Olga and Trials

Olga

I don’t know if I have talked about her yet or not, but Olga is the 2 year old who lives next door. Her mom is the house mom. But she is over here a lot because she loves our house. The first few days she was very frightened of me, which is typical of the little ones, as I’ve mentioned. She just looked at me from afar, but if I got close, she would cry. Well after a few days she started to actually touch me and I could make her laugh, but I couldn’t hold her. What a blessing—after a week and half she loves me!! Oh, and did I mention she is one of the cutest two year olds in the world. She’s fat, loves to dance, has long braids, and is simply precious. She likes to sit with me and dance with me and it is just so wonderful!



Trials


So the first few days after I had gotten here, I was looking through my journal and I found it funny that on the plane ride up here, I stumbled upon this verse and wrote this. . .

“This is such a mystery to me: ‘Consider it pure joy my brothers whenever you face trails of many kinds because you know the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be MATURE AND COMPLETE, not lacking in anything!’ James 1:2

Man if that is not encouragement I don’t know what is.
Oh how I want people to know this. Complete! Lacking in nothing! That’s what he wants for us. But it comes from trials of many kinds! Oh how easily we forget this.”

And then I got here and faced trials of many kinds. . .oh how easily I forget!

I was reminded of what I had written after a couple of days of being here and I laughed out loud.

But it WAS encouragement to me! I am facing these trials for a purpose--so that I may be made complete! Mature! Lacking in nothing! I do not necessarily know what’s the exact thing I’m lacking and I do not like the trials in the moment (at all), but I look forward to what it means the Lord is doing in me. Even though I have no idea what the purpose is of these trials are and how it will make me complete, I trust that there is something good coming from it! I get glimpses of these things every now and then, so that is helpful, but one day I will see it all!


Culture

It is so funny to see things like “Prayers First,” “Praise Yesu,” “God is good,” on ALL of the taxi’s, supermarkets, well pretty much all sorts of random places.