Violated!

Photo credit: just.Luc / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

It is a horrible feeling to know that someone has been in your house, looking at your pictures, touching your things… robbing you.  I count that our house has been broken into 3 times, our car has been stolen twice, and less importantly, our garage has been broken into and our bikes and tools all stolen.  And only one of those home invasions happened overseas.

I am fully convinced that God knows our fears even better than we do.  I believe that He was preparing us for life overseas by forcing us to face our fears in our own beloved Minnesota.  We don’t live in Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.  But sometimes when we are overseas we tend to romanticize “home”.  We think, “This never would have happened to me if I had stayed in Minnesota!”

But that’s just not true.  Houses get robbed in Minnesota too.  Cars get stolen in middle class neighborhoods in First World Countries.  If someone wants to get into your house badly enough, no amount of locks and security systems will stop them.  They could drive a car through the wall of your living room if they wanted to.  Bad things happen in America too.

So I think the Lord knew that by facing my fears while we were still living in America, it would have the effect of releasing me from those fears.  It’s like facing your fear of heights by going rock climbing or facing your fear of public speaking by giving a toast at a wedding.  Once you see that your fear was survivable, well then it has lost its grip on your mind.

It took a long time after each violation for my peace to return to me, but eventually it did.  At the moment of our last break-in, in Mexico, my husband and I held each other and cried.  As I cried, I prayed out loud and thanked God that we were safe, that our children were at school today, that not much was stolen.  I repeated the scripture verse from Job, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.”  And I felt like we passed a test.  Deep in my heart I felt the approval of the Lord.  I sensed that we would not have to face this test again.

When we picked up our kids from school, we worried about their reactions when we told them that the house was broken into while we were away that morning.  They only asked if all their toys were still there.  They were not the least bit concerned otherwise.  I marveled at how the Lord had given them a resiliency that I didn’t even think to ask for.  I thanked the Lord for giving us peace once again.

Hallucinating in Spanish

Last week a flu bug passed through our family.  Normally we get sick at the most inconvenient times.  But this time we were in between teams, so it was an OK time to be sick.  Is that weird?  It was a total body aching, pounding head ache, thing.  I am thankful that it wasn’t a stomach flu though, because there is nothing in the world that I hate more than throwing up.  Seriously.

But the weird thing about having a fever is that sometimes I hallucinate in Spanish.  I can’t even describe how strange that is.  I do crazy things like trying to conjugate proper names.  It’s just wacky.  This time around I didn’t actually hallucinate in Spanish, but I did translate my own thoughts into Spanish all night long.  It was like my brain got stuck in Spanish mode and I couldn’t shut it off.  I woke up feeling like I had worked all night long instead of slept.  it was awful!  I can now say that I have been sick in Spanish.  (OK that little play on words is lame-o).

Photo credit: ckaiserca / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Here in Costa Rica you can get a lot of medicines over the counter at the pharmacy that would require a prescription in the States.  The Pharmacist can actually do some doctory type things too like giving vaccinations and checking for ear infections.  They aren’t supposed to dispense antibiotics without a prescription, but sometimes they do.  However, they NEVER give you any instructions sheet or cross medications warning or ANYTHING informative with the meds.  If you are lucky, they might write the recommended dose on the box, but nothing more.  I now have a collection of dosing cups and droppers that I brought from America because they don’t usually come with the medications here!

In Mexico it was worse.  You could get anything without a prescription.  (The government once considered giving free Viagra to men over 60 to improve their quality of life!)  I remember once when Lucy was a baby I thought she probably had an ear infection.  So I called her pediatrician to make an appointment and was told, “Just go to the pharmacy and get some antibiotics!”  Oh, silly me.  So I went to talk to the pharmacist.  He asked how old she was and how much she weighed.  Then he handed me a bottle 1/4 full of a white powder with absolutely no instructions.  I was lucky there was a label with the name of the antibiotic on it.

