remembering sacrifices

The week before last was a big holiday for the people here. It is a time to remember the sacrifice that Abraham was asked to make, but how God provided a ram in place of his son. Everyone is off of work and spends at least three days visiting others and having their friends and family come and to visit them. We love the holidays here because they are great opportunities to shake up the normal, everyday mundane and also to visit our friends, deepen relationships and learn more about the culture we live in.

The holiday officially began on a Tuesday. Scott started out the morning by going with a few others to witness a real sacrifice. In observing this holiday many families purchase a sheep and have it slaughtered according to tradition. It was a very bloody experience, but also one that reminds us of the very real sacrifice that has been made on our behalf. I don’t think this was an experience that Scott will want to have over and over again, but definitely interesting to see once.

We had the opportunity to visit with many of our friends and share a few meals as well. It was also a helpful time for catching up with some friends that we haven’t been able to connect with in awhile. We were definitely tired out by the end, but the relational value of it all makes it very much worth the fatigue and tired children who are very sugared up and out of their routine!

Another thing that made that week fun was a special trip we took to the capitol city of this region. Our entire team packed up everyone and had a fun day checking out the sites in our neighboring province. We had a wonderful chicken lunch from one of the first American chain restaurants in the region, visited the oldest inhabited area in the world (which had some very cool-looking old structures) and played at a fun park that even had gondola rides! We are always excited to learn about the different attractions and experiences that our part of the world has to offer. It was also nice to take a day off from our busy lives and just enjoy being together as a team.

It is amazing how many fun and unique experiences you can have in an area where the “traditional” fun things we’ve always known just aren’t available. This area is really growing and expanding and bringing in more things from the west. It is fun to be able to find things like brown sugar and turkey bacon now, although we may have to travel a ways to get it! Now if only we could get this electricity issue taken care of! We remain ever hopeful!

Thanksgiving 2010!!!

It has been a very busy November for us! There are several things that we have experienced that I would like to share with you, but instead of doing it in one massively long blog I will break it up into three blogs that I will post over the next few days. I’ll start with the most current experience and work back to last week and then the week before.

As we all know, last week we celebrated Thanksgiving; a special day to focus on being thankful for the many ways that God has blessed us. Just because we live on the other side of the world where the people here don’t have a thanksgiving day doesn’t mean that we don’t practice our own traditions. In fact, making sure to prioritize these special days is what helps us feel more normal and at home here. Of course there is a balance in that if we tried to do everything here the way we did when we lived in the States then we would never truly engage in our life here. However, if you try to deny the things that are important to you from your background then you aren’t being realistic with yourself. So, we live day in and day out in a culture that we will never fully understand and are always learners in, but at the same time practice some of the more important cultural tradition and teach these to our boys.

Anyhow, for thanksgiving day we got together with a bunch of other foreigners that live and work in our community and met in a city about an hour from here. Our gracious hosts are a part of a community project in this city to the west of us and invited us all to come where we would have plenty of room to hang out, eat together, play games and even play a little American football! We have found ways to get and make all of our traditional favorite foods and had a really wonderful day. We played some fun group games and when the boys were spent we put them in their pjs and then they slept on the ride home.

The next day we invited some friends over and put up and decorated our Christmas tree. Zeke had such a blast looking at all the ornaments. One funny thing about setting up our tree is that the lights we have are all individual strands that don’t connect together so we had to use two full power strips to get them all working! We all enjoyed some pizza and even some banana cream pie! Afterwards we watched “Miracle on 34^th Street” (the original) and strung popcorn for the tree. It was really a great night too and I feel like we are finally starting to solidify some of our own family traditions.

We are so thankful for the way that God continues to provide for us and sustain us here. We have the honor of raising our kids in a place that we have come to love while still teaching them the things that we ourselves learned as children. Now, if all of YOU could just move over here it would be perfect! While we wait for that to happen we will be content in where God has us and how he continues to bless us. Hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving too!

an experience in the arts!

Scott here, putting in my two cents. There are unique instruments in this part of the world and, being a bit of a shade-tree musician, I love it! A few days ago I got an invitation from my language helper to go to a drum concert put on by a local group. This group started 9 years ago with one guy who is VERY talented and a bunch of misfit kids! They’ve matured over the years and have now performed all over Europe, winning contests at international festivals. The concert was only about 45 minutes, but it featured some incredible drum routines and great singing.

One of the funnier parts of the time was a very large cameraman who was set up about 2 rows in front of us. The men in the row behind us were heckling him because all the other cameramen were squatting or sitting in chairs, conscious of those sitting behind them. Now that we’re fairly proficient in language I could understand what they were saying; “it’s like trying to look around a refrigerator!” Fortunately because our culture is rife with brutally honest comments, the cameraman was not insulted.

Afterwards because my language helper is from the same town as the drummer group I was able to meet and interact with the drummers. Our host culture is so full of talented artisans, but because of the trauma of the region we often miss this fact. It’s a great place to be and live!