Our Birthday in Greece

July 16th was our birthday. My husband Kenn and I are 6 hours apart in age. We had an "american" Greek sort of birthday. We went out to dinner with our friends Kate and Ilir to Fridays (yes the same restaurant as we have at the mall at home). We also went the next afternoon to see Oceans 13 at the theater "europe style". We learned oh...so many things. We learned to check the theater number. Number 5 and 6 are side by side. We assumed the one with the door open would be our movie...surely the movie in progress would have the door closed and the movie about to play would be open. Unfortunately, not so....we were about 3 minutes into a horror movie when we realized we in the wrong place. We got up and so did a group of high school girls who had done the same thing. We also did not realize we had assigned seats. Good thing there were only 10 of is in the entire theater for the 5:30 showing. Most of Greece doesn't wake up until about 9 pm when they have dinner. The seats are much nicer than home and have a convenient table in between each two seats. It was quite nice. The movie was in English with Greek subtitles. We sat in someone elses seats, but they didn't make us move because we had rescued them from the horror movie. If Oceans 13 had been playing the theater "gold" style (and it wasn't) we could have sat in recliners that look like 1st class airline seats and had dinner with the movie.

Birthday greetings came in many forms. I had a real birthday card that was about 1-1/2 inches x 3 inches (a store bought card in its own envelope). I've never had one that small. It was very cute.l I had a card in "my space". I had an e-card. I had voice mail on SKYPE (where Mark/Pat SANG "happy birthday"). I had e-mail and a video call on SKYPE. I'm sure we would have had cards in the mail, if anyone actually knew where we lived. We felt very loved and not so very far from home. Yes...if you have read this far, you deserve to know how old we are.... we are 49 this year.

We are in Greece!

We arrived safely in our new temporary home about 3 am on Thursday, July 5th. All of our luggage arrived with us. It felt odd as we left California with no cars, no keys, no cell phones... only 4 suitcases. The rest of our life was boxed in 60 +/- plastic boxes mostly ready to come later.

Kate (temporary team leader and neighbor) met us in the afternoon after we had slept some and showed us the bus routes and the options for grocery stores and other local shopping. Our other “neighbors” 2 blocks up the hill (also on our team), Brian and Christine had us over to dinner that first night. Kate and Ilir live 2 blocks down the hill. Nothing in Athens is level.

Day 2-Friday, found us still completely tired. We canceled our lunch appointment (so we could sleep in late) and went into the city with Kate and Ilir for a late lunch in the Plaka. We helped prepare dinner for a family night at the park with the refugees and then joined them at the park near Syntagma for a picnic. I spent most of my evening talking with a 13 year old Afghani who spoke some English. She has lived in 11 countries and was most recently in Sweden. When they left Afghanistan they had $14,000 euros and thought it would be enough to start a new life. Now it is gone. Each time they have moved on they have paid money (as much as $2000 euro) for fake papers and for transportation (plane, train, boat). Last time her fake passport said that her mom was German and her dad was Egyptian. That made her laugh out loud. The life of a refugee is not easy. I’m hoping M. will get to come to camp next month and hear more clearly in her own language about Jesus.

Saturday, we got up early and worked in the tea house. I worked in the baby room after packing hundreds of lunches of hard boiled eggs, flat bread, pepperchinis and olives. It was unusually busy. We had as many as 20 moms/babies in a 10 x 15 room. My first real kiss here (other than from Kenn) came from a 5 year old Pakistani girl who played with me most of the afternoon. She had long dark hair, big brown eyes and was very thin. She was different ethnically from just about everyone else coming and going; and neither of us understood most of the language around us..we were "outsiders". She was very sweet.

There are so many things I don't know how to say when I want to say them. I need to learn how to say “don’t spit” in Arabic. One little boy was very rude to the other children every time his mom turned her back. Later after the baby room closed, I chatted with a refugee woman from Algeria who was teaching me the Arabic alphabet and telling me about how persecuted Christians are where she lived growing up. She lived for a while in England, so her English was pretty good. I ran into her again on Sunday at church, which was quite a surprise to see a familiar face.

