more blessings

A line of an old song says it well. "If it keeps getting better & better O Lord, I don't know what I'm gonna do"! I know that the Lord gives and he takes away and I hope my heart would choose to say Blessed be His Name in both situations but right now he is just giving and giving and we are overwhelmed at his goodness. Another Divine appointment...we stopped by the kids' AWANA club on Wednesday to meet up with some friends and go out for coffee. The director of the program mentioned that there was a family leaving the country and wanting to rent their house and sell all their furniture. We called the family and went the next day to meet them & see the house. Everything was perfect about the situation; we couldn't pass it up! The only piece of furniture we'll have to buy is a stove. We took everything else in their house and the best thing is that we were a huge answer to THEIR prayers. Imagine how much easier their move is now that they don't have to take apart wardrobes and empty out kitchen cupboards and have a dozen people coming through their house buying random pieces. We bought it all! The house has a garage, a beautiful yard (they even had a gas grill)full of fruit trees, (I have my very own bay leaf tree), a swimming pool (which we may or may not use), large entryway, living/dining room, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, large eat-in kitchen. It is just wonderful in every way. The people are leaving the internet in their name for us so we can avoid the hassle of re-applying for a new line as that can take 4-6 weeks. Although this house is a huge answer to prayer for us, I also love it when we're a huge answer to prayer for someone else. There's still more!! This group rented office space right around the corner from their house which they use for small group sessions, for meeting language tutors, for all kinds of things. We could just imagine how God could use this place and the rent was very affordable so we also took that on. It is 2 rooms, a reception area, small kitchen and bathroom. After thinking that this house-hunting thing was going to take weeks of looking at different places and then buying all the furniture and having it delivered by truck, we now have a house and all the needed furniture and it just kind of dropped in our lap. The location of this house is wonderful; right next to the Metro station and right near a large grocery store and open market. We will now keep our eyes & ears open for a place to start our business! I know all of this was the direct result of YOUR prayers. We can take no credit. Ultimately, God gets all the credit & glory and that's where it belongs. Thank you, God!

all in a day

I'm realizing that my thinking about blogs has been wrong. I don't have to wait until I have something big to write about and pictures to go with it; I can just write a short blurb about my day and some of my closest friends and family would enjoy that. Why should the constant feeling of guilt be associated with a blog?? I shall change that and write little bits more often! Yesterday was another rainy day here and I hate taking taxis by myself anyway, but standing in the rain for 15 minutes waiting for one, is just the pits. I don;t know my way around this city yet so I never know if the guy is taking me way out of the way to get to my destination or not. My fare to get to my language class is usually 4,000 dinar. Yesterday, when I saw that the meter was more than 5,000 I started to get worried. I had no idea where I was and the taxi dropped me off and said the school was right "over there". I started walking down obscure alleyways and finally asked someone. I was going in the completely wrong direction! I can't wait until I know my way around and everything is familiar! I am going to switch to an afternoon class because the morning one was not suitable for my needs. I'll be glad not to have to fight the 8AM traffic. In the afternoon, we met up with our friends and went to a coffee shop and visited for a couple hours. After consuming a chocolate/almond crepe, we decided we should walk home! Today we are going to look at a house that will be vacated in March. They even have all their furniture for sale! If that works out, it will be an incredible blessing. Darrell has moved closer to actually ordering our van and hopefully before too long, we'll be taxi-free! More later...

