Birthdays are something that I always get ridiculously excited about. This year was no exception. My birthday, May 4, finally arrived and landed on my day off so it was a twice as special day.
The week before my birthday though, I moved from la casa de frutas where I've been living for the past 8 months to la casa de cereales because the two sm's who were in that house returned home.
The switch happened rather quickly as I went to a house of 10 to a house of 9, from there being four volunteers being in the house to two and from living above the cafeteria that was extremely hot to the house that backed up to the jungle.
Because we can open our backdoor and take ten steps and be surrounded by jungle, that also means that we share our house with jungle life.
My birthday morning rolled around and as I was sitting in the living room with all my girls having personal worship time, one of my girls called my attention to the víbora that was making its way up the inside of our thatched roof to the main beam. It was above my room and since the divider walls don't go all the way to the ceiling, it was easy to see the white snake making its way to the highest beam. I think I'd disturbed his sleep by turning on the lights so early in the morning.
It was a pretty long white snake and Alejandro remarked that he hated to kill it once he'd been summoned to extract it. Maybe I don't appreciate God's snakes like I should but I didn't care what happened as long as that snake ended up dead. Alejandro shimmied up the wooden post, machete in hand and killed it but not before he successfully lodged it in between the thatched roof so we currently have a dead snake still in our roof. We'll see how long it takes to decompose.
Since it was my day off, I went to town and was able to connect with most of my family and wish my little brother a happy birthday as well since we're birthday twins but he's 4 years younger. The two other volunteers that I was with on my day off surprised me by buying me a brownie, tall glittery gold candles which they stuck in my brownie and lit as they sang cumpleaños feliz. In true Bolivian style, one of the candles broke as they were singing but it wasn't catching anything on fire so we let it be. It was really sweet of them to do those things to celebrate my birthday.
Once I got back to the mission, I dropped my backpack off at the nearest house and braced myself as I saw eight of my boys running towards me yelling, "es el cumpleaños de la teacher Kaylie!". I tried my best to fight as they grabbed my arms and legs and started making their way towards the river but we all knew it was useless to fight. Still, it made it more fun that way and I almost escaped twice from their grasp. Once we got to the ledge that dropped into the creek, I gave up struggling and instead latched onto a victim to bring with me into the creek. That poor victim was Kevin who wasn't fast enough to get out of the way and over the edge and into the murky water we went followed by my daughter Eva who had promised that she would go in the creek with me when my birthday came.
We all emerged from the water dripping and laughing.
That whole evening I was surprised with cards, hugs, kisses and "te quiero"s or "I love you!"s from the kids.
I felt so loved and it reminded me of the verse I had just committed to that morning in my personal worship - Hebrews 6:10 "Our great desire is that you will keep on loving others as long as life lasts, in order to make certain that what you hope for will come true."
I read that verse and it reminded me again why I am here at Familia Feliz and what my purpose is here in this world; to love others unconditionally. Though sometimes my attempt to love others has been rejected, thrown back in my face and taken advantage of, I always know that those who live in love live in God and God lives in them for God is love. (1 John 4:16)
So as I turned 24 (I know, I still can't believe it.), I purposed that I want to love with everything that I have and with all the love God can give me. I want to experience God's love on a deeper level and show others how much God loves them and how much He wants a personal relationship with each person.
It's so simple.
God is love.
No comments:
Post a Comment