Sunday we went to church with Kate and Ilir. After church I came home and observed the day of rest in the most literal form of compliance. I sat on the couch and napped and/or read a book all day. Kenn went with some of the rest of the team to Kalamos to swim in the sea and see the facility where we will have kid’s camp August 14-17. Around dinner time, I decided to just throw some cheese pies in the oven. Then I figured out that it would be nice if I knew at what temperature or for how long. The directions, of course, were in Greek and the oven was in centigrade so it wasn’t even like I could guess a good temperature to try! Cooking was not a subject we had discussed in my Greek class at home. I guessed the temperature to be the only number that wasn’t in minutes and looked up the word for minutes in my Greek textbook. I must have done something right because dinner turned out OK. It was a good thing Kenn was in Kalamos; he might have starved to death while I figured it all out.

The weather has been very warm, but oddly enough when you compare it to Israel and/or Jordan it is quite comfortable most of the time. We were prepared well by the “boot camp” that was our “vacation” in Israel for the weather and the walking required to get around here in Athens. I think I might have been in shock if I had come straight from my air-conditioned office at ECCU to here, but we seem to be adapting fine. Although I confess that today is the first day I have even remotely been awake and not sleep-walking through my day. I think it was exhaustion from travel, hiking and moving as much or more so than just jet-lag. God has provided everything we needed. Even today as we encountered our first real need for a translator (when we didn’t already have one) at the pharmacy, in walks Kate completely unplanned and not exactly even close to where either of us live. God is good. THANKS for praying.

God's Calendar

We had an e-mail this morning from Kenn's attorney saying that he doesn't think he'll have the paperwork filed in time to make a May hearing. Immediately my mind is full of all of the implications that come from that simple statement. A distrust of the attorney who said it was ready to file a month ago. Wondering if we ought to not rent our house until July. Wondering if we ought to just go for it and leave on a tourist visa in June anyway. Wondering if I should work a while longer. Disappointment. Anger. Frustration. Confusion.

Then the still small voice kicks in loud enough to be heard. "I am still God. I am still on the throne. Do you really think an overworked and underpaid attorney is going to direct the timing of MY plan? He is like channels of water in My hand."

We (OK...well mostly Kenn) have been teaching Sunday School this month about God's calendar. Did you know the day that Jesus road into Jerusalem on "Palm Sunday", was lamb selection day? The very day the lambs were picked for slaughter for the Passover feast. He died at exactly 3 pm on Friday...the precise time the shofar blew and the lamb in the temple was sacrificed for the sins of the people. He was placed in the ground on the day of the feast of unleavened bread as all of Israel prayed that God would bring bread out of the earth (perhaps unknowingly, praying for the one who called himself the Bread of Life?). He arose on the feast of First Fruits. The apostle Paul tells us in I Corinthians 15 that he was "indeed resurrected, the first fruit of all who have fallen asleep (died)." The first fruit was given in trust that God would give the harvest. Our God has an incredible sense of timing. He is never late.

We would appreciate your prayers that God would bring us His peace in place of our anger and His joy in place of our frustration and His wisdom in place of our confusion.

Missionary Training is Over....

My Korean Skit was over on Thursday. The picture above shows a portion of the taxi that we "took from the airport to the Seoul Hilton Hotel". I remembered my lines. Our "judge" was able to understand what we said. After 6 hours with a Language Helper (LH), we could barely repeat 3 and 1/2 minutes of dialogue in Korean. The point was not to learn Korean, but to learn how to plan sessions with a LH when you do not share a common language as a base. We tried different techniques over the 6 sessions and quickly learned what worked and what did not.

After the skit was over and debriefed, we ate a brief lunch and took the afternoon off. We had been very busy every afternoon and evening since the Second Language Acquistion classes had started and felt like we deserved a break. 5 of us took off for the Oriental Antiquities Museum in "the city" (what the locals call downtown Chicago).

