What time is it?

I'm reading a book about missions assigned by Aaron Brakefield and I hit one of the chapters on culture. The book tells a story about the different understandings of 'time' in different cultures. The story is told based around a meal where the missionary feels disrespected because his invited guest arrives an hour late. On the other hand is the guest doesn't want to arrive on time because to do so would give the impression that the meal is only about business. A true friend will arrive 'a little' late to show that the meal is about friendship rather than business.

This story reminded me of some of my experiences here in Brazil in the past. A friend invited me to eat lunch with their family multiple times. The appropriate response for an American to this request would be to ask "what time?" and "is there anything I can bring?" Each lunchtime I arrived when stated and became a little frustrated that the meal wasn't ready yet. In fact it hadn't even been started. Imagine me showing up ready to eat and learning that I still had to wait for the meal to be prepared.

It took me a while to learn what the invitation was about. The invitation wasn't about eating, which I had originally thought it was. The reason to go to their house was about the time that we would be able to spend together. What I had learned though this was that I should have felt honored about this family wanting to spend time with me and getting to know each other. The time that I had to wait while the food was being prepared was time that we were able to talk and build our relationship.

What ways in your life with friends are you able to show them that what you really enjoy is the time you spend together. Take some time to smell the roses, your relationship will grow with the time spent together.

After all of the rain that happened last Friday afternoon we've had a couple more days with thunderstorms. It's sad walking the streets of Cubatao and seeing all of the furniture that people have had to throw away because of the flood. There are some parts of town that are using bulldozers to deal with all of the garbage.

Last night the weather was becoming ominous while I was getting ready to go to Portuguese class. During class the rain came down hard for a few minutes with some close lightning and loud thunder. Once, during class, the power flicked off only to come back on right away. Walking home I heard some people on our street say that "this house has it but that house doesn't," I wondered what they were talking about until I got home and realized that our house didn't have power. We finally had power again at 4:30 this morning. I guess it's the stormy season.