I took my bottle of powder home and called Walgreen’s in my home city in Minnesota.  I explained that I was in Mexico and they had given me this with no dosing instructions.  What would they recommend I give a 6 month old baby.  I read all the numbers off the label to the American Pharmacist.  She told me, “Wow, we don’t even sell that strength here in America!  I would dilute it up to the top of the bottle and give her no more than a teaspoon twice a day.”  She also said to discontinue use if she started acting differently.  Oh great.  Now I feel better.

I know it sounds scary and complicated, but when I’m in the States sometimes I miss the ease of just walking into a pharmacy and buying some high-powered drugs without the hassle and expense of seeing a doctor first.  I just have to remember to NOT go to the drug store when I’m hallucinating in Spanish or else I might come home with a dose of Viagra instead of cough syrup.

Nacho

Our dog Nacho

We have a dog named Nacho.  Before we even left for the mission field, back in 2004 we promised our kids that once we got through itineration, language school and two international moves that we would get a dog.  So once we landed in Mexico, we made plans to fulfill our promise.  We sent a message home to my parents to go to a breeder and pick out a dog for us.  We wanted a Shih Tzu.

So my parents went out to the farm where the breeder lives and picked out the cutest, most cuddly puppy they had.  Some friends of ours from Mexico were in town for a wedding, so we made plans for Nacho to travel back to Mexico with them.  They brought us this adorable little fur ball.

Nacho has traveled to Mexico, back to Minnesota, and on to Costa Rica with us.  Missionary kids have to give up a lot of things as we move country to country.  So we make an effort to keep Nacho as one of the “constants” in their lives.  Some missionary families have to leave their pets on the field and get a new pet in each new place where they live.  That works for some families but I don’t think that would work for our kids.

The other thing that Nacho is good for is as a built in alarm system.  He barks whenever anyone comes to our door.  He guards our yard, although the most dangerous thing that enters our yard are those yellow birds that he hates and the gardener with his evil “weed wacker.”  But he lets those on the outside of our gate know that a dog lives here and so they better beware.  He’s got an important job to do.

Nacho loved the snow in Minnesota

But one major pitfall of having a pet when you live the life of a global nomad is that you must constantly be searching for someone to watch your dog for you when you leave town for a night or a week or a year.  It’s a head ache!  When we were home on furlough this last time there was a lovely lady in our home church who offered to take Nacho for us whenever we left town to go speak at a church.  She said, “I don’t have any money to support a missionary, but this is something I can do to bless you.”  And that was HUGE for us!!  Just huge!  To know that we never had to worry about finding a dog sitter when we had to travel and that Nacho was being well cared for was indeed a huge blessing for our family.

So I would like to encourage all of you who love missions but don’t have the financial means to support a missionary.  Look for practical ways that you can bless a missionary and make their life back home a little less stressful.  It might be offering to take in their mail, shovel their snowy driveway, mow their lawn, or water their plants while they are away.  Or offering to be the emergency contact person for the school where their children attend (a few times we found ourselves stuck in traffic and couldn’t pick up our kids after school.  It helped having friends who could run up to the school and pick them up for us.)  Ask a missionary if they have someone to fold and stuff their newsletters a few times a year.  That’s a practical blessing for sure!

Or maybe you know that the family will be arriving in your state in the middle of winter and they will have NO snow clothing for the first few weeks.  This would be a great opportunity to ask your friends if the family could borrow jackets and boots and mittens for a few weeks.  You have no idea how fast kids grow and how hard it is to find winter coats in December!  Anyhow, look for practical ways that you can bless others.  Listen to what they are talking about and ask yourself if there is a need you can meet here.  It’s a huge blessing for us missionaries!

Happy Day of the Dead! (a continuation of missionary pitfalls)

I decided to just sit quietly and let the students hash out this cultural dilemma amongst themselves.  It was nearing the Mexican holiday of Day of the Dead, and our Christian university students were arguing about what was appropriate for a Christian to do or not to do during this holiday.  Since I was still in the cultural learning phase and didn’t fully understand all the implications of the holiday for Mexicans, I decided to keep my mouth shut and see where this conversation goes.

