I’m pretty sure it started with the bed bugs. Yeah, there actually is such a thing. They like to come out at night and bite poor, unsuspecting high school girls down in Mexico on their first mission trip. Did you catch the first part: at NIGHT. Like say, about 1 a.m. just as you’re brushing your teeth and giving yourself a lecture about staying up too late. But another room, bunch of sleepy girls, an empty bottle of raid, a fumigator, and 15 bags of laundry later, I think we’re beginning to get on top of it. (Although unless someone else is more on the ball than me, there’s still several bags of bedding sitting next to the frozen veggies in the walk-in freezer- turns out bedbugs don’t like cold weather any more than I do).
Just the way I planned on starting my week. And it’s kind of set a trend for how the rest of the week’s gone.
Take today, for example. I’m in one of the guest rooms, wiping the bathroom floor for the third time because that’s what happens when Caleb is trying to fix the sink and I’m trying to clean the room for tomorrow at the same time. Just as I’m sticking the cleaner back under the sink and standing up, I hear water running. So naturally, I test the faucet to see if we’re all good for tomorrow. No water comes out. Yet, I still hear water gurgling. Opening the cabinet door, I find water spurting out of the pipes. Not quite a water hydrant but definitely a fountain. Panic hits as my mind pictures water puddling all over the room (this is while I’m sprinting down the stairs and manically pushing buttons on my pager thingy). And yet again, four bath towels, one Caleb, a few helpful volunteers from the rehab center, and another pass over the floor later, the room is ready for tomorrow.
Afternoon comes, and my friend Shelby and I combine our shopping trip for hospitality supplies (yes, my parking job was amazing even in a 15-passenger van- at least the first time) with blizzards from Dairy Queen. When she got here a couple weeks ago, I was the first to introduce her to DQlandia (ironic, huh? Kansas girl introducing California girl to DQ in Ensenada, Mexico). Since she’s headed out tomorrow, we took our break with a blizzard and a conversation about life (which was actually better than the blizzard).
My day is looking up, especially as me and a couple friends start toward Centro in a borrowed car to get our hair trimmed- mine’s needed it for like 4 months. A couple miles from the base, I get a call that the team that got in a couple minutes ago has 2 more people than anticipated and therefore don’t fit in the room I assigned to them. Thankfully my friend/ ministry team leader was at the base to handle the situation, so I told them to hang tight and I’d figure it out when I got back. Which was dinner time. By that time, Gemma had creatively rearranged people and we ran around trying to make sure beds were made for the guys that were going to be staying in the team’s new second room (as Gemm’s husband shows the guys around the base).
In the middle of the craziness, I hear my name across the courtyard and am nearly knocked over as 3 of my favorite little Mexican girls try to give me bear hugs at the same time. I was one of the staff that took DTS students to their parents’ soup kitchen every week last fall, and since then, we occasionally get to play when their daddy comes to fix the frequently broken washing machines and fridges on base. So as soon as the last bed is made and I’ve had time to microwave my dinner, we sit and talk about how Irahi and Maya want to be in YWAM (maybe in a decade, girls), Berenice playing peek-a-boo from underneath the table.
And even now, I shake my head and smile at the same time. Because weeks like this week drive me crazy. And I love it. I found out I can make it down 3 stories of stairs in 12 seconds flat. And that bed bugs die in the freezer. And how much I need the people on my team. And that I love blizzards and good conversations and haircuts and besos on the cheek from tiny brown-eyed two year olds. My ordinary is nothing close to routine. And crazy as it sounds, I wouldn’t change it for anything.
No comments:
Post a Comment