It's that time of year again!

Red and green ornaments. Christmas trees. Apple cider and hot cocoa. Sugar cookies. Cold weather, mittens and snow....oh wait...I mean dust, yes dust.

Yes it's still the holidays all the way over here at least in the white people's homes and we are trying our best to make it festive and bright. Enjoying the cold evenings and mornings when I can drink a cup of hot coffee and not starting sweating in the process.

Despite everything we are doing, it's hard to be away from family for the holidays. Last year (our 1st away) we took a vaca to the lovely and exotic Morocco and forgot about tried to forget about the season. Then the 25th hit and I was devastated not to be around a tree with wrapped presents and with family. I realized that we had made a mistake in trying to forget the pain, the loneliness, the emptiness.

And so we pushed forward, coming up with our own new traditions to do here. We decided that we would find our joy in Christ this year and not be overcome with the sorrow of being away. I will/ still do cry, but I remind myself of God's leading, His calling on our lives, His presence and joy that fill my heart. I remind myself that I am not alone. There are thousands of families that are separated each year. Military, m's, NGO workers, and others just like me are trying to cope the best they can without their family nearby. And so when those days come we will make cookies, sand dune sled, drink hot cocoa and give our own shoeboxes to some families and kiddos we know could use some "merry". We will choose to celebrate Christ's birth with our friends here and love on those around us.

And we will count down the days until my parents and my brother arrive in January and be lucky enough to celebrate a late Christmas with them. Until then, if you are around our families this holiday season then please give them some extra love will you? Because it's just as hard, if not harder, on them too!! And whether they will admit it or not, they could use some love this season!

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Hold the mayo

I'm not much of a breakfast eater. I guess I was in the States when I had easy access to cereal and good milk, but other than cereal I usually don't take the time to make eggs or pancakes or anything else that requires some work for the morning meal.

That being said, most people here eat a simple breakfast of bread and mayonnaise. Yes you read that correctly. Bread slathered with mayo. Slathered....as in a lot. Honestly it kinda grosses me out and it's probably one of a few culture customs I will never participate in. I really try to dive into the culture as much as possible but this is not one of those areas. I'll eat the bread, but please hold the mayo!

Just a random thought from the day :) P.S. Did you know that last year on my birthday our landlord gave me a huge jar of mayo as a present? Yep...they love them some mayonnaise!

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Joy in the midst of chaos

It's amazing to me how many times I have to get all the way through the lesson before I realize that G's been teaching me all along. Actually it's kinda of sad really, but still amazing that He is faithful in the midst of my humanness. Maybe one of these days I'll actually get it right away....here's hoping!

So anyway, B and I took our househelper and my African mama, Neene, to a city about 3 hours away this weekend. She wanted to see her family and begged us to take her and since we had just finished with a team we decided to take a vaca day and enjoy the restaurants and A/C (nope we don't have it in our house). We left in the afternoon with "plenty" of time to get there, but you know...we live in Africa so we should have given ourselves like 6 hours instead of 3. We assumed....there was the mistake....that Neene knew where her sister lived. I mean, I know where my brother lives. Don't you know where your siblings live?! We arrived to find that her sister's phone was off and she had NO CLUE where she lived because she'd never been there. We called her sister's husband who gave us a neighborhood so then we left to track that down.

Enter stopping at four random places and asking ten random people the name of some random neighborhood over the course of an hour. Now enter Neene seeing someone vaguely familar and kidnapping him for the next two hours as we tried to find this neighborhood. Turns out that we were given the wrong name! So finally after backtracking the same roads for three hours and stopping every 10 minutes to ask more people we FINALLY found them and got to their house.

Now enter the joyous part....B and I were tried, frustrated and feeling really irritated. Not at Neene per say but just at the situation. We had expected to get to the city, get a hotel room, swim, relax, eat at the place by the water, sleep for 9 hours in the A/C and then do a little shopping the next morning. Instead we got to the city and by this time barely had time to get to a restaurant before they close, sleep for 6 hours and then rush around to do the things we could have done the night before. So we were irritated.

But when Neene's family saw her and came RUNNING out to greet her, calling her name and clapping their hands.....man, all that frustration and irritability melted away into "I am so selfish and stupid". Turns out, she hadn't seen her sister's family for 2o years!!!! Can you believe that?! And they are only 3 hours apart!! My Father just slapped me upside the head and I felt so humbled by the fact that even though I am thousands of miles away from my family, I get to see them every week. All of that running around and "life in Africa" stuff didn't even matter anymore because a family had been reunited.

The more I thought about it the more I realized that joy in the midst of chaos is really hard and it's a lesson that I have to keep learning and learning especially lately. Really relying on Him for my joy and not my circumstances is incredibly difficult, but it's so much more peaceful. Those three hours of frustration could have been spent in excited anticipation for my Neene and her family, praying for their reunion and their souls. It could have been spent sharing a story with her about the Father's love for us and His joy each time one of us turns back to Him. Instead, I, like normal, had to learn that lesson the hard way and opt for my own selfishness instead of His joy in the middle of temporary unpleasantness.

Hopefully next time I will not be so slow to be joyful :)

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Hiatus

I know it's been like 5 months since my last post, but I swear I have a good reason.....well maybe not a good reason, but I do have reasons for my lack of posting.

1. In the Spring we had lots of volunteer teams which was GREAT!!! And then we went to Prague for some classes to finish our degrees and then we had homework and....

2. Our team has been in a constant state of flux since we arrived and found out that we had a temporary team leader and that next team leader would be picked out of the existing team. So suffice to say that our team has been a in a constant state of transition and that will continue for the next year. It's been really hard and overwhelming and icky and awful and hurtful and uplifting all at the same time. The Father surrounded B and I with people in this country who truly love us and uplifted us at the worst time of it all and we couldn't have been more blessed (but it was still hard and awful).

