You will be Inconvenienced

After this past week, I realized that if new missionaries to Africa asked me to give them advice on living life in Africa, one thing I would say is, "Allow yourself to be inconvenienced." It's inevitable that it will happen, so chose to accept it willingly. 

An example of choosing to be okay in light of an inconvenience happened on Saturday. At church the week before, I told the leader of the church and the Sunday School leader that I would like to host a training for the Sunday School Teachers. They were so excited that they went ahead and told me where and when to come that following Saturday for the training. Since they were eager for the training, I agreed to do it that week. 

I spent several hours preparing what I wanted to present to the Sunday School Teachers. Making sure the material was simple enough to be understood in English, but also got to the heart of what I found to be most important to communicate about teaching children Biblical truths. After much debate about all of this, I finally had a lesson I was excited to teach and was looking forward to using my Saturday to share this information with the youth who were willing to volunteer to teach the children. 

Will, Justin and I showed up at the scheduled 2:00 time on Saturday. Much like usual, no one was there when we arrived. We are very used to be the first the arrive at a scheduled time and took the opportunity to greet a friend who lived nearby while we were waiting. An hour and a half went by and we realized that no one was coming. Usually there are at least signs of people starting to come at this point, so we knew something was wrong. We called all of the people who we knew to call and no one was answering their phones. At first I started to get annoyed. I had given up several hours of prep and my Saturday afternoon and no one cared to show up. 

But then I chose to listen. 

We asked our friend where she thought everyone was and she informed us that it was "Rations Day" at the refugee camp. Each month, the refugees find a way to get out to the refugee camp (which is about 2 hours away) and collect food rations for the month. If they do not show up to the camp on the right day (which of course changes each month depending on when the delivery actually arrives), they do not get food for their family for the month. 

Well, poor little old me got over her complaints pretty quickly when I heard why no one was there! They plan their months around when they need to collect their month's supply of food and here I am complaining that a couple hours of my Saturday was "wasted". 

This has quickly become a theme in our ministry in Africa. Things are often canceled, people often show up hours later than "scheduled", etc. But we have learned to listen. When you are patient and listen to the reasons, there is usually always a very reasonable explanation. Friends are late to a meeting because they had to wait in line for 5 hours to get water for their family for the day. They had to walk a mile to get firewood before the could cook breakfast, and with the other tasks for the morning, it made them late, and so on. Yes, it is still inconvenient for us and often throws off things we had scheduled later in the day, but often loving people here well is being understanding of their circumstances. When you chose to slow down and listen, you realize the person was always more important than the task in the first place. Therefore, it's always worth it to be a little inconvenienced.