I have not forgotten about my blog, much to the reflected dates, but I am not sure what to post, of late!
I have had a couple great experiences however little time to process them into written form.
Life consists of school, taxi rides, time with the amazing friends that the Lord has provided, church, studies and oh two great trips out of town. I count it a complete gift and priviledge to study arabic in Cairo.
The Joy of the Lord alone is our strength!
12.12.09
12.10.09
Some Quirky and Some Refreshing
This city is MASSIVE! She is littered with tall buildings, narrow cars and streets. Her people are many, varied and wonderful!! That being said there are few experiences that make her a distinct city and I have been refreshed in some old things too . . .
1- Traffic is a serious commitment of time and energy, not to be trivialized. One must seek to maximize this time suck, bring a good book or fun people to talk with!
2- If in this traffic ones child wants to sleep, said child has to be OK with 'anywhere' as acceptable options for instance: a parents shoulder moving or still in any location regardless of sound, handle bars of a bike or moped, leaning on a sibling in the train, on a mothers head straddling her shoulder walking down the street . . . the point is really not where but that one gets a nap in! Right?
3- Clothes Pins are GREAT! And one needs many, being a large population exists close together there are many high buildings, one usually dries their clothes outside on the balcony from any height. This makes clothes pins your best friend and ally. This also strengthens your relationship with the Lord as you feel a compulsion to pray as your clothes dangle from, for example, the 12th floor. Though sadly I am not sure pleading for your clothes earns you any eternal rewards . . .
4- Parking options are as varied and tricky as napping locations.
5- Personal space is as rare and unheard of as a the phrase 'parking lot'. This really just a western notion though so . . . and really who wants everything to be the same!!!
6- There is one thing that is the same . . . people are people everywhere! They have the same things going on in life in differing degrees . . . there are Americans that are struggling to pay bills concerned about their families, there are Sudanese not making enough money to care for their family as they want to, there are Egyptians feeling pinched by the wage they can't seem to work hard enough to increase. There are young women every where longing for love and men everywhere looking for that special someone. Kids all still think the same things are funny!
1- Traffic is a serious commitment of time and energy, not to be trivialized. One must seek to maximize this time suck, bring a good book or fun people to talk with!
2- If in this traffic ones child wants to sleep, said child has to be OK with 'anywhere' as acceptable options for instance: a parents shoulder moving or still in any location regardless of sound, handle bars of a bike or moped, leaning on a sibling in the train, on a mothers head straddling her shoulder walking down the street . . . the point is really not where but that one gets a nap in! Right?
3- Clothes Pins are GREAT! And one needs many, being a large population exists close together there are many high buildings, one usually dries their clothes outside on the balcony from any height. This makes clothes pins your best friend and ally. This also strengthens your relationship with the Lord as you feel a compulsion to pray as your clothes dangle from, for example, the 12th floor. Though sadly I am not sure pleading for your clothes earns you any eternal rewards . . .
4- Parking options are as varied and tricky as napping locations.
5- Personal space is as rare and unheard of as a the phrase 'parking lot'. This really just a western notion though so . . . and really who wants everything to be the same!!!
6- There is one thing that is the same . . . people are people everywhere! They have the same things going on in life in differing degrees . . . there are Americans that are struggling to pay bills concerned about their families, there are Sudanese not making enough money to care for their family as they want to, there are Egyptians feeling pinched by the wage they can't seem to work hard enough to increase. There are young women every where longing for love and men everywhere looking for that special someone. Kids all still think the same things are funny!
So really anywhere can be 'home=comfortable and familiar' with the right people no matter how things swirl around you, no matter how many mistakes you make with strangers, no matter how uncomfortable certain things might 'feel'! The Lord seems to provide the comfortable and familiar in dear friends as you make a new like and family together helping and caring for each other! The Lord Will provide for all our needs as we trust and look to Him to be our everything.
22.6.09
Reading
Reading is a gift and I love christian biographies, love them!! I am reading a compilation of several men and their ways of thinking and life experiences. TodayI made three pages of notes. There is though a quote I must share from my reading today.
'Such earnestness and thoroughness of endeavors, is the ordinary means that God makes use of to bring people into an acquaintance with themselves, to a sight of their own hearts, to a sense of their own helplessness, and to a despair on their own strength and righteousness . . . It is experience of ourselves , and finding what we are, that God commonly makes use of as the means of bringing us off all dependence on ourselves . . . It is therefore quite a wrong notion that some entertain, that the more they do, the more they shall depend on it. Whereas the reverse is true; the more they do, or the more thorough they are in seeking, the less will they be likely to rest in their doings, and the sooner will they see the vanity of all that they do. -J. Edwards'
Heroes, Murray, pp. 14
9.5.09
Lego's Lead to Dying?
There are some that have the ability to craft a story from a simple experience and can pull out some eloquent truth, I less often have this ability. I admire it! Tonight I was reading one such person's blog about Lego's and got to thinking . . . about dying.
My grandparents lived their retirement years in Tucson, Arizona. We would go visit them most summers. I always declared that 'people were not meant to live in the desert', deserts are desolate and dead, you have to claw for food from the hard ground and create dams to gain water, crazy!!!
