The Kissy Face

You can tell a house of missionaries is in need of vacation when they kick a child out of their compound for a week… for “making the kissy face.”
(Try to get a Lopit translation for that.)
The children are so often disobedient and indifferent to our rules, it can get trying, especially in this heat. Since we won’t wield the stick, our rebukes often fall on deaf ears and the children have taken to testing us.
But we’ll prevail… in love and discipline, I suppose… even when they mock us with “the kissy face.” Haha.
But, do pray for us as this hard, hard unit on prayer and spiritual warfare is coming to an end, the heat puts us in a constant sweat and vacation is in view, for better or for worse. It’d be so easy to go into survival mode—burying ourselves only in our studies, lying as still as possible in the shade against the heat and dropping our role as learners in the community, resolving to jump right back in the instant we get back from holiday.
I’ve been close lately to that hapless state of survival—seduced there by recent trials with my health and stress in the community, among other things—so please pray especially for me.