Right now I'm sitting in Kendra's apartment across the hall from ours. Evan is taking his nap in her guestroom so that he can sleep undisturbed. It is, once again, a time when we are hosting guests. A large group of teenagers is using the house today while they wait for the rest of their group to be flown in from several different reserves. They've been teaching VBS all week.
But this is nothing compared to last weekend. Oh, no.... Last weekend we were planning on having quite a few people in and out during the day on Friday and Saturday, but no overnight guests. But the weather didn't cooperate. It was too rainy to do much flying. I counted 115 people using these facilities over the weekend with lots of people sleeping here Saturday night. The number of people sleeping here was much larger than the number of beds. They graciously used the floor.
Because the weather was so rainy, we were on a pile inside. Kendall and I took the opportunity to take the boys out for lunch on Saturday and do some things like that. By Saturday evening, we didn't really have any place to go. Businesses close down early here. The group that was occupying our apartment offered to let us eat part of the meal they cooked. That was nice since they were using our kitchen and our table and our dishes and our oven. Then they sat in our living room for a Bible Study. Part of another group was upstairs. Kendra was gone, but a guest was staying in her apartment. A large group was in the mission office's basement, which is on this property. And it was raining. So I put on a raincoat and let the boys ride bikes in the rain for awhile. Finally we went into Kendra's apartment and played games with the boys. We went to bed with the loud sounds of a Star Wars movie on the other side of our bedroom wall. Thankfully it soon ended and all the moviegoers went to bed- in our extra bedroom and on our apartment floor.
By Sunday afternoon when the weather finally stayed clear enough for everyone to get out, I was singing hallelujah. Eli and Evan were disappointed. How boring to only have 4 people in our apartment!
Last night a small group of 9 came back from a reserve- a day earlier than originally planned. They were happy to see our family again after so much rainy bonding time last weekend. After overhearing comments about watching Star Wars in our living room again I decided to take action. At 10:30 I finally said, "Can I, in the most friendly way, kick you out of our apartment?" They graciously allowed me to kick their backsides up the stairs to their rooms. And even though I had to shoo them out, they really have been my favorite group so far.
July is the busiest month with groups. Assuming that everyone really will leave tonight as planned, we will have made it through the craziest 3 weekends. This has been a lot of work and has taken flexibility, but it has been good for us. I have met some interesting people and the group that is on our deck right now really bonded with Eli and Evan. (They were stranded with us 2 nights longer than planned.) It really was good for me to have loads and loads (10, to be exact) of laundry to wash and hang out my first Monday morning on my own in a new town. (By the way, my washing machine was in many pieces at the time, but Kendra was kind enough to let me use hers.) It was good for me to have this responsibility right away and, at the same time, it will be good for me when everyone (hopefully) gets on the bus and heads for home tonight.
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Lao-tzu
July 1, 2008
This journey so far has taken me one thousand and four miles from my hometown, but I’m having trouble putting my finger on the single step that began it all. Was it Monday afternoon at the border when they gave me my official document allowing me to pass? Was it Saturday morning when we started the car and drove out of Goshen in our funny little caravan? Was it in February when we came up to Red Lake for a job interview at the hospital? Was it two Christmases ago being up here with Kendall’s family and all of us rating our desire to live up here? (I can’t say my number on a scale of 1 – 100 was high, but it was the highest of all the in-laws, so I guess I’m the chosen one.) Was it three years ago almost to the day that Kendall first said, “What if we’d move up here?” (I tried to ignore that one for several months, thinking surely it would go away.) Or was it June 10, 2000 when I married Kendall and made some solemn promises before God and all these witnesses? Was it a night before Kendall and I were married when we talked about moving to Red Lake? (It was a far off and romantic possibility at that time.) Or was it living in and visiting different cultures at different times in my life? Could the first step have been when my parents brought me as a baby to this same area for a year of voluntary service? (Kendall wasn’t born yet, but I surely saw his parents as they chatted with mine from time to time.) What about when my dad lived on a nearby reserve for two years before he was married? Or when my mom visited this town with her family as a teenager? Or maybe it had something to do with choices my grandparents made? Or other ancestors farther back?
At any rate, moving into this house where I slept for a few weeks as a baby and where my dad stayed as a teenager, has made me very aware of roots. And how they affect our lives and choices and passions.
I suspect there is no single step that began our move a thousand miles away from Indiana. It seems, rather, to be a coming together of so many different factors. (Not the least of which is marrying a man who has taken this land as a very part of his being. And for all the ways I can tease him and get annoyed at some of his woodsman ways, I really do mean that in a reverent and respectful way.)
So here we are, a thousand miles from nowhere. (Oops…I meant a thousand miles from Goshen.) I know that we safely made the journey here, but mostly our journey is just beginning. And mostly I’m excited.
This journey so far has taken me one thousand and four miles from my hometown, but I’m having trouble putting my finger on the single step that began it all. Was it Monday afternoon at the border when they gave me my official document allowing me to pass? Was it Saturday morning when we started the car and drove out of Goshen in our funny little caravan? Was it in February when we came up to Red Lake for a job interview at the hospital? Was it two Christmases ago being up here with Kendall’s family and all of us rating our desire to live up here? (I can’t say my number on a scale of 1 – 100 was high, but it was the highest of all the in-laws, so I guess I’m the chosen one.) Was it three years ago almost to the day that Kendall first said, “What if we’d move up here?” (I tried to ignore that one for several months, thinking surely it would go away.) Or was it June 10, 2000 when I married Kendall and made some solemn promises before God and all these witnesses? Was it a night before Kendall and I were married when we talked about moving to Red Lake? (It was a far off and romantic possibility at that time.) Or was it living in and visiting different cultures at different times in my life? Could the first step have been when my parents brought me as a baby to this same area for a year of voluntary service? (Kendall wasn’t born yet, but I surely saw his parents as they chatted with mine from time to time.) What about when my dad lived on a nearby reserve for two years before he was married? Or when my mom visited this town with her family as a teenager? Or maybe it had something to do with choices my grandparents made? Or other ancestors farther back?
At any rate, moving into this house where I slept for a few weeks as a baby and where my dad stayed as a teenager, has made me very aware of roots. And how they affect our lives and choices and passions.
I suspect there is no single step that began our move a thousand miles away from Indiana. It seems, rather, to be a coming together of so many different factors. (Not the least of which is marrying a man who has taken this land as a very part of his being. And for all the ways I can tease him and get annoyed at some of his woodsman ways, I really do mean that in a reverent and respectful way.)
So here we are, a thousand miles from nowhere. (Oops…I meant a thousand miles from Goshen.) I know that we safely made the journey here, but mostly our journey is just beginning. And mostly I’m excited.
Blog Archive
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2008
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July
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- Norseman Festival
- A Bit of Kendall's History
- My Helpers
- Eli Helps
- Always Remember Repellent
- Sandflies/Blackflies: Bites Taken Out of Our Skin
- Strawberry-Picking
- Okay, I Admit It's Really Beautiful Here
- Overheard
- Evan Makes Very Big Fountain
- Different Doorknobs
- Peaceful
- Canoeing
- Guest House
- What Bible School is All About
- P.S.
- Cloudy
- Two Lists
- Evan's first fish!
- Our home
- New Buds!
- "Fish poop spicy!" -Evan
- "This is great!" -Eli
- Breakfast
- Fishing
- Groceries
- Mosquitoes
- “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a singl...
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