changes

It's amazing to me how my Father has been doing so much construction in me in the past few years. Thinking back to when His and my relationship really started to develop when I was 13-14 I have been changed so much and have had some major overhauls and reconstruction.

This past week or so with my roommate who loves the Father so much I have been reflecting on all the Father has been doing in our life. I am just so thankful for what He is doing and there is still a long road ahead as I continue to look at His Son! and I'm glad that you are reading this and hope that together we can get to know the Story of Grace our Father has written to us about in His book even more!

As I write this blog I really do not want it to be about me, or what changes I am making in MY life. I know that it is the Father who is the only who is good and I am no special person who has done some great things for needy people and now I'm changing my life. Honestly the only one who has done great things for needy people is our Father and He is the one who has a compassion and concern for them! He also has called me to obey His Words. So I'm just another one of His who is empowered by His Spirit to obey. I really want to just write out the lessons I learned and changes that I am making so that I can look at them and see what the Father has done and put it into practice, but because of the encouragement of some I'm making it so that you can read it too.

my closet
It's funny how I got so used to living out of a suitcase this summer. Typically I'm not a big fan of doing that, but it really went well this summer. I kept it organized and I just got used to having the set of clothes that I wore. A really nice part of that was that it didn't matter what I wore, or even if it matched! Since being back I have been really overwhelmed by how much I own! I have so many clothes, and even ones I don't like!!! as well as so many other things. I have boxes at home that I don't even use right now, and I had stuff stored here at school with all the clothes and things I use in my dorm room! Since being back I have really realized that the Father has really given me so much and I want to give that to Him to use to glorify Himself. It is really an adjustment. I know that I cannot get rid of everything, but the my list of necessities is getting smaller. I also realize that there is so much room for me to grow in this area and I continue to ask the Father to show me how I can best use all that He has given me.

my study
One of the things I learned in my time away was about how the workers are doing studies in the Holy Book with the nationals. It has been such a learning and life changing experience for me! I was challenged not just to study and leave with new facts or new knowledge but hear and obey. It wasn't that I wasn't trying to put the words of the Father into action in my life, but I have always strayed from being very practical and intentional about it because it is scary to have to actually come up with a practical application and be accountable to do it! But as we went through the four questions* the workers use I realized that I need to use these each time I approach scripture and ask the Father to give me the grace to obey it. Also along with obeying it, I saw how important it is to be held accountable by others to actually be doing it! I was so blessed by the team I worked and how much they valued transparency and accountability. It made such a difference in how they worked together and I got to see them growing together! I wish I could show you what I mean, but I can tell you loved it and this has changed me and how I spend time studying the Word and even my relationships with my close friends to become ones of accountability!
  (*the four questions are: What do we learn about the Father? What do we learn about man? What are principles or examples to follow? What am i going to do about it?)


my daily life
When I learned about the way the workers do studies I also learned about how they find people to study with. They refer to it as "living out loud." As they go about normal activities and work in villages etc. they want to be having a conversation that leads people to think about spiritual things every time they talk. This might mean just mentioning our Father's provision to a farmer, or talking about praying to a waiter etc. As they do this they try to find people who have spiritual interest and invite them to learn more about the Father. Honestly, this is not just the responsibility of workers overseas... and as I was there I realized that there are some changes that need to happen in my life concerning;
      my fun/my friends
When I want to have fun, I usually find friend on campus or from Sunday Fellowship and invite them to hang out and do something together. Most of my interactions are with people who already know the Father. Instead, I can be doing this with people who don't know Him! and living out loud in front of them. I am still searching for ways that I can do that right now, but I'm hoping to be able to use sports or some kind of exercise as a way to get to know people in the community.
      my work
I've also been working on campus in the library. I enjoy the work and my co-workers too. They are a lot of fun and hard workers. I think that work my sophomore year gave me many opportunities to befriend people who don't know the Father though, so I have applied to work off campus and I am hoping to get to know some knew people and ask the Father to give me the grace to live out loud where I work.
  
my eating (just for fun)
This isn't really a life lesson, BUT it is something that I learned while I was away...
I got to try a lot of new foods this summer and I found some new foods that I like and some that are just interesting.

