The Aldens have a team here for a few weeks who are staying downstairs in staff housing. My first reaction when I heard they were coming was, "They're going to stay in my house? Wait. It's not my house..."
I'm sitting in a hammock upstairs. Unusually, the lights are on downstairs and I hear muffled conversation and dishes being washed. This is kind of nice. It's comforting to know that there are people nearby. For my first two weeks here, it was sometimes really difficult for me to be content living by myself. Not that I was alone all of the time. I wasn't. But there's a big difference between just being around people and living with people. I miss the living with part. I miss eating meals and sharing a bathroom and doing laundry and singing while you clean with people. I miss getting in each other's way. I miss everything that comes with living in the same place as other people.
I have been getting used to alone-ness, though, and I'm learning to appreciate certain things about it. It is sometimes easier to think, and it helps me to focus when I'm spending time with God. Still, I'm glad God gives me days like yesterday to recharge.
After church, I sort of invited myself over to hang out with Sydney, an MK here who's around my age...16, 17, I'm not sure. But she's cool, and I'm glad I did. We watched a few episodes of Psych and did mod podge (gluing random scraps from magazines or newspaper or anything together into a collage) and talked. And then she came over to my room and we cooked zucchini, carrots, onions, and garlic to put over noodles with a little soy sauce on top. She split a clove of raw garlic and made me eat half. Supposedly eating garlic helps repel mosquitoes. I can see why. I'm going to have garlic breath for the next week. And, since she thought my wall looked empty, which it did, she drew pictures of cartoon animals and the two of us swinging and other such things on sticky notes and decorated my wall with them. We just had a generally relaxing afternoon, chilling.
Sydney left to go to Honduran church in the evening, and I had a date with Emily, a medical student intern who has been here for six weeks and leaves today. We had planned to hike up the hill to the water tower, climb the water tower, and watch the sun set. It was pretty cloudy, so we had a nice and cool walk but there wasn't really any sunset of which to speak. Instead, we talked and laughed and looked at the ocean.
The view was incredible from the top of the water tower. Sitting up there, with the breeze gently lifting my hair and the hot sun finally resting for the day, I felt so relaxed. Looking out over the ocean all the way to the little islands and across the green flat land, with a few scattered twinkling villages, and at the steep, high mountains that rise up right at the edge of the shore made me feel so small, and reminded me how big God is. I think it's good to feel small in that way. It's good to look at vastness and beauty and see a part of who God is in what he's made. It's good to see something that shows you God and remember that he's near.
Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
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