Thankfulness: Thoughts from Vacation

Alison, Paul, Jared and myself all worked together to plan
and organize our week of vacation all around Africa….
The week was a blast but it really changed my perspective on some different
aspects of vacationing.  I want to tell
two little stories… just to explain how this change came to pass.

 

One of the last days we were in Mombasa hanging out at the beach. Myself and
Jared left before everyone was even awake… spent three long hours running all
over town to get everyone the bus tickets that they would need that night to
travel back home.  Just working out
logistics.  We finally made it back to
the apartment we were staying in to find a cranky group of complainers.  The special breakfast that was planned and we
had been looking forward to had come and gone so I grabbed a roll and some
peanut butter, passed one to Jared and sat down to listen to the swirl of chaos
feeling utterly defeated.  I heard one
passing ‘oh how did the tickets go’? but other than that nothing.  I mean you definitely don’t do what you need
to do looking for pats on the back and I am more than happy to go and make sure
things get taken care of.  It just got me
thinking…

 

And then…

The last stretch of traveling had been all messed up.  Our bus had broken down on the way to Nairobi putting us 5 ½ hours behind schedule and making us
miss our bus and then also the second bus they arranged for us, leaving us to
arrive at the Uganda
border late at night.  The bus people
said that since they were the ones who messed everything up that they would
take us directly to Torroro instead of leaving us in Busia.  Perfect! So early in the afternoon I let
Pastor Wilber know that we wouldn’t need a ride…

We get to Kisumu, our last big stop before making it to the
border, Paul meets us with all the rest of our stuff and we load it all up in
the bus ready for the big move and get ready to head off.  But they tell Paul at the last moment that
they wont take us to Torroro.  At this
point it is late at night and everyone is upset because its pouring rain and
now we are going to be on our way to get stuck at the border with no way to get
where we need to go.  I’m standing there
talking to Paul about what we need to do, everyone heads to the bus and my eyes
just well up with tears and the bus is honking and trying to leave and Paul
looks at me and says “Reese just be strong…” I hug him and walk onto the
bus.  My seat was towards the front near
Jenessa and a now empty seat where Jared had been and I look back to see
everyone settling in with Ipods and beginning to doze off.  What now? I sit and am either about to really
just burst into tears, not sure of what to do and feeling terribly car sick (We
had been traveling 24 hours at this point… so give me a break) but decide that
that wont help anything so I pull out my phone with the battery about to die
and try to call the people in Uganda. 
Every number I had wouldn’t connect. 
I call my dad at home and cant reach him and try to call his cell… which
is typically not answered… but he answered. 
I tell him what is going on and try to see if he can come up with some
other phone numbers on his end.  Click…
out of minutes. And the phone keeps beeping at me that its about to die.  I walk back and found Kyle and he loaned me
his phone and when I went to switch his battery into my phone to wait for Dad
to call me back, out falls a card for 100 shillings worth of minutes.  Not long… but I definitely did NOT put phone
minutes in the back of my phone by the battery. 
Thanks God.  Ok so phone call
after phone call, no luck.  I don’t know
what is going to happen… I was on the phone for over an hour trying to get a
hold of anyone I could.  Jesse just
happened to call and offered to look for phone numbers of hotels in Busia just
in case… and then Pastor Wilber happened to call having no idea how desperately
I was trying to get a hold of him.  He
just said he hadn’t heard from us yet and wanted to make sure we were ok and
when he heard what was happening offered to organize and meet us at the
border.  I hung up the phone full of
relief.  Went to give Kyle the phone back
and I let peeps know we have a ride… no one said anything. I went back to my
seat, threw up twice from being car sick feeling so drained from the last hour
of mess and the last 20 something hours of being on a bus. 

 

The reason that I tell these stories are simple… please let
me note that I am not at all looking for recognition, really it all was just
doing what needed to be done but I mention them because it made me think a lot
about attitude and how it comes off to the people around. 

 

The teammates I came back to after the bus tickets deal I am
sure didn’t know how discouraging their bad attitudes were but they really
affected both me and Jared.  And after
spending an hour making phone calls and getting sicker and sicker and getting
it worked out so that we wouldn’t be stuck at the border I must say a thank you
would have gone a long long way.  And I
know that is not why you do the things you need to do but in those discouraging
moments (all though I shouldn’t care) it would have really meant a lot.

 

 I know that there
have been more times than I could even count that I must have done something
like this to my parents (and different Aunts and Uncles) as they organized and
took us on all the different vacations that they took us on.  There is so much behind the scenes stuff that
goes on and when things take longer than planned or I was anxious to get the
day started I know that there were many times my attitude must have brought a
similar discouraging moment to those around me. 
My attitude of looking at myself and how ‘I’ was feeling and what ‘I’
wanted made me miss many many opportunities to be thankful to those around me.

 

As the bus headed towards the border I was too sick to fall
asleep and the road was far to bumpy. We were on the bus forever… traveling
about 29 hours or something to get ourselves moved from vacationing in Mombasa, Kenya
to our home for the last few weeks in Torroro,
Uganda.  All I could think about was gratitude.  My thoughts started with feeling hurt by my
team just expecting things to get fixed but quickly were turned to more self
reflection and I could easily see the plank in my own eye in regards to
gratitude. 

 

I thought about this attitude of gratitude and how I can
really step it up and become much more thankful to those around me.  It turns out that when you are born there
isn’t anyone there to offer a guarantee that people will spend time and go out
of their way to take care of you and so in all those moments that people go out
of their way to do something for me (big or small) it really should be met with
absolute gratitude.  The people here in
Africa… especially at this moment the people here at True Vine (and even more
specifically Pastor Wilber) have gone out of their way like crazy for me.  Even that whole time on the bus, everyone I
was on the phone with stopped what they were doing to help make sure that I got
a hold of the people I needed to get a hold of. 
My dad was making phone calls all over the place, Jesse stopped what he
was doing to go to the computer and spend all sorts of time looking up phone
numbers, and Eric, one of my Dad’s good friends here, stopped what he was doing
to make calls to find phone numbers as well. 
And here I am sitting there feeling alone in the mess of this situation…
but why? People all over were stopping what they were doing to help me figure
things out… people who were not affected in the slightest if we had a ride at
the border or not. People going out of their way.  I think its so easy to get distracted by
looking for gratitude from people that ‘I DESERVE’ but really I don’t deserve
anything and anything I do get is a blessing that I should be actively thankful
for… I want to become a person that is quick to express gratitude and less of
someone who wants to be on the receiving end of it. 

 

The bible talks about how when we do good with one hand we
shouldn’t even let the other hand see what it is doing.  Things should be done in secret. 

 

As I though of these things my perspective was completely
changed.  Still quite car sick but not at
all alone. 

 

There is a lot of power that comes with a ‘thank you’.  I think it might be time to really start
taking ‘thank you’ cards a bit more seriously as well… haha.

 

At the end of the night… around one o clock when I was
getting settled into my bed T walked over and just said thank you.  You couldn’t even know how much that meant.
And I went to bed thankful for my team and True Vine and for the challenge to
learn to really express my gratitude.