A little bit hard

 There are days when things are harder than usual.  In America that meant that some of our days were busier than usual.  But we always had days when we could catch up and get things back to normal.  The past couple of months have been a struggle for us and normal seems to be just out of reach.

I have a washing machine, but no dryer.  This is not the norm around here, most people have no washer and do all their laundry by hand.  I am very glad that we have a washer, but hanging out laundry by hand takes a lot longer than tossing it into a dryer.

We have seven people and we live in a hot, wet, sweaty and muddy place.  This adds up to LOTS of laundry.  I usually do at least two loads a day.  It's all I have room to hang out to dry.  Sometimes I try to throw in a third load to get caught up after a weekend.  It seems like it's always on catch up days when things go wrong. Power outage, the laundry line snaps, no water, rain.  In the last two weeks all of these have happened at least once.  It has rained more than a few times, making it hard to get things dry.  We all move fast to get things off the line and into the house where they get hung around the hallway when someone spots rain.  I'm sure it would be fun to watch as we run and grab laundry while it pours. 

Electricity has been a big struggle for the last couple of months.  The junction box -or whatever it is called- that is outside on the power pole has been switching to off randomly.  It took two weeks before the workers looked at the box and switched it out for a new one.  Things got much worse while they changed things inside the house before they finally listened to us.  It feels strange to be the ones who are considered to be ignorant because we are not understood.  Translation can be a difficult thing.  When they finally went outside to work, it took all of ten minutes, and the power box has not given us any problems since. 

To add to the regular fun, today we had water suddenly pouring out of the ceiling and lights in the kitchen while I was making lunch.  It turned out that a pipe had burst in the attic.  We had to turn out the power right away because the lights started flickering, and we realized that the wataer was coming from the water tank that has a pump to automatically keep it filled.


Thankfully, our landlord responded quickly and although it took all afternoon the pipe has been repaired and the water is not coming through the ceiling.  There is still lots of water in the attic, though, which is causing electrical problems in the kitchen.  For now we have the power turned off to that room, and power cords stretched across the hall to keep the fridge and wifi going.  Now you know what is important to me. 


Because the kitchen was off limits for the kids, we had an impromptu picnic on the porch for lunch.The kids enjoyed being outside and the air is pretty cool now that the hot season seems to be over.  We also had to finish off the ice cream that was in the freezer since we didn't know when we would be able to turn the power back on.  I'm glad it didn't go to waste. 

I have had this post written for a few weeks, but have been hesitant to post it.  I'm afraid it will sound too whiney.  But, this is the reality of our life here.  These things make everyday harder.  And I want you all to know what is going on so that you can pray for us.  We desperately need prayers for our goals and mission here, but we need prayers for our everyday things too.  Thank you for supporting us by praying with us.