5/4/2010 - Tuesday begins

We're all much more rested now after a great night's sleep.  Being exhausted does that for you!  It's a very good kind of tired, knowing that your strength had to have come from the Lord, because there's no way any of us could have performed the way we did yesterday on our own power.  I'm really looking forward to getting to know each of our volunteers better today, just like everyone else in the world, they all have a story.  I got to work with Howard's volunteers assembling distance glasses during one of the peak periods yesterday.  One is a young woman named Happiness.  She is 29 and said her  mother named her that because she was born on December 25th, the same day as someone else who has brought many smiles to the world.  She is aptly named because she has a beautiful smile and is always using it.  I asked her if her mother lived nearby and she said no, she had died.  I said how sorry I was, but she was so gracious, saying I had no way of knowing.  We had a long talk about how special a mother's love is.  I told her I had also lost my mother when she was far to young to be going to heaven.  It was special knowing we both understood a universal heartbreak and also that we would be reunited with all of our loved ones someday as believers.  It wasn't all somber.  Later in the day, I was helping again for awhile,and Happiness lost a screw out of one of the frames she was working on.  I told her and the other girls that they each could only lose one more screw the rest of the day or I was going to fire them and Howard, too.  It was a good laugh we all had, since it's pretty hard to find volunteers on either side of the Atlantic and the thought of firing one seemed pretty absurd.  To put it in perspective, we have a spare bag of hundreds of these tiny screws and I'm the worst at slipping and shooting them halfway across the room.  We have a pretty easygoing, appreciative relationship with all of the workers and I'm sure our love for each other will have grown by the end of the week, just as it did last November in Kawangware and there will be tearful goodbyes then.  It's just about time for breakfast, with any luck we'll have Internet after dinner and I can send another update at that point instead of the middle of the night!  God's peace to all of you!