On Tuesday morning, we sat together as a family at the breakfast table.  I was to leave for Hadjer Hadiid via plane at 7:30.  Sonja was feeling overwhelmed at the thought of me being gone for three days.  The kids wondered when I would return.  As we held hands, I simply asked, “LORD, will you please show us how BIG you are these next three days; that we do not depend upon me, or Mama, or the kids, but upon you for ALL things.”  It feels like a dangerous prayer, because many times, when I ask God to show me His glory, He actually strips away idols (the things I want) in my life to show me how inferior they are to Himself.  This time, I was hoping he would shower blessings on my family but felt helpless to make the blessings happen.

On Wednesday, I received three text messages from Sonja, but before I share them, I need to give you a little background.

Though it may be hard to tell with this big fat blog, we don’t always share everything with you.  We try to balance a little of the serious, the trivial, as well as our joys, fears, struggles, successes, and failures so that you can see a well-rounded picture of life here, rather than just one side of it.  One of the things we haven’t shared is that we have not had electricity in our home for over a month.  We used to have it for 8-12 hours every 3rd or 4th day, but is has been non-existent in May.  I am not sure why, but I think it has to do with the priority of serving the UN and diplomats first, whom turn on their air conditioners come summer season, which sucks up all of the energy, leaving none for others.  Also, we have a small solar system, but the batteries in our solar system went dead last week, which has left us to charge our devices during the day when the energy comes in by the solar panels.  Since the batteries won’t hold a charge (we just use our flash lights starting at 6:00…..thank you Steve and Jill).  The dead batteries and no electricity have also meant no evaporative cooler for Sonja for an afternoon rest.  And to finish the context, our kerosene refrigerator and freezer has not been working for the last few weeks (yes, that’s right, it runs on kerosene), which has us drinking warm water and changing our diet, since we don’t have the ability to store any leftovers or meat without it spoiling.

So, after reading that context, try to picture what my face looked like when I received these texts from Sonja on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

Tuesday: “Good news!  We had electricity until 6:30 pm!  We are drinking juice in your honor.  Love you.”
Wednesday: “I had the best night of sleep.  The electricity came back on and stayed on through the night!” (this message probably meant that she was able to sleep inside in front of the cooler or with a fan on, as opposed to sweating through the night).
Wednesday: “The freezer is working again!”

With a huge smile on my face and a heart filled with gratitude to God for such kindness, I replied with one message, “The electricity unexpectedly returns, the freezer is inexplicably working again…you must have a REALLY BIG GOD!”