assumptions or not there is one thing that I think I have been learning through the events of the last few weeks: that many times in life, it is keeping your perspective that makes all the difference. You see while what I was experiencing was simple inconveniences, one of the people that was supposed to becoming for the accreditation visit (from another country in Africa) is the principal of a school where he had a parent kidnapped the day before the coup, and a parent and student car-napped the day after the coup (needless to say, he is no longer able to come for the accreditation visit). I also had a friend who had to head to the US just before Christmas with her youngest daughter that was very ill. She wasn’t able to return when the daughter recovered because she had back problems that needed treatment. When she finally thought she was coming back to Niger to reunite with her husband and other children she discovered that her tickets for the flight were cancelled and wasn’t allowed to leave until a few days later, only to be in the air between Paris and Niamey when her flight was rerouted to a neighbouring country because it couldn’t land here because of the coup.

I guess I am just grateful that my problems have all be relatively mild.

Please pray for the accreditation visit it is supposed to proceed this coming week with only 2 of the original 4 team members (another person was stuck in Abidjan for the better part of a week because he flight to Niamey was cancelled due to the coup and had no way to fly back to Cameroon before then). Continue to pray for us too whenever we happen to come to mind.

Hope you are having a better day than most!