I have to express my overwhelming joy, gratitude, awe for a
God who provides infinitely more than I could ever ask. 2016 is the year of
bucket list items being crossed off – a bucket list that had long ago been
discarded as a checklist of impossible dreams. I can’t even find the list on my
computer any more. Must have deleted it as a cruel reminder of all the things I
will never get to do. Hah – take THAT cynical delete button!
First. In May, I am going to Israel! For 12 days I shall
walk in the footsteps of Jesus, stand where He stood, bawl my way down the Via
Dolorosa, and visit other important Old and New Testament sites. First stop on the itinerary – a market to
stock up on Kleenex. Even better, I am travelling with people with knowledge of
the significance of the journey. My home church, Twin Lakes, invited me to go
along on their staff trip to Israel and the Global Outreach Committee is funding
it. I could never afford a trip like this otherwise. Bucket list item – check!
Second. The cheapest flight from Johannesburg to Tel Aviv
just happened to have a 10 hour layover in Cairo, Egypt. That is enough time to
leave the airport and see the pyramids! Bucket list item – check check!
Third. In July my family is coming to visit! I have been
living here in South Africa for 6 years now and no family was ever able to come
and I honestly thought it would never happen as there didn’t seem to be any
movement in the direction of even discussing the possibility of “some day”
coming. And now out of the blue, 8 people are coming! My mom, my sister and her
husband, my niece and her husband, my nephew, my aunt and my cousin. I am so
excited to share South Africa with them – the good and the bad, and hope that
they finally “get” why I would be willing to leave everything I know and love
to serve here. I cannot believe my family is coming here, I am so _______________ (insert every
word for happy you can find in the thesaurus).
Now for the pigeon poo.
Last October, I dished out precious PLAY money to hire a web designer so
PLAY could finally have a beautiful professional 5 page site. He promised it would be done by the time I
headed to California in January where I was doing my whirlwind two week tour to
raise funds to cover four PLAY camps in 2016. Not only did he not finish it in time, he took
it down at the most crucial time, right in the middle of those two weeks! Then 6 weeks later, he put the new PLAY web
site online. He went live with it without my approval. Who DOES that?! It is so pathetically awful and now I am stuck
with it until I can find a new company and start all over again which will take
months. The designer won’t refund my money as he thinks it’s great, and he won’t
make any changes to it unless I give him more money. His design violates so
many basic standards of the industry – he chopped up the PLAY logo – who DOES
that?! I am so embarrassed to have
people see it.
And then the rain started. I was in town at a two day class
about how to debrief trauma victims and when it was over, I couldn’t get home. The
dirt road to my house was flooded and Fernando my Faithful Ford Figo had
finally met his match. I could not get home for 5 days. Now I am home, but the
rain started up again and now I can’t get into town. My food will last a few
more days, then I’ll be out hunting wildebeest in the rain.
So now I have to raise $10,000 to buy a bakkie, what they
call a truck here in South Africa. Which means sending people to the PLAY web
page to donate – the horror! Who would give big bucks to an organization that slapped
that web page together? Uggh*
Zippedy doo dah, zippedy day, I will choose to sing away
with the bluebird while scrubbing the poo off my shirt. It’s not the first time
and it won’t be the last. Maybe I should start wearing plastic shirts to let
the poo slide off… here we call that plastic shirt attitude TIA. But an even stronger weapon in my
coping arsenal – the peace of Christ that comes from knowing I am where I am
supposed to be and He is in control of the birdies. There are times when I
just feel like wringing the neck of that pigeon… then the bluebird sings of
Israel and pyramids and being surrounded by my family in the country that I love
and all is well.
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