Our new life

Every day I go to my Google Reader to see which of my friends have posted a blog. I'm sure some of you also check to see if I have recently blogged! I can't say that busyness has kept me from it; just haven't had the inspiration. But let me take a stab at portraying for you what our new life looks like. I must say that it is strange to never have my phone ring, never have anyone stop by for coffee. No one really needs me here right now and I am a person that likes to be needed! So this is a challenging time for me in a lot of ways. I am trying to make the most of it and realize that it is only for a short season and soon we'll be back in the thick of it. Since coming here, life has never been 100% normal I guess since we still have curfew every night. But I have nowhere to go anyway so it really doesn't affect me. Things seem to be pretty normal now in the country after an incredible week of demonstrations, shooting, looting, burning, etc. The only topic of conversation with every taxi driver is about their new-found freedom. People openly blast the government and the late president. In every country we've lived in overseas, we have always been very careful not to photograph anything having to do with military; in fact it's illegal. These days around here, you can walk right up to the tanks and soldiers and have your picture taken with them. People even climb up onto the tanks and photograph each other. It's really unbelievable! Walking down the main street of town, you can see thousands of people milling around, drinking coffee and taking lots of pictures. Randomly, a group of people will form and one will get up with a loudspeaker and start giving a speech. The atmosphere is full of excitement & hope for a new future of freedom. We are comfortably settled into our small, one-bedroom apartment on the 6th floor overlooking a very busy street. (there is an elevator & we have 24-hour electricity:)When the weather is warm enough, I love to sit out on the balcony with a cup of coffee and watch the world go by down below. We have a large grocery store (Monoprix) right up the street from us and every other convenience we could want or need. It's really perfect for our needs right now. Still, I guess every woman longs to have her own place and fix it up and feel like she's HOME. I've already started looking at houses for rent in the newspaper:) We feel like God led us to this place and I don't want to complain about His provision! It is just small and we're both in the living room all day long; no place else to go! It will be sweet when I have my own little corner where I can listen to my music & work on my projects. But until then, I am determined to make the most of this season!! We have begun language programs and that is proving to be more challenging than I thought it would be. Even though I speak Arabic quite fluently, I feel like a baby trying to pronounce this dialect! It's SO different. My French comes in very handy all the time and it's fun to be able to use it again. Our big project for the moment is trying to get a car. The process is unbelievable. Darrell's already been to multiple gov't offices and we haven't really started yet! The car we've picked out is a dark gray 9-passenger Citroen van called a Jumpy. So, there you have a bit of our news. We sure appreciate all of friends & loved ones back home and around the world. We are blessed, to say the least!

Our first week!

One week ago today we left snowy, frigid Chicago and after a very pleasant trip, arrived in our new city, right on time and with all our luggage. We walked out of the airport and started across the parking lot with all our loot just as the skies burst open and poured down on us. We were soaked to the skin by the time we reached the car! Rain is usually a sign of God’s blessings, so we took it as that I have a friend who I’ve known for more than 30 years who lives in this city with her family. They met us and we’re staying with them until we can find our own place. When Dave met us, he had bags of groceries in the car, saying that things were getting bad in the country and they were told to stock up just in case. Sure enough, just 2 days after we arrived, the president of this country was ousted from power and things went crazy here. The night that everything exploded we happened to have 12 adults and 3 children here in this house and because of a strict curfew put into place; no one could leave so they all spent the night. We first of all had a lovely dinner together, then a long time of prayer, then played a game of Settler’s, then watched a movie until midnight. As the helicopters roared overhead and gunfire burst all around us, we were all together having a great time of fellowship. When things quieted down in the morning, they all went home. Every day the curfew has begun at 5PM and lasted until 7AM. The pattern has been that things seem to be quite normal in the morning and people are out and about trying to get food, gas and other essentials. Darrell waited for over an hour in line to get bread yesterday. We have been getting creative in our meal preparation as we don’t have everything we’re used to! By mid-afternoon, things start to close up and the neighborhood “watchdogs” come out, wearing white shirts and carrying all sorts of weapons such as sticks, shovels, axes, shock absorbers, golf clubs, crutches, and an assortment of other strange things. The first afternoon when the government asked all citizens to do this in order to guard their neighborhoods from thugs that were going around randomly destroying & robbing people’s homes, our guys decided to get in on the action and put on their white shirts and joined them. They had a good time hanging out with the men & finding out what the talk on the street was. We haven’t been able to look for a house or do much of anything since getting here. One of the large, beautiful supermarkets here in town was burned down so we are disappointed not to be able to shop there now. Things have slowly started to open back up again but the lines to buy anything right now are very long. Nightly curfews are still in place and fighting down in the center of the city continues so who knows how long this siege will last? For the first time last night, we had a very quiet night. It was not so in other parts of the city evidently. Hopefully at the end of week #2 we’ll be able to report that we are settled into our own place. Stay tuned for more of our adventure!

