Reflecting on Busyness

My Friend, Joyce Mlenga

Joyce, Moses Mlenga with Japhet, EAFC's first student, met me at the airport!

Joyce tells me that her husband Moses only sleeps about 4 hours a day (night).  WHY?  Well, in their culture it is next to impossible to say "no" to any request, especially by a superior.  So when the sun comes up, he's busy with teaching, preaching or administering duties at the University of Livingstonia.  Then after the sun goes down, I guess they "are blessed" if the electricity goes out and they have to go to bed.  Because after 4 hours of sleep, he gets up to work on the PhD dissertation he very much needs in the academic world in which he dwells.

Joyce says she can't function on that little amount of sleep, and thus an adjunct teacher seeing her dilemma, invited her to come here (Washington state) for 3 months primarily to work on that dissertation.  See how blessed we've been to have her among us for these 3 days.  Joyce did explain to her other "hosts" that if it hadn't of been for EAFC she would have never been in her position, therefore, she wouldn't even know them.  I thought that was a clever way to explain how important EAFC is to her.

Cathy Phillips, long time friend of EAFC and former board member
on one of her trips to Kenya visiting with Moses and Joyce when they were studying
for their master's degrees

Now, let's contrast Malawian busyness with American busyness.  Maybe we just have different "bosses" in our lives that pull at our ability or willingness to say "no".  With grandmothers my age, it's wanting to invest in your grandchildren, please your children.  With businessmen, it's generally wrapped around "money, sex, or power."  (as Richard Foster taught us.)  With young women, it's struggling with career and family pulls, questions such as whether to play soccer on Sundays.  The lists go on and on and on.


Yesterday Joyce went to my luncheon club with me.  Though she's probably 20 years younger than most of us, we found we had lots in common.  We don't call it "witchcraft" that vies for our attention over trusting God, but don't we have "our demons in our closet?"  


In general, people are people!  If we STOP and LISTEN to one another, we find we have so much more in common than what appears on the surface.


Those who follow my blogs know now that questions are NEXT in my pontificating.  If I am to be changed as I want to be, I must be willing to let these questions penetrate my soul.  These are the seed thoughts that turn into prayers, for myself and for "us" that care about our brothers and sisters who live on the other side of the world.


Now, some of my questions: are we letting ourselves STOP long enough to MEDITATE?  Do we have "our pet projects" and not stop to examine whether we could stretch ourselves to learn a better way?  Are we too busy to even meet the "Joyces" that pop into our lives from time to time?  OR are we just too tied up with our very personal  world that we just  don't consider letting this other "world" invade our routines from time to time?


Just my musings for the day.  May God show us a more excellent way!