Love under mosquito nets

I wonder if anyone has ever fallen in love under a mosquito net? I feel like it could happen: the mesh falling in smooth curtains around you, creating a sort of isolated romantic lagoon. Secrets and giggles are shared. A warm evening breeze slips by and crickets hum a silky love song. I write this and wonder because I am sitting under a mosquito net right now, and with a little imagination, I think they have some love story potential. In reality I can say that I awoke this morning to find a stinkin' mosquito filled plump with blood inside my net and it is now a smashed blood stain on the side.

I think I'm going to try and start off all of my entries with some random unrelated, yet somehow connected, part of my day. And today I chose the mosquito net. It tells something of where I am (a place where there are mosquitos) and that it is hot.

Today was a very restful Sunday. We went to an Episcopal church where we sang a number of hymns and listened to a service focused on the prophet Jeremiah. God chose Jeremiah to be his prophet before he was knitted together in the womb, yet when God first called him Jeremiah's response was, "but God I am just a child". It made me think a little bit about predestination in our lives. I was thinking about the topic before going to church and the sermon made me think about it a little more. What does it mean that God knows the plans he has for us before we are even born? If we believe in free will, can we also believe in predestination? I think most of us would like to believe that we have free will to choose the paths our lives will take. I think that even when we make 'bad' decisions, God can use us and our bad decision to make something good. I also feel that God directs us in our decisions if we ask him and choose to listen to what he is saying to us. With that said, it's not always that easy when trying to make a big decision. Most often I've found that God's ways of speaking are not blinking signs on our foreheads telling us what to do. At the same time, like Jeremiah doubting God's calling, I think we too can doubt what God is trying to say to us. Anyway, that's enough philosophy talk for one day.

The photo you see was taken at a memorial site for the former Sudanese president in Juba. The guardsmen were curious about me taking photos of the flags and chuckled when they saw that I also got the woman carrying the water. I wonder if they thought it was a mistake that I got her in the photo?