Mercy! It's been a while. I've had emotions and feelings and thoughts and so many things I want to write down, and absolutely no time to do it. So here's a little (very tee-tiney little) recap of what has been our life the last few weeks.
We are finally moved into our house. We are still missing quite a few things that make up a westerner's home, but for the most part we are settled. We are crazy about our new neighborhood where there are plenty of people out riding bikes and playing in the streets.
Our stuff from Macedonia was delivered the very day we signed the lease for our house. Talk about good timing.
And so the last few weeks have been full of ripping open boxes and trying to find a place for all of our stuff. When we weren't doing that, we were carting our poor-pitiful-bored-out-of-their-minds children to the stores with fridges, ovens, fans, dishes, rugs, beds, mattresses, wardrobes, tables, couches, and ant cabinet (there's something for you to chew on) and so on and on and on. And while it may sound fun to some, fun is not the word I would use to describe shopping to furnish your new home in a foreign land. Three babies in tow, one of them being carted off by someone who wants to take selfies with him, the other two playing bumper carts in the washing machine department, a foreign language, foreign currency, little to no direction and hot. Y'all, it's hot. And at the end of the day, every day, when we just wanted to plop on our couch, there wasn't one.
Until three days ago when our beautiful new comfy couch was delivered! Who knew I would ever be so thankful for somewhere soft to sit!
In the middle of all that jazz, we are still in the midst of language learning where we will be for the rest of forever. We LOVE our language tutor. She is just the greatest. I wish I could put her in my pocket and carry her around with me every where, and then I wouldn't need to learn the language because she could translate for me. That would be wonderful! But alas, no such nonsense is going to happen. So I must press on and study, study, study, because knowing the heart language of the people you live among matters, and it speaks volumes of love. We are so thankful for the opportunity and time we have to learn it.
Our try something new (that I actually remembered to take a picture of) was riding in a Song Taaw. It's a truck with benches in the back that'll cart you around town on the cheap.
Isaiah was cuddly that day... for like two minutes. There are no pictures of the moments when he was hanging his little blonde head out the window or the moment he decided to hang from the handle bars across the top like a monkey. We're basically a traveling circus.
Thomas loved the ride!
We are happy, healthy and slowly adjusting to life here. We are thankful for sunny days and a small yard to play soccer and golf in. We are thankful for new kind neighbors who always throw our ball back over the fence and smile while we practice this new language with them. We are thankful for new friends. We are thankful for you praying for us. We are thankful you gave sacrificially so that we could be here doing life among a people who are shrouded in darkness. We are so thankful for God's mercies that are new every day. We are thankful that His grace is sufficient for those times we lost it on our bored, hungry children. We are thankful that He has carried us every single solitary step. We are thankful that He will continue to carry us. He is teaching us all so much. (Deep sigh full of love!)
And so tomorrow we will venture out into this over-polluted city. We will drive by these people and all the others like them, and we will remember why we do what we do. We will remember that Jesus loves us and Jesus loves them. And just as He did, we will strive to deny ourselves and lay our lives down for the sake of His great Name in this new place.
1 comment:
So Brian. You moved away from Macaronia - I liked the pictures you sent from there. It looked just like the Old Country, way back when things were done the right way, not the way they are done now.
Any-who, Momma sent a picture of your new apartment in Tahiti. Now I always wanted to go to Tahiti ever since I was a little girl and saw the movie with Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant when they were walking on a white sand beach at sunset and singing songs and dancing. I thought
about that movie when I used to work in the factory making
whoozywhatsits for the war. Bobby Hamchuck was the factory foreman, but all the workers were ladies, because all the boys were off at war. Some never came back from over there. Sometimes when I was working on the assembly line I used to dream that I was in Tahiti - just like in the
movie. And how I loved to dance, but that was before my broken hip and bunions. Now this foot points this way and that foot points the other way so I don't dance no more.
So when you go to the beach next time with Mandy and Kate and Thomas and Isaiah, you take some sand and put it in a bottle and mail it to me so I can pretend again just like I used to at the factory. And when you are
looking east I want everyone to wave and give a holler to us people so far away.
Please send plenty of pictures just like the movie.
Xoxoxo,
Toodaloo for now
Ciocia Frania.
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