“Yes,” said one guy in the group, “I know that we don’t want to glorify death, but what about eating the Pan de Muerto (the traditional Bread of the Dead was sold in all the stores this time of year.)  My Grandmother makes it, and it’s SOOOOO good!  Do I offend her?  Do I NOT eat the bread?  But I reeeeeally like it!”  A hot debate burst open between the students who argued that the Pan de Muerto symbolizes everything they were wanting to avoid, and those students who felt that you can’t become corrupted by what you eat like Paul arguing about food sacrificed to idols.  I could see both sides of the debate.  Personally I was thinking about how shocked and offended our students would be if they knew that I had 3 carved pumpkins in my backyard as we spoke!  Heathen!!

In the end, the Pan de Muerto issue was not resolved, but the students agreed to make their own “ofrenda” or display to show their campus how Christians view death.  They constructed a cardboard coffin and painted it black.  Inside the coffin they placed a mirror at head height.  Around the mirror they wrote scripture verses, “It is appointed unto man once to die, then after that the Judgement,” and “I am the resurrection and the life.  He that believes in me though he were dead, yet shall he live.  And whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”  I was impressed at what they came up with!

I was inspired by their solution.  So at our own house we decorated for Halloween, which is just starting to catch on as a candy-centered bonus to Day of the Dead.  I bought a ton of candy, pulled out a box of pocket sized Bibles in Spanish that a team had given us, and fired up my computer to print up some bookmarks with those verses on them in Spanish.  That night as the Trick-or-Treaters rang my doorbell, I gave out 75 Bibles and 125 bookmarks with Bible verses on them!

Secretly, I also bought a loaf of Pan de Muerto just to taste it.  I wasn’t impressed, so that detail no longer tempted me.  But you can see that as a missionary, I had to decide how to handle a holiday that is based in the pagan culture.  What does it look like from the perspective of the Christians in THIS culture?  How do I go about becoming all things to all people so that I might win some?  Can I use the base of a pagan holiday as a tool to do something good for the Kingdom of God?  Heck yeah!  The Devil is always trying to take our good stuff and twist it for his evil plans, so I just consider this and eye for an eye.

Word Mash-up

Man, that ol’ Tower of Babel really messed us up.  When God confused the languages of mankind, He really did a doozie on us.  I know a woman who can speak 5 languages, but most of us struggle to master even one.  So it just amazes me when I observe how babies are wired for language learning.  I see the 9 month old daughter of our friends learning to speak her Mother Tongue, Spanish, and I am in awe.  Spanish equals work to me, and here this baby understands some of it better than I do!  It amazes me.

Last week I had a weird conversation that really was a mix and match of languages.  I met a French family.  They know very little English and a little Spanish.  I remember a very little French from high school, but I have English down pretty well and Spanish trucking along from behind.  So between those 3 languages, we managed to communicate!  It was a shallow conversation, to be sure, but it felt good (in a crazy way) to be able to communicate with this French family.

This last month our school hired a Chinese woman to teach Music class.  She doesn’t speak English and this is a school where we mainly use English.  She speaks Spanish… sort of… so when I talk with her, Spanish is our common language.  It was the same when we were in Mexico.  There was a large group of families from the Korean embassy who sent their kids to school with MY children.  The parents spoke no English and I spoke no Korean.  When we wanted to communicate with each other, Spanish was our common language.  Their kids amazed me.  Their kids were going to school in their THIRD language!  Their Mother Tongue was Korean, they were really good with Spanish, and they were studying in English. Talk about some brainy kids!!

In all of these situations I have found myself literally STUTTERING in whichever language I finally pronounce.  My brain becomes like a plate of spaghetti with all these linguistic wires crossing.  When I’m trying to figure our which language to use to start a conversation, I’m always afraid I’ll go to say, “hola” and “aloha” will come out.  I swear, one day this will happen.

