It was 1991. Ken and I were in a three-month training course held by Wycliffe Bible Translators on a remote ranch in Texas and making trips into and eventually living in Mexico for one month. Our days were spent in classes learning about living overseas, taking Spanish lessons and doing long and then longer hikes every day. (Ken lost 15 pounds and I lost 7!)
Each day, the staff would do something to us to prepare us for living in another country. The electricity would be off, there would be no water, we’d have to evacuate camp in 20 minutes…that type of stuff. Afterwards, there would be a debriefing.
Our director always asked us to contemplate the following: “What if life turns out to be like this?”
In other words, what if this isn’t just for a short moment, but this is life? What if this is what it is? How will you cope? It was the best training we could ever have for living….well, anywhere. Sure, Mexico was different, Indonesia even more different, and while Germany was fantastic, it still was different from what we were used to! It’s a good question for any of us to ask ourselves each day actually!
Ken is back in that situation. electricity is on and off. Internet is sketchy. Food is very different. It’s hot. And the shower (bucket shower) is VERY COLD!
“But it’s just two weeks” you might say. Yes, but in that two weeks there is so much to be done. And when you are bombarded from all sides with “different” or “stress” it can be difficult to get your task done. And we all like to get our tasks done, don’t we?
Here are some much-needed prayer items from Ken:
“We will have a very full day. I worked on just three computers in nine hours yesterday! All three had major issues. In total, we completed about 7 or 8. Today, we’ll be inundated with another 20! So, pray for …
- a good internet connection. We haven’t been able to get our downloads on the USB stick working so we’ve had to use the Internet. It’s fairly costly and slow but we need to get them updated.
- good team work. We have things going everywhere, with many people in the room. I think I’ll ask people to stay outside of the room today unless we are working on their computer … or at least remain in the back of the room. Otherwise, we trip over them.
- patience.Some times, it’s just a challenge to figure out what the problem is. I had one that had a virus. It had AVG on it. But, the virus wouldn’t allow me to uninstall AVG. I finally used a 3rd party program to uninstall AVG and then installed Microsoft Security Essentials, an anti-virus program. Updating the database file took a long time because I had to do it through the Internet and now I have to scan the entire computer. That takes over an hour itself.”
Life isn’t bad…its just got it’s challenges. Thank you for standing with us THROUGH them!
The Haugh Herald 