Now, I find myself calling a desert 'home'. All this week the desert has been blowing getting everywhere, blowing in the streets (i even saw a small but strong 'dust devil' a mini tornado), creating a fine dust coat on anything still. A positive is that it has caused a dusty haze over the normally brutal sun. It has been cooler. The desert has been well even desirable, oddly enough.
Then tonight the winds started really blowing and the power flickers. As we stood on the roof tonight marveling at the limited view and the grit in our teeth and eyes, using our tarha (head cover) as a dust mask, I thought about the change that comes with dust and death.
Every time we experience the awesome yet gentle prying that the Lord does in our heart, minds and attitudes, a death happens, but it also brings life. I am reminded that the Lord calls asks even insists that parts of us die, but the good news is He also is in the practice of resurrection. He will bring life in spite of death, maybe not life how we thought, but life that lifts His name higher!
I find this whole haboob season a lot like how we dye to things. It's ugly, scary, unpleasant, painful and usually effects others, it can sometimes even limits our view of life and the future. We travail and weep, we pray and read, we do everything to cling to sanity and Jesus. Then it slowly lifts and we feel dazed and a bit stunned by the change around us, then eventually cleansed, fresh and definitely more in love with Jesus. The Lord brings life to us by our death. An upside down logic that our Savior loves!
This dust that is swirling and gusting outside now seeming even scary will continue through the night. It might even cause some damage. But when it blows through and has poured out more and more sand, it will rain, always it rains. It will rain, it might even thunder and lightning. It might even pour and flood. But oh that rain is a treasure! That rain cleans everything! Absolutely everything cars, cats, dogs, the air, sidewalks, roof tops, clotheslines, railings, streets, and people. Jesus can and will come and wash us afresh and anew like that. Oh the Glory!
This has been a season of dust and grit, pain, even embarrassment, for me personally. But I can with confidence say I am thankful for it. I know that in those seasons change is happening! I am moving along with Jesus, closer to Jesus. We are moving!
My grandparents lived their retirement years in Tucson, Arizona. We would go visit them most summers. I always declared that 'people were not meant to live in the desert', deserts are desolate and dead, you have to claw for food from the hard ground and create dams to gain water, crazy!!!
Now, I find myself calling a desert 'home'. All this week the desert has been blowing getting everywhere, blowing in the streets (i even saw a small but strong 'dust devil' a mini tornado), creating a fine dust coat on anything still. A positive is that it has caused a dusty haze over the normally brutal sun. It has been cooler. The desert has been well even desirable, oddly enough.
Then tonight the winds started really blowing and the power flickers. As we stood on the roof tonight marveling at the limited view and the grit in our teeth and eyes, using our tarha (head cover) as a dust mask, I thought about the change that comes with dust and death.
Every time we experience the awesome yet gentle prying that the Lord does in our heart, minds and attitudes, a death happens, but it also brings life. I am reminded that the Lord calls asks even insists that parts of us die, but the good news is He also is in the practice of resurrection. He will bring life in spite of death, maybe not life how we thought, but life that lifts His name higher!
I find this whole haboob season a lot like how we dye to things. It's ugly, scary, unpleasant, painful and usually effects others, it can sometimes even limits our view of life and the future. We travail and weep, we pray and read, we do everything to cling to sanity and Jesus. Then it slowly lifts and we feel dazed and a bit stunned by the change around us, then eventually cleansed, fresh and definitely more in love with Jesus. The Lord brings life to us by our death. An upside down logic that our Savior loves!
This dust that is swirling and gusting outside now seeming even scary will continue through the night. It might even cause some damage. But when it blows through and has poured out more and more sand, it will rain, always it rains. It will rain, it might even thunder and lightning. It might even pour and flood. But oh that rain is a treasure! That rain cleans everything! Absolutely everything cars, cats, dogs, the air, sidewalks, roof tops, clotheslines, railings, streets, and people. Jesus can and will come and wash us afresh and anew like that. Oh the Glory!
This has been a season of dust and grit, pain, even embarrassment, for me personally. But I can with confidence say I am thankful for it. I know that in those seasons change is happening! I am moving along with Jesus, closer to Jesus. We are moving!
23.2.09
Rats Rats Rats
When we got back from Kenya for Holiday we had rats in our flat . . . beyond GROSS! there are two things to bear in mind when thinking about this suybject:
1-I sleep on the floor
2- We live on the second floor
We settle in for the night and my roommate arises for the next day and our friend #1 runs across her foot. These kinds of experences happen off and on for a week. We then go for death . . . at this point we know there is one and he is using our washing machine as a place of refuge. In Sudan death of rats is not usually routine. A fact that baffles me. So we set the trap (that will leave them alive), FWAAAM! Got one in the middle of the night. I arise first and he's caught! I then see his friend a few minutes later. Friend #1 gets death by drownding. Contestant #2 is hiding that day in the washing machine, that night we suit up to get him. Unsure if he has escaped.
He was gone . . . sadly.A few days later he met the end of his life. We never caught the #3 we saw a few days later . . . but a few days later the "plumber" came and found 5 plugging the sewer to our building. Beyond Gross!
How we got them living on the 2nd floor i don't know, but we were told later they probably crawled up the toilet, gag me! I am not convinved that is possible.
Just another day in Khartoum!
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