Tradition

We continued our Friday evening tradition tonight with yet another good old fashioned home cooked meal with friends. It's really become our tradition to have a dinner party on Friday evenings, and invite people we want to get to know a bit better to our house for dinner. And it's nice to have a good excuse once in a while to have a good meal! It's really the only time we cook something nice - we even have meat most of the time when we invite people!

Tonight we made some meatballs in a really nice sauce (of which Annamarie was the main chef). I made the vegetables (a nice stir fry of zucchini - I was SO happy to find that in the market - green peppers, carrots, onions, and of course, a lot of garlic). Jackie made the salad and the lemon cake and custard which we had for dessert.

We had an interesting group over tonight - an Eritrean friend (the one who had us over to his place for shiro a few weeks ago) and his friend (another Eritrean guy who works for the UN here), as well as a friend who works as an agriculturalist for the Anglican church here! It was a good group of folks, and I really enjoyed the time together with them, as well as the lovely meal that we put together.

There's something wonderful and warm about inviting people to your house for dinner, rather than meeting them at a restaurant. So many people in this town live in "team houses" or prefabricated containers, where they have cooks who provide meals for them all the time, or they go out for dinner at the restaurants. And it seems that people really appreciate coming to a "real" house for a nice home-cooked meal (not that we're the best cooks in the world, but people just like the home-cookedness of it, I think - or else they're all just being really polite about it all the time!). It is a blessing to have a home where we can invite people over, so we're definitely taking advantage of it!

I need a husband

Because I have a hook to hang up in my bathroom (which requires the use of power tools and the procurement of screws - neither of which I have or are easy to get here), I have a florescent light tube in my bedroom that's been burned out for several months now (again, not an easy thing to find around here, plus, the last time I tried moving a ladder I nearly broke a few things, and I've been told by a certain someone around here that it's not proper for a girl to climb a ladder anyways), and I had an empty gas cylinder this evening whilst boiling water for my tea.

Plus, we didn't have any food in the house this evening with which to cook dinner.

So, I need a husband who can fix stuff, can go to the market and can do the cooking. Somehow, Zane's little paws just can't grip the necessary tools well enough, nor can he reach the clutch when he tries to take the truck out to the market.

Or maybe I just need my own toolbox and a little more gumption.

I was pretty desperate for a cup of tea, so I used the tool that I borrowed last time from Wes (and never gave back - he went to the States after that anyways so doesn't need it!), rolled the new gas cylinder into the kitchen and managed to change that all on my own. But I just can't help but think it would be really nice to have someone else around the house to do such things once in a while.

On a happy note, though, I had a great time this evening playing some Dutch Blitz with a friend. Happily enough, I also won :)

The rain and a bit of ridiculousness

It rained this afternoon! What a wonderous rain it was. I thought that the rainy season was on it's way out, but I think it's going out with a bang. We didn't have too many heavy rain storms during the "proper" rainy season, so they're all coming along now! Anyways, the rain has made it much cooler this evening. I might get my extra sheet/kikoy thing out to sleep under tonight. At the moment, I'm wrapped up in a nice scarf - not quite cold enough to get out the sweater, but chilly enough to need something on my bare arms. What's chilly, you ask? Let me go and look at my handy-dandy thermometer. Brrr... no wonder my nose is cold - it's only 24C in my house!

I'm certainly not complaining about the cold, though!

This afternoon we had a bit of ridiculousness in the office. Somehow, Jackie and I have become computer technicians to the country's famous and powerful. Some rather high up persons in the Ministry of Education sent along their computers today for us to put a program and fonts on so that they can type the special characters needed for their own languages. I did the same thing on a Bishop's computer yesterday. However, most of these computers seem to come to us without anti-virus software and with all sorts of dodgy things on them.

So installing a simple program and a few fonts, which normally takes 10 minutes, ends up taking a few hours, because we have to first clean up all the viruses and invariably, there's something else that causes the program to not work as it should. I'm learning a lot, just by trial and error as I try to keep these computers going for these big people. If they want to type their own languages and do some work to promote their mother tongues, who am I to stand in their way?!

