Today is my little brother's birthday.  You know, birthdays are always a good time to be reminded of how much people mean to you... But especially when they just had a head-on collision and they're alive to tell about it!  I'm so grateful that he's still around and that he wasn't hurt worse!  Since he was in the "big truck," he fared quite a bit better than the "little truck guy" who was airlifted to Charlottesville.  Since most of you from home already know the whole story, I won't go into all the long, complicated details of it all...but I'll just say, wow!  He is so fortunate and so, so blessed!  

I was sitting calmly at Bible study through it all.  We reached Mama Peninah's place just as it began to rain.  Tell you what, we were all just thrilled to hear the sound of rain pattering away outside!  It has been so incredibly dry, and we need rain so desperately!  There were already quite a few of us crammed in her small mud house, but as others came in, dripping wet, we made room for them to slide in.  Soon, I was tightly packed on the dilapidated piece of a sofa with ladies on both sides and a little tyke on my lap.  Thankfully, the rain cooled things down a little bit, but it was still pretty sweltering, and with the small windows closed to keep out the rain, there was no airflow and it began to get rather suffocating.  We sang our normal amount of songs, and as we got ready to have devotions, the rain began to REALLY dance on the tin roof.  "Pasta Joe" shouted amidst the din that we would just have to keep singing instead of devoting, and that maybe we would even need to sing the entire time.  We sang at the top of our lungs, but even still no one would have known if I would have thrown in a few wrong notes.  I glanced at my deaf friend, Benter, across the room and felt as though for once, I had something in common with her.  I had to look around at others to see what word they were mouthing so I would know when to plunge into the chorus.  Not that anyone would have heard if I wasn't coming in at the right time.  Ok, ok, so it wasn't quite that bad.  We could hear each other a tiny bit, but just slightly.  Before long, I realized that my right shoulder was drenched.  It had been getting wetter and wetter, but by the time I absorbed that knowledge completely, my dress had absorbed a whole lot of rain and I was getting rather waterlogged.  I looked up and saw that there were plenty of other leaks too with water dripping down with predictable consistency.  I shifted over and soon, SPLAT, a very massive drop landed in the center of my song book and began to blur the words together.  So, back to my original habitat.  Really, being saturated is a helpful way to keep from dying of a heat stroke.  I think.  The little person on my lap sat quietly, completely undisturbed by my discomfort and satisfied to eat handful after handful of nyoyo.  The rain did stop, and Morris was able to "carry the topic" after all, and best of all, I was able to escape outside to dry off a bit and claim a tiny bit of space for myself.  The rest of Bible study was normal.  We sat around and talked and laughed and ate nyoyo and drank tea and then I trekked off with Pamela to her house that I had helped mud several weeks ago, before rushing back to head home with Joe and Glenda.  

Sometimes living here seems so easy.  There are many good times, many great experiences, and a lot of friendly people.  But there's also a very real side to living here.  I generally try not to post negative stuff... however, even here, life is real... and it isn't always perfectly perfect.  It isn't fun to be so far away, from your family, so alone, when something "big" is going on.  To not even stop in at the hospital to see how your brother's x-rays are going, to not be in the middle of it all, to not know what's happening in the moment.   When you realize that honestly, he could have not made it out of the truck alive.  Or he could have been hurt badly.  Yet, PTL, he is here today!  Well, he's halfway around the world...but he's THERE... and it's his birthday!  Happy, HAPPY birthday!!!!!!!!!! :)