When living overseas as a missionary, your work often becomes your life.

In Canada, it was easy to separate the two. When we came home, work was over. The work/life balancing act was natural and easy.

Since living in Africa, this has been one of our greatest challenges. For us, our passion, skills, and opportunity collided in such a powerful way that is difficult to describe. That, along with living and working in a foreign country with a foreign culture where we have to start everything from scratch, it’s challenging to separate all of that from your life. It feels like it IS your life!

Not only are we learning a new culture, finding a place to live and making it home, finding a church, learning how to drive around, where to buy what we need, how to build a community of friends, we also have learned/are learning how to register an NGO, how to set up an office, how to hire staff, how to navigate the law, how to network, how to start up an organization, etc etc etc.

I understand the other etc. are redundant, but that is what it’s like!

We have overcome many of these challenges, but are still learning and settling into life here.

We are really excited with the progress that LifeNet has made here, the clinic visits, upcountry trips, and relationships being built. But we are still trying to learn how to balance our work and our personal life.

We, especially Josh, are working long hours, physically feeling the stress on our bodies, and feeling exhausted at the end of each day. It’s a huge challenge, but one that we remain prepared and excited for. That being said, we look forward to the day when the weekend comes and we want to do more than just catch up on our sleep!

We are loving the work that God has stuck us into here in Uganda, but are really looking forward to a break in a couple weeks to leave the country and spend some time separating ourselves from the work and unwinding together. Say it with me now: VACATION!

We’ve learned through trial and error (mostly error) how important it is to take the time to get out, hit the pause button, and recharge our batteries. We also continue to learn how important prayer, spending time with God, is during times like this. The busier we get, the less likely we are to dedicate that time, but we’ve experienced it firsthand; when we let our prayer time fade away, the challenges seem insurmountable and the frustrations set in.

“Come to me all you who are weary & heavy laden and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy & my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30

Please pray for us as we continue to seek balance in our lives, for health, for rest, and the energy we need to keep on going!

Thanks for reading!

Blessings,

Nadine

P.S. Below are some photos from a few months ago – some of the photos are of Mombasa, Kenya (a short trip I took with a dear friend visiting from Canada) & a long weekend trip Josh & I took to Congo to climb a volcano. Exhausting but breath-taking!