Transformation

In an open air warehouse across the street from the MCC office yesterday afternoon, I manoevered my motercyle with great concentration around a chalked in figure eight. When the afternoon's downpour subsided, fireworks signalled the start of a cremation at the nearby wat (Buddhist temple). If you had read me this excerpt from my life a year ago, I'm sorry to say that I would have laughed in your face! Asia is truly the last place on Earth that I expected to end up, and I'm not really sure that I knew that Laos existed. Furthermore, those of you who know me well know that I have not always had the most positive relationship with motorized vehicles. Once upon a time, I was convinced that I would never learn to drive a car, let alone a motorcycle. People change; God works in unexpected ways.

So what's changed? Physically my hands are a little raw from doing all my laundry by hand, my muscles are growing from lifting baby Joshua and I have a new freckle two. Emotionally and spiritually, this year is already stretching me in more ways than I can count. I can feel myself exuding a new confidence. Yes I can drive a motorcycle in a city that is becoming less foreign to me everyday. Yes I can eat whatever unidentified substance you have just piled on my plate.
Familiarizing myself with this place is, as a class mate put it earlier today, "like coming out of a thick fog". The squiggles on roadside signs burst into clarity, jumbled conversations spring into order and baffling cultural practices repeat themselves predictibly. I wish I could say that the sun has come out and everything from now on will be bright and sunny, but for now, I'm happy living in the humidity of a Lao afternoon in rainy season.