But at about 6pm today, Jackie and I had a grand total of 6 laptops in the office, which were in various stages of installations and scanning. It was slightly ridiculous, especially considering the two of us are supposed to be the literacy department here!

I did have some non-techie fun today, though. In preparing for the workshop that I'm faciliating in a few weeks, I made a sample primer page. Because I wanted to give the participants the feeling of being illiterate, so they can understand a little bit about what a learner sees when he first sees a primer, I did the pages using English, but transcribing it into the Greek alphabet. I'm sure some Greek experts out there could find some serious errors in my use of the Greek letters, but I think it's pretty good. I even wrote a short story about... you guessed it, a rat :)

No primer in this city would be complete without "rat" as a key word! It might still need some work - don't think it's quite perfect yet, but I'm pretty pleased with the lesson so far. And it was just SO much fun to sit and do some literacy work this afternoon. Hmmm... I was trying to upload a copy of my primer pages here, but the internet is being pesky. I have a feeling there are too many people in the guesthouse trying to skype all at once... the joys of living in a community!

Anyways, maybe tomorrow I'll be able to post my beautiful primer pages, just to prove to you that I actually DO do some literacy work once in a while around here!

A few photos

I was going to post last night, but alas, the network wasn't working, and at 10 pm on a rainy Sunday night, I wasn't about to start investigating where the network problem was.

So tonight, I will post a few photos from the past several days.

By the way, I'm sitting here in the dark - the electricity just went off, and no one seems to be running to turn the generator on! Hopefully soon...

in the meantime, I'll try to post a few photos:
On Monday, we went to go and try the new aerobics class at the UN Compound. However, there was a seriously mean guard at the gate, and he wouldn't let us into the gym! However, folks from NGOs are allowed to walk around the track in the UN camp, so we ended up doing that instead. It's a nice place to walk - it's a HUGE camp, and they have a nice smooth (but gravel, of course) road to walk on, where you don't have to worry about stepping over piles of garbage or puddles of pee, or being yelled at by curious locals. It's really a much more relaxing place to walk than in my own nieghbourhood.

And happily enough, as we were walking, the sun started setting, and it turned out to be the most amazing sunset. It was just gorgeous, and because we were in the UN camp, with lots of wide open spaces around us, we could really enjoy the changing colours of the sky. It was just beautiful. True eye candy from God - something I don't get much of around here.
One day last week, we went to our local restaurant for lunch. While eating, Jennie told us a story about a rat (yes, there are still a few of those around), which was rather shocking. Actually, in the course of her telling the story, we decided it would make a wonderful "easy reading" story for a book, so I took a few photos for the book. This is one of them. I was shocked, can you tell?
Come to think of it, a lot happened over meals last week! On Friday, I went on a "field trip" with Richard. I love going out with that guy, 'cause he always goes to interesting places, and tells me all sorts of stories about the places we pass by (since he was born and raised in this town). It's always good fun to go to the market with him, too, as he makes friends with the folks who we buy from, and ends up getting really good prices for things (me, on the other hand, have completely not yet gotten the hang of the whole "bargaining" thing!).

Anyways, in the midst of it all, we stopped for lunch at a little restaurant belonging to his relative. It's just a little open air kitchen under the trees, but because Richard is a relative, they gave us a little table and two chairs on a patio in the back - it was nice to not be stared at through the whole lunch. It's not exactly the type of place white girls frequent, so people were a little surprised to see me there!

The food was delicious! We had some nice fried beef, a little pasta on the side with some mince meat, and some beans with some goat cheese, onions and tomatoes. All eaten communally from the same plate, scooped up with bread. The soup was also lovely - a broth made with peanut butter. Yum yum! I love that kind of food. Now that I know Richard's relative's place, I will have to go back again.
And this is a photo of the funeral which kept me awake on Friday night. I took this photo through the fence on Friday evening - doesn't show much, but I didn't want to be too obvious taking photos while spying on them through the fence! But gives you a bit of an idea of what a funeral here looks like! A tent and lots of plastic chairs.

