Sunday evening I got a text asking if we can be at a team meeting on Thursday afternoon. No problem. We added that to our weekly plans. Monday at 10am, a new message arrived. Flights changed for the week, so the team meeting will actually be better in just a few hours. Can anyone host it? Can everyone bring a snack? That's a true scenario and that's life around here in a nutshell. I'm not saying that our mission is last minute. I'm saying that LIFE here is last minute.
You never know when you will have guests stop by just as you are putting the finishing touches on dinner (around here, you would never NOT invite them to stay). I might find out in the morning that we will have guests staying for that weekend beginning that evening. And then, after making the bed up, it wouldn't be unusual to find out that actually plans changed and now they won't be arriving until Wednesday. Even fun things happen last minute…a phone call at 5pm to invite us for dinner in an hour. Or a phone call asking, "Can you come to my daughter's birthday party in the morning? And bring cookies?" Then after baking the cookies, it wouldn't be surprising for the party to get rescheduled for next week. Here's a real live example, our base may or may not be expecting 4 missionaries who Jeyson will then drive over to Suriname (yes, the country) to go check out a plane for our mission. When's this happening (or not happening)? Next week!
Last minute changes - it's cultural. To add to that, we live in a very remote place in the country which runs extra last minute. Compounding that, we are in ministry. Our job by nature involves serving others and "others" involves other people's schedules and needs…even the last minute ones. And just to make it extra interesting, we work with aviation in the world's largest RAINforest. Rain, jungles, and aviation don't mix. So bad weather results in the flight schedule getting shuffled around non-stop. And the flight schedule getting shuffled results in our life's schedule getting shuffled. Hence the last minute guests, who might have been planning to stay at one of our co-worker's house who got stuck in a village overnight etc. etc.
So, what's to be done? I've learned a few survival tips along the way that keep me sane. Well that help anyway.
1. Get as much done as you can on Monday, since you never know what the rest of the week holds.
2. Meal plan flexibly. I just make a list of a few meals I might like to make that week and buy the basic ingredients. That way I can make whichever one works for that night, depending on what else is going on.
3. Make extra food in your meals so you can easily have people over. If nothing else, there's a nice night of leftovers later in the week.
4. Keep snack food on hand that can be pulled out to offer to unexpected guests (pretty much expected here).
5. Learn to say no to some things. One of the nice things in Brazilian culture is there's an expression "Nao vai dar". Literally means "It's not going to give". It can basically be used to say no to things in a very vague way without requiring you to give any excuse about why.
6. Flexibility, flexibility, flexibility. We constantly have to remember that Jesus' major priority with his time was people. We have slowly learned to be more and more flexible in order to make people, not our time or plans, a priority as well.
