Frustration.

When I mention frustration I am sure everyone thinks I am referring to my own frustration.....not the case this time!! I am referring to the frustration of my three year old. Yesterday I was busy putting up the summer clothes and taking out the fall and winter clothes. My son came in the room and asked for some juice. I told him to go ask Fatima.(The girl who watches the kids while we go to language school.) I heard him searching all around the apartment for her. After a few minutes he returned. He told me she wasn't here any more. I laughed and again instructed him to go find her and ask her, because I was up to my ears in little kids clothes! Again I heard him screaming, "Fatima, Fatima, FA-TI-MA." A few seconds later I heard the door to his room open and I heard him talking. He ran into my room and very upset told me that Fatima was on the ground. (He proceeded to get down and demonstrate exactly how she was positioned on the ground.) He had been in there with her for a few minutes, right in front of her. He could not understand why she would not respond to him. He was very upset. I quietly explained to him that she was praying....(hmmmm..well, not really praying....more like reciting......try explaining how some praying is good and some bad to a three year old.) I was a little surprised she wouldn't even acknowledge his presence in the room. He has so many questions. It is a little difficult to teach our kids that Islam is wrong without teaching them to be intolerant. For example the Mosques here are such beautiful buildings and they have tall minarets, some with crescent moon shapes on top. My son thinks they are fascinating. Once when he asked to go there, I tried to simplify the reason why we would not be going by simply stating that Mosques are "BAD." *Well, it's true they are, but does that make the people who go there bad?? You can imagine the questions that came form my simple answer. I know this is just the beginning of the challenges we will face with our children living here. I would appreciate your prayers for wisdom in this area! I have a very curious little boy!

So...uh..where's the bathroom???

Where to begin.....we just got back from a trip around the country. We traveled to meet new believers and others who are searching for the truth. We drove all day on Tuesday and made a stop to give some materials to a young guy who wants to study more of God's Word. We were with him for a few hours and then it was back in the car again. We had a good friend of ours with us who is from here and is a new believer himself. He was such an encouragement to us. My husband and him talked nearly the entire trip about Jesus and The Bible. He is excited to know that he now has the truth. It seems like all this guy does is read the Bible!!! Even in the car....when there was a break in the conversation he was reading his New Testament. I felt sick at even the thought of reading in the car on those winding roads.

.... As we continued driving, it was getting late. Or friend mentioned that we were relatively close to the "city" where his family lives. Or to explain it better, the tiny little village very far away from evertything where our friend grew up. ( Lets just say I can see why he lives in the city now!!) Because we were so close he suggested that we stay in the village with his family.......uh....okay...I guess....So we continued on , first we came to the turn off of the main road. There was a sign there for the next city so I thought we didn't have much farther to go. Wrong! After passing through a very small city the road got extremely narrow and dark. We went further on the loosely paved road. After maybe 1/2 hour I saw faint lights in the distance. (Honestly at that point I was relieved to know that they at lest had electricity!) We soon parked our car and grabbed all our belongings and began the walk to his house. It was incredibly dark. Finally we arrived at his home. His super nice family welcomed us in. We sat and ate in their two room home. They have two rooms that do not connect. You have to go outside to get from one room to the other. They have a dirt floor, two light bulbs hanging down and NO bathroom. Not even an outhouse! So it was a different experience for us to say the least. Honestly, I had a great time. I am thankful the Lord is allowing me these opportunites. The time at their house was awesome for language practice and learning about a culture very different from the culture of the "city people" here in this country. We all wore the same clothes the entire time we were there, partly for lack of place to change and secondly because they would find it strange we change our clothes everyday. I have to be honest, when I asked to go to the bathroom and I was lead down a dark to path...... I started to get frustrated. I thought about how I didn't want to be there. I stopped and asked God to help me, to help me appreciate these people,their way of life, the hard work they do everyday, and their hospitality to us. God answered my prayer. We had a wonderful time. I can say it was truly by God's GRACE!