On Saturday afternoon, I went out for coffee with a friend of mine, and some of her colleagues, since she was leaving for Nairobi to do some work there for a few months.
I already miss Carrie :( She's the same one I went to Zanzibar with, and we hung out a lot here so I miss her. Bye Carrie! Have fun in Nairobi!

So that's my week in a nutshell (at least, more of the non-work aspects of it!).

I must admit, though, today I had a great afternoon, starting to put together a plan and a timetable for a primer workshop that I'm running in a few weeks :) Yahoo for literacy work! I'm getting really excited about it all... and I'm looking forward to working on my plans for the workshop more tomorrow!

Some scary stastics

Part of what I like to do on Saturday mornings (even when I haven't slept all night!) is catch up a bit on some of the emails that come in throughout the week with information and articles and news to read.

This morning I was skimming some UNESCO reports that were linked to an email that was sent out by my organization.

I read some sad statistics:

According to estimates by Oxfam, the financial support needed to reach EFA corresponds to:

– four days´ worth of global military spending

– half of what is spent on toys in the United States every year

– less than what Europeans spend on computer games or mineral water per year

– less than 0.1 per cent of the world’s annual gross national product

Source: Oxfam 2000. Achieving Universal Primary Education. London, Oxfam.

According to these statistics (which, yes, I realize, statistics can basically be used to say anything you want them to say... but they can also be food for thought, no?) with a bit of global reorganizing of priorities, every child and adult on the face of the planet can access quality education.

So maybe instead of buying just one toy, or one bottle of water or one computer game, we can give that amount to an organization that's working to provide quality education somewhere. Somehow, I don't think I can change any government's ideas of how much money to allocate on military spending vs. educational spending, but putting it in terms of toys or computer games or bottles of water... that makes it a little more manageable.

Anyways, just some food for thought as I sit here and plan a primer workshop for 4 language teams here!

Indeed, I did not sleep

Just to update all of you faithful readers... I did not sleep last night. One of my colleagues is driving to Uganda today to bring our trusty Hilux pick-up to visit a mechanic in Kampala, so he left at the crack of dawn. Since I take my role as "snack coordinator" very seriously, I actually rolled myself out of my bed at 6:30am to present him with a bag full of road snacks, to make sure he doesn't go hungry on the road today. Now I'm thinking I should have packed him a giant flask of coffee - his little tukel is even closer to the speakers than my room is... poor guy didn't sleep last night, and has a 15 hour drive on some pretty crazy roads today.

Anyways, when I got out of my bed this morning at 6:30am (I won't say I "woke up", because I don't think I was really sleeping), the music was still going strong. Just as loud as it was when I blogged last night. The most annoying part of it was, though, there was only a handful of people left there! Most people had already gone home, but they still kept the music turned full-blast. But then, as soon as they saw the sun, they turned off the music. And I went back to bed.

I still can't figure out why they can't wait until the DAYtime to have their little party. Why, oh why, do they have to do it overnight?

Anyways, I didn't sleep. Neither did anyone else on the compound. So I have a feeling we all might be a bit grumpy this afternoon - might be a good night to stay in and curl up with a movie :)

I shall not sleep tonight.

Not because I don't want to. In fact, I'm really quite tired tonight. But there's a funeral next door. Yes, that's right. A funeral. Next door. All night. Why would that keep you awake, you might ask.

Well, here's why.

In these parts, a funeral starts at about 9pm. A funeral consists of a gathering of about 200 - 300 of your relatives and friends, together with a veritable forest of plastic lawn chairs, the biggest loudspeakers and generator you can find, and a DJ to holler "hallelujah" into the microphone at periodic intervals. If you're lucky, you might get a live band for part of the night, complete with a cheesy (and yet oh so loud) keyboard and an off-key singer. Once again, punctuated by an awful lot of "hallelujahs".

