Hurry

I know being in a hurry and being busy are not good. And yet, I have felt an adrenaline rush of busyness and hurry-up-edness for about a week. I have had the presence of Spirit to take small moments to stop myself (not going through yellow lights for example) and to stop and smell the diesel, but it has been hard.

It was very enjoyable to stop last night...Cecilia's birthday. It was simple, not overdone or involved, but it was nice. Especially nice was Susan's bringing Soren a Lego kit (an airplane/boat/space shuttle) his first. It was very cool to sit with my son and do something I use to do with great regularity...and even more cool to see him play with it, and then say "I want to build something else" and do his thing. Very cool.

The coffee....God's timing. The guy we originally hired did nothign until Gender went to pick it up, and then he informed him that the price he gave us was not enough, it needed to go up 40%. Gender asked me what to do, I told him to handle it....he was there, I was not. He(we) was getting taken advantage of, and that guy was not living up to his end of the bargain in any way. So, Gender took the coffee, went down the road a piece to another place...and it was nicer, the people were nicer, and they were Christians eager to help, and give us a cheaper price by about 50% versus what the other guy was offering. Now Gender should be bringing the coffee, the stickers have been bought, and all that will be left will be to see what happens.

I share the following just to give a glimpse into life here. We hear stories like this, or different, on a regular basis, but to share these is hard sometimes. I will not include names, but for some of you, it will not be hard to figure out who the subject is. This woman took in her parents who had no where to live over a year ago...even though they were never there for her when she was growing up (even sending her to live as a foster child in a government facility...which she is thankful for because the teachers she had there instiled in her good morals, which she does not think she would have received from her parents.) She has eight children, and struggles to provide as best she can for them...to get a good education and be able to realize their dreams, something that because of her situation she is unable to do. Her oldest daughter is not even 15 (she wants to be a doctor) and her mother has been encouraging her strongly that she needs to settle down and find a boyfriend. Yikes. It came to the point that she has had to tell them to leave (there were other problems there as well, such as spankings/beatings, no care for the children in general, etc. but that was the final straw), as well as talk to her daughter and tell her (these are her words, not mine) not to fall into that trap, not to be stuck at cleaning houses and doing menial work like she is but to keep striving to fulfill her dreams.

I saw this at the sticker place....God can be glorified in ways sometimes we do not realize. It did in my case...it made me stop the hurry I was in mentally to stop and pray.

And this....is the latest over reaction to the A-(H1Ni) here at the bank. I felt bad for these tellers...not only the ineffective masks (the three inches of glass is not enough?) but those gloves. I can only imagine how pruny their fingers were by the time they had a break.