Just when I think I'm really doing well here.  I have intentional friendships with Bolivians and missionaries.  Teaching has been much more than bearable the last few weeks.  I have been so immersed in life here in Bolivia. 


And yet I spent another evening soaking my pillow with tears.  Homesickness:  A package that can't come.  The realization that I didn't get to see my nieces and nephew over the computer while my sister was home.  Worry that my friendships which were so strong when I left in July will be forgotten when I go back.  Frustration at my own selfishness.


A year must be the hardest amount of time to serve cross-culturally.  I'm barely halfway through, I've just been able to really make myself be here, and I already need to start applying for jobs back home.  Lifetime missionaries are hesitant (with reason) to rely on you because you'll be leaving long before they will.  I hate the self-pity that is rising in me right now, but I don't know how to beat it back down.


Tonight I finished reading Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper.  If God has called me to teach 5th grade in Dusty, Hot City, Bolivia, then anything else would be wasting my life.  However, to live without roots for this long doesn't always feel great.  Not wasting life can hurt.


So, this post is extremely "angsty" as my cousin once called my homesick ponderings.  However, it's reality.  May someone read this, think twice before they obey God's call, and then obey it anyway.