Please pass the “Salad of Lettuce”

When we lived in Mexico, we invited our Mexican friends over for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  I included tortillas for a touch of familiarity for our friends, but I assure you that was the first time that tortillas were present on my Thanksgiving table.  I remember one of the little boys sat staring at his plate, dumbfounded.  Then he whispered loudly to his mother, “Que es esto?/ What is this?”

She quickly shushed him and explained hurriedly, “Es ensalada de lechuga./ It’s salad of lettuce.”  I stiffled a giggle at her description.  I can only imagine what turkey and mashed potato tacos tasted like to them.  But they ooh-ed and ahh-ed appropriately throughout the meal.  Then once I brought out the pumpkin pie, they thought they died and went to heaven!  From then on, I have had regular requests from my friends (in both Costa Rica and Mexico) to make pumpkin pie at all times of the year.

Last year, I made 11 pies during the month of November.  Each time my Latino friends rolled their eyes in ecstasy as they savored every bite.  Then they asked for the recipe.  I doubt that any of them will actually USE the recipe, since it’s much easier to just ask the Gringa to bring a pie.  But they loved it.

So at the end of last November, I cleared out the store shelf and bought a dozen cans to last throughout the year.  Wouldn’t you know it, this is the year that the store decided to stock pumpkin pie filling ALL YEAR LONG.  They’ve never had it year round until the year I stock up.  Well, never mind, I’ve been well prepared all year.

So I started THIS holiday season off right.  This past weekend I made 5 pies.  Some were for the school bake sale this week, and others were to treat my kids’ classmates to a bite of spicy heaven.  But my middle daughter has decided that she does not want to share her pie with her friends.  She would rather keep the pie here at home and make some less-coveted treat like pumpkin bars or chocolate chip cookies for her friends.  I assured her, I have more pie where those came from!

No Water

Every few months we have a weekend with no water.  The city shuts down the water to do repairs on the water pipes and we are all left high and dry.  In our house, we don’t have a reserve water tank on the roof like some houses do.  (We had one in Mexico, but we don’t have one here in Costa Rica.)  So we have to plan ahead.  We always keep about 3 or 4 water jugs on hand for drinking water.

But before the water goes dry, we fill up as many buckets and receptacles as we can find.  We fill up a few Action Packers for sponge baths for the kids, then that water is used to fill up the toilets for flushing.  I keep a bucket of water down on the floor by the kitchen sink for the kids to use for hand washing during our dry spell.  And I usually keep a bowl of water in the sink for washing a few dishes- but this is a good excuse to use disposable plates for a few meals.

During our water outages, I try to think creatively and not waste any water.  I think about the next few steps to recycle the “grey water”.  So this last weekend when the water was out and I was trying to conserve it, I was washing a few dishes in a large bowl of soapy water.  When I was done washing, I pondered my options for using the dirty, soapy water.  My first idea was to use it to fill up a toilet.  But then I imagined soap suds pouring out of my toilet bowl like some deranged I Love Lucy episode.  In the end I decided if that happened at least I wouldn’t have to scrub the toilet this week.  Into the toilet it went.

You never realize how much you use water until it’s not available.  I’m a chronic hand washer, and when the water is out I can easily go through a package of wet wipes in a weekend!  The most challenging things are cooking and brushing teeth.  It’s like camping in your own house.  It makes me thankful that we  DO have it most of the time.  It makes me think about the places in the world where the people go to communal wells or water holes to collect their water for the day.  (It makes me thirsty just thinking about it!)  I’m thankful that I’m only inconvenienced for a short while and that normally I have access to water.  So thankful!

Running on the Hamster Wheel

This is part 3 of our story of how we were called into missions.  If you missed the last 2 days, you can go back and read them, or you can pick it up from here.

We had just bought a new house, but something strange was happening to me.  I kept forgetting what the front of my house looked like.  I don’t know how many times I drove right past my own house and had to turn around and go back.  I just couldn’t fix it in my mind.  So one day as I was pulling out of the driveway I turned around for one last look of the house to try to fix it in my memory.  Suddenly the Lord spoke to my heart and said, “This isn’t yours, don’t get comfortable here.”  I had no idea what that meant.

