The Long Road or the Easy Way

There are times where it can be challenging living in a culture where everything is very time intensive.   It takes 3 days out of one’s schedule to pay the electric bill, the water bill and the phone bill as one waits in line with last month’s bill in hand to pay cash for their usage.   Everything takes time – much time.

Along with that is the fact that the rules change on a regular basis and are not always clear.  There also can be various interpretations of rules that leave us puzzled as to how to move forward or stuck at an intersection because no one quite knows how to process something.

When you are dealing with these two forces it can be very tempting to look for a short cut or an easy way out.  Many times those easy ways are right there in front – an opportunity, or as an old friend of mine used to call them, “a hook up” to speed things along with a little bit of money.  Of course there is temptation there – making a process that takes months into a process that takes minutes.  However, we are of the mindset that the short cut in the long run will not pay.

Of course this costs us at times in the short term.  Like recently when if I had just been willing to pay a bribe I could have cut through what will possibly be months of red tape and the possibility that we will not get what we needed in the end.  It was a decision that I didn’t even need to think twice about…but it could mean huge delays for us personally.

When we started the project we decided to go the long way.  We went through the long process of licensing and project proposals and agreements.  It would have been so much easier to just get started.  At that time it would have felt so good to just jump out there and start working and bringing hope…that wait was painful as we felt so throttled back from being able to be about what God had put in us.   Even today the long road comes at a cost as we spend intensive hours of reporting and recording.

However, it is all paying off.  The long way around has brought us to a place of God granting us favor in the community.  The local government recently told us that they love what we are doing and that we are providing them reports unlike what they typically see.  The Sub-City government recently came for a visit and were very favorable in both their verbal and written comments and asked us to keep helping other families.   Even the agency which took us a long time to proceed through with tons of red tape recently said that they really love what we are doing and were sharing with another government official about us in favorable terms.  Plus, we are able to walk in an integrity and transparency that brings us great freedom and life.

Of course there are rocky roads and trials and tribulations that we have yet faced, yet we stay committed to the long road.  It is a road on which I believe God will lead us through.