I. Am. Amazed.
Here we are in the USA for our first Home Assignment/Furlough.
Without wasting your time, or mine, since we are all very busy (apparently our American culture has folks trapped into thinking we are so busy that we MUST read and answer texts while we are driving in our cars??), I'll just get to the point.
Guys- my whole life feels like a crock pot. There are machines that are doing the work FOR me! I feel like I can "Fix It and Forget It" with all of these things:
- Food. I made pork carnitas a couple weeks ago in the crock pot. It was glorious to pop it in and have it be done a few hours later with zero effort on my part!
- Laundry. I can have a whole load washed, dried, folded and put away (ok, my kids do that part) in just a couple hours! I have a washer in the tribe, but not a dryer!! It's amazing!
- Dishes. There is a dishwasher in the house we are staying in. This machine is so much more of a time-saver than I even realized! I put them in dirty, and add this fancy-looking dishwasher soap tablet thingy, and a couple hours later I have clean, dry dishes.
I hope this doesn't turn me into a gripe when we return to PNG next year! :) Honestly though, that is why we strive for balance over there. We are not living over there just to 'live there'. We have a job to do, a very important job! So as a mission organization, they encourage us to consider what tools/resources will help us to be most effective in that job of church planting and discipling, translating... That is why pretty much all of us have washing machines for our clothes. There might be tribal locations with a dryer, or a crock pot.. I'm not sure. But it's also why we live in somewhat normal houses, and why many of us choose not to keep up a garden or chickens or whatnot. It's not wrong to make those choices either, but we are always wanting to consider what will give us the most time to both raise our own families, and to have the most time possible spent directly with the people the Lord has sent us to reach with His gospel of grace through Jesus Christ.
Anyway, this is going to be a different year, for sure, with all these Fix-It-and-Forget-It machines at my disposal! It's glorious, and to be perfectly simple, it's just "really, really nice!" I'm sure my daughters don't mind either- they get a break from washing dishes by hand for a year. And all of these machines equal more time they can spend with me (like it or not, haha).