New Favorites:
I found out Tofu and Tempe (another protein filled soy product) are yummy!
Rice at lunch and dinner are great! (Having it at every breakfast can be a little much sometimes.)
The island I was on doesn't mess when it comes to spicy food and though I love spicy, I'm weak compared to them!
Also fresh squid is great.
Because of the many local fruit trees there were all kinds of delicious fruit "juices" which were basically blended fruit! SO YUMMY! (and usually for less than $1)
a local favorite dessert is "Es Campur" (Mixed Ice) shaved ice with a variety of fresh fruit and sweetened condensed milk (Yum.)

Interesting:
I got to try grilled fish--this means the entire thing! It was quite a task to get all the meat off. The way the locals do it is the best way--with their hands.
I also got to have little tiny fish (sardine size) fried with peanuts. It tasted very fishy but fun to eat the little fishies whole :)
I ate foods I didn't recognize wrapped in banana leaves. Sometimes great, sometimes not so great.
I tried green coconut--the top is cut of and lime juice is squeezed into the milk. You can drink the milk and scrape out the coconut meat.

Yummy espresso!

Gotta love it when you're friends bring out something they call "Tim Tam Slams" and just expect you to eat it in a really odd way without asking questions (thankfully it wasn't a prank and it was delicious).

Green coconut

Es Campur

Time's Flyin'

Yep it's true! I've been back from Asia for a MONTH today and today also marks one week back on campus! So much has happened recently. I have begun adjusting back to American culture and now I'm getting into the swing of things here at school.

Since I have been back I have had the priviledge of drinking LOTS of tap water (actually I'm currently sipping on some) without fear of parasites or amoebas! Also I have found all my clothes which sat waiting for me and it has been so much fun to add some variety to my clothing! I have one a few occasions given people things with my left hand--and even when I did I usually appologixed, even though they could care less. I have also eaten cheese at almost every meal and had salads without even having to think about all the work that goes into washing the lettuce! and one of my favorites, I've had sweet corn A LOT! These are some of the cultural changes I went through.

I've also been busy going to two weddings, visiting grandparents twice, being at home with the family and doing all the fun lake stuff, traveling to Tab and Robb's (my sister and brother-in-laws) and traveling back to school and starting classes. It certainly has been full and it is so different from my life this summer. It is fast paced and we're all heading somewhere and it has to be FAST! In some ways I've enjoyed that and I've been very busy myself, but I miss having less responsibilities and having opportunities to spend time with people. I also, like I mentioned with all the sanitary things, have been adjusting to the convenience of life here without having to worry about all the possible sicknesses etc. and along with that I am adjusting to the American perspective on convenience. I have lived so differently and now coming back I at times get frustrated by people who get upset about things that are so miniscule in my mind. For example--really it's ok that the supermarket is out of that, or that it is arranged inconveniently. It's really ok that there are things in your life that are daily challenging and inconvenient--you do not have the right for your life to be convenient. I'm not saying that I personally felt like life was hard for me this summer. Honestly, I loved it. But I watched those I worked and live with give up so much in their life. Often they would make it even seem easy to give up all that they did, and many times it meant hard work on their part! After observing that, the "rich people problems"/ "first world problems" people have in this country we live in sound immature and annoying.

That's just a little of the changes I've gone through. I am also missing the families I got so close to during my time there. After living my life for seven weeks with them, it feels odd not to sit around at dinner and tell them of the days events, or watch the kids play and read books with them!

One month and I think I'm starting to see what it's like to live in the US. I've also noticed how my new perspective and the lessons I've learned are changing my daily life. If you want to read more of those come back and read again soon. I plan on focusing on the life changing lessons I learned in my next post.

I made it back to the US safely. (For those of you who are wondering, I'm the brunette on the left)

Bridesmaid exactly a week after getting back to the US (top left stair).

and of course, what's summer at the Hood house without blueberries. Day #1 at home we went and picked 17lbs.

Made it home just in time to celebrate Travis' 17th birthday. (Yet again, to clear any confusion I'm the one with the long hair on the left and YES i do share a face with that good looking man in the middle.)

A tea party with friends!

Heading off to school with Udai as my co-captain!

First trip to Starbucks of the year with my roomie! WOOT! WOOT! One semester left!

First ever Tudor's Bisquit World! :) gotta love WV! and good times with friends!

You're Missing Out!

      It's mornings like yesterday that make me realixe how much the rest of the world is missing out! The Creator didn't miss this island when he made his work of art we live on. 
     Yesterday morning after going to bed early the night before I woke at six and was ready to go for the day--no alarm. So since the sun consistently rises each day from 6-6:15 here I went out and took a look. I thought this might be interesting.

