Week 5

We went to a Catholic church service yesterday that ended up being about a 2.5 hour service. It was a lot like a US Catholic church but with better music (!). Not to mention that a couple got married while we were there. I had no idea who they were but it brought me as close to tears as I get even when it's someone I know. Beautiful. The bride walked down the aisle in somewhat the same manner as they do at home but with a lot more rhythm. It was more like a subtle dance. We ended up sandwiched between the bridal parties family members. As an offering during the service a couple of people brought up giant bags of rice. After the service we walked out and there were many people out begging. They had very obvious physical problems that no doubt keep them from working. (Everything here done for work, for the most part, is very physical. These folks work very hard for the little food that they get.) I felt like I was walking around in the gospel where the beggars that were disabled sat outside of the church. It's exactly what it was.

Walking into town is usually something I have to be ready for. People usually drive by honking and the street vendors are always following us speaking in French/Fon trying to sell us things. The kids yell "yovo" at us which means "white person" and they just laugh and smile. The ones that aren't too scared of us like to come touch our hands and skin. Tons of zimidjans (motorcycles/scooters that they mostly use for transport) are everywhere. These drivers have no shame either. You really have to be paying attention to what you're doing and what's going on around you because they don't usually stop or slow down for anything/anyone. We walked into town on Friday after work to get some awesome mango and papaya for the weekend (the weekend lunch here is nothing to write home about) and I was confirmed with the fact that I am not good at the shopping system here. You negotiate prices and well, basically, I'm a pushover. I'd almost take the first price just to not go through the trouble except that the prices that some start at are ridiculously high. We ended up getting some decent deals and fruit out of the experience though.

Over the weekend we had a couple of plastic surgeons come in. An extra one had come which opened up more surgery slots so I helped in screening today. We unexpectedly didn't have many people show up and some of them aren't able to be operated on because what they need done would have to be by someone who does an entirely different type of surgery. It was such a blessing today to be there seeing the process of how things are done and what the people go through just to try to get help here. How they travel from far places and wait eating the lunch they packed. How they wrap their babies up so they ride kind of piggyback. How they are excited and almost don't believe that they are handed a little green card that represents that they will get to come back to the ship within the next few weeks to have an operation. I'm so grateful that I was allowed today to get to meet them and talk to them so that in the next few weeks while I'm working with these doctors these patients will be much more to me than a face. I got to see the life in them today.

On a different note. Just when you think there's no possible way to learn anymore at a single time it just keeps going. I feel like the things I am being taught just keep going exponentially to the depth of the roots of the matters. The real roots. It's amazing how at a certain point in life you can fall into a lie about the nature of who God is and then years later it just becomes a part of who you are. You forget that it was a point in time that you believed that you had to make something up to Him (as if there was something you could do to make up for anything) and your decisions become based on it. The thing is, Christ died for our sins as forgiveness. He doesn't just kind of forgive but actually forgives. The kind of forgiveness that we don't really know how to understand or accept and it has already been done for us. His nature is nothing like ours. I think we can sometimes think we know that He has forgiven us but don't entirely experience the freedom that forgiveness brings. Experiencing that freedom is the best feeling. It's not that I have finally done enough good deeds for everything to be written off but that I have had it the whole time without really really believing it.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. Ephesians 2.4-10