My friend Nelson is from Zambia. He's a native. We met at Teen Missions bootcamp this past summer, when I was a leader for the Hong Kong team and he was a leader for the Zambia drill team. Our not-so-inside joke is "NOW now!" Because Africans don't operate on time like Americans do. We're always on a schedule. Africans just do things until they feel like doing the next thing. So if I had to tell Nelson to be somewhere, I would tell him, "No, they want you there NOW now!" Because "now" doesn't really mean NOW to an African. It means when you're done with what you're doing. So "NOW now" means really, right this second. I was thinking about that last night (I have so many more funny stories about Nelson . . . they'll get blogged at some point) and the thought occurred to me that I should be living in the NOW now. I tend to live in the future - and I don't mean that in a Star Trek kind of way. I mean I'm always looking forward to something and sometimes I can be a little impatient to be done with what I'm doing now (like grad school). But I might miss all the great things God is doing if I'm focused on the future so much. Not that it's wrong to look forward to things, I just need to keep myself in line here:) So I need to live in the NOW now.
Just something I've been thinking about.
Leah
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