What Have I Been Doing You Ask?

Things have just seemed to settle in. Nothing terribly news worthy has happened because the spa and cafe have just been slowly progressing towards being ready to officially open. Furniture came in. Waiting for tables in the cafe and art work to go on the walls. Menus need to be printed. Things like that. I feel a bit more competent at my job at the shop. The girls are getting much better at finishing pedicures under an hour. (this of course sounds really stupid to you, but this means customers will want to come back which means these girls have income from doing nails instead of prostitution). I told them the other day that they have wonderful gifts to offer through their work: 1. as they massage the sore muscles of women, they are making their bodies feel better; it's almost like healing them. 2. as they do the women's nails they are making the women feel beautiful. These two things seem to be the exact opposite outcomes of what happened to the girls in the brothels. It's like God is giving them a chance to reverse the hell that they have come from and create something good, and not for them but THROUGH their own hands. It looks like healing. Now we're working on remembering the order of the steps to different massages. Sometimes I feel useless, and like I am a waste of space here at Daughters. (I don't wanna hear your nice words. Sometimes there are just days like that.)

These are some other random events: I go upstairs to the cafe often out of the goodness of my heart and help them practice making things I order. (The mango bananna smoothies are particularly good.) I know. I'm a joke. Yesterday it was church at the center and I walked in on the discussion of what they would do for music worship because the guy who normally comes in wasn't there. Samuel (Ruth's husband) then looks up lazily, points to me and says "have her lead." 2 minutes later I was chopping down my nails with scissors, tuning a guitar with a missing string, and sitting in front of a rather large group of cambodian women and children who were all looking up at me with big, expectant eyes. I haven't played the guitar in like 2 months and I was sweating because I briefly forgot how to play the A chord. But it was fine, I don't really get nervous in front of people anymore so I did my best. It was really nice to use my musicality to lead worship for the people I came across the world to serve. My favorite part though was the 3 year old little boy who silently stood right behind me the whole time I played. Sometimes he would lean against my back, and other times he would ever so slightly lift up my shirt and stick his tiny fingers down my pants. Curious little bugger. It was hilarious. On my off time I lay in bed thinking. A lot. Sometimes to my downfall. I start thinking crazy things like "you know what? I'm really thankful I don't have a mustache. Some girls do you know?" It's also the time that I get most homesick. But I try not to think of homesickness and instead I read LOTR (Gandalf just fell in Moria... we're weeping, but we must keep moving.) Lastly, I learned how to fight off the disturbingly persistent sellers: pretend you speak Spanish.

PRAYER REQUEST: First of all, I haven't seen any rashes since I asked for prayer for it, AND I escaped getting a full-blown cold! I only had one day of weakness and one day of a runny nose. I'm all better! Thanks for your prayers. You're all my favorites. But for some reason I've had a really hard time falling to sleep lately. I just lay in bed, not tired at all, and I listen to chill songs and write depressing poems in my journal. I just wanna sleep!