Bounty.....

I'm not sure why this is a fact of life out here, but for some reason there is constantly someone taking off on a last minute trip. Because of the heat and the lack of high-quality fresh stuff available on our side of town, even when items are kept in the fridge they don't have as long a shelf-life as in the US.

Consequently when folks head out on a trip they usually dump their entire fridge contents on some lucky friend.

Tonight, we were that friend! These folks lived across the border so we got the following items we haven't/never purchase/d:
Big yummy seedless grapes
Hillshire Farms lunch meat
Mushrooms
Fancy grape juice
Home-cooked pork and bean dish
Little yogurts marketed to kids (?)
Real cheddar cheese

Fancy jam
baby carrots
Fancy dried sausage that looks expensive!

......and then just lots of fruits and veggies and milk....

Tom said that our fridge hasn't looked this full in AGES! (we're not low on the food budget or anything....it is just that things spoil so quickly we shop 3-4 times a week.)

You are also seeing bananas in the fridge for the obvious reason....yummy biscuits I made the other night, yogurt, and mozzarella cheese (we get this EVERYWHERE here for some reason?!?).

A Proper Little Evangelist

As many of you know, Ramadan started a few days ago. This is a month where all Muslims fast from all food and drink from sunup to sundown. Everyone has commented that this will be a particularly difficult Ramadaan as it is the hottest part of the summer combined with the longest days: 430am to 7pm is the fasting times these days.

After we ate together as a family (Tom is fasting as usual) we headed out to a local park. I use the term loosely, of course. I should have taken pictures (= There is a very nice gate, sturdy wall, two sections of grass, a broken water fountain, locked bathrooms, a couple of slides and swings. This park has been under construction since we moved here 4.5 years ago.

Despite all of this, Layla was very happy and by extension, so were we (=

There were plenty of other kids running around and they were very drawn to Ryan - all children love babies here. It is amazing the amount of love and care they will display to any baby. Of course it is the first foreign baby that most of them have ever seen or touched.

I had a group of about 5-6 kids come over and they were asking me all sorts of questions like:

Why is so white?
Well I am white and so is his daddy and his sister.
Why doesn't he have eyelashes and eyebrows?
He does, they are just really light.
Why doesn't he have eyelashes and eyebrows?
He does, they are just really light.
Why doesn't he have eyelashes and eyebrows? See my brother has them!
(not sure why they were so struck by this, but they do typically have the most beautiful eyes and eyelashes!)

Then the conversation took a decidely different turn:
Do you know Allah?
Yes I know him.
Do you know Allah?
Yes, everyone knows Allah, He is everywhere. (I can explain this answer more later if any of you care to hear more....)
Why don't you wear a shayla? (the covering on their head)
It isn't part of my culture
Are you going to Paradise or hell?
What??
Are you going to Paradise or hell? (Literally Paradise or The Fire)
Ummm....

I was rather stunned and was trying to think of what exactly to say here when her maid who had been listening in on the whole conversation got rather mad at her for being so forward (= She was a proper little evangelist doing the 4 Spiritual Laws in her own way!

I felt like my Arabic was terrible (it was in comparison to where it has been in the past!) and that I wasn't ready with a good response. Either way, it was a good little interaction and the kids continued to play with Ryan and Layla despite the question of their eternal damnation or salvation....

...and we have a FACE!

 
 
 

I tell you - turn your head and kids move onto the next stage. Tom found a white board at an empty house he was helping folks move into and wisely brought it home for Layla. She has been having LOTS of fun drawing and erasing. We were goofing off yesterday and suddenly she started drawing real faces with eyes and mouths etc. I was so surpised. Oh, and a walking ostrich. Of course.

Tammy - I suggested she draw Lily and of course she wants to draw you and Greg as well (=

Photos of life lately

Just some fun photos of life around here (=

What it looks like to try and get a visa

As many of you know, we are looking/praying/waiting for our residence visa. Once we have this, we can buy and register a car, get a post office box, get a bank account and cross the border to the other side of town without incident. More importantly, it gives us a sense of stability, legitimacy and removes a BIG layer of stress around visa issues. These are important things.

We had one really good idea for a business and Tom had a wonderful local partner(all businesses need a local partner) and paper work was in process and then it all fell through. Apparently the level of visa they would give us was the same as a Pakistani day laborer. This means we wouldn't get any of the benefits listed above.

