Photo by Telegraph News
The phrase, “you don’t know what you have, unless it is gone” constantly rings out to me as I try to go through daily life in Indonesia.
There are a lot of things that we are still trying to get set up for the house that we are renting. It has been a slow and arduous process but we are slowly seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
We finally got our refrigerator and other household appliances. We are still trying to figure out about a water heater – we have not been able to take a warm shower in over two weeks. I am humbled by thinking about some of the missionaries around the world who do not even these things. I have a lot of respect for them.
The other day I was just thinking about how blessed we are to live in the States. There are a lot of things I took for granted. It isn’t until some of these are absent when we really notice how much we have appreciated some of things.
Why is it that we need to be separated from things in order to appreciate them?
One day, my family and I were talking and we came up with a quick list – warm showers, beef jerky (the ones from the real beef jerky stores), Doritos (we have searched everywhere), a good juicy steak, fast high speed internet (top speed here is 3Mbps) – but then we quickly stopped listing things that we missed because it doesn’t help to look at the cup half-empty. We have to see it half-full.
This is when we started to think about some of the things that we do have here – meals for $1.50, incredible Indonesian food, Bread Talk (store that has freshly made bread), J. Co (cheap frozen yogurt), diversity of culture, cheaper gasoline, new friends, learning new things, more time as a family – and the list goes on.
A lot of times when we see some of the “inconveniences” in light of the Gospel and the mission at hand, then they don’t seem so bad. It is worth it if we can see one more person come to trust in Jesus as their Lord and Savior.