A Day in the Life (A Photo Journal)

Serving Breakfast and Preparing for the Day

Like most mornings, Wilmer, a young guy from the neighborhood who loves to come by, stops in to say hi to Genny and Diego.

Then there's my laundry. Since it's almost always sunny, the hang-dry method is utilized... which I have grown to love. I like grabbing my sun-warmed clothes off the line in the afternoon... and then they end up in a giant pile in the middle of our bedroom floor... waiting to be folded....

But instead of folding, I decide to drink some AMAZING Dominican coffee and write up the shopping list for the day...

 After that's taken care of, I check for new e-mails, make phone calls and plan for the upcoming teams...

But then I hear some ruckus outside and see that our lost truck has been returned! (it was borrowed 2 days ago)... unfortunately it was returned on the back of a tow-truck...

...with most of it's engine in piece in the bed *sigh*

As I head back to the guesthouse to inform Dan, I find this big mess and very innocent looking puppy...

 I don't find Dan, but instead I see our branch of bananas and decide to make some banana bread...

But THIS time I make sure to set the timer... because I may have burnt several things beyond recognition this last week (the brownies that cooked 12 hours through the night turned out less than gooey...)

And this gives me just enough time to sip more coffee as they bake...

Tah- dah! Delicious!


And thus ends the photo journal part of my day... at 11:00am...mostly because I find it difficult to remember to carry my camera around with me for more than 10 minutes at a time. Perhaps I will try again another day...

Looking back through my morning, I have to admit, it looks less than glamorous or thrilling. But even though big parts of my days (like anyone else's) are filled with seemingly mundane tasks (laundry, cleaning up doggy messes, washing the banana bread goo out of mixing bowls and trying to decide which of my limbs to sell in order to earn enough money to fix the truck yet AGAIN) I LOVE it. Something about living here- in a place with so many vivid colors, raw emotion, and non-stop music, has helped me see beauty in so many places I never looked for it before.

There are still a lot of moments when I REALLY want my life to be special and significant. I want to MATTER. I want to show Mother Teresa how it's done. And I want the lighting in my pictures to cast me just right.
But I think hope, that the moments when I'm content with the mess that I am and the GOOD God that HE is, are slowly become more frequent. Those moments bring romance and adventure into the simple and mundane.
Like the feeling of butterflies that a girl gets in the slightest hint of affection from the guy she loves, God can whisper his love to me in the feeling of sun-dried gym shorts, the way that my knife glides through a perfectly ripe avocado or the satisfaction of pulling perfectly browned banana bread out of the oven.
It's a GOOD day.