After praying and thinking some more, we were connected with another local friend who is a well-known businessman in town. Tom was actually just asking his advice about something else when he asked Tom to consider working with him on his business and getting a visa through him.

We were praying that God would open the doors that were appropriate and we would just continue to walk forward as long as the doors were open. There were concerns and uncertainty about this second situation, but we figured we'd just keeping walking forward.

Once the paperwork started we began another type of roller coaster ride. It has felt like every week we have one day where we are SURE the visa is coming in the next 24 hours and then another day where we are SURE the whole thing is going to fall through. That takes a lot of emotional energy.

Meanwhile, Tom gets calls from our local friend/partner - some times two a day - and has to jump in the car with all the appropriate documents and rush down to an office and watch the paint dry as the Arab bureaucratic machine does its thing. So slowly.

Getting all the documents has had its own issues - different people in the same office say different things. This is time consuming and expensive. It costs about $80 to have something FedExed from the US. It involves crossing the border and that is it's own story.

Our local partner friend is very very frustrated and doesn't understand why they bureaucracy is turning down our visa. Today it looks very very bleak. We don't know what to do next and have no real options that wouldn't involved a whole new idea and process.

I often try and console myself by thinking about all the hassle that the American IRS gives to immigrants. What we are living through is not some special torture and not some personal vendetta against us. Many many people have to do this visa dance all over the world. It is just tiring and discouraging.

We KNOW the Lord brought us back here at this time. He was so clear in communicating that in so many ways. We aren't losing hope in that....we just don't see anyway forward at the moment. It feels like we've been brought back here only to spend an enormous amount of energy figuring out how to stay. sigh.

....as if the C section wasn't enough....

I realize that this is old news to most of you, but I was looking through my blog posts and realized that I never really explained what happened to me after Ryan was born and how I ended up back in the hospital. So for the sake of posterity:

Just to recap the main events – Mom came about a week before Ryan was born, we moved across the border to stay in a friend's house to avoid the increasingly difficult border problems. Ryan was born on May 21st. We stayed about 6 days in the hospital and then came home. About 5/6 days after coming home I started to get rather sick and after four days of fever, I went to the ER at our hospital that is across the border on June 8th. That started a 10-day stay in the hospital. Mom and Ryan were with me there while Tom and Layla stayed in Buraimi. There is no way we would have made it during this time without my mom! While we had quite a community of friends here before, there is such high turnover of foreigners here that we really didn't have friends to help during this time. We felt pretty isolated.

It took the doctors about 3 days to sort out what the problem was, initially they thought a uterine infection, then they thought it was just typical fluid building up after a surgery and then after two ultrasounds they figured out that it was an abscess under the C section incision. The head surgeon said he has never seen this sort of thing before even though he had been a surgical specialist for the ObGyn dept of a previous hospital. The abscess had made its way down through all the layers of the C section and even broke through the abdominal wall. It did NOT break through the peritoneal (?) sack around the intestines. This is a huge blessing because it would have been a MUCH more difficult surgery and I would have been much sicker. It does mean I have a weaker abdominal wall with some minor things to watch out for like a hernia and some concern about a third pregnancy.

The hospital is very comfortable as we’ve mentioned before. They don’t provide food as the locals prefer to have family cook for them, but consequently, there are small kitchens attached to each room and we had a mejulis/empty sitting room for mom to sleep in just like when both kids were born. It seemed a lot of room at first, but after 10 days we were grateful for the space! So we watched a lot of the World Cup intro stuff, a lot of BBC and actually got a LOT of sleep (= We’d feed Ryan and then put him to sleep and then we’d go to sleep as well.

They did the surgery on June 10th in the evening and I had general anesthesia. I had two surgeons and my ObGyn present. I was grateful they decided to do it that way instead of just putting in a drain. The abscess turned out to be much larger than they anticipated and the full surgery allowed them to really clean things out. I started to feel better immediately and was SO grateful for that. I was getting really tired of feeling sick! My only complaint after that was the IVs I had to have for the three antibiotics! They were giving me SO much stuff because they weren’t sure what to treat me for at first. After a couple of days I stopped breastfeeding Ryan in case if there was something being passed on to him. Once the surgeon heard that, he actually switched all my antibiotics to one they knew was safe for babies. I really appreciated that. When the nurse started to poke around again to restart the IV for the 6th time I just broke down crying because it hurt SO bad. I just begged for oral antibiotics and asked her to tell the dr I just couldn’t handle the IV for tonight. He approved the switch to oral antibiotics and I was SO grateful!