And you make sure the volume is turned up as high as it can possibly go until about 6:30am. Then, finally, people are allowed to go home and sleep, and your neighbors can also get an hour or two of shut-eye before heading off to the office for a full-day's work. Does this really bring anyone closer to the Lord? Does it really help you celebrate the life of the deceased? Or does it just make your neighbors mad? Do you really want people to remember you for how many days you were kept awake by their funeral? It doesn't even make the missionary neighbors feel like Christians when they are awake at 4am, listening to "Hallelujah" in the middle of the East African pop/dance music. It does not turn my thoughts towards God - have they not read that Psalm that says, "He gives his beloved SLEEP"?!

It wouldn't be so bad except that I have to admit, the music they play is really not to my taste. It's normally this horrible East African pop, played on a keyboard with an off-key singer. Honestly, it's TERRIBLE. And it's right next to my house tonight (and probably tomorrow night, as well). And remember, I live in a brick tent. No windows to close here, folks. I'm really dreading having to hear this at 3am.

Please, if I pre-decease any of you, dear readers, make sure my funeral doesn't go overnight. I'm really not into this whole overnight singing thing. Just bury me quietly. Since I'm a bit of a night-owl, ya'll can hang out at Starbucks until closing or something. Just don't disturb the neighbors as you celebrate what a wonderful person I am, ok?!

A few observations

1. Wild mint is growing in front of our compound. However, as soon as I brought it into the house, I started sneezing.
2. It's fun to wear shoes that match your skirt once in a while. It's almost like playing dress-up.
3. Cheeseburgers (even without the cheese) with a Coke can be awfully refreshing after a long morning of meetings in government offices.
4. There's a small hole in my mosquito net, which is probably how the little guy that buzzed around my head got in last night.
5. I like being an adult because there's no one to tell me to clean my room... well, until it gets to certain point, then I have a feeling the young woman who helps in our house is actually going to say something about it.
6. I've only ever bought one box of tissues (like Kleenex - but of course, not Kleenex brand, so I have to call them "tissues") since coming to this country nearly 3 years ago. I miss tissues. Especially when I start sneezing (see number 1 on this list).
7. Eating just vegetables for dinner gives me a rumbly in my tumbly at about 11pm every night. Where's the honey jar?
8. 27C is just about the perfect room temperature for me (27.5C in my room at the moment).
9. I think I have too much stuff. Hence the need to clean my room (as alluded to in number 5). Garage sale, anyone? When one moves to a country with two suitcases, how on earth does one collect so much stuff?
   

Busy Bee

Yes, that's right, I've been a pretty busy bee lately. Since getting back from Kenya, I've worked quite a few evenings, just taking a break for supper... and then a little break from about 11:30 - midnight to watch old episodes of "The Amazing Race", which, at that time of night, show up pretty decently on YouTube :)

What have I been so busy doing, you might ask. Well, our oganization's fiscal year begins in September. Which means that new contracts for all the staff, as well as all the budgets etc need to be done in Sept/Oct. An awful lot of administration junk. I happened to see that most of the spreadsheets that were being used for salary scales and contracts had absolutely no formulas or any linkages in them. What's the use of using a spreadsheet then, I asked? I could see a much better way... so I got involved.

While I really don't like all the details of administration, I like to make things pretty and efficient on the computers. So while it's definitely not perfect, at least now there are some templates (complete with a couple of relevant formulas!) for determining people's salaries, as well as some mail merge documents set up so that the information that's in the spreadsheets can be automatically filled in to the contracts - without having to retype the whole thing! I have no idea why no one did any of this before, because it makes so much more sense. Maybe I'm destined to be an office manager, rather than a literacy specialist?! I just got such a feeling of satisfaction seeing a computer work for someone - rather than seeing someone doggedly retyping information that was already there! Did my little computer geek heart good, too.

We also had a little virus scare in the office yesterday. So, guess who got involved? About 6 hours later, I have scanned the suspect computers with a new little anti-virus program sent to me by the uber-geek in the UK. It's so wonderful having folks like him on the other side of Skype to answer my SOS calls! I'm not completely done - I'm still working on trying to figure out how to scan the flashdisks (thanks, Andy, for the instructions - just haven't had time yet!), but at least it seems our computers are going to be safe for now. One of the challenges is that one of the suspect computers is direct from Taiwan... with Chinese Windows on it! At least all of the menu options are in the same place as they are on the English version, so between having a translator sit next to me, and knowing where various commands are in Windows, I'm getting pretty good at navigating through the Chinese Windows! At least it's not Chinese AND Vista! Then I'd be completely sunk.

