Almost halfway through?

Unfortunately any plans to eat out last night didn’t happen, so we had the same lasagna we have eaten every week since we’ve been here. To be honest, I would love a little variety in the food here. Or at least more regularity with the menu items I prefer. But you can’t have everything you want, so I’ll just get over it. After dinner last night, there was plenty of conversation after a chapel meeting, and then I watched a movie with 10 people crammed onto two beds’ space. It was tight and cramped and hot, but you make sacrifices for the ones you love and V for Vendetta. Halfway through the movie I left because I was tired and just went to journal/blog and hang out. It was honestly a really frustrating night for me that I’m still getting over.

But as soon as this morning came around, I sleepwalked through breakfast yet again. Service sites started out the same as they have been the whole time, with nothing exactly new involved. After carrying bamboo pieces down a large hill (probably 10 minutes of walking) we got to work fortifying the steps of the garden. Took care of that real quick because we didn’t have our foreman and just tried to reinforce it for Tuesday when our foreman will be there, and then got to work on the back of the house. It had a giant mound of sand when we started, probably 3 feet tall and a quarter of the yard wide, and we were supposed to level it out. To make things even more difficult, the backyard has a steady grade, meaning we worked on it steadily for 3 or so hours and still haven’t finished. And when I say “we” worked on it steadily, I don’t really mean we. There were people who were working the whole time (me), there were people that were working regularly with breaks thrown in, and there were people who watched for the last hour or more. And I wouldn’t be as frustrated by this if it didn’t happen every damn day with the same damn people. But I know that I can’t control that, and it’s really something I need to let go. And while I was working, there were 2 other people I was carrying on great conversation with. It started with ridiculous questions such as “If you were a steak, how would you be cooked?” and went to “What do you like most about yourself” after we asked “If you could change anything about yourself, what would you change?” It went really deep, and I learned plenty about the people I was talking to. The only problems were that we were working in such close quarters with people around us that people were constantly listening and chiming in. In fact, the conversation was commandeered a couple times by more controlling personalities; when the conversations were hijacked, we just reconvened at a different location after the commandeering parties were self-sufficient with their conversation. It was a frustrating thing, but yet another thing I’m learning to deal with, and the conversations I did have made it all worthwhile.

After that we drove up the hill and grabbed lunch. Lunch was great, with a great conversation coming in the form of ideas of a Bible study we could have with the senior youth, who are 17-24 year olds from Haniville. We got some solid stuff put together, although I did feel a little discouraged trying to motivate people who would rather sleep than actually plan anything. After we got that taken care of and out of the way, Riley and I went outside to hang out with kids while others stayed inside and slept. I’m really having trouble with the fact that people are willing to travel halfway across the world to do service, but when they finally get there, they are too self-consumed to do anything more than lean on a hoe while they talk or sleep instead of spending time with the very people who they came to spend time with. In the 2 HOURS that we had after we planned (not counting the 1 hour of lunch already out of the way), probably 10 people actually came outside to spend time with people they only have 2 more weeks to even see. Meaning half of the entire group stayed inside because they would rather sleep or talk to people they have 24 hours to talk to every day when we live in the same damn location. While I was blessed with the ability to spend over 2 hours playing barefoot soccer with little kids, while making them laugh and enjoying my time with them, there were people that didn’t move from the chairs they laid down on originally.

The youth group came at around 4, and we convened then. There were only 9 of them, so we played a couple of name games, and then zip-bong, and then did the short devotional we had planned. We asked them questions to get a better feel for them, and they asked us a couple questions. It was a fun little “get to know you” experience, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. We left incredibly late, 2 hours after we left yesterday and after almost 10 hours at the site. When we got back, it was time for dinner and a toga party for 3 people’s birthdays. We celebrated, followed by a little dancing, but the funk that I’m in caused me to not enjoy the dancing so much. I did enjoy the small food fight, however. I only ended up with a little icing on my beard, but a couple people got quite into it. It was crazy.

And now I’m exhausted, probably going to bed soon, and ready for a long weekend. We leave tomorrow morning at 8:30 for a tour of the battlefields of South Africa. We have 4 hours of driving one way tomorrow, are staying overnight, and 4 hours of driving back on Sunday. The tour is supposedly really boring (thanks to Allie, who works at Walk in the Light and studied this semester a year ago), but the best food on the trip. And I’m confident that the people can make it fun, so I’m not worried about it at all. Should be an exhausting weekend though. I will keep the updates flowing Sunday night, and hopefully they’re all good. Thanks for the prayers everyone!