Not much...but SO much!

Some days I don't know how I can cram so much of life into a 24 hour time space. This week I had 12 hour work days. 12 hour work days in America are draining, let alone here. Although, 4 of those hours involved a language learning seminar this week that was so good. It kicked me in the butt to be continuing language learning. After studying language for 10 months straight 5 hours a day, 2.5 hours a week...I just got so tired. But, my language plateaued after that as well.

I was missing my brother so much this week. Nothing happened particularly that made me miss him. I just felt like he was further away this week. I know you can't get much further away than death but sometimes it seems he's closer than others. It's so hard when every person I meet asks me how many brothers and sisters I have. I still say three...because I do. One just doesn't live here on earth any more. But, it still sends a little stab of pain through my heart.

I don't have a whole lot to say...mostly because I have too much to say today. My mind is swimming with responsibilities and plans and things happening. I feel as if I were to write down all I have on my mind, people would definitely stop reading this blog. So, all that to say, I need prayer for what is going on around me today and what is coming up in the days ahead. We have guests and a mini-d-school and I am doing a week of teacher training here in town. On top of that are meetings and leading the team and house issues and daily life and language. I'm also in need of a new language teacher. Please pray that I would find a person that can meet with me.

We're off to see the village

On Tuesday I ventured out to a Turkmen village that was about 3.5 hours from my city. And there was a real, paved road for about a third of that time. I sat in the back of our van feeling like I was riding a camel the whole way. We donated a library to the school, made a few speeches and left. Usually we will run a teacher training seminar and activities for kids and stay for a couple of weeks. However, this was more a favor for the government because this school has been requesting help for a bit. So, the Minister of Economics came with us and it was all "official." Seriously, the things that I have learned to do over the last two years. I never realized I'd be so involved with the government here.

It was also New Years here. I laid low this year because we had a bunch of security warnings. My city is the main city in the country for New Years...much like Times Square in the States. So, I slept in, watched movies, and that was about it. So nice. Happy 1386 everyone!

Korean teams and local men

This last week we've had a short-term team with us from Korea. I have to admit my view of short-term work has changed a bit as I've experienced it from the long-term side. It's a lot of work to host a team and there have been some good experiences and some bad. It's never good to have a team come and then have to do "clean up" work after they leave either literally or relationship-wise. I could probably express a lot of opinions on this subject, although this is not the object of the post. The point I AM making is that this team was a great blessing for us. They led some amazing worship times (if you have not prayed with a group of Koreans, you are missing out on an incredible blessing!!!) and shared with some of the locals in our mini d-school. Last night they threw a party for our team and cooked some amazing Korean food and totally blessed us. So, the pictures above are the team visiting us, the second is our team and the Korean team. The third picture is me and the kids of a family of mine on our team. They moved into my new house with me.

Tomorrow I'm heading out to a village that we made shelves and tables and chairs for and we're putting a library in their school. I've been realizing something incredibly hilarious. Before I left to come here God spoke to me that I would train both women AND men. I kept this in my heart because I thought it was an impossibility. And I wasn't sure if that was from God, or from me. Well, I would say 80% of my work here has been training men. Between the schools, my office workers and now the mini seminar we are doing, I am working with men more than women. Tomorrow I'm off to spend yet another day with men: my office workers, a government official and the staff of this school, all men. Hilarious....I fought it for so long and yet God seemed to have led me right into this work.

Today I made an incredible discovery. I put on my yoga pants (which until this time have acted as pants that I wear under my skirts here) and dug my running shoes out of a box and got my little booty down to the GYM!!! There are gyms all over the place but they are only for men. Well, one of them in town decided to open it's doors every day only to women for 3.5 hours. Some friends and I went there today and worked out. It was one of the most amazing things I've been able to experience here. There were about 10-12 local women, young, ambitious...married and single. It was a great place to strike up conversations while on the treadmills or doing sit ups. The equipment is not too bad...not Lifetime Fitness by any means (the seats on many of the weight machines are car seats...like they have an actual seatbelt on them. Hilarious!) but I was able to sweat and strain some muscles. I know for many of my readers, it may not be a big deal. But please understand, women do not exercise here. I cannot run, I cannot do anything outside my home so I've been limited to pilates and workout videos. One of the ways I relieve stress at home is to go for a nice, long hard run or hike all day until I'm ready to fall over. Here, the most I can do is pound my head against the wall. I'm looking forward to meeting more women here and am going to make regular event of it.