And what else has been taking my time? Well, I'm a walking dictionary (a few folks come to me and ask me what a particular word means. The word of the day today was "cult"), a telephone number keeper and source of info on dual SIM card phones, a chef, a bookseller, a cultural adviser, a printer cartridge cleaner/changer, a report writer, a water bearer, an adviser to the Ministry of Education, and a calendar printer, among others.

The highlight of my day today came at 9:15pm when I successfully printed the 2010 calendar for one of the language teams here. I needed some help with the riseograph machine, since I don't use it very often, and our roaming expert is travelling sometime in the next few days. So the only time I had to grab him was this evening. So we spent a few hours in the container with the machine, adjusting, testing, scanning and finally printing 300 copies of the calendar. And, if I do say so myself, they look pretty good! What a sense of accomplishment to see something like that come hot off the press (especially when I'm the one that pressed them!). It was a very satisfying end to my work day today. Very satisfying indeed.

An ovation?!

I've been back at work for a few days now. Somehow, I feel a bit refreshed and ready to get to work... and have been so busy that I haven't hardly had time to think about blogging.

One thing that encouraged me to continue with my work here happened on Thursday morning - my first morning back in the office. We all normally have tea together at 10:30am (and I'm usually one of the first to be there - I'm never late for refreshments!), but on Thursday morning, I was a bit late for some odd reason. And what fun it was - when everyone saw me walk into the dining room where we take our tea, they actually erupted into a round of applause! What a welcome, eh?! I mean, I didn't win the Nobel prize or anything, in fact, I didn't even bring gifts for everyone from Nairobi. And yet, they burst into spontaneous applause when I walked in the room. Now that's a way to make a girl feel loved and appreciated!

So it hasn't really been too bad getting back into the swing of things here. I'm still holding on to the wonderful memories of my time in Nairobi, though. After the meetings that I went to, I had a few days of holiday (well, a couple of them were the weekend, anyway, and then I took two more days off) because some dear friends from home were in town!

I couldn't have asked for more wonderful people to visit with - one of my dearest friends and her parents were in Nairobi at the same time that I was, and what a reunion we had! It was just so wonderful to spend some time with people from home, people who know me from what seems to be a completely different lifetime!

One of the highlights of the week was our Thanksgiving meal. It started off as a bit of a bust - the restaurant that we wanted to go to was closed, but thankfully, the taxi driver knew of a different place not too far away. We ended up having the most wonderful Japanese feast for Thanksgiving! Not your traditional turkey and cranberry sauce, but man, was it ever good!

It was the type of place where you sit around the grill and the chef (a Kenyan cooking Japanese cuisine!) cooks right in front of you. Our chef was not just a cook, but also quite the showman. We were taking photos and having a good time with him, and he was just lapping up the attention! You could tell he thrived on being the center of attention all evening. But he really did make it an enjoyable meal, while butting out enough to let us have our own conversation, as well.

Funnily enough, Richard was there with us for the dinner, and he got to have his first bit of sushi! It was SO tasty (of course, I ordered the non-seafood kind!), and so beautifully presented on the plate:


It was all just so lovely and beautiful. Good food, and even better company! Thanks, K family for an unforgettable Thanksgiving!

I also enjoyed a few other wonders whilst in Nairobi. I went to the movies. I saw one called "My Sister's Keeper". The problem with going to the movies once every year and living in the bush is that you have no idea what any movies are actually about. When choosing a movie in Nairobi, I basically choose the one that's playing at the most convenient time, unless it looks like a horribly graphic horror movie or just lots of people blowing stuff up. "My Sister's Keeper" looked pretty good - after all, it had Cameron Diaz in it. I was thinking maybe another one of her romantic comedy type movies. Man, was I wrong.

