This is how our home has been looking the last days... painting, relighting, unpacking and buildiiiiing. Sam and I went to Ikea last week, what a world in there. We got a little bit of everything. Then... we put it all together....
This was at 12:30am, right before we decided to stop keeping our neighbors up with the sounds of our carpentry shop.
My new Indiska curtains... (don't let the sunshine deceive you, it's freezing out there!)
It's a unique feeling, you know... coming "off the field" to the Western world. I have more culture shock here than I've ever gotten in China or Africa or all of the other places I've been. It takes more effort to live in America or in my case now, Sweden. Yes, these places are more convenient, more modern, more practical in many ways, but it's also much harder. Maybe it's just the way I've been made. Maybe it's because I'm not called to live like a western girl. Oh leaving my Ethiopia is like experiencing withdrawal from a powerful addiction. I was addicted to the African way of life.
I've been asked more times than I can count...
"But Gab, wasn't it hard to wash all your clothes by hand and be without electricity and water and learn the languages and adopt a new culture and preach to Muslims and live without contact with your family in a dessert land?" Are you kidding me?? Of course it was very challenging sometimes. But what's a life without all those things? That IS living! My life IS the faces of nations. I live just to hold newborn street babies. I live to sit in the dirt at the market and help some old ladies sell their bananas and spices. I live to open my door to the faces of my disciples coming in for a visit and time of teaching and prayer. I live when I'm laying my hands on cripples and blind eyes and diseases, believing in the power of God to produce a miracle! I just don't really come alive when I'm living the "American dream".
Fika with my hub last night.. atleast I know I'll always have that!
I think I'm the most shocked when I enter a supermarket. It's wild! There are sections for everything and no funny smells and animals running around. Products come in plastic or cardboard wrapping and there is such a crazy, enormous variety of stuff. Stuff. The West has a lot of stuff. You'd be surprised how much you don't have to live with. I'm also shocked when it comes to appliances. I've had some funny moments these last days. I used an electric mixer for the first time in years the other day and may I just say, there was chocolate all over the room and then I electrocuted myself. A few minutes ago our neighbor told Samuel the basement flooded.... yea, I'm the one doing laundry down there this very moment. (But we didn't mention that :) ).
I suppose the adventures of a missionary life never end, although, sometimes the surrounding change a bit. Every land is full of sinners, desperate, lost, hurting and sick people who need the love from and truth about their creator and God. That's what we think about every day. That's the focus wherever we are in the universe.
Anyway, it's fun to have a small landing here in Sweden before our next adventure among the unreached people groups of the world begins. Oh my heart is fluttering for them.
Not quite sure what the next weeks will look like at this point. Sam will be preaching and beginning to job hunt and I'm trying to understand immigration rules. Oj. I'm only here as a tourist and eventually my time will run out. Yes, even though I'm married to a Swede. Looks like I may get to Hawaii sooner than planned. There's a Swedish consulate in Honolulu and that's just a 40 minute plane ride from mom and dad. They say applying and waiting for "permission to stay" in Sweden shouldn't take more than 6 months (although we're pushing for just 1-2 months), and it must be done in my home country. Papa God will take care of it though. Who knows, maybe there's another way around it all! It feels good to fix all of these practical things before our future unfolds even more.
For the time being, visitors would be widely appreciated!
Our apartment is continuing to come together candle-by-candle, mug-by-mug. We got a few paintings the other day... Africa in the big room, flowers in the kitchen and NYC in the bedroom. Yes, we surely are a blend of cultures in the Strandberg family! Loving our big blue couch from "Second Chance" and the smell of paint is starting to go away finally(I've repainted a dresser and bookshelf!) In a few weeks we'll get a real bed too :)
