Coke heads and Pokey McKenzie...

We have had a number of adventures lately, and we wanted to share two of the most comical ones with you here. This will be a joint venture with me (Katie) writing the first half and Scott writing the second.

The first one has to do with Zeke. He has reached the fun age where he is very adventurous, curious and resourceful. As those of you who have gone through the toddler stages know, these traits are a recipe for trouble! A few days ago Zeke made two new discoveries: the first discovery was that he can take off his own diaper! I have been dreading this moment, knowing that it would inevitable come. After his nap on this infamous day I had gone into his room to take him out of his crib. As I entered his room I could see that he had taken his pants off. Now, this act alone is nothing new. He has been able to take off his own pants for some time now and does it whenever the whim to do so comes over him. As I approached his crib I saw something more curious: his opened diaper sitting off to the left of where he was standing. I also noticed that it contained a nice little deposit. Fearing the worst, I slowed my approach, hoping somehow to not see what I expected to be the first expression of his own, personal art form. However, I lucked out! He had pulled one side of his diaper off and then simply stepped out of it. His bottom happened to be clean and he had decided to play on the other side of his crib! I didn't even have to change his sheets! I know that I am about the luckiest mom out there and I am thankful for that, although I don't expect that this will be a one time incident!

The other discovery that Zeke made this same day was that he can now reach the center of our dining room table, an area that I had thought was still beyond him. However, after we had finished having dinner with a friend I had begun clearing all of the dishes off the table as Zeke ran around playing. I had gotten everything cleared except for one tumbler which had about an inch of coca cola remaining in it. As I was coming towards the table I saw a little flash of blond running in the opposite direction. I could see that he had the glass in his hand and was toddling full-speed into the living room. I sprinted after him, but only in time to see that he had already spilled down the front of his shirt. However, upon closer inspection, along with a look of shock on his face, I saw that he had also dumped most of it on his head! He had already gotten a bath earlier that day, but it looked as though a second one was in order. I wish I could have gotten a picture because I am sure it was only 2 or so ounces of liquid which he made look as if he had dumped an entire can of soda all over himself, but we had to clean him quickly so as not to leave our guest all alone. Needless to say, it was a sticky mess, but one of those things to log away as a parenting lesson learned: never underestimate the reach of a motivated toddler!

The second adventure we had recently involved a new friend of ours who needed a little advice for his brother. (Scott here now). My tutor explained his brother had an offer for thousands of dollars from a man who emailed him out of the blue from Africa--typical internet scam, right? What a great time this would have been to explain, "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" but this was my language lesson, not his. So I agreed to go and take a look at the corroborating documents the guy had sent him. When I got to my tutor's brother's store, I was ushered into the office and found that his brother had actually believed the scam up to this point and had an internet chat set up with the guy, who promptly disappeared when he saw a native English speaker. Turns out the man said a Ray Wyborn, an Australian, and his family had died in a car crash, but had deposited $12 million in bank in Ghana before then. All my tutor's brother had to do was call the bank and tell them he is Ray's foreign business partner and the bank (of course phones run by the email scammer) would get the cash to him. But he would have to split the money with the scammer who was privy to the knowledge of the car crash. What the scammer didn't know was that here no one has a bank account, so his whole plan to steal my tutor's brother's identity was never going to work! But in order to convince my tutor's brother that the plan was real, the scammer sent a scan of an obviously photoshopped passport. When I zoomed in on the scan most of the image was pilexlated, but the font he used to re-enter his own name was clear as a bell. Funny this was, the governement must have issued his passport a year after it was set to expire. Hmm... I knew this was fishy so I went on to the other papers, "scans" (obviously created in photoshop) of poor Mr. Wyborn's contract with the bank in Ghana. The bank was no where to be found on the internet. Then the official stamp at the bottom was perfect--no seams, cracks, full-bodied ink, etc.! Quite reminiscent of the "circle tool" in photoshop, it was. If any stamp maker could do that, he'd make millions in our city! What I thought most suspicious, however, was that upon examining Mr. Wyborn's signature I noted that a certain "Pokey McKenzie" had indeed signed the document in lieu of Mr. Wyborn. Upon evaluating the evidence, my tutor's brother finally decided this was a scam. My advice to him was to email the scammer back saying only, "learn photoshop." My brother's tutor had a friend there too who knew some English. He said, "The American had decided, it is baloney." There you have it. If you ever find yourself wondering whether or not to illegally collect millions, make sure you look for ol' Pokey McKenzie's signature.

