Christmas! Its over

Wow it has been awhile since even I have looked at this blog. Christmas slowed me down a bit, but now that the main festivities are over I should write a little about what has happened in the recent past.

I did a lot of "traditions" this year. And since I have a one and a half year old, and no dish washer, and I'm a full time student--I was tired at the end. I felt motivated to do and make everything Christmas-y that I could think of because I don't know if we will be in Chad or where next Christmas, or the Christmas after that, or the Christmas after that. It could be a long time before I have jello (for Christmas jello and jigglers shaped like pine trees) and Crisco (for the special icing on my mom's traditional advent cake) or candles (again for the advent cake and also the advent wreath) or brown sugar and powdered sugar (for the whole made cinnamon roles that are now "traditionally" Dave's Birthday cake on Christmas morning, because his birthday is on the 25th), or chocolate and peanut butter (for my mom's famous holiday cookies), or cream cheese and crab (for my Aunt's crab dip).

It wasn't so bad, it just took a long time. and of course Ben added to the excitement. After my 4th failed attempt to make these cinnamon roles for Dave (I am new with yeast baking) Dave had to take Ben outside to play so I could try one last time. The ended up at the laundromat watching someones clothes dry. Fascinating field trip. I finally figured out that the reason my bread wouldn't rise was because our house was too cold. (don't worry--our house is not that cold. I just have picky bread I guess). So I stuck the dough in the oven after I baked something and that stuff rose triple! Then I burnt the edges on Christmas morning. But Dave didn't seem to mind.

Thanks to a couple of you, who sent me sociable crackers and wheat thins, we had something to eat the crab dip with. I was attempting to make my own crackers when Ben reached up onto the counter (he has recently gotten tall enough to grab almost anything he wants, and since I let him play with my measuring cups sometimes he thinks they are his) and pulled a cup of beat eggs onto himself. --Suddenly making crackers included a bath and change of close, moping the floor. and then finally rolling out the dough and cutting out little crackers. I think its understandable that I forgot to "prick" the crackers all over, and then therefore ended up with little star shaped biscuits instead of crackers. Again, thanks Andrea and Mom. I love store bought crackers!

I mentioned earlier that we don't know where we will be in the Christmases to come. I think I ought to explain that for anyone who might be confused. Because of having children (which no one can plan) and visas, we don't know exactly when we will arrive in Chad or when we will leave. I'm not totally up to date on the situation but I do know that we are waiting to find out when we will be able to enter the country. We thought we knew how we were going to get out visa, but (something normal for all missionaries) we don't know anymore. So within the next few weeks we should find out. I'm pretty comfortable with not knowing. I figure that we will get there--sooner or later. Those who are dealing with the problem might not be quite as at ease with it as I am however, and I'm sure they would love your prayers--for wisdom, and for God to keep Satan's hand from preventing us to enter the country.

I suppose I feel relaxed about the visa problem because I like to focus my energy on other problems. Like, for example, the fact that Dave keeps running out of socks before I do the laundry. This is a big problem, for him, for me, and for all those people in the room when he takes his shoes off. Another one of my major problems is that, lately, I can't seem to remember to make sure I know what we are going to eat in time to produce it before 7:30pm. You can pray for me too.

Eating Snow

I posted these picts awhile ago, because I didn't have time to add an explination. Now I'm on Christmas break from school and I'd love to tell the story.

Once a month all upper level students get the chance to give a presentation on anything they want to present. I chose to use my mom's advent cake tradion to present the redemption story and the reason that Jeasus came to earth to my class. It was a lot of work--not only to make the three layer cake with lots of crazy decorations; but also to translate the story that goes along with it and present advent all in French. So, after my presentation was over on Thursday morning--I asked Dave if we could ditch language study for the afternoon and "head for the hills." For anyone who didn't know, we live in the foot hills of the French Alps. So off we went, to the top of one of our hills. (these are hills, not mountains. the mountains are just a few miles further--in my opinion.)

It was beautiful. Benjamin had a blast. Since then we've bought him a red sled and had another adventure with some of our other missionary friends. As soon as someone sends me pictures of that trip I'll post him with his sled.

Check out my Slide Show!

Its everywhere

Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings Dave and I start the day together. We get up, eat, drink our coffee, etc. Then a baby sitter comes over and we run out the door. Last Thursday was a typical example of one of these days, except that we were late and doing all of these things very, very fast. Then we got nervous around 8:44 when our baby sitter hadn't arrived yet since this particular person had come over the previous morning thinking that it was Thursday while it was in fact Wednesday.

"Do you think he thinks its Friday and he is still sleeping?" I asked Dave. Dave didn't answer.

That means he doesn't know.

Then the buzzer rang. After giving the regular babysitting instructions we fled the apartment. I pushed the button to the elevator but it was rattling around somewhere on the fifth floor. It kind of sounded like someone was playing hockey in there, so we grabbed the stairs. Our stairs are dangerous for a healthy twenty something in tennis shoes to run down, much less me in my heels with a cup of coffee in hand. Even worse for anyone sick, old, or tired. Its a spiral staircase wound so tight you never have more than about a foot to step on, and that's not a foot sq. I'd say its about 1X.75.

Once we safely reached the parking lot we encountered two of our friends, lost--looking for their car. They could have rode with us but they wanted the car for after school. So we continued on without them. Once we got to our car we noticed that theirs was next to it. Yup, they saw that too. So the four of us are one step closer to arriving safely at school.

