My friend Amy wrote and gave me the perfect word picture for what I’ve been feeling lately. It’s that sense you get when you’re into the ocean just a little too far and the waves are big and they just keep knocking you over and pulling you under and swirling you around till you don’t know which way is up. And just when you find North and manage to stand up, you get hit by the next one and you’re down again. That’s how I feel right now. Of course it’s a limited perspective, I’m sure God’s grinning, but still, it’s one of those months – just feels like a water-view all day long.

Events? Well, today was our Padre Pio day, so back we trooped to the local primary school for more punishing hours of copying English sentences into our notebooks over and over and over. Not me, of course. I was sitting just around the corner in my ” mobile office” – yes, really, my car. The kids’ school chaperone isn’t doing the most wonderful job of really supervising the kids (you know there’s a problem when they are being regularly petted by their fellow students anytime the teacher’s not around which is about six times per hour). So there I sit, nearby, in my car, trying to give the illusion that I’m NOT there while still BEING there. I brought along my laptop, about a zillion letters for sponsor families of our orphans (all needing reading, sealing, stamping, addressing), and a book on educational philosophy. And I read, worked on spreadsheets for agriculture and worked my way through the pile of letters.

Being a muzungu, of course, I’m so NOT subtle sitting there in my huge all-terrain vehicle in the middle of Kanmphono – the slums of Nyhahuku. Inevitably I soon attracted the attention of one of Nyhuka’s resident crazy-people. Drawn by my presence, he entered the school yard and began his ritual acts around the campus. He approached Naomi and Quinn’s class and did some ritual acts there too then headed back to sit guard by my car while I continued my work – crazy people are remarkably drawn to our skin color. All was well until some teachers from the school noticed him circling my car and yelling about killing the Ugandan president (yep, they’re ON it.) When they politely asked him to leave he started screaming that I was his wife and he wasn’t going anywhere, then he picked up two BIG rocks (like cantalope sized) and began threatening to throw them at me. He stalked around angrily for the next thirty minutes while I discussed demon possession with the Catholic priest who had come over to mention that I had really gotten the guy excited (“perhaps his demon senses the Spirit of God within you” he said). I decided I would try my demon -intervention another day (yes, I will, later this week) and hung tight until the guy finally left.

Arriving home the kids played, thrilled to be done with Ugandan school, while I headed off to chapel and more interactions with my surly cell group – I somehow got all of the most troubled girls in the school in my group and don’t seem to be getting through to them. Then off to print orphan letters, organize books in and out of the library, visit Christ School neighbors and talk about difficult issues with some.

So what feels so beach-front about it all? Hard to say. Perhaps it’s a lack of faith, a lack of seeing the future, of understanding how all these little events make up a life that will impact eternity. Perhaps it’s the moments when we break up student theft rings, when we face potential cheating scandals, when our food costs go up yet AGAIN, when girls indecently expose themselves and laugh, when a rat eats through a month of Christ School receipts in the office drawer . . . . . Perhaps it’s those moments that make the others feel harder and less worthwhile. And since they just keep coming in such succession (all these an more within the last week) it feels a little too intense. So pray that we would focus on the beautiful view and not forget to BREATH whenever possible.