Time Is On My Side, Yes It Is

I love it when people ask me to pray that God teaches them patience.

I always tell them that they really don't want me to do that.

"What?" they always respond incredulously. "How in the world can a pastor not want to pray that God teaches me patience?"

"Because if I do that," I always respond, "then God is going to fill your life with seasons of waiting and tests of your impatience. Is that what you really want?"

Usually they fall silent at that point.

If you really do want to learn about patience, however, then I invite you to come and minister here in Peru.

A simple banking transaction can take 2 hours to complete.

A simple trip to the central post office can last for 6 hours.

I am not making this up.

We recently had to close one bank account (remember that blog post?), open a new account, and transfer money into the new account. It would've been easier for us to just open our own Savings & Loan. There were a mountain of forms to fill out, finger prints to take, ID checks to verify, signatures to examine, passports to photocopy, and I think even a blood sample or two. Then there was a problem because one signature contained my middle initial and another one did not, so of course, as the reasoning went, one of the signatures must've been phony. Then the bank manager was at lunch, and she had to give her final approval to everything. 2 hours from start to finish. And we still had to go back a week later for our ATM cards!

People make an entire day out of a trip to the central post office in Lima. We once received a notice that someone had sent us a package, and that we had to retrieve said package at the central post office, so off we went. There had to be 200 people inside the post office. The idea of an orderly line was non-existent. It was more like a cattle herd, with people fighting and shoving and yelling and cutting in line. We went from one line to a second to a third to a fourth, then we had to exit the post office and go to the bank to pay a fee, then we had to return to the post office with the stamped receipt from the bank, then a postal worker finally retrieved our package, opened it up, and told us that we'd have to pay an additional tax, which meant another trip to the bank, another stamped receipt, and another line when we returned back to the post office. 6 hours from start to finish.

In the USA, I used to get antsy if I stood in line at the post office for more than 10 minutes. Now I just dream about those days.

Do you really want to learn patience? Then just come to Lima and open up a bank account and go to the post office.