NEW and OLD

Today I made some observations about how my days have changed through my years of living in Nicaragua.

Day in the life of the OLD Carey:
4 am gym
5:30 head to work
Teach all day
Work on lesson plans, grading etc until 4:30pm
6:30 Church or Bible study
8:30 eat dinner and grade papers
10:00 bead time


Today, Wednesday, August 27, 2008
5:30am run with friends
7:30 work on some emails and work stuff from home
9:30 Supposed to meet a mechanic, waited around for 45 minutes but had 2 great conversations with others while I waited.
10:15 Mechanic shows up and we chat for a while
10:45 meet with a director of a guest house to make arrangements for a team and we chat about life and encourage one another for 45 minutes and then get down to business.
12:00pm Walk Home
Meet some old friends on the way and stop and chat for 15 minutes.
Work on some stuff for the afternoon
2:30 meet a friend to go on a walk for her birthday
4:30 bake a cake for Bible Study
5:00 Jason another friend drops by and we chat and feed him dinner
6:30 Jason leaves just as gals from Bible Study arrive
9:30 I'm here writing this blog entry and then heading to bed :-)

Ok so before my days were focused on tasks and the to-do list. I'm not saying that those lists are bad. I still write them and attempt to cross things off. Now my time is not measured in the number of items crossed off the list but rather in the quality time that I spend listening, sharing and spending time with others. The majority of my meeting with people today was completely unplanned but just happened because I was not so busy running from one place to the next. Wow! I think I like the new way of doing things. Sure there are times when it is frustrating because you really do need to get some things done but I find that God blesses and uses me through others when I take the time to slow down and be used by Him.