I am not a morning person at all. But for some reason, no matter how tired I am and how long I’ve been traveling, I have this amazing inability to sleep past 7:00 in Quito. You would think it’s just the extra noise or the sunlight, but I haven’t woken up grumpy about either of those things in a very long time. This is one of the places where I also never wake up and think “where the heck am I?” on the first morning, despite the fact that I am almost always staying in a new place. So here I am blogging it up at 6:45am.
I know that I am going to see a lot of people who are near and dear to me today. And eat a whole lot of delicious food. And as I wrote yesterday, I’m excited. But I’m also really thankful for the transition time. I told somebody at home the other day that I was just not yet in the mindset of hosting a team. So maybe after a day of enjoying friends and fun stuff, I’ll feel ready for meetings and shopping and airport runs and orientations tomorrow.
That’s actually been my ongoing prayer in the last few days. I want to be prepared to host the team. And that’s being “all here.” I’m going to miss my youth and be wondering how things are going. I’ve got some alarms set to make some phone calls to the U.S. I’m not going to completely block out my life at home. But I can’t worry about all of my plans at home for this time and try to micromanage it from another continent.
And I also have to give my full attention to the 26 people whose lives are my responsibility for the next two weeks. Yes, that’s a dramatic way of putting it, but it’s a good reminder to me. I’m excited to get to know and work with them and see all that God does in and through them while they’re on field. But I hope and pray here in my transitional day that I am ready to be an effective, supportive, prepared and faithful host for them.