It was a great movie, and I would recommend it to anyone. But boy oh boy, bring your Kleenex! One of the friends that I saw it with had lost a son to lukemia a number of years ago, and at first, I was feeling really bad that I dragged him into that movie, without having any idea what it was about. But he said that it was actually really good for him to watch, and has helped him understand some of the emotions that his family went through during that time. It was really a tough movie to watch, though.

I ate a lot of good food at Java House and other lovely Nairobi restaurants, including these lovely tea scones at the Karen Blixen Gardens:

These, by the way, I enjoyed while a leopard danced upon my head:

I also got chased by a baboon and probably wouldn't be sitting here today should a brave African brother not stood his ground and defended the women and children in the zoo. It was actually quite scary, because this baboon was seriously out for blood, and there were so many little children running around!

I guess he thought I didn't get his good side when taking the photo, so he wanted to make sure I didn't make it out of there alive! And really, this was the ZOO, it's not like I was out in the wilds of Africa or anything. This baboon sure didn't get a standing ovation from me... but the guy who chased him away sure did!

So all in all, it was a good little holiday. I had wonderful people to share it with, good food, good weather, and some real fellowship and refreshment. Ahhh... life is good because God delights in giving us little gifts, like time together with old friends over a good cup of coffee, plus new friends to welcome us back to our new homes.

D'oh

I was planning to post about my trip tonight, but I got distracted by facebook. Actually, I tried several times to upload some photos to facebook, but it was giving me grief and I got "upload failed" several times. So it took me way longer to get that little task-ette done than I thought it would. And now I"m half asleep, so you don't want me to be blogging in this state, that's for sure!

But it's coming. It's coming. Maybe even later tonight. There's no way I'm going to sleep really soon. There's a big concert at the "cultural" center near our house tonight. They're not showing any signs of slowing down, that's for sure!

Anyways, more will come. I'm just not so coherent at the moment...

Can it be adapted?

I really want this little chair... but can it be adapted with a little fan on it, too? Imagine how lovely it would be to have a reading light and a fan, powered by your own rocking motion - for those steamy days (like today) when there's no electricity!

Home sweat home

Just a quick note tonight to let you know that I'm back home in sweaty Jb. I stepped off the plane this afternoon and nearly melted into a little puddle on the runway. It was a very warm welcome, let me tell you. At the moment (11:36 pm) it's 28C, and not a breath of air is moving. Of course, there's no electricity. So, yeah, I'm a sweaty girl, once again.

But I had a great time in Nairobi - I'll try to blog a bit about it in the coming days and put some photos up. For now, though, just wanted to let you know that I'm back! And I'm in fine sweaty form.

Consulting

I have SO much I could blog about tonight. But it's after 11pm, and I have to be at breakfast by 7:30am :( What kind of morning person made the schedule, I'd like to know! There's also a prayer time for the seriously spiritual, beginning at 7am. When they announced that, all I could think of was starting my own prayer time for us unspiritual night-owls at about 10:30pm. That's the time of day that I'm most awake and certainly much more alert - if I try to pray at 7am (especially before breakfast) there's no way I'd be able to stay awake. And yet, in Christian circles, you're made out to be a pagan if you're not up at the crack of dawn, praying! Maybe there is something seriously wrong with me, but somehow, I feel like God is just as awake and alert and ready to listen to me praying at 10:30, or even at midnight, as he is at 7am. So I'm trying not to feel guilty about skipping out on the prayer tomorrow morning.

Anyways, this "consultation" is going well. It's quite interesting to hear about what people are doing in the part of the world that I work in, and to hear people's perspectives on things. We had a wonderful Kenyan speaker this morning talking about worldview and cultures and all that. I love that sort of thing, and he said some things which really helped me understand some of the reasons why people in my little corner of the world do things the way they do.

I'll try to reflect a bit on those things tomorrow - and write it up when time isn't ticking on my internet and my sleep...