Okay, and one more thing to add before we let you go. Tonight we had one of the most exhausting and useful language times. You know we've made lots of good friends here, and tonight we went to my other tutor's house. His mom is a FANTASTIC cook! My tutor knows about as much English as I know of his language, so we got along fine without much of a lanuage barrier until we hit deeper topics like politics and religion (off limits in the States, right? but here everyday talk). We realized something motivating again; while actions of love go a long way, until we can function deeply in this language we'll never be able to fully communicate heart to heart. Like yesterday at our neighbor's house they told us a relative died, and the word for "husband" and the word for "has died" are really close (coincidently!!) and I said "that's good" thinking our neighbor's had seen there aunt's husband. Ugh. Fortunately that was fixed quickly. We're grateful for the time we have to put into it these first two years here. Days like today are encouraging to see how far we've come and how many topics we can understand, but discouraging when you encounter a new accent or things too hard to communicate concrete words of motion (eat, send, get, fall, etc.)! Thank you for remembering us in this journey!

from death to life...

These days recently have been both busy and interesting for us. Life is always an adventure here and we are learning and experiencing new things almost everyday!. We celebrated our first Easter here. On Sunday morning we gathered with many foreigners in the city and had a time of worship and a short message, which fortunately for us, was in both the local language and in English so it doubled as language time for us! Also, many of the foreigners dressed up in their cultural outfits to celebrate the occasion, so I'm sure we were quite the sight! We were supposed to meet outside, but due to rain there was a last minute change to an indoor location. It was really a nice morning and although I had not wanted to dress up in my new outfit that morning, it did afford our team a chance to take a picture together while we were all in our outfits! Afterwards we enjoyed American-style hamburgers (with no crazy spices tucked into them), good conversation and opportunities to build new relationships with other families that are working in this city. There were no flowers, white dresses or Easter hats, but I would say it was a wonderful morning. Zeke could barely keep his eyes open on the short drive home after so much excitement.

Another thing that we have slowly been learning about since moving here is the deep and sordid history of these people. We have seen things on the news that are hard for us to understand, so we try and ask a lot of questions and see if we can glean some insights into the lives of people who have been through so much. Over the last few months we have seen story after story on tv of huge groups of coffins sitting together, each with a regional flag laid over it. Well, today there was a huge commotion in our city and we had seen more of these kinds of pictures in the news the night before, so we started asking some more questions. It turns out that during the late eighties when these people were being severely persecuted by the famous dictator of this country, that gas attacks, torture and imprisonment weren't the only things families endured. Soldiers would go out to villages, gather all of the people-- men, women, children, elderly-- and cart them out to a spot somewhere outside of town. Then they would force them to dig a large pit, put everyone inside and then bury them alive! We had heard some awful stories, but somehow they never cease to shock you! In recent times they have slowly been discovering these mass graves and are digging them up, doing their best to identify the people and then are giving them proper burials. What was happening in our city today was a procession of trucks coming through, each carrying a casket that held one of these victims. This particular procession carried 187 people. We were in class while they went through our city, but later we watched on the news as they went through a village south of us. I couldn't get over the line of truck after truck; all the people had flags and banners that they use for funeral processions. Many of the older woman were all in black and were hitting themselves as a sign of grieving. The men would wave their hands at each passing pick-up while others sang songs with their hands over their hearts. For many people these are family members that, I suspect, they thought they would never find. We recorded a small clip from the news broadcast we were watching.

As we learn about these things and the hopelessness these people have endured, our hope is that they can disover and experience, all the more, the riches, grace and blessings that come from God alone who through death brings life. Despite whatever people have been through, there is only one way to find that needed new life, and more than ever I long and pray for the day where we will see that discovery in our new home.

ah, finally! Happy New Year!!!

I apologize for my tardiness with this blog. With all of the busyness of life, plus a pretty nasty cold to boot, it has been tough for me to focus, sit down and write this blog. But, alas, here it is.

