Paul's World: Andrews Abroad Week 5: Preparation

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Preparation: the action or process of making ready or being made ready for use or consideration. Many times throughout our lives we are preparing for the next thing. When you're engaged, you're preparing for marriage. When you're pregnant, you're preparing for a baby. Through your working years you hope to be preparing for retirement. The eyes are looking forward to the things to come.

Parts, parts, and more parts. When you're hours away from the shop, you don't want to be short!

This week was very much a week of preparing for the next phase at Kawa. The water tower needs to be supplied with water from the spring. That requires pipe, pumps, solar panels, tanks, concrete, trenches, and so many odds and ends of tools. Many of these things needed to be sourced and purchased locally. The pipe specifically was purchased from a store in neighboring Puyo.

Pedro and Silas unload the pickup after delivering a load of pipe to Kawa. There were enough parts that we required two trips to get it all out there.

If this project were being completed in the States, it would still be a big project to build. But it would be relatively easy to get supplies. You could drive to a big home improvement store and load up a truck or trailer with everything you might need. There are no big box stores here. One shop has concrete, another has pipe. Want to check out? You'll have to wait for a handwritten receipt, and a couple calls to your credit card company. Unfortunately only part of your order is available because the truck will be here tomorrow with the rest of your supplies.

Tomorrow comes, but the truck does not. In fact it might be several days that the truck does not come as expected. This is the way things go here.

We got to spend quite a bit of time with this kid at the plumbing shop.

Why is this important to know? Our lives on this earth are ultimately preparing for eternal life with Christ. We have work to do on this earth certainly, but the focus, the goal, is looking forward to the things to come. When the water project is complete, the people will drink. When our lives on this earth are complete, we will celebrate with Christ.

When the struggles and difficulties in this life come, and they will come, do we look at them with temporal vision? Are we preparing our hearts, minds, bodies for the glory to come? Do you see the opportunities to walk alongside our fellow sojourners and encourage them to look forward to the things unseen?

2nd Corinthians 4:16-18: So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.