The Countdown

"Spend more time focusing on the present rather than the future. It's not like you'll ever reach tomorrow. When you get there, it's called today."

They always say the coming is a lot faster than the going. You know, like coming home from a long trip or finishing the other half of a good milkshake or burrito. It starts off slow but then finishes fast.

That's what I feel is about to happen. Not that much of this experience has been slow. One day I get here and don't know anyone; the next day, I'm laughing with my kids, going to church and sabbath school, and eating with them like this is simply my life.

It feels like yesterday we had that storm that blew down half of the bamboo houses on the campus; and it has to have been last week when little obi was born or when I held Samuel months after he almost lost his life when his mother made a grave mistake.

My kids are actually my kids now and this is my home. No place is perfect. I still miss having a fridge to keep my food fresh and a couple days ago I found a colony of ants mating underneath my pillow; but that just comes with being in a jungle.

We almost flipped in the jeep off a cliff into a rice field a weekend ago. Fairly normal. It was crazy to see how calm we all were as the tire slid slowly slowly (casni casni) to the edge. We were singing "Jesus Take the Wheel" to commemorate that moment. But even times like that seem so distant and so close.

I'm sure these last 3 months are going to go sooo speed only. Don't tell!

I've had a countdown pretty much since I got here. Especially since I realized how hard it was going to be to come back. When I open the app and see the time trickling away, I cry a little inside.

Today one of my oldest kids suban and I were riding in the back of a truck on the way back home and he mentioned how beautiful the setting sun rays were in the trees. Like a forest on fire, dancing with such emotions.

"This is my home" I thought. A little jungle in the middle of a piece of India that most people don't know about.

It's this place where I've been able to talk with my boys late at night about nothing, tell them about my friends back home, make jokes; and you realize, man I've got some good kids. They really are the best

I know I pretty must only talk about my kids when I write, but they are where most of my memories are.

And I'm making some more during the last months, during the last nights in the jungle, during the last tiresome days visiting patients, the last times laughing like none other, the last times of living like this. It's quite something.

We'll make memories and so much more as we count back down.

5...4...3...2...1

Alabanza


Kameron Carter