We had an amazing time in Jordan. It was a refreshing time with friends, family and American cuisine. Its always nice for us to get out of here and experience a life that is a little simpler for a short period of time, but when the time came, we were ready to be home. There's just something nice about being in your own bed, even if there is no electricity to accompany that comfort! As an extra special bonus, Scott's parents also accompanied us back to our home. It was a great time that we had with them, even with half of us with a nasty cold!

While they were visiting we experienced our first new years. It is the biggest holiday here and very unique since it is only celebrated by this people group and it is distinctly them. Everyone was definitely in a partying mood during the holiday. Originally we had heard it would be Saturday and Sunday, mostly, with maybe some of Monday. It turned out to be Friday through Monday solid, with a few stretching into the rest of the week. We weren't able to get our language teachers back in action until Wednesday! Along with the holiday, our neighbors and friends really wanted to show Scott's folks a good time, so we were being pulled in multiple directions the entire week. I think they may have been a bit overwhelming, but their intention was to show our family that we are loved and cared for.

What happened with the holiday was sort of the normal fun and festivities of this culture, only SUPER hyped up. Everyone spends the entire holiday in their fancy, cultural clothes, despite the fact that they aren't very comfortable. On Friday we enjoyed lunch with a some friends that are becoming very dear to us. They pulled out all of the stops with an amazing bbq and also broke out the dance music so that we could rea
lly have a good time. Because me and Zeke were really under the weather, we had to cut the fun a little early. Later that day there was a huge street party not too far from our house. I only saw it on tv, but Scott and his folks ventured down to where the people were packed shoulder-to-shoulder as they walked about, talking, dancing and having a great time. Evidently this year was much bigger than previous years, with something in the hundreds of thousands of people congregating on a shut-down section of a main road. In the evening many light fires on the streets outside there house as a symbol of their freedom and then dance and sing around it. Saturday was a day-long picnic in the mountains. This time included TONS of food, dancing, kite flying, tea-drinking, and good conversation. Once again, Zeke and I missed these festivities, but everyone we heard from had an amazing, but tiring, day. The traffic on the way home from these picnics was bumper to bumper and many had twice as long of a commute home than what it took for them to originally get to their spots.

Sunday and the days to follow were much of the same thing I've already described. Everyone has family and friends from all over come to celebrate. Our neighbor's house was packed out and we could here dancing late into the night! On Monday evening, just before Scott's parents had to head home, they asked us to come over because they had departing gifts. We were all pretty tired, so we were hoping to make it a quick visit. However, in this culture, that is easier said than done! When we got there, they told us to sit down and immediately began showering us with drinks, treats, nuts and tea. Then they wanted to do a dance for us. Finally they brought out the gifts and wanted to have each of them individually pictured with our family. The visit ended up being around 30-minutes, which is record time!

On a high-note, Zeke and I were able to experience a picnic the following Friday with many of our friends. Evidently this trend continues through the spring, until it is too hot to venture out during the daytime. We really love experiencing each new part of this culture and find it to be more and more of an enriching experience as we grow in the language. God continues to be faithful in our lives in growing our heart wider and deeper for the people of this land. We have truly fallen in love with the people and loved being able to share that experience with our family. Anyone interested in coming out and experiencing life here is always welcome! All for His glory!

Good times!

We are currently in the beautiful country of Jordan, once again. We were blessed to be able to take a little vacation time before participating in some meetings here. It has been a great time spent with family and friends, and has been very good for relaxing and refreshment. Basically we have spent our time doing a whole lot of nothing...its been wonderful!

We have managed to get a few experiences in while we are here, and not all of them include American style food! Just after we got here, Scott had the opportunity to go and visit an ancient city of Roman ruins. Here are a few pictures of that experience.


