Cornbread and Chicken

I´m having one of those moments where I feel like I´m living in two worlds at the same time. Scotty´s gone off to Spanish class and it´s turned cold, wet, and rainy outside, so I´m hiding away in a small corner internet cafe to spend the time while he´s in class. It´s dry and warm in here and there are two junior high age girls sitting next to me chatting away (I´m assuming with boys) on some chat page while Alan Jackson is singing loudly in the background "Where I come from it´s cornbread and chicken". That´s where I come from too (and have introduced many Bolivian friends to cornbread in the past few months). Here I am in the middle of the capital of Bolivia, thinking about the meeting we had with our SIM team this morning, sharing our joys and frustrations of being missionaries in a latinamerican, third world country, but Alan Jackson´s country twang is bringing the memories back of another day- attending middle school as a gawky, introverted girl who loved country music, saturday afternoons taking pontoon boat rides at my grandparents house in the country, driving out to High Springs to search the antiuqe stores and share lunch with my mom at the Great Outdoors Cafe. It´s wierd how your mind can be two extremely different places at the same time, 2 places that you love and that have such comfort and familiarity. Like the weather, my moods and feelings about being here can change so quickly- from peace and optimism to wondering what the next step is and how I fit into it. Scotty and I are finding greater challenges with some of the people in our church plant team than we could have foreseen and are actually planning on confronting one couple tonight to discuss some of this friction. Confrontation is hard, but we are finding that we are called to present the character of Christ as we learn to love, forgive, humble ourselves, and seek reconciliation.

And Alan continues to sing, "it´s alright to be little bitty..."