Happy new year (hmmm…let’s try it again.  Sounded terse.)

Happy new year!! (Better…)

Lately, one health I’ve experienced much frustration at how much time it takes to grow plants; to develop a seed production program and to implement it; to communicate technical ideas using bits and pieces of a language I didn’t know how to speak over a year and a half ago; to present an idea and to wait for the “Aha!” to light up in colleague’s eyes.

“Be still and know that I am God…”  (Psalm 46:10).  I’ve been meditating on this lately, cystitis especially with the challenges that have been going on lately.  It is difficult to look beyond the distractions of life and work, visit web and the deep desire to control everything I care about and can put my hands on, and to believe God is in control. Sometimes I wonder how much more development work affects and changes me, than it does the people I wish to help. I’m in the sixth month of the seed bank project now, and things are just starting to chug along.  I started renting a place in Chiang Mai so I can rest and have a home when I’m in the city.  I’ve started thinking about what to do after this project – where to live, what to do, investing more in relationships and community, what part of the development sector to branch out into.  There’s a lot on my plate in general, notwithstanding relationships that are important to me.  This morning, I read about the devastation in Haiti and talked with my roommate last night about the atrocities by the Burmese military that have resulted in the marginalized ethnic minority communities in northern Thailand that my work is focused on.

Often the frustration runs so deep that I can affect so little change.  But I’m learning to centre my existence, my reasons for being and doing on God and it has been a deep journey into my own heart and into His. A lifelong journey towards patience and letting go, not just applicable when the going gets tough.