Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Where do I start?

I've been back on American soil for 5 days now and I've yet to publish anything on my blog about our wonderful experience in Africa. The problem I've run into is - where do I start? I thought of doing daily reports (my original intention) on the different things we experienced but I decided that might get old to me and you so let me do a quick summary of thoughts I've had now that we're a few days removed:
  1. Yesterday I got ticked off because I heard about some employees at our company having to pay $10 a month for a benefit they formerly got for free. $10!!! This time last week, I was driving through Ouidah (wee-dah) Benin West Africa which is one of the poorest towns you'll ever encounter. What many of them would give for $10 a month and all we can do is complain.
  2. I heard today about an employee who is waiting to sign her annual review until her attorney reviews it !! What ??!!! She is a lower-level employee who is spending way too much time on what was a good review anyway. If she'd been in the village of Dandihoue (donny-way) where I was back a week ago Friday, she'd be thankful she has a job and a roof over her head. Sadly, the poor people in Dandihoue weren't complaining to their attorneys about their pitiful accommodations.
  3. I had lunch today at IHOP. My meal was an meat-lover's omelet that was huge. I was remembering back to my lunch with Ega in his house that was no larger than most of our children's bedrooms and the meal he served. The meal he served did not taste as good as what I had today (hey, I'm just being truthful!) but I bet the guy who prepared did not sacrifice a large portion of his month wages to make it like Ega did. What a blessing it was to sit at Ega's table and enjoy the blessing of being served. And he didn't expect a tip either.

Are you getting the point? I'm 5 days into my life back here and I'm having to deal with issues that I didn't think about before. Pray that God will continue to reveal himself to me and to others around me. I've loved being able to share my story and experiences in Africa with my friends and co-workers. Pray that seeds will be planted!

God bless you all and kaffu, kaffu, no ma owe (Praise the Lord in Aja!!)

SJ


1 Comments:

At 11:01 PM , Blogger SG said...

Welcome back! Culture shock. Matt Elliott, Mike Cope or someone had a post this summer about Re-entry that I suspect you would stand and say "AMEN" to about now. The hardest part of a mission experience is after you come back. We slowly start slipping into the "not thinking about it" mode again. One day it hits us that things are "back to normal" and we are strangly sad.
I think as Americans, or citizens in a non-third world country, we are very blessed and very blind at times! Just daytime and night time mainly! :-)

 

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