I was in my home city of Seattle over the holidays recently. While I was there, my sleep patterns graduated from waking and rising at 5:30 or 6AM, to getting up sometime closer to 8AM. Being in the mission field brings a greater amount of focus to the work I am trying to accomplish for God’s Kingdom. Sleep has less to do with what I want, and more to do with what God is asking of me. If only I felt as called to my work back home as I feel called to the work out here. My mentor and good friend Norman Elder has somehow mastered time in a unique way. He treats sleep like fuel, requiring neither too much nor too little. It may be that part of my time in the field is being used by God to make me more aware of how I abuse sleep in my normal life, or how unhealthy my American life is in general. Here I wake up when the light of morning reaches a certain crescendo; refreshed, encouraged and ready.
The weather forecast for today called for thunder-showers. To generalize grossly: in Albania, people do not perform outdoor work during times of rain. Last night I prayed for workable weather today, which is not my custom. However, I would have dressed in tight-fitting, bead-fringed, calf-skin pants and danced around a fire yelping at the sky if I thought it would give my crew and I a chance to get some more concrete in the ground without having to worry about the world collapsing around us. Whether my prayer was heeded or not, I was thanking God at the end of the day for how orchestrated everything seemed.
Rain began to sprinkle sometime around the lunch hour. We had already placed 40% of the day’s concrete by that time, and so I was not worried. We were down to two wheelbarrow -loads of concrete to complete the day when the rain really hit. It came down in a quantity so heavy that the sidewalk in the back of the church appeared to be a rushing, muddy stream. There was not a place to stand out of the weather, but by that time I was singing and dancing for joy. My crew and I had hit our mark with precision and purpose. We are becoming a team.
albaniacalling 