My first good day.

      We have been here a whole week and I (Elliot) have been struggling. I've been trying to hold it all in and put on a happy face each day but inside I have been ready to scream. I don't know what expectations I had coming into this but they have all been wrong. It has been a far bigger adjustment than I thought it would be and I haven't enjoyed it at all. It gets dark here early, it stinks, my job isn't fun, a lot of the guys I work with speak with very heavy accents so it's hard to understand them, the job I have is a lot of tedious painting and scraping paint, the "soccer team" isn't a soccer team and they play on a field that is sand 6 inches deep, I've burnt myself twice already, I don't know any other guys, I don't sleep well, I miss people at home, etc, etc, etc.

      All this stuff has clouded my vision until today. Today I finally saw God instead of my problems. I don't know why I write this except that I feel it needs to be declared publicly, so I will share with you my journal entry to fully summarize my thoughts.....

      "My first good day. It sounds slightly overdramatic but today has really been the only day that I've enjoyed being here. Work was boring and I burnt myself, but God spoke to me. I spent the entire day chipping paint on the aft (the rear of the ship) crane with Mattias (a worker from Ghana). Over the noise of the needle guns and through my earmuffs I could hear him singing worship to God. Here is a guy, from Ghana, working for no pay and having a great time chipping paint. The only word I can think of is content.

      We take a brief pause in our work and he asks me about Julle and where we are from. After telling him a little about myself he replies with, "God is the one that blesses us. We cannot bless ourselves and we cannot be blessed by other people; only God can bless us through other people." We paused, put our earmuffs back on, and resumed our work. Mattias will never know just how right he was and how much I needed to know that it is God that has blessed me and chosen me to be here.

      Then tonight, at community meeting, a lady spoke and I might as well have been the only person in the room. She spoke about us working for God and working for the people of Benin. "All of our work," she said, "is for God. Whether you are in engineering, painting, cooking food, or performing surgeries, you are here because God called you here and you are working to please him, no one else. The combined effort of this whole ship serves west Africa and is used to bless them in ways that we will never know." I sat there stunned, understanding a little more that God is in control and that I am not scraping paint for the sake of the ship, but for God.

      Lord, help me make it. Give me the strength I need to do what you want me to do today and tomorrow I'll need more strength for what you want me to do then. I need your strength. Help me to chip paint for you tomorrow. Amen."

      I know that this doesn't make everything better and that all my days will be easy and happy, but I do know that God is in control and he is who I am working for every day. That's why today was my first good day and that's why tomorrow will be my second one.