There was a little lake across the street from our house, a mile and a quarter around.  I’ve never been a runner, but all that spring I had such a restlessness in my spirit so I started running around the lake in the mornings.  I’d run and run and run, trying to out run my restlessness.  Trying to escape out of my own mind.  I ran so much that I started to feel like a hamster running on the wheel, always running and never getting anywhere, uselessly running in circles.  I felt restless.  Change was coming.

Then the purging began.  I started giving stuff away.  I felt like I couldn’t breathe surrounded by so much stuff!  I just had to get rid of stuff.  I didn’t care about money, I just wanted to purge my life.  And with each gift to friends and family, I felt lighter and freer.  It felt good, so I kept doing it.  I just gave stuff away!  That was weird, but in a good way.  Change was still coming.

Then one day we came home from Youth Group on a Wednesday night and I felt like a light switch had just turned off in my heart.  “I think I’m done,” I told Josh.  That’s it, I’m just done.  Well, he wasn’t done.  But I said, “when you do feel done, don’t wait for me- I’m already there.” So that was that.  Nothing left to do but wait for God to make his move.  Waiting for change is like waiting for the storm to arrive.  Tense.

A few months later Josh walked into the senior pastor’s office and plopped down in the chair.  “I think I’m done.”  He finally was feeling the winds of change blowing through our lives and he too was uncertain about which direction they would carry us.  Our pastor suggested missions, knowing how much we loved going on our trips with our teenagers.  “Hmmm, maybe someday, but not yet” Josh said.  Our pastor graciously let us stay on staff until we figured things out, for as long as it took.

A month later we were on a missions trip to Mexico City that had been in the works for nearly a year.  We knew it was our last trip, but the kids didn’t know anything.  On the last day there, the missionary took us to the University campus UNAM.  He told us that there were 400,000 kids studying on this campus and it’s extensions, yet we have no ministry for them.  He asked us to walk around the campus and pray for God to send workers here.  Josh and I sat down on a bench together.  He looked at me and said, “Well, what do you think?”  and I knew exactly what he meant.

In a fraction of a second, I had an entire conversation in my heart with the Lord.  “Mexico?  Mexico?!?  But I took FRENCH!!!  Oh wait, is this one of those times when I say Yes to what you want and then you give me what I really want?”  No.  Then in a flash, the Lord took me to all the times that I had ever knelt at an altar after a missions service and begged, “Send me!  I’ll go ANYWHERE!  Just send me SOMEWHERE!”

And he asked me “Did you really mean anywhere?”

I paused, then I said, “Yes Lord.  I did mean anywhere.  I will go where ever you ask me to go.”  And I had the sensation of free falling off a cliff… backwards, arms flung wide open… and I had no fear because I knew the Lord would catch me.  Surrender.

...Read part 4 tomorrow…

She Left Her Mark on Me

Today (April 16th- this is posting later) is the anniversary of the death of a dear friend of mine.  She was one of the first victims of Swine Flu in Mexico back in 2009.

Nely and her family.

That was a really rough year for me.  We had just come home from our first term in Mexico with a sick baby and I myself was going through cancer treatment.  At the same time, we were traveling around raising our funds for our next 4 year term overseas.  One day between my surgery and my radiation treatment, I was at home with Lucy when I received a call from my husband who was out of town.  He said he had received a call from Mexico from our friends telling us that Nely had died unexpectedly that morning.  I felt like someone punched me in the stomach.

I remember falling back against the wall and trembling all over.  How?  What happened?  All the details were sketchy.  We called several friends to try to piece together the details.  We called the airlines and booked tickets for that afternoon.

Our two oldest children were in school and would not be able to accompany us on the trip since their passports had just expired.  That was terribly hard to leave them behind, but we made the arrangements for them to stay with family and called the school to break the news to them over the phone since we would be leaving for the airport within the hour.  It was so hard not to be with them when they cried.

The service in front of her parents' house.