So the wound is still open – they want it to close on its own slowly as it drains. Poor Tom is having to clean it and put gauze on the inside! (they want to keep it clean and open to check for the drainage.) I am told that if it hasn’t closed in two weeks, I should go back to the dr. Doesn’t that sound crazy!? A few days ago we had our one-month check up appointments and I saw the surgeon again and he said everything looked great. What makes absolutely no sense to me is that this incision is right where the C-section incision was and I have no pain with this one. I can sit up, turn over in bed etc etc with no pain other than not have stomach muscles due to the pregnancy/C-section. How is it that two incisions in the same place can produce such different results??

At the one month appointment for me, I asked my obGyn why they did the C-section. Typical to the culture here, the reason for what was happening was not really explained to us. The midwife had said one thing, the dr on call at that time said another thing and Vic (my midwife friend) was thinking a third thing. Essentially, the risk of a uterine rupture is what caused them to rush to the C-section. I was very grateful to have such a good doctor on hand for the C section.

Watching my body heal has been a great reminder of how the Lord created our bodies in such an amazing way. As of the beginning of August, I am fully healed and about ready to start thinking about exercising! Yippee!

View of life from the outside

Some of you know that we've had some friends here checking out the area before they move here next year. They were very gracious in realizing that we are in a strange state having just had a baby and struggling with visa stuff, but it was still odd to have folks observing our life and coming to conclusions about the area as a result.

I'm not sure how often you have the chance to look at your life from someone else's perspective, but I found myself being rather self-conscious at times (= It was also a great chance to share what we enjoy about being here (though we were pretty limited in what we could do because of the heat, the border and our itty bitty baby).

All that being said, I took our friends up to D for them to have some "touristy days" and to decompress a little before heading back to the US after being here for 7 weeks. It will be strange to not have them around! Layla has really enjoyed them and they took both kids overnight when we went on our spontaneous little anniversary trip last week (Thank you Tom!)

So if everything goes as planned, they'll be back in our neck of the woods next year!

(I tried to add some pictures of our time together but it isn't working. Guess I'll try again later!)

Lj singing love songs, Part One

I had trouble uploading this video so I split it into two parts. We've borrowed some Barney videos for the summer and Layla is definately their target market. She has their songs down, plays their games and pretends that Barney is in the room. Those folks know what they are doing.

Either way, it is very sweet to see Lj with Ryan - here is just a glimpse....

Layla sings to Ryan....Part One

Some thoughts on Faith

One of the things I enjoyed immensely about living here before I had kids was my time in the kitchen to cook, clean up and listen to music or sermons by Tim Keller. Times like that were so good for my introverted soul (=

Now that I have kids, being in the kitchen is fraught with potential accidents....particularly since I'm a big believer in having kids be a part of what is happening while cooking etc. Layla is constantly sneaking licks of things or asking to try things. (she chewed an entire garlic clove yesterday for about 30 seconds before calmly spitting it out and say "Too Spicy!!"). Anyway, Layla often spills things and I must say it irks me that her constant response is "Don't worry, it's only water." or "No problem, we can clean it up". I'm glad she's got a calm response, but I do wish that sometimes she'd seem at least a little contrite.

Well anyway, tonight we had a family of four over for dinner in a rather disorganized and impromtu way. The kitchen was a MESS and I was so tired from our chaotic evening that I had to sit down with a cup of tea to recover before attacking the piles of dishes. Lj and R were in bed so once I had the energy to clean up the kitchen, I had a wonderful chance to listen to a sermon on faith by Mr. Keller. It has probably been at least a year since I've been able to do that!

Some gems:
A faith that doesn't need success is the ultimate success. (Meaning that if your definition of faith is that things will go well in the end if you just pray/do enough, you'll run into the ground eventually.)
Embracing Jesus and what he did for us turns every failure and every sorrow into gold. I don't know how, but it does.

Jesus' tragedy of God turning away from him, and his suffering and non-escape from death, is a precious thing to remind us that our faith in God is not about having an easy, comfortable designer life.

Boy is it good to be reminded of all of that. I'll take more chance to do dishes at midnight if I can walk away with some good encouragement like that......