The museum had an exhibit with antiquities from Iraq. My favorite part was this giant relief of Sennacherib. It also had a small sand prism that told the story of his battle with King Hezekiah. On each side of the prism it told a different version of the battle. On one side from the annals of King Sennacherib, it told of his victory over the children of Judah. On another side it told the Biblical story of how the Angel of the Lord slew all of Sennacherib's soldiers. Still another side told a story of how field mice had eaten the weapons while the soldiers slept over night and how they mysteriously died. I love the clarity of the relief. You could see the laces on the King's sandals, his jewelry, and even his fingernails. The prism from thousands of years ago confirms the biblical account.

That evening we had Giordano's pizza with our class. This was our only authentic Chicago pizza experience while in Illinois and our last night to be all together. After dinner we went back to our rooms to finish studying for our final quizzes on Friday. I sent my Portfolio project to my instructor (a 22 page word document on what my plan will be in Greece for language acquistion including reference material I acquired throughout the course in an Appendix).

Our quizes went well. I only missed 3 points on my production quiz (how well I can pronounce the sounds from the written phenomes). This was my best grade of the course and usually the part that gives me the most grief. I had a hard time with the transcription quiz (taking the sounds given orally and writing them on paper using the international phonetic alphabet), but it is over and my other transcription quizes had really good grades. Thank you so much for praying me through this class.

The classes were over around noon. We said our "good-byes" and went back to clean the apartment and move out. We got on the road about 1:30 pm. It looked like we were ahead of the 2-sided storm due to arrive later that night. 2-sided storms generally produce heavy rain and tornados. We arrived in St. Charles, Missouri about 7 pm and spent the night with friends. We arrived well before the storm and with only a minor detour .

Saturday morning we awoke to rain and were back in the car by 8:30 am headed towards Plano, Texas to see my brother and his family on our way back to California. We drove through heavy rain as we headed south. The rain later turned to wind and it blew a path of sunshine for us to drive in, with each side of the 2-sided storm divided by our patch of sunshine. Later in the day we drove through a dust storm that reminded me of what the dust bowl in the 1930's must have looked like. In the end, we made good time and arrived safe but dusty in Plano around 7 pm.

Today we rested. We went to church at Prestonwood Baptist. My brother, Craig BBQed a roast for dinner. Courtney, my niece is building a bridge out of notebook paper for her physics project, so the house sounds like saws buzzing and smells like glue. If it will hold 11 pounds of weight without breaking, she will get a good grade. It has all sorts of rules about how much it can weigh and how many supporting pieces it can have. Kayla, my other neice was home for a while from the University to see her boyfriend who is home from Iraq. Both were home for lunch. It has been a good day.

Monday we will drive 1o to 12 hours to Albuquerque and on Tuesday we will drive another 10 to 12 hours and should be back home in California. We have developed a rhythm to entertain ourselves as we drive. We listen to music "shuffled" on my ipod for a while. Then we listen to podcasts on Kenn's ipod. Then I read to Kenn for a while. We are reading Charles Martin books. He writes Christian fiction sets in South Carolina. He is a masterful storyteller as he makes us laugh and cry. I found the last book of his that I didn't own at the bookstore in church this morning. I could have danced. My favorite book thus far is "Wrapped in Rain". Then we start all over again with music. That's life on the road.

Lisa had encephalitis? When?

OK...so I shouldn't post prayer requests that refer to former illnesses that happened before this century. Was 1995 really that long ago?

Let's see....in May of 1995, Caleb was 11, Betsy was 9, Jenni was 8 and Andie (my neice) still lived with us and she was 3 years old. I remember coming home from work after a particularly difficult meeting. I had shed tears, that under normal circumstances I would not have let fall. By 5:30, I had picked the kids up from daycare and I was dead tired. I let Caleb cook dinner and I went to bed (also, definitely not a normal occurance - to go to bed at 6:00 pm or to let Caleb cook). Kenn came home from work the next morning and by that time I went from being tired to having double pneumonia and unable to walk from one end of the house to the other. I spent the day at the doctor's office and lab getting blood work and x-rays taken. All I really wanted to do was sleep. I remember that Andie was freaked out about me being sick. The last time her mom was "sick" a policeman took her to foster care and took her mom away. She was sure I was going to disappear.