Oh, and because I haven't written about my food for a while - on Monday evening, I went to visit some South African friends of mine, and wow, did they ever feed me! I had the juiciest, tenderest most amazingest steak that I've had in so long, complete with little pumpkin pie-lets. So wonderful. Tonight there was fish served here, so now my belly is growling, hence the dreams of that wonderful steak...

Right, on that very spiritual note, I'm off to sleep!

How cool is this?!

So here I'm sitting in Java House, Nairobi, sipping an iced coffee, munching on a chocolate chip cookie and surfing the internet using the coolest little modem, which is no bigger than a flash drive! And it's FAST! Faster than our high speed VSAT set up in Jbs. Honestly, if I lived in Nairobi, I think I would just forget the office and set myself up in Java House.

But I did intend to get some work done today (was meant to write up my monthly report, as well as check a quarterly report from one of the language teams that I work with), but um, well, um, er, I sorta went for a pedicure instead.

But now that I have happy feet, high speed internet (so yes, I downloaded all 22 of my work emails which I now need to go answer!), I can get to work.

Just wanted to let you all know that I'm safe and sound in Nairobi and happily connected anywhere I go in this country. Man, why did it take me so long to get one of these little modem things?! We definitely need to get these things started where I live!

An Answered Prayer!

Funny how there are certain things I pray about a lot, and certain things that I guess I just figure I can do on my own. Now, in my mind, I know that I should be praying about everything. I know that I depend on the Lord for the very air I breath. I should be praising him and thanking him for the fact that I'm sitting here on my bed, completely healthy, using my fingers to type, my brain to think, the electricity to power my internet, and his grace which just keeps the world spinning as it should so we don't all fly off into space!

And I know that I should also be praying for all of the little situations I find myself in every day. I should be praying for my work with the Ministry of Education every day and praying for his guidance on how to speak and who to speak to. I should be praying for safety on the roads when I go out (though I do often thank Him for protection and safety each time I venture out!). I should be praying for peace in this country. I do pray for those things, but I should be praying for those things a lot more, and I should be expecting to see Him to amazing miraculous things.

But in actual fact, my prayer life comes alive when it comes to these pesky computers that I work with! Honestly, I have never prayed so much over a bunch of "stuff" until I became a bit responsible for all this IT stuff down here! I can't tell you how many times I've been completely clueless about how to make a computer work again, or how to get the network and Internet going... and out of desperation, just prayed, because there was nothing left to do!

And it came to that again tonight. Actually, one of our "real" computer guys has come down for a few days from a different city, which is a blessing in and of itself! Especially because one of our key administrators dropped his laptop yesterday! Ooops. He completely killed it, though he did make a valiant effort to save it, even ending up on the floor himself in an effort to break the fall of the computer on the concrete!

Anyways, I couldn't do anything with it, though I did try to replace a hard drive. And tonight, the computer guy took a look at it, and he couldn't do anything with the old hard drive - it was dead, completely. Wouldn't spin, nothing. But no problem - Andy brought an extra hard drive and even a whole new computer with him, and Richard had backed his stuff up just last week, and his emails from the past week are still on the email server.

However, through a comedy of errors (rather unfortunate errors), the high tech super duper supposedly fool proof back up system that the computer geeks had set up for him hasn't actually been working since March! And the high tech super duper back up system is supposedly so automatic that it doesn't even tell the user whether or not the back up that he thought he was doing was successful or not.

So, you can imagine the trauma that goes along with realizing his computer hasn't been backed up since March! Remember, Richard is one of our key administrators, who handles a lot of the finances, immigration, personnel and employment issues... so his data is rather key to a lot of records that need to be kept.

Our computer geek worked and worked and couldn't get anything off the hard drive. It was impossible. So we were thinking all was lost.

So I prayed. And I prayed. And I thought, man, I even should lay hands on this little hard drive!

And guess what? An hour later, all of the data is safe and taken off the hard drive. And all I can do is credit the Lord!

Now why don't I pray and give the glory to God in other realms of my life like that?! Why are my fervent prayers and thanksgivings concentrated in the realm of IT?! I think I have a few lessons to learn here...