Things I Miss and Things I Don't

Things I miss from the States:

• Most of all....family (Seth, my dad and mom) and friends (you know who you are!)
• Good coffee and coffee 'get away' time with friends
• Clean, neat, well organized stores
• Eating fruit without having to sterilize it in bleach first
• Convenience foods
• Tex-Mex food
• Sterile hospitals with knowledgeable doctors, nurses, and midwives
• Quality toys (and all things for that matter)....I've said here is like a nation of 'Dollar Store toys'. If a toys makes it for two months we're impressed. Some of our Christmas toys didn't make it past Christmas Day.
• The ease of everything
• A clothes dryer
• Sour cream
• Towels that are soft...not as Joe says like sandpaper from hanging on the line to dry. Everyone wants to use the towel second not first since it's a little softer then. :>)
• My crockpot and crockpot cooking
• Not having someone in our family dealing with sickness on any given day
• Feeling competent i.e. being able to communicate what I'm thinking, feeling, wanting in my native tongue instead of stumbling through and feeling stupid in a language I am not yet fluent in
• Independence: Being able to be alone and to go out alone (This is a way that I recharge.)
• Driving alone (see above)
• A stable government
• Ben and Jerry's
• Being able to walk down the street without seeing someone urinating
• Drinking, cooking with, and brushing my teeth with water directly from the faucet
• That things made from plastic are not expensive
• Feeling pretty secure that there is not a cat living on the shelf of a restaurant where I'm eating
  

Things I don't miss from the States:

• Joe being away from his family much of the time
• The underlying sense of 'hurry, hurry, rush, rush'
• The lack of focus/priority on people and relationships
• $4.00 a gallon for gas
• So much advertising/consumerism
• Keeping up with the 'Joneses'
• That things made from wood are so expensive
• The busy-ness of life
• Strict parking regulations in Washington DC (I got two parking tickets while there visiting Seth!)
  

Things that are the same all over the world:

• People's need for a Savior
• My desire to follow our Lord no matter where He leads
• Need for mentoring in Spiritual matters
• More needs than ministers/people meeting those needs
• More fields ripe for harvest than workers in the harvest
• Human suffering
• That people are so wrapped up in their daily lives that they don't see the spiritual warfare going on around them