Zeke has also had many firsts while we've been here. He experienced his first sucker, his first time in a sand box, his first McDonald's happy meal, and his first time driving! In addition to that he has gotten all sorts of play time in with his younger cousin and has enjoyed learning about being gentle with babies as well as about sharing. We also went to a childrens museum which was a great time for all. Just to give you a taste of what life is like for little Zeke, I am including a picture of a group of women taking his picture. Wherever we go, he is always the star! It has been quite a week for him.
Also, just before leaving for Jordan, we had a wonderful picnick with some new friends. It was a beatiful day and the guys chose a wonderful spot. It was a fun experience and I wanted to inlcude what tailgating looks like for us now. Just a glimpse of the small changes we experience everyday. So now we are onto the work portion of our time here and then back to our home. The twist with going home this time is that Scott's parents will be coming with us! They will be helping with our meetings and then coming to visit with us. They also will get to experience, along with us, the huge cultural holiday that is taking place next week. So more details on all of that to come. In the mean time, we will continue to enjoy our time of rest and prepare ourselves for all that God has for us in these coming days. Also, I fixed the problem I was having with comments, so feel free to leave all the thoughts and comments you like!

We're back!

As some of you know, we spent all of last week in the amazing city of Istanbul. We had a week of meetings that related to our work here, as well as one day that we took of vacation for a little site seeing.

In order to save funds, we took a taxi a few hours past the border, to a small airport which we then flew to Istanbul. It was a LONG trip, but a good one. Because of our choice of travel, we chose to leave Zeke with our teammates back home. This was the first time that we've been away from him, so it was sort of tough, but good. We only had one complication while crossing the border. There is alot of tension between cultures in this part of the world, and these tensions come out in unexpected ways. One of which is a short-fuse when it comes to the temper. A small eruption occurred between our taxi driver and the man who was giving us our turkish visas. We were afraid for a moment that our taxi driver was being arrested! However, we were told, by a helpful english speaker that was also in line with us, that this is very normal! Who would have thought! The conflict was worked out, though, and we were on our way.

Aside from being an expensive city, and having to be very aware of our surroundings because of crime and theft, it was an absolutely beautiful city. There were flowers everywhere, despite the still cool weather. There were tons of things to see, many American restaurants and the generally fun feeling of the hustle and bustle of city life. In some ways, it felt very familiar to be in such a western-style city. There is also a ton of history and we enjoyed seeing many of the main tourist attractions. We also were thrilled to be able to enjoy Mcdonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut and a wonderful mexican restaurant. We filled up on wonderful milk-shakes and burgers that didn't have strange spices in them! Forgive me, if it seems strange to focus so much on the food we ate, but these were all tastes of home that we have missed greatly. Overall, the trip was a blessing to be on both for the relationships built at the conference as well as a little time-out from our daily busyness.

The trip home was pretty uneventful. Our taxi driver coming back did get a flat tire, but with the help of several men that stopped to see what was wrong, we were back on the road in good time. After being immersed again in a new culture, with zero language abilities and no sense of how one should act or respond to others, it was a real relief when we crossed the border and could feel the comfort of what has become our home. We were very tired when we got home, but relieved to be reunited with Zeke, who took turns running back and forth between Scott and I, giving us hugs! It was a sweet home-coming.

We have a busy week ahead of us. We have our second group of students graduating from our center this week, as well as preparations to make for yet another trip in just one week. It is still a little cool these days, but it seems that winter is definitely over. We have a small lawn as part of our courtyard and we took the time to pull up dead grass and plant some seeds today as Zeke chased his ball around in the driveway. We'll see what comes of that. Pray for rain! Despite our ups and downs, though, life is good and we are glad to be back!

2 More Cents

Scott here, adding two of my valuable cents to the blogosphere, while waiting to catch a plane in the middle of Turkey. In a future blog we’ll tell you more about that. But since being in our new city we’ve had some interesting experiences with local folks and their perception of us. I would like to share two of those with you.

#1 Haircut

I love having my wife give me haircuts. It’s a bonding experience as I sit still and avoid getting my ears literally lowered, while she hunches over and pulls muscles in her back, nipping here and trimming there. I am quite happy with her work, but she’s never satisfied. So finally after months of asking, last Friday I caved and went to a local barber. In preparation I got some haircutting terms from my tutor; “I want a haircut,” “cut it short here,” and “don’t do anything here.” I carefully memorized these words ready for my encounter. My tutor thought it strange why I wanted to know “I want a haircut.” They would of course know why I was there.

