Struggling......Part III

Struggle 4: Just so you will know these struggles are in no particular order, it is just what I feel like writing about at the moment. Today, we have been without power for 7 hours. This leads me to another struggle of mine, NO POWER! For the last year and 1/2 Zambia has been experiencing problems with their power situation. We have had to deal with load shedding throughout the country. You may wonder, what exactly does that mean. Basically, it means that certain areas are without power for part of the day and supposedly on a rotating basis. For several months our power went off every day for 6-12 hours/day. This can really wear on you after a while. Finally, Zesco(our power company) came up with a schedule that we could look up on the internet so at least we would know when our power would be out. I know that might sound funny, but it does help us if we can kind of know when it will go out. It just helps us to prepare better. Our area for the last couple of months has been scheduled for Monday, Wed., and Fri. evenings only for about 4 hours. Well, I'm not sure what happened but they are not following the schedule. Our power is going off just about every day. Why make a schedule though if you are not going to follow it? This is a frustration when you home school and you need power for the dvd player. It also always seems to be off when it is time to eat. Thankfully, we were able to buy some cadac propane burners so we can now cook when the power is off. I realize that probably 95% of the people we work with do not have power at all but they never had any to begin with. We have been use to it and now it has been taken away. Sometimes, I think I have gotten use to it and then there are days like today when you just don't know if you can take anymore of it. This has got to be one of the hardest struggles that we deal with just trying to live in Zambia. It is amazing how comfortable you get with your stuff at home, your power, your water, etc. but then when it is taken away, whoa it knocks you for a loop! I think I will request prayer on this one, it has been tough on our whole family. I am thankful that we do have power sometimes because there are missionaries that have it worse than us. When you pray for missionaries remember to pray for their physical needs as well. Sometimes we have to spend a lot of time just trying to make it day to day. One good thing in all of this is that I know that God is trying to teach me something and that He is molding me to hopefully become more like Him.