Muck Monsters and Silver Linings

Yesterday, after dropping the boys off outside the school yard (the school is adding a grade 8 and 9 classroom so the drop off circle gets pretty crowed with building materials and causes a back up of cars of parents dropping of kids, so we have recently begun dropping them off outside). I had just gotten home (we live about 3 minutes from the school) when I heard a car honking incessantly in our drive way.

Going out to see what the commotion was about, there in the front seat next to the driver was a muck monster, actually Ryan, who had fallen in the shallow open drainage canal just at the school gate. Covered in fine silt, algae, mud and unidentifiable goop from head to toe was Ryan, who having recovered once from the initial shock let go with good hearty cry. Poor guy, we quickly moved him into the shower and 'unmucked' the muck monster with a long hot shower. We weren't sure how much the fall in the canal had affected him, so when his aide called from school we let her go home and thought to keep him home for the day, but quickly realized that he was fine and could have gone back to school with a tale to tell, but surely will share the next day in any case.

Hopefully Ryan learned a lesson about taking risks. By the end of the day we were able to unravel the story and found that Ryan was walking on the raised curb separating the walkway from where the canal verges toward the walkway and goes under the road and he can't say exactly what happened but he fell in. Scott's teacher was walking by and fished puled Ryan out. One of the parents dropping off his children bundled Ryan into his car and brought him to us. During the day as the conversation would come back to his fall we would discuss the wisdom of walking on curbs were we could fall into water or fall from heights.

Karen said she prayed that out of the mishap some positive might come, and very quickly we found what that was to be as it unfolded throughout the morning. The parent who brought Ryan home's wife called about a half hour later to see how Ryan was doing and in the course of the conversation invited us for dinner later in the week (our first dinner invite in Kabwe). We talked about the need for antibiotics in case Ryan had swallowed some of the foul water she said she had an alternative natural anti-biotic so Ryan and dad went off hand in hand to visit and get the medicine. This led to actually getting to know the couple who are longtime missionaries in Zambia and a long conversation with the husband about Zambia, living in Kabwe, serving God, and an offer to help us find a house at a reasonable cost that might serve as our permanent abode here (something that just that weekend we had thought was going to be just about impossible).

So being open to and expectant allows us to become aware of the latent bounties in every situation.