Putting Out Fires

Lisa and I had planned to stay home today. Okay, well, LISA had planned for us to stay home today. She is always on my case to make me slow down. A few weeks ago she declared Thursday as our weekend day in an effort to make us take a day off from "work." So far, it hasn't.

There was nothing pending today so we decided to stay home and unpack a few boxes, work on staff job descriptions (which proved to be too late), do some paperwork/budget/etc, decorate the babies' rooms, etc.

Good thing we were home because it turned out that I needed to be around to do those "boss" things....the things I have dreaded since this project began. God has definitely given us a staff of wonderful individuals but it still takes awhile to gel as a team. Add on top of that the language barriers and differences in cultures and it magnifies.

Note for future reference:
"Assistant" (as in "my assistant") translates to: "no one important"
"Manager" translates to: "we will do anything he tells us to do"

I learned that the hard way today. I have a wonderful man working for me. His name is Joshua and he is the "everything" man - takes care of the grounds, helps with the staff, assists in so many ways. At some point during our beginnings this past month, our iscari (security watchman) began to have issues with Joshua. He told me that he did not want to talk to him or listen to him. I explained many times that he would have to; that we would all have to learn to work together. He did not like that. I explained that Joshua was "my assistant" and they must work as a team. We have done many things together (dinner, etc) and I thought things were going pretty well.

We finally had to have a "come to Jesus meeting" this morning, which lasted a few hours. At some point in the conversation (taking place in Kiswahili, so I was just getting the jist of it, not every word), the whole feeling in the room changed. It was the strangest thing. I heard the word "manager" and all of a sudden everything was fine. then, tom began to get angry with me, saying it was all my fault because I never told him that Joshua was his manager. Suddenly, he understood why Joshua was telling him what to do. Apparently, I had failed to use the correct word.

We do have a great staff. Please pray that we continue to mesh as a family. Other than Tom, the iscari, everyone seems to be perfectly happy and have no problems. Even now, he is much better.

Pray for wisdom for me as I manage the staff. This is new to me, and it is not a role I enjoy. But God equips those He calls and He is faithful.

Today consisted of....
* meeting Jared to trade cars back,
* picking up Lynette (one of our staff) to bring her to the home,
* going to get my friend Nellie (Heshima teacher) to spend the day with us,
* being met by the iscari guys who wanted to discuss things,
* being pulled in several directions as everyone needed to "discuss" something,
* having spontaneous staff meeting,
* organizing the cleaning schedule for the ladies,
* finding we now have NO WATER because power is STILL OUT and can't pump water to the tank,
* ordering bookcases at the furniture shop,
* getting wood stain to repair our new furniture,
* picking up Lillian (from Heshima) to go celebrate her birthday dinner and dessert at java House,
* going home to find (the hard way) that our wonderful staff had made sure we have (more than enough) water in our apartment by placing buckets FULL of water all around. They are hard to see in the DARK - because we still have NO POWER.