Something's bugging me

Interesting start to my day. After falling asleep (literally while I was replying to an email) about 9 pm, I woke up at 5:30 am which is actually a decent amount of sleep (finally!). I was checking email and posting on the blog when I noticed my brother in IL was online, just returning to his office after a night meeting. We skyped and his webcam found me in my still-dark bedroom, surrounded by the mosquito net. Had a nice chat.

I’m learning that I might not want to look too closely at some things. After getting dressed, I fixed a bowl of cereal in the kitchen. I opened a drawer to get a spoon only to find little black objects scurrying out of sight. I worked at a counter and noticed other (bigger) black objects hurrying behind items along the backboard. Of course there are always a variety of flying insects (including mosquitoes and moths, of course).

I moved to the table, eating my cereal and reading 2 Timothy, when I noticed something that I tended to classify as a cockroach-like bug calmly crawling across the tablecloth and over my eyeglass case. (He didn’t live to tell his friends about his adventure.) Shortly after that, I noticed book called “Triumph in Death”, about Malagasy (the name for people from Madagascar) martyrs, that Olivia apparently left on the table. As I was about to pick it up, a totally different insect that looked like a rhinoceros with wings started crawling across the cover. He survived our introduction.

I ask myself what else has come and gone around me that I haven’t noticed.

There’s another setting where I’m just not aware of nasty things happening. Spiritual battles, satanic attacks, etc. Someday (in heaven) I expect I’ll learn more about this. In the meantime, I can be thankful that another unseen force, the Holy Spirit, is always with me and helping me cope with those unseen things.

All this before I even walked out the door.

Today went very well. There was a little cleanup from yesterday’s network issues but most of my day was involved in three areas. First, I helped ensure that a critical but missing item for a network backup system was ordered by JAARS back home to be delivered to someone leaving Dallas early next week. He will hand carry the item and save us about $300 in shipping fees. Second, Jonathan from the Uganda-Tanzania branch was here to move the accounting system from a soon-to-be-retired server to one of the two I finished setting up. I monitored the process and helped as he required it. The final task was to prepare for an installation for a software system Larry and I will do on the other server tomorrow morning. Besides reading through documentation, I also ensured that all the pre-requisite server settings were enabled and downloaded any files/programs from the Internet that we would need.

I realized today that I’m about half way through my time here. The time seems to be going very quickly now. I really do want to get in some touristy time… besides, Julie is expecting me to return home with some goodies for her. I guess we’ll have a late Valentine’s Day.

I still haven't had a lot of opportunities to take interesting pictures of my work.  How exciting is it to see me working at a computer, which is where I have to be when setting up servers, troubleshooting network and software problems, solving the problem of world peace.  Still, here are some pictures that include one of a friend from several years ago that is now assigned to Kenya in the IT department.  Strange position but perhaps he's looking for a bug under the shelf that I just didn't see.  Do notice that he's multi-tasking pretty well... 3 computers at one time.

Also here are pictures taken during lunch to show how the different sexes eat separately.  The ladies usually get pretty active in their discussions, with lots of movement and laughter.

The men always sit on the circular ledge of enclosure, and usually include politics in at least part of their conversations.