Untukmu Para Pengunjung

There are many things I could complain about today. For instance, we haven't had electricity since Sunday morning. That means no hot baths, no drinking water, no laundry, cooking on firewood in our fireplace, etc. Last night we had to clear out our freezer and fridge. Have I mentioned how I hate wasting food? There are bread queues everywhere - people snaked in long lines waiting outside of shops to find bread. Of course, there are also longer queues for rare items like sugar or cooking oil. For those, you have to stand in line all day. Yesterday a man yelled at me in town because he is trying to help orphans and The Salvation Army (my new department!) isn't doing anything to help him! I just made our departmental budget, and was told not to expect any money for the entire year. We want to get next year's Zimbabwe School of Youth Leadership applications out, but none of our photocopiers can do more than 20 pages a day (and we need 200 applications). So I'm going to pay to take them to a printer's, and it's going to cost me almost 3 years' salary just to do the photocopying!! Being poor sucks. The Mayalas are returning to the Congo today, and we'll miss them. Yesterday I ran into a friend in town. Her mom had just died, so she was trying to find transport money to return to the rural areas.

BUT God is good. There are many reasons to give thanks, and I was trying to count my blessings as I was bathing out of a bucket this morning. I had a glass of milk last night. I know a lot of good people. I have access to the internet at work. I have a new job - which is a huge challenge, but a blessing. I have been published this week (on http://theRubicon.org - an article I wrote about being white and labels we give people). We read a lot more here. John reads about 2 books a week. I can recommend 3 good books I read recently: "Half of a Yellow Sun" (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie), "The Book of Negroes" (Lawrence Hill) and "The End of Memory" (Miroslav Volf). They're all good - check 'em out.