home is where you make it

So, for the past four days or so our internet hasn't really been working, but it has supposedly been fixed now, so hopefully it will stay connected long enough for me to post this :)

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but somewhere between the thirty minute rides on pothole-filled "roads" to the grocery store 5 miles away, the five different trips we had to make to the immigration office to renew my visa, the "tear gas" incident (i'll explain later), and going to help our neighbors fetch water...from an "illegal" tap into a public water line.....it hit me: i really could live here. as most of you probably know, my heart has always been in the village. my dream was always to live in a mud hut out in a remote village (probably in Sudan). But the more time i spend here, the more God has been showing me that, in reality, I could live anywhere he sends me. Sure, I still have my dream of living in the village, but I am starting to realize that, if God has other plans then, yeah, I could live with that...and even enjoy it! I've been told that, statistically, Sierra Leone (and the capital in particular), is the absolute most difficult place in the world to live. Now, I'm not sure who came up with those statistics, but I can definitely see the difficulties here. And yet, the city life has it's own little charm as well. For one thing, there's really never a dull moment! Even everyday tasks like grocery shopping become an adventure!

Just the other day, Moses, our driver, was taking Megan and I into town to run some errands. It wasn't too terribly hot, so we had the windows rolled down. As we drove out of our neighborhood, we passed a car on the side of the road that i just assumed had been in a small wreck. The car didn't look damaged, but it was smoking, and the people standing around were all coughing terribly. Well, as we drove by, a whiff of whatever was smoking blew in through our windows, our eyes watered up, our throats got tight, and we started coughing uncontrollably. Luckily, we got past it soon, and into some relatively fresh air (as fresh as it gets in such a polluted city). Moses was convinced that a bottle of tear gas had been broken. I'm not so certain, but whatever it was certainly had me coughing for the rest of the day!

But it isn't just our little "adventures" that are making me fall in love with this country. More than anything, it's the people. They are very hard, very closed off, and, to be blunt, they like to lie alot. But underneath all of that calloused exterior, is a heart that is hurting....a soul, shattered by war, poverty, and desolation, that desperately needs hope and love. And sometimes, ever so often, on small occasions, that broken heart starts to show through the tough front they put on. And in moments like that, I can see so clearly why God has brought me here. And the more i think about it, the clearer it becomes that there are people like that everywhere! Especially in Africa, where so many nations are still trying to recover from war, and more are always starting up. But one thing I know for sure. Wherever God may choose to send me in the future, I know it will be because in that place there is a need. One which He has chosen to use me to fill! And what an incredible privilege that is.