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This mountain named The Great Mountain is central to life here and the biggest of the single mountain range on the island

Papaya seeds and Charcoal

Sounds like a yummy mix right?

Well for me these have been my recent staples :) Well, sort of. I have them both in my diet right now because apparently they are natural ways to deal with whatever decided to invade my stomach. Thankfully I’ve just finished day 4 of 5 on the yucky ground up papaya seeds and there isn’t too much charcoal left either.

Last week I had a really special privilege of doing a home stay with a local family along with another young lady from the US, two young worker’s daughters and 3 Indonesians that are a part of the mobility team here. I was excited to see the mobility team in action and be a part of giving strollers to 2 young kids that couldn’t walk and also doing a fun lesson for some kids in a village with one the ladies on the team. I also got to see the most recently completed water project that has brought clean water to a village that a few months ago had no running water at all!!!

These are some pics of some of the people the mobility team helped and the kids we taught (sorry, no pics of the water project).

Now let me tell you a little bit about my home stay. The people we stayed with are a couple that is a part of the mobility team who live close to where many of the patients live, about 2.5 hours from where I have been staying. They were gracious hosts excited to have all of us come stay with them, even thought there were SEVEN of us :) For their area they are pretty well off actually and their house had many modern conveniences. Now I’m sorry I didn’t take many pictures of the house and the area they lived in, I’m sure it would’ve been very interesting coming from an American perspective, but I’ll just use old fashioned words and trust your vivid imaginations.

-To get to the house we had to park on the side of the road and walk on a path to their house. The walk to the house was downhill and back to the car was uphill so it took us 15 minutes to walk with our stuff down to the house and 25 min to walk back (this is where packing lightly is KEY). The path was actually VERY nice, though I might not have said so at first. It was cement the whole way BUT the cement path was only 2 feet wide. Now for walking there wasn’t a problem and many people rode their motorbikes on it, which was why it was cement, but I just thought it was so different that people would put in all that effort to cement it, but only make it wide enough for a motorbike! And it won’t ever become a road!!! I guess I’m still very Western in my thinking. (Now maybe you’re thinking “Oh, that’s nice, a beautiful path in the woods where you can walk and see down into some beautiful valleys and get glimpses of the sea and the sunset over the sea” which is all SO true but imaging walking 40 minutes at least just to get a little thing from the store! Or just to get to your car to drive another 30 minutes to get to the big market!...)

-When we arrived at the house I was so pumped about all their modern convinces. They had doors, rather than blankets in the doorways! And walls around the rooms and living space!

They had drinkable water!

They had beds for us to sleep on!

They had a kitchen and bathroom with water!

They had a Western toilet (if there’s any confusion here, there are other options than the model you currently have at your house, namely the “squatty” and you can use your imagination here).

So we were living an elite kind of life here.

Through my American eyes though, I saw something that looked a lot different. I saw that all the walls were unpainted cinder block, the kitchen was unattached downhill from the rest of the house, the water that is in the bathroom and kitchen just is a faucet that is connected to big storage tanks and there are no sinks to be found anywhere (they are replaced by handheld little buckets). Also I noticed that there is no way to warm up or cool of this house and there is no water that runs to the toilet (yet again this is where the small buckets come in handy). It’s funny how the two perspectives are so different. I could go on, but I don’t want you to get a negative idea of my stay or think that I am just being sarcastic. After being in those villages every day we came home with the “little” we had, I felt so overly blessed and like we were living in abundance! Life here is just so different.

On our last day at our friend’s beautiful house we had a fun day. The mobility team knows our hosts very well and have stayed there many times, so it was a lot like they had come home. Everyone pitched in on the chores and loved just hanging out and being together—whether it was watching TV, or talking over coffee, or playing UNO. The jobs that they helped out with were things like cooking the meals, watching the dishes, feeding the animals or even cleaning the animals poo :). On our last day there we were involved with getting coffee ready to sell. Our hosts basically have a small plantation where they have goats and chickens and grow coffee and cloves. We had a chance to help pick a little coffee earlier in the week but on our last day we took coffee that had been drying for 10 days and got the outer husks off by grinding it with a big stick, sifted the beans to separate out the beans from the husks and bagged the green coffee beans. It was fun for us, but certainly alone it would have been exhausting work. Here are some pics of that. (Fun fact: There is a need for fair trade coffee because women like those we worked with in these pictures work hard and get paid $2 at the most for 1 kilogram (2.2lbs) of coffee!)