I did not get better with antibiotics. Kenn didn't go back to work for 3 weeks to care for me. I eventually went back to work part-time, but could not shake the fever and could not get my strength back. By July, I had frustrated my family doctor and was referred to an infectious disease doctor who started testing for auto immune diseases. He assured me that I would either get better and not care if I was ever diagnosed, or I would get worse and they would figure it out. Somehow that was supposed to make me feel better. At some point over the summer, I became aware of how difficult it was to cook from memory. I would leave ingredients out of recipes or forget to cook a vegetable or starch that usually went with a meal. I realized, I could no longer ever win at solitaire on the computer. I voiced my complaints to the the infectious disease doc and got sent to a neurologist.

The neurologist ordered an MRI. They told me it would take 10 minutes to take a peak at my brain. I knew when I was still there 45 minutes later they were looking at something interesting, at least to them. There is nothing quite like being in a small tube with the sound pounding so loud you can't think or sing or hardly even pray. They found recent scars deep in my brain in the area that "labels the filing cabinets of your memory" (your memories are there you just can't remember where you put them) and near my hypothalmus that controls temperature regulation. The neurologist's best guess was that I can contracted encephalitis, an infection in the brain itself that left the scars. It was unusual to see deep tissue damage without brain stem damage. It was like the infection went so far and then without any reason just stopped (could it be that people were praying and God said, "OK stop right there"?). He hadn't ever seen a case with this kind of damage that didn't impact the brain stem too, so there was no way to know what the long term affect might be. He said that most brain injuries heal over a 5 year period. My best plan would be to eat well, take vitamins and exercise to maximize the healing. Whatever didn't heal, I could learn to live with and be grateful I wasn't in some sort of vegetative state from a brain stem injury.

They repeated the MRI again 90 days later to make sure there were no new scars and there were not, so I was released from the neurologist, and the infectious disease doctor. There was no way to know if the pneumonia was the primary infection and my lowered immune system caught the encephalitis or if the encephalitis came first and caused the pneumonia. Usually at this point in the story, I blame Kenn because his sister contracted viral meningitis within a week of when I got sick and he was around us both. He claims this is impossible, but it makes sense to me. Paramedics are exposed to all kinds of sick people.

So what's it like now? The fevers reoccur when I am stressed or if I am exposed to some sort of virus. The good news is that I rarely catch anything that lasts because the fever wipes it out quickly before it takes hold. My short term memory remains a problem although it is much improved from the early days. I have to intentionally create long term memories with repetition or emotion or something to make it stick. I generally park my car in the same row at work or at the store so that I can remember where I parked. I hang my keys in the same place so I know where they are. I create a logical place to put things so that if I can't remember what I did, I can at least reason through, what I should have done. This is a source of endless humor in my home because my family knows I don't really know. It keeps me humble and it keeps us all laughing.

I originally thought this was the end of my academic career. However, in 2002 I discovered that adult degree completion programs don't require test taking. I went back to school at APU and finished my undergraduate degree in 2004 after a 25 year plus break. In the fall of 2005, I enrolled in a Greek language class at St. Paul's Orthodox Church in Irvine. The pace is pretty slow and Nina also doesn't give tests to her adult classes. This too has been a positive experience. It takes me a little longer to remember, but I am remembering. Nina teaches out of the same textbook that the staff in Greece use to learn language. If I can build a base of learning here, I will be that much farther ahead when I get there.

So....I think I may well have flunked my first quiz at least since high school and maybe ever today. There is a first time for everything. Thanks for praying for God to help me remember what I need to know for this Second Language Acquisition class. This is going to be an interesting 2 weeks.

Missionary Training: SLA

We are starting a new module today at Missionary Training on “SLA” (second language acquisition). Our next two weeks will be spent learning the written language used internationally for phonetics as well as learning how to plan sessions with a language tutor. It seems very practical and valuable. Our teachers are highly qualified and excellent at what they do. The language tutors, however, are Korean and speak very little English. We as a small group of 4 will spend 8 hours with a tutor and prepare a short skit in Korean demonstrating our ability to navigate a common situation of our choosing. During the last session we will present the skit where we will each have a speaking part (in Korean). Kenn and I are in different groups. We are also using this experience to develop a language learning plan that is specific to our initial needs as we go to Greece.

