"comfort is the enemy of achievement"

there's a weekly blog i get written by a retired police chief. he now reads, paints, and reflects deeply on life. this blog title is from today's article he wrote. it was good timing. 

in addition to noticing how God low key put this trip in front of me, the driving reason that got me to commit was knowing that i wasn't pushing myself out of my comfort zone. the predictability of my days where i determined my schedule mostly was getting quite nice. too nice i started sensing. it was time to break out of it, and show myself i can do hard things. 

i am glad i did it. 

it is very very easy to forgot what people around the world are up against. it is impossible to grasp how differently people live. i needed that reminder to do more, give more, be more. 

for example, i was wrong yesterday about the bathroom for 17. this is it. 

and this is jackie's kitchen for 17. 

in between, the bathroom and kitchen is the shed for a cow. 

i wouldn't last a week. 

on a positive note, today we had chaos control. the prior two days were somewhat uncontrolled chaos. we decided today, we had to set controls and boundaries. the day started with a really powerful church service. thevmessage was on obedience and dying to our flesh. when we choose to not do what He desires (and we almost always know the right thing), we choose death... death meaning separation from God. separation from God honestly seems worse than death.

then we had our little version of VBS. the medical team did evaluations on twenty kids, and the rest of the team was split between interviews with each child, coloring pictures for the ones that have a sponsor, making crafts, painting fingernails, playing soccer, and doing praise songs (and dancing!) the whole process flowed smoothly and we accomplished everything we had hoped. jackie and richard who are raising all these kids were immensely grateful!

we got home at 6:30, had a delicious dinner, and were able to relax until bedtime. the energy of today was soooo much more manageable than yesterday. not joking, the amount of stimulation yesterday was a lot for this lover of quiet 😵‍💫... when we dropped into bed about 10 and there was no noise, it felt like my brain kept popping and sizzling until midnight 😳 

the good thing about going nonstop is that there's not a lot of time to think about home. for me, i have to stay fully present here or my homesickness will win. so, just keep moving 🙃.

here are pictures of the day. and notice baby elvis's (his thirteen year old mom was raped) snoopy shirt. i just happened to wear my snoopy earrings today 😁.