There is no embalming in Mexico.  Bodies are buried within 24 hours of death.  Often times, memorial services are held in the home with the rented casket and the body right there in the home.  Nely was a well loved pastor’s wife.  People came from all over the city to attend one of the 4 or 5 services that were held in her parents’ house.

The thing that I remember the most is looking into the faces of her three children and wondering Why.  Her youngest son Abel, stands out in my memory.  His face brightened to a wide smile when he saw us then immediately crumbled into tears.  I scooped him up in my arms and just hugged him without saying anything.  What could I say?  I had too many questions unanswered in my heart.

Friends comforting Nely's husband

Nely was the kind of friend that every missionary needs.  I feel like God gave her an instinct to understand foreigners.  She left school when she was pre-adolescent and was married by age 15.  Nothing in her education could have prepared her to understand me.  She had never lived outside of Mexico City, even visiting relatives in the country side stressed her out.  She had never even visited many of the famous tourist sites in Mexico City!  So what could have prepared her to understand someone coming from another culture and country, speaking a strange language?  Only God could have given her the understanding and compassion to befriend a foreigner.  Only God could have given me a friend like Nely.

I lack the words in English OR in Spanish to describe the indelible mark that Nely left on my heart… on my life.  And I’m not the only one.  Everyone who knew her loved her and misses her tremendously.  A mom, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend.  She was so very ordinary by the world’s standards, but so very EXTRAORDINARY in all the ordinary things she did day in and day out.  She left her mark and in some small way the world is a better place for having known Nely.  And Heaven is all the more extraordinary because someday I’ll see her again up there.

Choosing between the Good and the Best

As they continued their travel, Jesus entered a village.  A woman by the name of Martha welcomed him and made him feel quite at home.  She had a sister, Mary, who sat before the Master, hanging on every word he said.  But Martha was pulled away by all she had to do in the kitchen.  Later, she stepped in, interrupting them.  “Master, don’t you care that my sister has abandoned the kitchen to me?  Tell her to lend me a hand.”

The Master said, “Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing.  One thing only is essential.  Mary has chosen what is the Best and it won’t be taken from her.” (Gospel of Luke 10:38-42 The Message Version)

Every day there are many Good things that vie for our time and attention.  Some of them are important too, like making dinner.  I’m sure if Martha hadn’t made dinner for everyone at some point Jesus would have gotten hungry!  So there are things that SOMEONE has to do because they are the basics of life.  But where we get off track is when we start to treat the basics like they are the most important thing there is.  Sometimes we are in the presence of something or someone far greater than the ordinary- and we need to recognize that.  We should be treating those special moments with greater honor and distinction.  The ordinary has it’s place as “good” in our lives, but when the “best” comes to visit we need to drop everything and spend some quality time right there.

When was the last time you just sat at Jesus’s feet?  Have you lingered around the altar lately or are you always rushing away after the sermon is done?

This is a hard lesson to learn.  I’m a Martha by nature.  If you come to my house I will automatically move to the kitchen to make you something yummy to eat.  That whole relational, spending time with people is something I’ve just begun to learn by living in Latin America.

When we lived in Mexico, getting together with friends often meant spending the whole day together or going for lunch and coming home after dinner.  It was such an ordeal to get anywhere in that city that once you got there, no one was in a hurry to leave.  A “get-together” could easily last 5 hours or more!  That was hard for us Americans to adjust to, but once we did, we found that we could place a higher value on the people we were with instead of on the schedule we were keeping.

Coming back to America, we felt rushed by our old routine of sitting down to the meal the minute we walked in the door and leaving about a half hour after the dessert.  It just felt like it went by too fast.  I missed our Latino way.

The big lesson to be learned here is that Jesus is much more interested in spending time with us than in what we can do to serve him.  I get the feeling that Jesus would have been fine with a more simple bite to eat if it meant that Martha could come and spend time with him too.  Sitting at his feet and hanging on his every word is the Best.  And when we find ourselves in that position, it won’t be taken away from us.