Babies and HOT Peppers

One thing I noticed after a little while of being here is that they don't sell too many high chairs. For the reason that if they did their baby would be sitting up way higher than everyone else. People here eat sitting on the couches they have lining their living rooms. They usually holds the small children on their laps or....they just let the kids run around like crazy. :) Whenever we eat with other people, someone always insists on holding our daughter while we eat. I am never comfortable with that situation. You know being the typical mother I worry she is going to spill something or break something. I also worry about what they might feed her. Well, the other night I had a reason to fear!!!! Our friend wanted to hold our daughter at the table. She seemed to like him so we started eating with her eating sitting with him. There was a small bowl of extremely HOT hot sauce on the table. If you have ever been in South America, it was similar to Peruvian Aji.....we are talking about super HOT. This stuff makes the hot sauce at Mexican restaurants seem like ketchup. Sooo...you probably know where I am going with this, our friend had no idea how HOT it was. He took a small piece of bread and scoop up the HOT sauce and popped it right in our daughter's little mouth. I didn't know how to say anything in Arabic at that moment. I screamed "NOOOOOOO!" Everyone at the table was running around trying to get something to wipe it out of her mouth and soothe the burning. She shocked at the new horrible taste in her mouth. I think it was the worst ten minutes of her little life. our friend felt awful. We assured him she was okay. He learned that night babies aren't to fond of hot sauce. As for me, I have learned in my short time being a mom in living in 3 different countries and traveling to many more that I can't shelter my kids. I can't keep them from being right in there with everything the country and the culture have to offer. Obviously it is not always easy for me or for them but I really believe if you want to build relationships with people you have to share your life.

Later that night our daughter was sitting with our friend playing on the floor, forgetting all about her experience at the dinner table.

"You are the KING!"

We all know that God loves it when we sing to Him and Praise Him. I just can't help but think He must enjoy it even more to hear those praises in Arabic. Sometimes when the Christians here are singing at church I feel tears coming to my eyes. There is one song they sing that I can understand almost completely, I love it. In the song they sing to Jesus and say, "You are the King."It is beautiful. They sing it with joy and thankfulness.
I have written several posts in a negative tone about Ramadan. Today I was thinking of something that has really blessed me this month. That being, while most people here are following strict Muslim practices and talking about all the things they are obligated to do, the Christians are learning about and experiencing even more the freedom they have in Christ. For example yesterday, it was awesome when our friend who was visiting us understood that he didn't have to fast during Ramadan. A little funny too! Anyway tomorrow Ramadan is over and everyone will be stuffing their faces all day. I am pretty excited myself. :) It will be nice to get things back to normal. Normal????.....I guess that wasn't the right word, back to the way things were before Ramadan.

"I JUST SAID THAT!!!......didn't I?????"

Okay, so I would not be covering all the bases if I did not write about Torture......I mean LANGUAGE SCHOOL! I am in language school here learning dialectal Arabic. Arabic as you may know is not written using "our" letters so this really complicates things!! So in other words it is not like how it was when I was in Spanish language school..... where I would just write down the new word in a small notebook. In Arabic there are sounds we don't have letters for!!! Like for example the H in English, "H-h-h-Hat" right??? Well, here we need to learn three ways to pronounce what to me always sounds like "H". There is a sound that is kinda like a "KH"....but honestly it sounds like somebody clearing their throat. Then I was taught another "H" sound. It has to come from deep in you lungs. When our teachers teach us they always put their hands on their upper chests and ask us to the same. They say we should be feeling vibration. Hmmmmmm.
Today, I probably repeated a word 25 times after my teacher because I just could not hear the difference in what he was saying as oppose to what I was saying! AHHH! Talk about frustrating, I kept telling everybody,"I just said that!!" It was pretty funny our two other friends in class with me were agreeing with me(Nice to have the support.) Our teacher was cracking up shaking his head no.
It is NOT easy learning a new language ever. If you have children I think things can even get a little more tricky...not to mention annoying when your three year old can pronounce Arabic letters better than you and all your friends LOVE to point that out. God is giving me the patience and the desire to learn. Little by little everyday that is my goal. When I was ending Spanish language school I realized how much I did not know and I suppose to be "finished" learning. The truth is I am still learning English. I like to look at learning new languages as a journey. It seems to be easier to grasp that way. Really though it is not easy and sometimes have to make myself leave my children and go to school, I know it is an awesome opportunity from God to be able to learn how to communicate His word with people who otherwise might not hear......But please pray for me!!!!!!!:)

Creativity!

