A day in the life of Ken the missionary…

Ten minutes after realizing that the reason I’m freezing cold is that I’ve kicked off one blanket and the other is turned sideways so my feet are hanging out…Juan come crashing into my room telling me that we’re late for his doctor’s appointment. So at the ridiculous hour of 6:30 we’re off to the clinic. It’s freezing cold out.

Juan does his thing in a cup…and we’re back home for devotions by 8:30.

While we’re waiting for the last couple of guys to join us, Sandro asks me if I want some hot chocolate. Since it’s still freezing cold, I say yes…even though I have a fleeting thought of “I didn’t think we had any hot chocolate mix…”

The hot chocolate is actually pretty good…although it seems a bit thicker than normal.

After devotions I go into the kitchen to find the guys making more hot chocolate…using a President’s Choice brownie mix my sister’s brought me from Canada two years ago.

Oh…during our prayer time I opened my eyes (some of the guys pray for a really long time) and I look down to see a piece of rice on the floor. Not unusual, the way guys eat. No wait…it’s moving. That is unusual. I imagine that it’s an ant carrying the rice to his little house. So I kick at the rice to see the ant. Nope…no ant. The rice is walking. Well…obviously it’s not a piece of rice but some new, bizarre bug I haven’t seen before. Oh look, there’s more…and they all seem to be waddling towards my feet.

Okay…yea, I’ve seen this movie! Some weird alien life form that’s going to burrow into my toes and take over my brain. Oh listen…the alien bugs make a funny popping noise when you step on them. Wow, there’s a lot of them. Shoot…I think it’s my turn to pray…or is Rudy just pausing…I have no idea…

Over breakfast I argue with Juan and Rudy about how amazing peanut butter is. They think I’m crazy. How can 100 million North Americans be wrong I say. So they try it…and like it. I realize what I’ve done, grab back my peanut butter jar and tell them I’m not sharing and they can’t have any more. Peanut butter is expensive here.

I organize the guys to do their chores and sit down to figure out my financial receipts. The wind is blowing so strongly through the crack where my window doesn’t close right, that it’s blowing the receipts onto the floor. Did I mention it’s freezing? I’m still wearing the longjohns, pajama pants, sweatshirt and fleece jacket I slept in. Except I pulled on a pair of jeans over the longjohns and pajama pants to go to the doctor’s office with Juan. It’s not all that comfortable but at least I’m a bit warmer.

I spend the next half hour duct taping all the cracks closed on my window.

Ah…lunch. Rice. I have nothing more to say about that. Wait, yes I do. I’ve eaten rice twice a day, seven days a week for the past three years. If every rice plant in the world died tomorrow I would dance my happy dance.

I spend the afternoon trying to motivate the guys to study since they have an important exam on Sunday. I cajole, threaten and bribe them…yes, my parents taught me well. Of course it didn’t really work with me, so why should it work with these guys. After a while I don’t care any more and I go play a video game.

The guys all leave for their evening classes. Ah, peace and quiet. I always thought my mom missed us when we left for school. Now I’m not so sure…

I’m still freezing, so I decide I should take a bath. I’m not really one for baths, but my new bathroom has a bathtub which I’ve never used yet…so why not. It’d be nice to be warm. There aren’t any taps for the tub, just the shower. Showers here have electric heaters on the shower heads (or showers of death as we like to call them) and to get hot water you have to turn down the speed of the shower. The slower the water…the hotter the water.

So I wait for over an hour for the tub to fill with nice hot water. I’m actually starting to anticipate my hot bath. This tub isn’t plastic…it’s porcelain. Which I thought was a good thing. Until I settled in and realized that the porcelain was still freezing cold. My nice hot bath lasted a good three minutes before the tub made the water cold and it was time to get out. But I will say that it was a relaxing three minutes. It’s a very comfortable tub.

I’m cooking supper for the guys, so I decide to make my favourite standby…goulash. I put the water on to boil for the noodles and figure I’ll put a movie on to watch while I wait. This is a DVD that I bought back in December because I heard it was a good movie…but then I never got around to watching it. Then in February I remembered that it was a good movie and forgot that I bought it in December and bought it again. Now in May I’m finally sitting down to see it. I watch the first two minutes and realize that I’d watched it in October when I was home in Canada. I didn’t like it that much.

I go to check on the water…it’s not boiling. I come back ten minutes later…it’s still not boiling. This goes on for over an hour. Finally I figure there’s something wrong with the water (I’m not kidding) and so I dump it out…wash the pot again and put more water on to boil. Half an hour later it’s still not boiling. It’s then that I realize that, even though the burner is on high, there’s only a little flicker of a flame coming out under the pot.

Ah…we’re out of gas. So I make Jimmy go to the corner store to buy more. Yes again, my parents taught me well. It’s what teenagers are for.

The guys arrive home and they like the goulash! They don’t always like my Canadian cooking. But tonight’s a hit. So that’s nice. Although they want to know what the name of it is in Spanish. They mock me when I don’t know. It’s goulash…I don’t even know what that is in English.

I lectured David for tracking mud into the house and then another kid for not turning off the bathroom light when he was finished. And yay, it’s official. I’m a parent.

Now it’s 12:30 at night and the house is quiet. Franz cleaned the stove tonight without having to be asked, because at breakfast I talked about not being lazy and waiting to be told to do something that needs to be done. It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.

And yep…in seven hours I’ll be up to do it all over again. Except without the weird alien bugs.

I hope.

A day in the life of Ken the missionary.