Joy for Joi, Week 17

 My "Joy Dare" notebook continues to fill with the faithfulness and generosity of God, as He continues to bless and bless.  Looking back at this week, there seems to be a theme:  all of our big highlights involved Him blessing us with or through other people.

For example...  yesterday we invited a team of "World Racers" over for lunch, and it ended up being one of the best times we've had in the 'Dova!  These kids (ok, ok, they're in their 20's... but I'm getting old now) were so fascinating to talk to.  They are just finishing up a month of service and ministry here -- and it's the 4th such project they've done in as many months.  Within 11 months, they will travel to 11 different countries -- this particular team's route includes Haiti, Dominican Republic, Romania, Moldova, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, the Philippines, India and Nepal!  I get exhausted just writing all those names... I can NOT imagine traveling to them all within one year -- and serving people in each place.

Clearly this a group up for crazy adventures!

The team already has many stories of precarious sleeping and eating conditions, transportation nightmares, and amazing things they've seen God do in each place.  Strider was so intrigued and asked them question after question.  The young men were great with him -- they loved his curiosity and told me later they could see him becoming a leader on a trip like this.  Sure enough, as soon as they walked out our door, Strider turned to me and said, "I want to be a World Racer!"

 As a side note -- I have never had a group of people appreciate my cooking so much!  These people ate helping after helping of macaroni and cheese, and swooned over the chocolate chip cookies.  (Eating in third-world countries for months will do that to you!)   I need to feed people like that more often.

Anyway, we loved our time with them.  Last night, though, as we were reading the facebook status of one of them, we learned that they had just discovered they have lice.  We'll see if my joyful smile persists through next week....  (Strider tried on 2 of the guys' hats yesterday!!!)

We've also been blessed this week by some of our friends here.  They invited us over for dinner on Tuesday and you would think we were going to Disney World the way the kids were anticipating this big event!  (We don't often get invited to dinner anywhere)  I don't know how many times I heard, "How long until we go to the Bucks' for dinner?!?"  Thankfully we only had to wait 2 days from the time of the invitation... I would have gone insane with the questions if it had been much longer.

The actual dinner was very exciting -- maybe close to Disney World.  They actually found ways to make several Asian dishes.  Delicious!

This same couple has also offered to babysit our kids for a whole weekend so Pete and I could get away.  I have been blown away by how God has even given us friendships in this short time that would make that a possibility!  (We are not actually able to take them up on the offer for a couple of reasons, but I was so touched that they sincerely offered that.)

And finally, we have been blessed materially through people as well this week.  Some other friends here made an unplanned trip back to Seattle last month, and we suddenly realized we could maybe get our broken iPad replaced (since shipping back and forth to Apple from here had not been a possibility).  A contact at the Embassy told us she was going to D.C. for a week, so we ended up sending our broken iPad with her, and she took it to a UPS store to mail to Apple.  Then Apple mailed a new iPad to our friends who were visiting Seattle, and they brought it back here to us this week.  So now I have a new iPad!  Yay!

Thank you, God, for all the people you've put in our path.... and please keep the lice far from us.