A friend of ours took these pictures while he was here visiting. I thought it was pretty cool how he creatively put this together. It reminds me of how it is working here. Since we can't do the door to door thing, or the advertising, or any of the normal public ways to stir up interest we need to come up with newer ways of discreetly getting the word out. So far, even though we are just getting started we are getting some response! Another reason why I like this picture is because I love artwork. Artwork is always suppose to have a message or meaning behind it. So this picture probably says to me exactly what our friend intended it to. It symbolizes the doors of the hearts of the people here. We are praying that God will open these doors. You can read about some of the creative ways we are sending the message out on my husband's blog. Pray that God will use these creative ideas!

GREAT TIME

I would like to ask everyone reading this to please pray about something with me.

My friends here are all very different. I always have a wonderful time hanging out with each one of them. I practice my Arabic with them, go shopping with them, learn about the culture from them, and learn about their religion from them. - That last point is where the problem begins. I learn by asking questions. I listen to their answers and then I always try to share things about what I believe with them. I share with them about the freedoms I have in Christ. They have a very hard time listening to this. I was questioning one of my friends a very strongly about why she changed only during Ramadan. Why the head covering and long sleeves during the day and then hair down with a sleeveless dress at night. Why only pray faithfully one month out of the year.? Etc. I have shared with many of my friends that true believers and followers of Jesus Christ are always the same. If I think it is right to do I need to do it everyday all day long. They see the obvious contradiction and just shrug their shoulders. They feel obligated to do everything they do. They all say the LOVE Ramadan. Hmmmmmm. I find that really hard to believe.
Anyway, I would like to ask you pray that the Lord would open up more doors for me to talk to them about Him. I always have fun with them. They are great people. I just hate thinking about their eternity. It would be easy for me to just hang out with them, but I know hanging out will leave blood on my hands. It can be intimating to say the least to bring up conversations that single me out. That magnify our differences. But it is true our differences go far beyond my blue eyes. Please pray with me about this.

You mean you can't stay for dinner??????

On Saturday one of my closest friends here invited me to her house to eat the meal at sunset. I agreed to go and I was excited to be invited to eat with her and some of her cousins who are also friends of mine. We were out shopping half the day on Saturday to prepare for the meal. We also stopped by the tailors to pick up our new djellabas we had made. I always have a great time with her.(*More on having a GREAT TIME in a few minutes.)
Anyway, last night after we got home form our church which is an hour and a half away, I went to her house. It was very close to the time to eat and everyone was already sitting in around the table with Harira in their bowls. I think it is hilarious, as soon as they her hear the first part of the word "Allah....." they already have their food in their mouths. I hid my smile and reached for my spoon. So we ate....and we ate.....and we ate some more. The word you say when you are telling someone to eat is "kul" like "cool". SO, I think I heard them telling me to "kul" about 100 times. I think I said "Safie" which means "enough" about 200 times. One way or another I was still left with that never ending bowl of soup!!!
After we were all stuffed they all got up to go pray. One at a time they went into the dark living room and wrapped blankets around themselves and read the Quran and prayed. They had to do it that way so I wasn't left alone. I could tell my friend was a little nervous about leaving me but her Mom told her she would sit with me. After about 20 minutes of this everyone had finished and they were laying all over the couches. I tucked my feet up under me and watched a ridiculous TV program in Arabic. I was glad it was in this dialect of Arabic. I understood enough to know it was a really cheesy comedy. After what I thought was long enough I stood up and stretched my arms up over my head, and stating how tired I was I told my friends I had to go. It was after 9:00. Then the protests began....."You mean you are not staying for dinner???? My mom is about to begin preparing it." I didn't know what to do. Quickly remembering the honor shame culture here, I told them "You must understand my children are with my husband and it is a shame to me to have him caring for them for such a long time!" They began to nod reluctantly. I apologized for having to leave the extremely exciting nap time and then I left. As you can see I am applying what I am learning about the culture here. :)

Playing Mosque.......