Just enjoying my time here and getting to see another temple on the edge of a lake.

UNO!

Grinding the husks off the coffee. (btw, I am very tall in this culture, however she is also very short :)

Next comes sifting. We tried it, but it was better left to those with experience.

Then you pull out any coffee beans still in their husks to be ground again.

And you sift again.

Finally it's ready to go home and eventually sold. (Everyone got a kick out of us carrying the big things of coffee on our heads. Very typical for them, a neck ache for us!)

So to get back to the papaya seeds and charcoal… Although I enjoyed my exciting and exhausting cultural experience on the first night, my stomach decided it was not going to be a part of the fun and starting then, until today even, it’s been a little bit off. I’m not sure what it was that I ate or drank, and it could’ve even been something before I got to my home stay but we’re thinking it’s some kind of parasite or the like that has decided to take up residence inside my stomach. So when I got back and continued to feel yucky my host went right out and bought a papaya just for the purpose of grinding up the seeds for me to drink. Apparently the seeds paralyze the parasite and then it’s my body’s job to get it out. The charcoal is something else we added to that. Charcoal comes in swallow-able tablets and it absorbs the parasites or whatever is in my stomach so that they don’t stay in my stomach but they move along with the rest of my food. Exciting right! (See there are just some things you don’t need pictures for). So that’s where these two things come into play and now you know the go to natural drugs for parasites :)

 

My host with the papaya.

Somebody didn't want to miss out on the photo op

Seeds and honey coming up!

             

Ok well enough about my new cultural experience for now! Hopefully my next update will inform you that my regimen worked its magic!

so much to say...

There are so many things that I'd love to let you know about how my summer is going and I'll make an attempt but for now I'll catch you up using some pics.

From the week I did English club, I was pretty excited for the day I was finally able to steam milk and make it foam!

I'm always amazed at all the very detailed and intricate statues and temples. You also might notice that this one is overflowing with offerings.

My friends C and I had a fun week together filled with all kinds of playing pretend, playing Wii, and even a movie night. These 3 pics are from when we went out to lunch one day after getting my rabies shot. We shared a "funny face cookie" and each ate an eye.

Breakfast on the beach with C and his mom and sister :)

Game time! Last week I helped do some childcare for a conference. This was during one of our morning sessions.

I helped some of the girls color a huge picture drawn by one of the moms that was taped to the floor.

Four of the six dogs that sat watching me as I worked out one afternoon :)

This one is for Dad. It was pouring outside, but we had a campfire anyways and I braved the rain to roast a marshmallow. This one turned out perfect--just the right amount of brown and it grew big and fluffy. What can I say, I learned from the best!

Starbucks in the airport with H :)

These are the two big mountains we could see from the conference last week!

Back home and going for a run with K. This is what we walked outside to!

English Club

This week at another friend's house here I had the privilege to help with an English club. It was VERY fun and the kids were extremely attentive. That was so encouraging. They also loved
playing the games as well as listening to the stories we told.

Each day when the kids came we would begin by review and playing games. Once the review was done we'd get everyone together and sing songs. Even though we sang in English, they joined in as much as they could and by the end of the week they were getting the hang of them. It was especially fun when we knew the song in their language too so they could sing it and understand.

After song time another lady and I shared a story in English. We would each share a story and teach key words in the story and then we'd listen to them in their language. It was fun to creatively teach them new words as we told the stories. Sometimes they would help tell the story by saying the word when I did a motion, or held up a picture or sometimes I would have a coloring icture that went along with the story so they would label the new words as I taught them.

After the story the kids colored and practiced their new words to receive a prize. 

At the end of the week my friend was very pleased. She felt like they learned the new words and had a good time. The stories were ones that were knew to them too and she was glad they had the opportunity to be exposed to the stories that have changed our lives!



I am going to go to another island for this week, but after I return, there's a big possibility that I'll be going to teach another English Club at another friend's house.

Please continue to think of the kids that heard these stories this week and their families and for the opportunity for me to teach again.

Coloring

A young girl reading the story picture book in her language.

At the end of the last day the hose came out and fun ensued!