Sewing machines that won’t. Printers that don’t. Blenders that can’t. Things break. Fix one item, and two more fizzle out. You know the feeling. This is life, and missionaries receive no free pass. It seems like things are constantly breaking. For example, my sewing machine, which I use for making patches for pathfinders and other items, had a broken part. I managed to find a replacement part online, but it took another four months to arrive and another week for the repairman to come and do the replacement. It seems he didn’t tighten the bobbin enough. I tried to sew something, and now the machine won’t pick up the thread.

The big printer I use to print books has not worked for the past two months. It prints okay, but crumbles the paper inside. I have called the repairman many times, asking him to come and fix it. He always agrees to but never shows up. Now my color printer has decided it can’t find the black toner cartridge. I have opened the machine and felt around to see if something was blocking it from finding the toner, but I could not find anything. I tried another cartridge, but that did not solve the problem. I still kept getting a question mark where the toner icon should be. The third little black and white printer (yes, it is good to have multiples of items you depend on) doesn’t get along with my computer. I have updated the drivers, but the printer keeps spitting out pages with “memory allocation failure” printed on it instead. Of course, it worked fine at the repair shop. They used it to print out lots of pages. But no, not with me.

Then my blender jar blew out its side when I tried to blend frozen pineapple. I glued the jar, and it worked for a while, but it started leaking again because the glue here isn’t all that good. I was blessed, though, to have a new jar delivered to me by someone from the home office when we all got together for our regional AFM retreat in November. Even my stick blender had problems. The little “C” washer broke, causing the blade to move up and down. Thankfully, it was still under warranty, and a new one is coming.

But what are these inconveniences when compared to the sacrifice of Christ. We praise God for teaching us patience in His strength.

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