Christmas & New Year's

Seeing as we only have 5 days until we board a plane for our new home in Long Beach (and that's not California!) I decided I'd better get this blog updated. Christmas has come & gone and more memories were made. Our son Glenn came home on the 22nd of Dec and daughter Rachel + husband Josh arrived on Christmas day. They were all home for a week and we spent lots of time playing games, watching movies, talking and eating. We went downtown Chicago early in the day on New Year's Even and visited Glenn in his studio apartment on Dearborn St. We walked to a lovely restaurant to eat lunch and on our way home we all got soaked in the the rain. We warmed up with a cup of Starbucks coffee and decided to get out of the city before the mobs of people arrived for the evening celebrations. We knew it was the right decision when we encountered thousands of cars entering the city as we were leaving! We spent a quiet evening at home with our daughter (her husband was visiting friends). Rachel & Darrell stayed up until after midnight but I crashed at 10:30. Early on the morning of January 2nd, we all headed for the airport and went our separate ways; they, back home to Philadelphia and we, to visit our son Nathan in the Caribbean for 4 days. We were met by Nate & his girlfriend (who was visiting form Chicago)and taken to the island on a private boat that Nate had rented. It was one of the funnest things I've ever done! The island is beautiful and the laid-back lifestyle is charming. As I write this, we are still here for another day. We have been wined and dined by many of Nate's friends, had a picnic on the beach with steaks on the grill, coffee on the porch, gone swimming in the pool and lots of other fun stuff. Tomorrow we will head back to the frigid north and begin the last-minute marathon to get ready for departure on Jan. 11th. Stay tuned for details of our new adventure.

plans...

I thought I'd wait and blog about our Christmas but will catch you all up on our latest news so you know what our plans are as of now. Darrell's brother will not be needing a transplant immediately as first thought, so we are going ahead with our plans to leave on January 11th. That means less than 3 weeks from now! When I first came to the realization that time was so short and in between there is Christmas and a trip to see Nathan (our oldest), I began to panic. I proceeded to make my lists and have been consistently crossing things off as I finish them. Looks like we'll make it after all. We arrived home a few days ago from a wonderful visit to Dakar, Senegal where we attended a regional conference & also got to spend 10 days with my two sisters and husbands. It was so fun to get up early and have coffee together and just talk for hours. What a wonderful gift from the Lord. Leaving Dakar at 85 degrees F and arriving in Chicago at 24 degrees was quite a shock to the system. Now we'll be going to a place that is more moderate certainly than Chicago. Last I looked, it was about 65 degrees. We are very excited about what God has in store for us in this new chapter of our lives. We also feel incredibly fortunate that we still have new challenges like this at our age. I'll be back in a few days to tell you about our Christmas. Here's our tree & the view from our front yard. Merry Christmas to all...

"home is where you hang your hat"

I never gave much thought to this old saying but I'm discovering that it's absolutely true! As I travel around, one of the recurring questions that I'm asked is "where did you like the best?" (out of the dozens of places I've lived) I honestly cannot answer that question fully because I have loved everywhere that I've lived. Another question that is repeatedly asked is "where's home for you"? I now know without question, that home is "wherever I hang my hat" at that moment. As I get older, I find myself longing for "home". It's not as easy for me as it once was, to move from town to town and bed to bed. Yesterday was my last time speaking for this home assignment. I tried to "stay in the moment" as much as I could but found myself saying to myself all day "I just want to be home." I don't know when I've experienced such joy walking into my own home and sleeping in my own bed. It seems kind of silly since I will only be in this house for another 7 weeks and then will move on to another country and set up yet another home. But I am quite sure that I will feel the exact same way about my new place, because that's where I'll hang my hat.