Progress!

Since I last wrote on Tuesday, a lot has been done.  On Wednesday we did more prep work and other various tasks which needed to be done because the supplies had not yet arrived.  I was given a special task of filling in a hole in the wall with stones and mortar, which was very fun, kind of like a puzzle without a set solution.  On Wednesday night a friend of ours from a couple hours away came to celebrate my birthday with us. :) On Thursday the supplies started coming, but we had planned a trip across the border to Guebwiller, France so we could see the work that we would be doing for the first 3 weeks of July and also meet with the missionaries in whose house we will be staying and for whose cats we will be caring. On Thursday night some missionaries from France, with whom Wesley had stayed for a week about a month ago, came over for dinner and told us some crazy stories about their kids. (All four of their sons are in missions, three of them in Africa.) Friday we started the real work, gluing insulation onto the wall.  We made a lot of progress on Friday, so I thought that we would probably finish on Monday, but I was only sort of right. On Friday night we had dinner at the home of some missionaries from College Church and had fun playing with their girls, and then we went to the dwelling of some other missionaries and watched Germany beat Greece in the Eurocup quarterfinals.  Yesterday we finished gluing the insulation to the wall except for a small 5cm gap at the top.

The Work Begins!

When I go on a trip, I don't really think about the things that could go wrong until they do.  My parents and I flew out of Chicago on Thursday morning. When we arrived in Zurich on Friday morning, exhausted from sleeping about 3 hours on the plane, we expected everything to go according to plan.  We went to baggage claim, and only my parents bags appeared.  My bag was
nowhere to be seen.  So, after finding out that my bag wasn't coming, we went to report its missing state.  We found out that it had been left in Chicago and was flying on the next flight, which arrived at the same time the next morning.  The only problem was that we didn't have an address to the apartment where we were staying or a phone number for the people who could tell us...big problem.  And then, when a kind Swiss young woman offered us to use her phone to look it up, we found the phone number and the address for the mission where we would be working.  However, the lady handling baggage retrieval would not let us use her phone to call the missionaries, and the Swiss lady who had let us use her phone had to leave.  So, we were in a pickle.  There were no pay phones on the inside of the airport that we could use, and none of our phones worked internationally.  So we sat down to think, which is very hard to do when you've had little to no sleep and your body is telling you it's the middle of the night.  Then I had the idea that we could buy wifi and use my dad's grooveip app which piggybacks off of google voice to make phone calls.  We paid 5 Swiss Francs for 24 hours of wifi in the one location, and then called the missionaries and found out the address.  Then, when we thought we had resolved all of our problems, we found out that Jeremy had missed his flight. (He was taking a later flight with a separate airline because he is going back to the States early to be in a friend's wedding.)  The airlines had given away his seat to someone else, even though he was there well before the boarding gate closed.  The plan had been that we would wait for Jeremy in baggage claim til he arrived and then together we would wait until Wesley got to the airport in the car he had rented in France.  But then we had no way for Jeremy to get to Germany because he wasn't coming in until the next day.  Eventually, though, we decided to stick with the original plan and wait for Wesley to pick us up.  He emailed us a picture of the car he was driving and told us he would be there in a few hours, so we settled down to wait. And wait. And wait.  Finally, about 6:30 p.m. he pulled up.  The 320 km drive had taken a LOT longer than expected, but at that point we didn't care.  We were just glad to see him.  So, we went into Zurich for a little while, snapped a few pictures, and then headed to where we were going.  The only problem with that was we didn't actually have any way to reach the guy who was going to let us into the apartment where we were supposed to stay that night, and by the time we got to Kandern, it was about 9:30 p.m., and none of the stores were open and there were no pay phones in sight.  So, we finally decided just to ask some random person.  A lady offered the use of her phone, and then we called the missionary responsible for us, who opened the gate and let us into the apartment. The next day my suitcase came and Jeremy got picked up from the airport, Sunday we went to church and explored the town.  Yesterday, we started work, prepping all the windows, first by washing the outside, and then covering them with masking tape and plastic so they wouldn't be damaged by the plaster when it was put on.  Then the scaffolding people came and put up scaffolding, so the rest of the day we proceeded either to help the scaffolders or to continue masking the windows.  This morning we finished with the windows, and then this afternoon we attached a bunch of tarps to the scaffolding so none of the plaster gets into the neighbor's yard, which is literally less than a yard from the edge of the building.  Tomorrow the supplies should come and we'll start the real work, putting up insulation  

Identity

The world tells me, "You're nothing special, nobody cares about you as a person."  Jesus tells me, "You are mine, you are precious in my sight, and I love you."

The world tells me, "Your only worth is your body, and even that is worth nothing if you ever gain weight."  Jesus tells me, "Your price is far above rubies."

The world tells me, "You have nothing to offer those around you."  Jesus tells me, "You are gifted for my service."

The world tells me, "You were an accident, you have no direction in your life."  Jesus tells me, "There is a purpose to your life, a reason to why you were born."

The world tells me, "You are so dirty, nobody could ever really love you."  Jesus tells me, "Nothing can separate you from my love."

The world tells me, "All your friends are fake, no really cares about you and actually likes you."
Jesus tells me, "I am your friend and confidant."

I could go on and on.  Doubts about my self-worth have plagued me for as long as I can remember caring about that sort of thing.  And I have allowed what the world says about me to penetrate into my way of thinking so that I actually believe the lies that have been whispered at me since I was little.  For a couple of years, I have been trying to combat those lies with the truth of my worth in Jesus. I'm trying to believe I am worth something, but it is hard.  I'm sure many, many other girls and young women struggle with the same thing, and I sure haven't gained the victory over these lies, but one thing has helped me, and that is this: I recognize that it is wrong to consider myself worthless, and that no matter what the world tells me, I do have a purpose for existing, and that God's love for me is beyond comprehension, and I can go bask in that light whenever the dark lies try to smother me.  To Him whose love is beyond measure be the glory, now and forever! Amen.

© Robb Davidson Photography