Big sigh of exhaustion for this introvert! In a good way.
Last Monday, the first day the seven MCCers sat together in our office (Mark, me, Serge, our new boss couple and our *former* boss couple), they recognized the stress we've been under and warned us that there is also such thing as positive stress, and we're likely to experience it now. And I think my state of mind when we got home from visiting Goma on Saturday shows how true that positive stress idea is. I slept all night and again for four hours this morning. I almost skipped frisbee!
And Mark, ever the extrovert, has really enjoyed all of the time to talk and hang out! He's been an incredible support to me as we've been hosting in our home and in our town. He made a run to buy more internet credit when we ran out suddenly, he made amazing tacos one night when I was too tired to cook, got all the office keys copied and a whole lot more.
I got to put into practice some of the process design stuff I learned at EMU to lead a final circle conversation before our interim-bosses finished and went back to Kigali. It was really nice and encouraging to me to allow my gifts to be used for the good of the team, and I was thankful they let me insist that we do some relationship discussion, since the relationships often get neglected because we have so much good and pressing work stuff going on.
We've had lots of intense conversations and have a lot more ahead of us, but it's a huge blessing to have people here in the midst of the challenges with us. Mark and I will be going on stress leave sometime in the next month for a week of counseling and rest (still in Africa), and we're really looking forward to it. We're running pretty close to empty right now.
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| Our new Eastern Congo Program Coordinators, Clair and Beth Good Photo credit: Ben Weisbrod |
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| On the boat ride home from Goma. Serge and Clair are passed out. I think we all slept a good portion of the 6 hour trip. |
I got to put into practice some of the process design stuff I learned at EMU to lead a final circle conversation before our interim-bosses finished and went back to Kigali. It was really nice and encouraging to me to allow my gifts to be used for the good of the team, and I was thankful they let me insist that we do some relationship discussion, since the relationships often get neglected because we have so much good and pressing work stuff going on.
We've had lots of intense conversations and have a lot more ahead of us, but it's a huge blessing to have people here in the midst of the challenges with us. Mark and I will be going on stress leave sometime in the next month for a week of counseling and rest (still in Africa), and we're really looking forward to it. We're running pretty close to empty right now.
May God bless you BIG time, especially before, during, and after your stress leave some time in the next month. From part of your cheering team, an ardent admirer, Nancy.
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