No one told me that the weather would be pleasant living in rural West Africa, but most of the time you can do things to help alleviate the uncomfortableness. This time of year tends to be the hottest temperatures with winds from the Sahara Desert and temperatures as high as 110’s or even up to 120+. However, the Lord usually sends us cooler temperatures and a cooler breeze in the evenings to make sleep better. Remember, I don’t have air conditioning and many of my Gambian friends don’t even have fans. I usually say that there are only about 3-4 nights per year that I cannot sleep due to the heat. Well, it is only May and just this week there have already been 3 nights that I struggled to sleep due to the heat. When our watchmen who work at night complain that even in the middle of the night they are too hot outside you know it is bad!
So, what do we do? We pray for the Lord to give us and our Gambian friends strength and health to endure the temperatures. We greatly limit our activities in the peak times of the day. We drink tons of water and repeatedly preach that to our Gambian friends. We travel from fan to fan, I never leave my house without a hand fan. I thank God for the fans that I do have. And, the last few nights we have all been getting up multiple times per night to wet ourselves down with a cool shower although it has been so hot the “cold” water in the pipes is not even very refreshing. Last night I even went to bed with a wet rag and a bucket of water next to my bed so I could re-wet it in the middle of the night. In short, we get creative and do what we can do.
Isn’t that a big part of life on earth, get creative and do what you can? Sometimes life heats up. We may be undergoing trials or in the crucible as the Lord works on refining us. So, what can we do? We can stay the course, we can pray and thank Him for being with us, we can search out the cool breeze of His loving comfort or His provision of a slight respite in whatever form it comes (even if it is just a wet towel or bucket of water.) And we can ask others to pray and join us in the uncomfortableness. Please pray for us in The Gambia, pray for health, pray for a cool breeze in the evening and most importantly pray for the loving comfort of a Savior for those that do not know Him.
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