Passed Evaluation - Ready For Christmas Break!!

Whew! What a crazy week for us!

Last weekend I was at a Women's Retreat from Friday through Sunday. This is one of the few retreats I've attended in the last 8 years that I didn't help to plan or do any work at! It was truly a relaxing time. I got to sleep in, eat good food, lay beside the pool and chat with friends, and sleep in AIR CONDITIONING!! :) How nice! I'm thankful that Josh was willing to give me the opportunity to join some of the other ladies from our organization in this time of refreshing. He got to get up early, heat up leftovers and take care of our kids' every need!! Yes, it sure was a treat!

Josh and I had our language evaluations this morning, and we both were passed on to Unit 4! That means we have 2 units left! We're over half done our language study. We now have 2 1/2 weeks of Christmas break, and go back to class on January 8th.

We're planning to take some time during the break to see some of the sights here on Java as our time on this island is almost over. We hope to see a Buddhist temple with some friends and check out a large nearby city and the batik that's made there.

We do plan to stick around home for our first Christmas here, though. We are planning to have sub sandwiches (I have to bake the rolls) with some ham we were able to special order here. We can get cheddar cheese from New Zealand at a local import store, so that will make it extra special. Of course the lettuce and tomatos from the pasar (market) won't be left out either. Throw in some Cheetos and it's a great meal!! There's a new flavor of Cheetos here - "American Cheese Flavor" - and yes, it tastes more like "home" than any of the other chips here. (This must be the snack food capital of the WORLD - there are fried snacks of all shapes and sizes here. Many are sweet - which is not too tasty for us - but some are not too bad. There's a funky macaroni shaped one that tastes a bit like Bugles. Otherwise, another favorite is singkong or yucca chips - great with guacamole.) Coca Cola has a factory here so Coke products are relatively easy to get. Some Sprite or Coke will round out our Christmas Dinner!!

This weekend I plan to wrap the kids' gifts and we filled their stockings last night. Spencer didn't notice - or maybe he suspected a change - because he mentioned it this morning. Basically he said that the stockings wouldn't be filled until Christmas Eve, "right?" and we didn't disagree. So he thinks it's settled!! Many thanks to our sisters and our friend Jeanie who sent stocking stuffers and gifts to make the "Season Bright" for the kids. The candy canes were a special treat! There were so many we were able to share some with our (15) language instructors!!

Julia has her 2nd birthday on the 28th, so we're excited about that! I think she started her Terrible Two's early, though there are a lot of "Terrific Twos" times in between. Sometimes it's a challenge to know how to deal with her. She's got a great helper to watch her when we're gone but the helper (MBak Siti) doesn't stop her from doing what she shouldn't be doing - she just does damage control. So, we have attitudes (she actually huffs and crosses her arms with a pout when she's "not impressed") to deal with when we're home. On the other hand, she's a lot of fun and picking up the trade language very quickly. She asks "Boleh saya minum susu?" (Please may I drink some milk?) and greets everyone she sees with "Selamat Pagi" or "Selamat Siang" (Good Morning and Good...Afternoon - kind of - not a direct translation) no matter if it's the right time of day or not! She loves to play "(S)Uperman" with the boys and especially loves to play with the MagnaDoodle we brought with us!

Anyway, she's asleep now and looking like a little angel with her blond curls around her head! How sweet! I should go to sleep too - Josh is camping on a mountain near us tonight, so I'll be up early with the kids tomorrow morning! Yippee!! First day of vacation!! I know it'll go TOO quickly!
Thanks for praying - My ankle is doing much better, though I have to take time to put it up every couple of hours due to swelling. I don't have much pain, though, so I'm thankful for that!

If I don't post before then, Merry Christmas! Thanks for your prayers for us!

Love/Story *not appropriate for children

Today I wanted to drop through the floor at school.  It was the first class of the day and we had to present our pengalamans.  Mine was about how the Lord provided the money for plane tickets to visit my brother over Christmas.  I was trying to say that I wanted to relate a story my sister had told me (about the tickets).  Somehow I mixed up "cerita" which means "story" and "cinta" which means "love".  With the prefix I added, somehow I said something about "lovemaking" instead of "storytelling".  Unfortunately, the person who had to break it to me was my single male teacher.  Besides me, the people in the room at the time were: our single male teacher, a married male student and Josh.  I KNOW I was RED!  Won't make that mistake again!    In our Unit 1 textbook, there's a quote that goes something like "you have to murder a language before you can master it".  How'm I doing?? :)

Trying Something New

I don’t know if this would surprise you or not, but I tried something new today – Acupuncture!
Background: I twisted my ankle on Saturday night. I iced it at the time and since there wasn’t a lot of pain, basically got back to life as usual. Monday after class I noticed my ankle was huge, so I spent the rest of the day and evening in bed with my foot elevated, icing it, taking ibuprofen and wrapping it. By evening the swelling had hardly gone down. I kept it elevated all night as well (making for a rough night). Today I kept my foot up in class, but during the break, as I was attempting to make my way around without putting too much weight on my foot, one of the Korean students noticed and asked if I’d been to the doctor. I hadn’t. He then asked if I’d tried Acupuncture for my ankle. I said No. He said that if I wanted to, to let him know. Apparently he’s been trained. I thought, "Why not? Let’s give it a shot". So, I found myself in an empty classroom with Koreans gathered round my foot, with one of them inserting 3" long needles into the skin around my ankle - 9 of them! They speak some English and I speak no Korean, but we all speak the trade language, so we communicated in that! Overall, it was not a bad experience. I have to do it again tomorrow (didn’t quite understand why –maybe it’s more effective? - but I’m willing). I happened to have a camera available, so I took this shot for you!