I entered the shop gingerly, expecting the workers to motion me to a chair. Instead, they stared at me for at least 10 seconds while I tried frantically to recall “I want a haircut,” that my tutor had said I didn’t need. Something close to correct came out and they all laughed and sat me in a chair. Then the bomb fell. I began telling the barber what I wanted and he said to me, “I don't know that language.” He only spoke Arabic! All that memorizing work wasn’t for nil though as I was able to communicate through another guy who told him in Arabic. Another interesting factoid: instead of using the buzzer to shave the back and sides of my hair, he used a straight razor. I came home with a great story and haircut, all for about $4, and a little knick on my neck. Here's a shot of my new haircut; sorry, the photographer surprised me.

#2 Concert

One of our English students is a very good violin player who works at a school for blind kids, and he moonlights as a music instructor for adults at the government center for the blind. He invited me to join him in a Valentine’s Day concert to sing an American love song, to which I agreed. Only a week before did he mention the need to practice. At our first practice I brought a copy of music and the recording of “That Thing You Do,” not exactly a love song, but good nonetheless, and the only song I could think of at the time. I didn’t take into account that my friend has no use for written music, and that the third guy in our band, a piano player, was in fact blind. Furthermore, the violinist only listened to the recording once! At our first practice my friend asked me to play along with one local tune with the children, followed by another, and then the day of the concert surprised me with 2 more new songs! Fortunately the melodies are not difficult here, though the rhythms are entirely new. With much pomp and two news channels on site everything went fairly well last Saturday. But the best part was the cementing of our friendship. Our friend was grateful and even came to our Saturday night meeting. Now he has asked me to use my influence in the musical world to get the first professional recording studio installed in the city. So if anyone knows of where we can get $120,000 worth of recording equipment for free, let me know!

That’s all for now. Have fun at whatever you’re doing and don’t forget to take time to thank Him for each thing.

Here's a shot of "that thing I did."

Its raining mud!

Welcome to our new blog! Thanks for going to the trouble of tracking us down here. We appreciate your commitment! Life has continued on as usual. Thankfully we have been getting a fair amount of rain lately. Apparently we didn't get us much rain during the fall as they would like, so every bit we get now is greatly needed in order to assure water for the dry summer months. As I've mentioned before, when it rains here it brings all of the dust out of the air, so in addition to making the ground very muddy it also appears dirty and muddy in the AIR! The picture I've included appears to be doctored up with a sepia enhancement, but I assure you that it was truly that color when we took the picture. Rain is a whole new experience when it is done here. The cars also become very filthy, apposed to the relief that usually comes with rain for saving you a trip to the car wash! However, this is all something that we have come accustomed to in our months living here.

Language is going well. We have had the chance to try out new teachers these past couple of weeks since our normal teachers have been exceptionally busy. It's been fun to glean new things from then since they offer us a different perspective. Getting multiple answers to the same questions here is helpful since everyone seems to have a different answer even to the simplest of questions!

Zeke continues to grow and learn new things. His latest thing has been exerting his independence. He will not let us help feed him anymore, so we have been forced to roll up his sleeves, put his high-chair over a big plastic table cloth and just let him dig in! This is particularly entertaining on pasta nights! We also have had opportunities to let him play with other kids his age. Its amazing to watch him try and figure out how to respond to the other kid and to make choices to either share his toys, snatch them away or just go and find something new to play with; also to be kind to the other boy or to hit him when he makes him mad; and to simply ignore him all together, as if he didn't exist or to embrace this new friendship. So many seemingly simple lessons, yet they are the sort of choices that all of us have to make in one form or another everyday. I just finished reading the book "The Shack." One of the overarching themes, among many, is that of relationship. Just as my son is learning about his first relationships and how to let people (or not) into his world, it strikes me that this is something that we all have both high and low points on through our entire life. Sometimes we really take time to value our relationships and give them proper time and attention, where other times we allow task to take the main stage over people. This is also, I believe, the picture of our relationship with God. It's amazing how there are so many things that we can learn and see played out in the simple interactions of children.

Well, that will finish up our "deep thoughts with Katie hour" today. But stay tuned for more later as God works in my life and that of my family! We have been thinking a lot lately of those we love and miss, so keep us in your thoughts, and just like in our previous blog, feel free to leave your thoughts and comments. We miss you!