3. Our computers.....may they rest in peace..... We've been without computers since about July/August and working only on the iTouch and I'm sorry but I'm not going to do a blog post from my iTouch....too little :)

4. ummmmmmmmm okay so there's just three reasons and I know I probably sound like I'm making excuses and I am, but take it for what it's worth. We have gotten a new to us computer for B and mine will come later next year, but I'm back at a keyboard and able to post so get ready!

Thanks for all your prayers over the last 6 months. Things are the way they are and I'm learning to adjust and pray through things more than I have in the past. Because the only way I can get to the end of all of this is with His help...nuff said.

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{My Body Doesn’t Bend That Way}

No I’m not talking about yoga or stretching. Although I could stand to do a bit more of that in my life. I hear it’s really beneficial for your body, but I’m getting sidetracked now.

At our training another couple and us would joke about how our middle names needed to be changed to “Flexible”. Sometimes working for a huge corporation creates lots of miscommunication or just plain no communication. So we’d joke about how in order to be successful in this job, one thing that we needed to be was flexible. It was our way of dealing with frustrations and irritants that came along the way even as late as our training two months before we left.

For people that plan and organize everything from their spices to their calendar, being flexible is not the easiest thing in the world. It creates LOTS of frustration, anger and sometimes, hurt feelings. But if God has taught me anything this year (which believe me, He has!) it’s that I really can’t do my job unless I’m flexible.

What does this look like here? Well the people here aren’t organized for one thing. Like at all! Seriously they don’t even know what a calendar is. No they do, but you get my point! You can’t really plan a specific time to meet with someone. You just have to give a 3-4 sometimes 5-hour window for your meeting. And that’s just for them to show up. Also people just drop by unannounced. Now for some people in the South (who shall remain nameless…my husband), this is perfectly acceptable. But in IL, you just don’t do that! So sometimes your plans or goals for the day get thrown out the window when someone drops by for 3 hours unexpectedly.

And of course the company flexibility continues. They are constantly re-organizing, re-structuring, making things more efficient (or so they think J). Seriously, in the year we’ve been on the field, we’ve had 3 “new and improved” medical expense reports to fill out and 5 different emails to send them to! BUT we love our company and as frustrating as it can be to a person that doesn’t want to be flexible sometimes, we’d never change it. They take SUCH good care of us and we are incredibly blessed.

So all this to say that one thing that God continues to impress upon this not so flexible person is the importance of being able to chuck your plans and go with His. You never know what the person who stops by unannounced might need to hear from Him. You never know what the re-organization might bring to bless your life more. Jesus is a great example. When people stopped listening to Him, He just got up and left. No second thoughts like “Well my planner says that I need to leave on this day”, no getting angry that people were changing what He was doing. He was simply flexible with Himself and gave of Himself without another thought.

The thing is that if you remain inflexible to the changes around you, you WILL go crazy. Trust me, I know this from experience. So when your neighbor comes over for an unexpected visit, or it takes 3 hours to pay a bill of $2 or your language test gets postponed again and again, the only way to survive is to follow His example and just be flexible.

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Ticket Days

"Have you had a ticket day yet?" we were asked by some colleagues who came to visit us this week. Unfortunately I then felt completely stupid because I had to ask what on earth he was talking about!

A ticket day just means that if you had a ticket back to the States you'd use it because it's so aggravating here or you're just plain tired of being a missionary, of visiting people, of having a constantly dirty (think layers of dirt, not dust) house and you just want to leave.

I had to stop and think about that question for a bit. Sure there have been times where I've wanted to come back. I miss my family and friends. I miss my church. I miss the ease of living next to a grocery store or a Target. I miss lots of things..who wouldn't?! But even in the midst of all of that I've never wanted to come back because I was tired of this culture, aggravated or so frustrated that I wanted to stop. I've wanted to come back to give my family a big huge hug and be loved on by them, but never because I didn't want to be here anymore.

It's a funny thing...we've been here a little over a year now and sometimes it feels like just yesterday we arrived. We are constantly inundated by new things, things we've never seen or heard before, new challenges, new successes. So much so that it feels sometimes like we're still newbies (i mean we are...but we have some time under our belts). But yet at the same time this feels like our second home. Just the other day we were walking through the market, almost got hit by a donkey cart, were pushed around by the crowds of women in the main section, stopped and chatted with some women with the same last name and then bought a HUGE eggplant for .10 cents and it stopped me in my tracks. I thought...this feels normal...just another day...something we've been doing forever. How weird is that?!

One thing that I've consistently been sure of is His call on my life. I've never doubted that I was supposed to come here. Even in the midst of....well just plain yuckiness....I've always been sure that this was what He's called me to do. So even if I had a plane ticket, I'd only use it if it meant I could come back here after I loved on my family for a bit. Because this is my second home...oh and we've worked really hard to make it homey....in a good way...not the boring, colorless, drab homey way....like pretty, warm, and colorful way and it'd be a shame to stop now :)

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Here and gone again

Well the cold weather came and unfortunately has already gone. We had about a month of cooler temperatures. So much cooler in fact that we had to pull out the down comforter we brought with us....yes we did bring a down comforter with us because it's one of my most favorite things in the whole world and I just couldn't leave it behind. And see we got to use it!! The days were cloudy and cooler. I was able to wear a scarf to class because it was chilly and I got to relish the evenings on my couch reading, sipping my cup of Teavana tea, wrapped up our new lightweight Moroccan blanket. It was GREAT!!

But now it's gone and although it's not yet hot hot hot! it is getting there. I guess I'll just have to wake up extra extra early and enjoy that cup of tea and blanket time.

Have a good week!!

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