The weekend is upon me starting tomorrow. I'm in desperate need of it as I've been putting in 14 hour days most of this week. So, I do have one family I'm visiting tomorrow but besides that, my time is MY OWN!!! yeah!!!

Weep with those who weep

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Romans 12:15

To be honest, I am so tired of crying. I have always been an emotionally-expressive person. Most people can tell how I'm feeling even when I think I am hiding it so well. Since my brother's death, the tears freely flow and usually at, to me, the most inconvenient times.

However, today my tears flowed for another death. My language teacher, and my best local friend here, experienced a tragic loss in her own family. Her uncle (her father's brother) went to the bazar in the morning and was healthy and well. When he came home he complained of pain in his shoulder and that afternoon, he died, most likely of a heart attack. My friend showed up at my house a few days later, eyes puffy with tears and we just sat. Not many words were exchanged but grief and hurt and loss hung in the air between us. There was mutual understanding.

Today I attended the mourning session. My heart could barely carry the burden of this time. I entered a room lined with women wailing. In the Bible, where it talks of crowds of women following a dead body wailing, that is what this was like, except within the home. The wife and daughters of the man who died sat at the entrance to the room. The women would enter and just weep with them, wailing at the top of their lungs proclaiming what a good man he was and what a tragedy this was. As painful as it was, it was an oddly beautiful experience. The ache of death is something I have come to grasp. Our humanity NEEDS to wail over the tragedy of death. When I came home for my brother's funeral, I always felt like I needed to constantly pull myself together. I always felt like the odd-one-out weeping all the time (except of course with my family who wept along with me). How wonderful it would have been to sit in a room and just weep all day and have others come just to weep with me. Even God understands this need as he led Paul to command us to weep together. We don't need to tell each other words that we think may take the pain away or lessen it. We don't need another pan of brownies or a casserole. We need tears, lots and lots of tears.

So, i cried with these women. Some of the other women were staring at me and asked if I knew him. "No, but death hurts. I understand this pain."

I know that God is not so narrow that he would take my brother away from me and my family just so I could understand death and relate to people in this land (who experience death way more often than I ever have). I would never put that on God's character. But I know that God sees the complexities and many facets of our life we never see and that he raises beauty out of the ashes. And the beauty is that my tears and pain can come alongside another. Please pray for my friend and her family.

$$$

I found out this morning that I GOT AWARDED MY SCHOLARSHIP TO WHEATON COLLEGE!!!!! I'm so excited. :) It's a full-tuition scholarship that functions as a loan. So, for every year I'm on the field after school, they forgive 25% of the loan. So basically, school is paid for by spending 4 years on the field, which is what I was planning on doing anyways. I was so in need of good news.

I moved into our new house yesterday. It's very nice but has it's typical new-house problems that all new houses have here. Our doors and windows don't all close because the winter has shifted the house already. The water pump is broken so sometimes we don't have any water. And we don't have a generator yet so the electricity comes and goes. I kinda feel like I'm camping.

High-tech security

I've been meaning to blog about our new "neighborhood watch" system here, mostly because it gives me many moments of sarcastic comments and ironic chuckles. I love to let you all in to my bizarre little world.

There have been a couple of robberies in my neighborhood so I don't know who decided it but there are a couple of guys that walk around at night to just be a presence in the neighborhood and deter people from breaking into homes. Sounds great, right? But, they walk around with whistles and blow on them all throughout the night. Also, each house (including ours) pays them $1 a month for their "protection" in the neighborhood. Now, in a way, I really pity these guys. I for one, would not want to be waking around a dark neighborhood blowing a whistle alerting everyone to my exact presence so they can come beat me up. Also, I wonder how this increases security because I think it just lets the people who want to break into a house know exactly where the people are so they can sneak around away from the whistle-blowing guys. AND, what does the dollar pay for? A new whistle every now and then? Maybe to resole their shoes as they walk around on the rocky streets all night? You can't really support a family on that! Everytime they walk by my house at night I just have to laugh because I find it so strange.

Some other crazy new news: I'M MOVING!!! We rented another house because our team is growing. I orginally hadn't planned on moving but it just kind of worked out. The great thing is that I will have my own room for awhile. I'm a big girl now. So, to pay homage to my room that has been home and a refuge for a year and a half now, I am posting a picture below. Once I move and get settled I'll post a picture of my new house. You can actually see the building on the blog I posted below about the muddy streets. It's the tallest building on the left side of the street, so our team all lives really close...which is good so we can maintain our security! ;)