Dave shut the door, turned the key and backed up. Once we began to role forward he reached for the radio--bzzpskft, bling, blee. ohh yeah. bap, boop, bap. A rap song. straight from the states or England. Completely familiar in every way possible. We started to laugh. Every where we go in the world we find explicit American rap. Amman, Jordan; Ensenada, Mexico; Chambery, Paris, France; Istanbul, Turkey; Chaing Mai, Thailand...Dave said he's even heard it in Abeche--Chad. Its good to know that rap will always be there for us, a part of our lives every time someone reaches for the nob of a radio.

You are never far from home.

Chad vehicle update

Hey, I wanted to let those of you who are wondering how we are coming along raising money for this insanely expensive vehicle for Chad, know, how we are doing. The other day someone gave $10,000.00 towards it. Isn't that amazing!? That brings us to 12,314.00. We think it could be possible to buy something for around $30,000.00. Weather we can find something or not is another story (needle in a hay stack). So, keep praying for that remaining--unknown--balance.

Ben says Daddy

I always think to write on my blog when I'm not in a great mood. And, since I don't like the idea of complaining to the world, I end up writing nothing. I feel bad about that, because I want to be writing all about learning French, about raising Benjamin, and about being a missionary. So I want to say just a couple of things about what is going on in those areas of my life right now. Before I have any second thoughts.

Beginning with French. French is the third "second language" I've learned. At this point I speak it far better than I ever spoke the other two. My first "second language" was Spanish. I studied it in High School and then in College (for my European readers that means University). And then I spent a total for 7 months in Mexico practicing. But, as my mom says, "education is waisted on youth." I should have tried harder, and if I had I would defiantly have come out with a seriously superb ability in Spanish.
The second "second language" I studied was Arabic. Arabic is a whole different ball game if you will. (If you will what? what is that supposed to mean?). I studied Arabic four hours a day in school, five days a week. Then I had 10-15 hours of study time a week and then I did around 10 hours of conversation time a week. I was single obviously, and it was still very, very hard. I did this for one year before I quit and followed my husband to-be back to the states. On the first day of Arabic school the director stood up in front of all the new students and said, "Arabic is the second hardest language to learn in the world. Mandarin Chinese is the hardest." I leaned over to the girl next to me and said, "I'm going to need to be reminded why I'm here."
But French, French has been a wonderful awesome experience. I speak French. I speak it well--not necessarily in comparison with all the other people in my class, but with what it might be if I hadn't studied for so long, or in France, or as seriously as I have. I speak it.

Language learning is an something that changes you. It humbles you. It gives you a new world view. It gives you new and wonderful ways to say things you can't necessarily say in your own language. (There are dozens of different kinds of bakeries in France, which means I can say bakery in many interesting ways). But mainly its the humility part I want to mention. You could be a rocket scientist or a kindergarten teacher. When you enter a country where no one can understand your first language, you sound like a foreigner, and a three year old. Check your pride at the airport and pick it back up on your way out. As a language learner you learn to deal with the fact that you will never do it perfectly. Your chance of getting a perfect score or not making a mistake is basically none, zip, zero. You need to learn to deal with failing hourly, or even more frequently than that. Like I said, It changes you.

Parenthood. I love Benjamin. He is so cute. He is so funny. Wow! incredible. I love seeing how much he learns and grows each day. He can put his rings on his little bobby ring stick now. He can put little shapes in this blue ball with shapes cut out of it. He can say tiger, turtle, thank you, daddy. And I think today he said tooth. He doesn't say Mommy, and I think when I say, "Ben say mama," he thinks I'm saying no no, because he responds by shaking his head no. I hope that's the situation and its not just him telling me, "no, I'm not going to say your name. Sorry try again."

Raising Ben is also a humbling experience. Its humbling to know that I will do things wrong and God is in control and I'm not. But at the same time, I know that God is in control and I'm not. And I can't really mess Ben up. I am parenting with the philosophy is to teach Ben to love and honor God, and that's pretty much it.

Wow, but raising Ben and learning a language at the same time--that is a special combination of chaos for a girl who is famous for only being able to concentrate on one thing at a time. Pray for me, because I'm in trouble. I can't concentrate at all--and I need to. I have two months left to learn French. I need to get my grammar and my spoken French to a more "professional" level so that in the future I can write things that may circulate around the Chad missionary community (in French) and not sound like a four year old.

I'm increasing my hours in school for the month of December to 20 hours. Then in January I'm thinking of increasing to 30. Students who take 30 hours of class are so busy they hardly sleep, and they are usually single--not married with a child. So please please pray that God will bless my efforts and help me to have the time I need away from my daily responsibilities to concentrate on French.

Being a missionary. Right now the missionary part of my life is scary and exciting at the same time. I'm happy to be headed to Chad, even if the initial stage of living in Chad will be to pick up the Chadian dialect of Arabic. I'm excited to be there and to learn what it is like to live there, even if I won't be able to begin ministry to our target people group yet. I'm also excited to begin studying culture and history and stories as soon as possible.

I'm scarred because of the unrest in Chad. Right now the town that we will be moving to in three short months is very close to open fighting. When I say right now I guess I mean as of the last time I heard which was yesterday. There have been times where I've thought that I would pull out when we got closer to going. That I would turn to Dave two months before our departure and say, "I'm sorry, I just can't do it." But now that we are here, at the jumping off point, I'm ready. I know this is what God is asking us to do. I know it so completely that I can't even consider doing anything else but moving there.

There, I wrote something. If you are still reading thank you.