List making

We've been thinking about what's next for us, as our last 10 days in Haiti are in front of us. 

 

We've made plans for our exit next Wednesday to Port-au-Prince, and on Thursday to the airport, and we have fun plans for this Friday night with a Building Goodness team.

We also have some guests coming this week, so we have some more hosting to do.  And we're working on some last projects, now that we've borrowed some tools.

But every night, as we sit in the salon, waiting for the generator to get turned on before we go to bed, we end up talking about what's going to happen when we get home. 

We wonder how we will adjust to being back, and what we want to do next. 

Aunt Emily's memorial service in Nashua, NH, will give us a chance right away to visit my dad in Pleasant Valley, NY.  Thanksgiving and Christmas will follow close behind.

We're looking forward to more volunteer work with Fiesta Cristiana and resuming bagpipe band activities.

But those activities will only allow us to put off the bigger questions of next careers until maybe January.

Jeff keeps mentioning the Half Time book by Bob Buford that he read a while back on Lance Youngquist's recommendation.  Buford suggests these questions - which look to me to be good ones no matter what stage of life:

• What am I really good at?
• What do I want to do?
• What is most important to me?
• What do I want to be remembered for?
• If my life were absolutely perfect, what would it look like?

This is a pretty challenging list, and I would add yet another question - What do we know about ourselves that we need to apply in the next situation?

When we first got here, we made a list of all the projects we needed to work on for the sake of FHM.  We were pleased that the list was so long, over 50 items, because we had been worried that we wouldn't have enough to do here.

 

So still in the list making mode, we're making more lists, some of them only mental, others written down for future thinking.

We're listing what we've learned about ourselves, what we've missed from home, what we will miss when we get back to Apex, what we found out we don't need, what we need more of as we move forward.  Even to have time and energy to make such lists is a privilege.

I was reading this morning that we as Americans not only have "freedom from" but also "freedom for." 

The latter may be our biggest blessing as we look forward to the next chapter.

We hope many of you will offer us advice and counsel as we search out the next adventure, the next big challenge, the next opportunity to serve, the next chance to explore the world.