God's Provision

It's been a long few days with our new amoeba friends, but I'm thankful to say that we're both doing much better. Wendy got us lots of medication- we each took 5 pills at dinnertime- but it's doing its job. We're not back to 100% yet, but we're on the way.

Even though getting sick so quickly here hasn't been any fun, we're seeing God's provision in countless ways. First of all, getting sick down here at some point was probably somewhat inevitable, so it's actually a good thing it happened when it did. If it hadn't been this week, we wouldn't have had a clinic on site and a nurse here who speaks English and who has been taking excellent care of us. It would have been much more miserable if we'd already been in Antigua and had been staying in a family's house with whom we couldn't communicate very well. Then also having the clinic right here, we were able to get a diagnosis and medication very quickly, where as that process would have been much more difficult if this had happened next week, once we've started language school.

The Lord's provision is coming in a lot of other ways, too. The internet makes communication so much easier- so being able to talk to family several times since we've been here has certainly made the transition easier. But especially with the sickness, this week hasn't been a honeymoon- then again, we didn't sign up for one. We came here wanting the Lord to teach us things that we really need to know.

One of the ways that is already happening is by seeing people's dependence upon prayer in a whole new way. I never used to think much of praying for safety in travel, but after driving around in Villa Nueva and Guatemala City, I'm all for having an entire worship service in the car before setting out to go anywhere- traffic here is nuts! My concerns about driving here, however, are trivial compared to the things for which other people are utterly dependent upon prayer- like food, health, or the safety of their children amidst gang violence. We heard the other day of a teenager who used to go to school here who was killed. I was pretty saddened by the news, then little Kevin came up and gave me a hug and I became even more thankful that he's living here instead of out there.

One more way we've experienced God meeting our needs- this evening Kara and I were talking about how it's different being here without a church team, and how for now (since we can't communicate with most people and we can't really get started on our work yet) we just don't seem to have a place. Right after we said that, we heard a knock on our door, and it was two of our favorite little guys, Sammy and Giovanni, demanding that we play cards with them. We agreed and went outside to play. It took us a minute to figure out what the game was- but it became obvious that it was a 4-man game of war. Both of the boys were cheating like crazy- Sammy played a king of spades about four times in a row, but playing with them was just what we needed when we needed it.

There certainly is no limit to the ways that we can see God's faithfulness, but I think we do have to be paying some attention. Normally we wouldn't have noticed the Lord in a couple of boys cheating at a card game, but it was pretty obvious tonight.