My Favorite Complaint

At each of our daily team meetings, I give everyone an opportunity to say something that they've enjoyed or found especially interesting, and something that has been difficult or challenging. Last night's most commonly expressed difficulty was that they haven't been working hard enough.

Now that's what I like to hear.

Not because I don't think they've been working hard enough; there have been more waiting times on this trip than on some previous trips, but they have done a lot of work during the times when we were supposed to be working. We're starting to see results; it just took a while to get there. I'm just really glad to be here with a group of youth who want to do good things, not just see a foreign country, and who want to know that they are really helping someone.

Before we leave, we will be replacing the barrel bolts on several of the shower and toilet doors. As I told them last night, it's likely that no one will ever realize that we've done this task. Most people won't even think about how the bolts got there. But because we do this little task, no one will get locked in the shower again, or cut their finger forcing the lock open, or have potentially embarrassing moments of walking in on one another (not that any of these things has happened to us...). And it may not seem very important, but that's how God works: in a million little things every day that hardly anyone notices.