Or should I say "playing Imam." Tonight right before the call to pray at sunset, I heard two of our young neighbors (maybe 10 years old or so) out on their balcony screaming the call to prayer. "Allah hoo Akbar" They where screaming it, and then cracking up. Their screaming was quickly followed by their mother screaming at them to stop. I heard her saying, "You boys have to stop now. Now!! Stop it now!!" I couldn't help but laugh. I quickly ducked behind the clothes I was hanging so no one could see the foreign lady laughing at this little innocent mocking of their precious call to one of their mandatory duties! I found the whole situation quite funny!

Bad Timing.

Last night we had a few people over for dinner.(People not from here.) So we were finishing up and I noticed that we had a lot of chocolate cake left over. I put it on a plate and thought it would be really nice to share it with my friends who live down stairs. They love our American desserts because they are sweeter than their traditional ones. So I grabbed the plate and headed down the elevator. I left my husband and everyone else talking at the table knowing I would only be a few minutes. (My friends knew we had guests.) I rang the doorbell and our friend's maid answered the door. Their house was very dark and quiet in a strange kind of way. She invited me in. She looked very hesitant, like she didn't know what to do, where to take me. Normally I would have been warmly greeted a few moments after entering by a few members of the family. I looked around...I quickly saw everyone......there they were, all of them, all the women of the family completely covered being lead in prayer by their father. To make it a little stranger for me, when Muslims pray they must pray in the direction of Mecca, so they were all facing the doorway I was standing in. I am sure they saw me, but they didn't even lift one eye in my direction. I stood still for a few awkward minutes and then I turned to the maid ( I am not sure if I forced her to interrupt her prayers or not.)and told her I was needed to go. I wishing she had never opened the door. This morning my friend called me and thanked me for the cake. She didn't mention my untimely visit. Before Ramadan this particular friend almost never spoke about Islam. I am not even sure sure if she prayed, but during Ramadan their prayers "count" for more points. *you can read about the points on my husbands blog.
Anyway, now all the stores are starting advertise all the traditional clothing and party type foods, because Ramadan will be over in a little more than a week and everyone is getting ready for the big bash they have to celebrate the end of fasting. Believe me I will be celebrating too, because I will be sooooo glad when Ramadan is OVER!!!!

Spices and things.

I was just thinking you women might want to know where we do our grocery shopping. I remember when my husband came here to visit before we came, one of my first questions was....."So how's the shopping?" I wanted to know how modern the markets were. Well.........

It turns out here we have one extreme to the other. Below our apartment on the first floor of the apartment building across form ours is a supermarket much like an American grocery store. Our other option ( the more exciting and interesting option) is to walk a few blocks to the suk. A "suk" is an open air market. Or to be more exact is a very crowded street that transforms into a market. It is packed with carts with fresh vegetables and fruits. Then little stores line the street selling live chickens, spices, beans, toiletry items, and.....really just about anything you can think of. There are little whole in the wall stores packed with imported stuff from Europe. Things are only sometimes cheaper in the "suk". Still the majority of the people do there shopping there, I guess out of tradition. I do about half and half. When it rains the suk becomes one nasty place. The particular suk we go to is on a hill. The area where the sell the fish is near the top of the hill, when you buy fish they gut it for you....throwing the guts on the ground. When it rains everything washes down stream! SO you can smell and see fish guts all threw the fruit and vegetable section! Obviously here there are no clean ups on isle 5!!Pretty gross! On a good day however, the smells and colors are beautiful. This is a picture of a little spice stand. Everything is always fresh. These spices make our little glass bottled ones taste so dull and stale.
Anyway, just thought you might enjoy a little knowing a little more about everyday life here in Northern Africa.

Thank You!!

Hey, I just wanted to write a quick post to say thank you to all my friends who called and e-mailed or posted comments in this time while my husband was away. I feel very blessed to have so many true friends. Thank you for your prayers and concern for me. I know people are honestly praying for us and that is such an awesome thing!! Thank you very much!!