::beauty in the details::

This is our 54th day in Hawaii!  Practically a life time!  54 days of discovery, adventure, tears, laughter and a decent amount of sweat!  This blog is playing an important role in the journey, because it forces me to reflect on each week before rushing into the next.  The days pile up on each other; combining into a blur of moments.  If not for this blog I would never actually sit down, untangle each day and each adventure and realize how far we've truly come in the past seven days! 

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record when it comes to our church family here, BUT I can't possibly delve into the week without first saying that they are immensely encouraging, supportive and a tremendous blessing in our lives!!  Being a part of that family is unlike anything I've ever experienced, and absolutely wonderful!  Having that community and fellowship is essential and I'm so thankful that God led us there. 

Another blessing has been Monday morning worship at the YWAM base in town.  There's nothing like a whole hour of worship, surrounded by people from all around the globe, to lift your spirits and prepare you for a new week of jungle life!  Since 'town' is a good 25 minutes away we usually frequent the Costco and Wal-Mart, making for a much shorter work day, which is always a good thing on Monday!!  We were accompanied by our lovely new friend, Leslie, and got the tour of her family's farm afterword, officially making this the best monday EVER!!  I couldn't stop referring to the farm as the Garden of Eden because it's THAT beautiful!  They have coffee trees, which were very nice, but I've seen my fair share of those in the past two months!  What I have NOT seen my fair share of is the loquat, poha, mountain apples and tangors they have growing, and that's just the few I remembered the names of!!  Don't have a clue what those are??  Don't worry!  Neither did Derek and I!  I felt like Charlie in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory...  "what is THAT?!"  "I can EAT this??!" "You have a pomegranate tree!!!?"  Running from tree to bush to strange little plant... It was positively delightful!  We kept seeds from all the new fruits we tried and are hoping to grow a few of our own exotic fruit trees :)  

We left the 'Garden of Eden' with huge grins our faces and a new determination for working the land right in front of us; turning it into something beautiful!  Little did we realize how vital that determination would be...

The first few days of the week were pretty great, we came to a section of the field that I almost want to label 'breezy' but let's be serious, it's still a jungle!  The bad news is that even in these breezy rows, I only lasted a few hours before my shoulder started protesting.  We discovered Derek can pop my back in if I'm laying in a field or even in the bed of the truck..  very impressive!  After a whole day like this, Derek made an executive decision, taking me off of weed wacking duty until further notice.  Also, we may or may not have driven all the way into town for a much needed Dairy Queen date!  Come on, everyone knows that the chocolate extreme blizzard will remedy almost any pain!  (We also had a few errands to run, so we weren't completely unjustified in using all that gas :)  I spent the next few days pruning, an amazing change of scenery, but a bit of a challenge for the over-analyzing part of me.  Because of the extensive weed population, there's only leaves on the top part of most of the trees.  So, when we cut the old, scraggly branch off, new branches will begin to grow!  Because they don't have to fight the weeds for sunlight and rain, those new branches will be full and produce lots of coffee cherries NEXT harvest!  The dilemma is that if we cut down all the branches that equals NO harvest this year!  So, I ponder and analyze and walk around and around the tree deciding which branches to cut and which to leave.  My shoulder was oh-so-thankful for the break, though!

Speaking of a break, our week was broken up by some adventures in the jungle!  Our neighbor also has a feral pig issue, but he is an expert snare setter and is making a significant dent in their numbers!  The other day he trapped and killed three of them, giving Derek new inspiration for his snares.  Anyway, we were eating dinner after a long day in the fields and we heard a squealing sound!  After a few minutes of this we decided to investigate and took off up the hill; Derek with the 9mm and me with the kitchen knife!  Derek kept telling me to walk quieter, but I couldn't even hear my own footsteps over the sound of my heartbeat!  After all, I was preparing myself for a face-off with a 200 pound boar!!  However, after zoning in on the area the squealing was coming from and slinking through the jungle, all we found was a little, tiny pig that had stumbled upon the neighbors snare!  Label me what you will, but I couldn't let Derek kill it!  Plus, from a logical point of view, it wouldn't have been worth the trouble of skinning, gutting and whatever else you do to feral pigs!  So, the hunt lives on and I've promised Derek that when we DO catch the daddy pig I won't try and reason him out of shooting it because "it might have a family somewhere!"

Back on the farm... my warrior husband kept at it with the weed wacker until Friday at lunch when he admitted that the lower section of that last field was the worst he'd seen yet!!  I couldn't believe it!  We've seen killer vines that will twist around you and your weed wacker till you don't know which way is up or how you'll ever escape!!  We've seen thick, tree-like weeds with roots that must connect to the Earth's core!!  We've battled grass that is so tightly bound together you feel like you're weed wacking through a waist high, bale of HAY that drains your tank of gas in 50 feet!   To hear him say this is the worst he's seen... let's just say I felt a little sick to my stomach!  I traipsed down there with him after lunch and I wish this is the part where I say "he was just kidding!  He finished the whole field and wanted to surprise me!!'  Unfortunately, it was no joke.  We have entered the Amazon!  Absolutely unreal!  I wanted to cry... okay, I still want to cry!  But, we made our way through two rows that afternoon and by God's strength we'll make our ways through the next 20 rows, too!  

I talked to Jesus a LOT this week; between the fire in my shoulder, the high intensity night-trek through the jungle, and an unexpected, final mountain of weeds to tackle!  But I talked to Him about more than the painful/terrifying occurrences, I've been talking to Him about everything!!  During my sweet, sweet time of pruning I listened to the audio-book "Beautiful Outlaw" by John Eldredge and absolutely LOVED it!  I could fill a whole new blog with the things I learned!  Suffice it to say, it made me think about Jesus on a whole new level and love Him more than I ever have before!!  

He knows us so well and this week I was reminded, once again, that He is so present in the details!!  Driving up the slightly extreme terrain we call the 'road', Derek mentioned how he would love to fix it up someday.  The NEXT day, we're heading out and realize someone HAS fixed it!!  It's no highway, but all the big holes have been filled in and patched!  We couldn't believe it!!  And then (this story will hit home for my female friends) we were having some SERIOUS chocolate cravings one day!!  And what do we find at the Post Office the next day?!  A crock-pot FULL of chocolate!!  God works in strange ways!  I'm so thankful that He allowed our Easter package to be detained for so long that we thought it was lost, only to have it arrive at the perfect time!!  

See all that I would have missed if I hadn't thought back on our week!?  There's grand stories in each moment!  There's beauty in the details!