Thanks for praying for me and please continue to pray – I’m horrible at sitting still with my foot up but I understand that if I don’t this it won’t heal quickly. We walk so much here and it’s hard not to. Pray that I would remember and not take this lightly.

Re the pic: my ankle is left (swollen) and my heel is kind of showing to the right. My foot is the part going up. The marks are from my tensor band.

PS - Follow-up - Spencer seems to be doing much better. Thanks for praying! Josh's guitar solo went well, and he ended up singing the chorus of "One Small Child" on the last time through it (in English! :) He surprised us all - himself included!

Crazy Weekend

Happy Sunday! Just a quick note here. Hope you all are having a great day! Ours was full, though not what we expected.

I had to miss most of class Friday because I had some strange bug. I was weak and nauseous and flat to bed all day. (Praise: It was a 24 hour thing!) After feeling well all day on Saturday, we went for a walk as a family after dark and I twisted my ankle when my foot slipped of the paved edge of the road. Thankfully, there hasn’t been too much swelling, and I’m able to walk on it a bit, though not as much as normal. Because of that, instead of going to the local Church this morning (for the first time, as we had planned), we had church at home as a family. Also, I had plans to go to the Ibu-Ibu meeting today, but had forgotten about a small group meeting that was taking place at our home at the same time. So I’ll have to wait until next month to join the Ibu’s for the meeting.

Prayer Requests:
1. Quick healing for my ankle (Praise- we have the bike and don't have to walk to school)

2. Tomorrow Josh is to play the special number on his guitar in Chapel. I’m not sure which Christmas Carol he’s chosen. Please pray for him – he hasn’t had too much time to practice. I’m sure I’ll wake up tomorrow to the sound of him practicing.

3. Also, please pray for Spencer - he seems to have some sort of bug, too. Might be parasites, though, so we all took a treatment. Hope he does better tomorrow. He was pretty miserable tonight. No fever, normal body functions but just felt yucky, didn't want to eat and only wanted to lie around. So, we'll see tomorrow how he's doing. If this treatment does the trick, great, if not, we'll take him to the lab for some tests to see if we're missing something.

Thanks for upholding us in prayer - we couldn't do this without your partnership!

A First For Me

Today I had a "first" experience you might be interested in. I was invited to join a Women’s Bible Study that met this afternoon. The invitation came by way of a photocopied notice left on our porch furniture yesterday afternoon. The person who left it would have known for sure that I was a believer, or it wouldn’t have been left.

The study took place in the home of a lady who lives a five minute walk from our house. I didn’t know her name (the invitation said “Ibu ______’s house - no address) so Josh checked with a friend of his who is a believer and he said his wife would stop by and pick me up on her way there. We walked in the rain, each carrying our own umbrella.

It started at 4:30 with women arriving and shaking hands when they entered the home of the hostess. Everyone shook everyone else’s hand. Each time a person entered the room, they went around and shook the hands of everyone already present. After a while, the lady who was leading it started (in the local language, of course). The study was about grace and the reference was Ephesians 1: 3-8. (I only know that because the leader was a western lady who’d been living in the neighborhood for 8-10 years, and as the ladies were gathering, she told me what it would be about.)

After she was finished, an hour later, we sang a number of songs from books the ladies all had a copy of. There were no musical instruments – there were just numbers above the words and they all followed the tune. Someone prayed, then some women shared testimonies, maybe related to the lesson (?) (I know because I know the word for testimony and it sounded like the ladies were telling stories about their experiences – also they used “normal” words.) Then more songs, some prayer requests (they wanted me to pray but I only know the basics – thanks for this day and please help us to learn - from school – so I declined) and then they passed an offering plate – a bowl covered with a towel. Only, I didn’t know it was an offering plate – I thought it was communion or something so I peeked under the towel. When I saw cash, I put the towel back (I hadn’t brought any money– didn’t know what to expect at all) and passed it on. Then there was more praying.

After that they brought out a snack – not sure what it was – it was flat and circular and had some egg/greens or something with a side of very hot peppers that the ladies were all casually eating. The egg thing tasted good. The pepper was too hot for me. There were also some lovely cakes which I declined, having already experienced their style cakes – pretty but mostly flavorless and somewhat dry – not sweet really. There was also a side of salak – which is snakeskin fruit. Ladies mostly put those into the bags provided and took them home to their families.

It was over after 6:00. Most of the time that this study was going on, there was a terrific thunderstorm going on as well. Sometimes it was so loud I could hardly hear the speaker – wait, maybe that was also because they speak fairly softly here! In all, there were 12 local ladies  and 2 westerners in attendance. I was able to understand about 30% or so of what they were saying – but the trade langauge was mixed with the local dialect, so that’s not surprising. Also, I haven’t gotten to the unit in school where they teach you “Spiritual Vocabulary”. I did write down some of the words I heard a lot so I can look them up!

Itu pengalaman saya. (That was my experience.)

My next great "first" experience will be… Sunday afternoon. I have an “ibu-ibu” meeting – that would be “Mrs-Mrs” in English. Yes, a ladies meeting – all of the women in our neighborhood get together once a month on the 10th at 4:30. Will let you know what I experience!