My concern heading into the 2 weeks relates more to the phonetics portion than the practical piece. The language sounds cover every conceivable noise used in international language. We are learning how to speak it, write it and describe where in the mouth, lips or voice box that it is created.

Want to try? Take the tip of your tongue and place the bottom side of your tongue on the roof of your mouth. Now try to make a “ch” sound. You have just made a retro-flexed, affricate, voiceless, aspirated, “t”- wedge-“s”-sound. Are you having fun yet? I have developed a great respect for each one who works as a linguist and/or translator for SIL (Wycliffe).

Kenn is having a hard time hearing and producing the sounds. I am struggling with remembering from one minute to the next what I have learned. My short term memory loss from when I had encephalitis isn’t obvious in most situations because I have developed coping mechanisms that hide it fairly well, but it is going to be a challenge as I go cross culturally and a challenge to do well in this class. I believe we are required to complete this class, although no one has said yet that we have to have a passing grade, but we have higher expectations for ourselves and see the practicality of what we are learning. Our prayer would be that the Holy Spirit would enable us to learn what we need to know and that we would not become discouraged in the process. There is some sort of tipping point between having fun and laughing at yourself, and wondering whether you have what it takes. I’d like to finish looking back and thinking that this was fun (and wanting to repeat it in Greece some day soon without dreading it).

Thanks for praying. It really does make a difference.

Inside a Mosque...

Picture a dance floor from world war 1. Now remove all of the people. Instead visualize 800 men from Pakistan and India kneeling shoulder to shoulder on the dance floor in their stocking feet. It is 20 rows deep with40 men across. Now on the left side in the 5th row, picture an old irish man, possibly a former alcoholic, sitting in an old dining room chair who can't bow with the others, but wants so much to be a part of the community. Finally, in the last row directly in front of you stands a 2 year boy who is looking at you as all the others kneel facing Mecca. The Imam on the dance stage in front chants the call to prayer. It is 2 pm on a Friday afternoon and all of these men have taken time off of work to earn "extra points" for praying in person in the mosque. On the left side behind a screen are a few women and other children who cannot see what takes place outside their space. As outsiders we are allowed to sit in the back and watch quietly. I picture our guardian angels standing at attention in front of us between us and the sea of backs and feet and covered heads that move in unison in front of us.

Following prayer, the Imam speaks. The words spoken are not militant, they are a call to keep new year's resolutions to use time wisely and to keep our commitment to God. Maybe he doesn't use the word "Allah" in deference to the outsiders sitting in the back. He speaks for 20 to 30 minutes. They pray briefly again and then they leave. This is repeated 5 times each day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Upstairs our Guide gives a presentation on Islam. He quotes from the book of James and explains how faith without works is dead. Our religion is not very different from theirs in his perspective. He quotes again from I Corinthians. He is soft spoken and kind. If you were not knowledgeable in the Word, you might not understand the significant differences he quickly glosses over in an effort to be a good host and make us feel comfortable in his home.

While this visit did not make my skin crawl like the visit to the Hindu Temple, the lie of the enemy here is a trap set with poisoned honey. Islam is growing at an astonishing rate here in the US. It is now the #2 religion in the US replacing Judism (Christianity is still #1). As we debriefed later, we learned about a witness that God has left in the Qur'an that can open the door to a meaningful apologetic conversation with a Muslim. I walked away, though, thinking that until our churches learn to demonstrate love and community in the way we saw it in the mosque; the offer of a loving God and a certainty of heaven might not be enough to walk away from a community that prays together 5 times a day shoulder to shoulder and cares for each others physical needs. Would they really know us as disciples of Yeshua by our love for one another as we pass quickly once or twice a week in and out of a church building where we sit in our own chairs and rarely touch? It made me stop and think a while about what I saw.