Out of Order

It started with a frog in the toilet.

Not a dead frog, but a very-much-alive-and-happy-to-be-here frog that had taken up residence in our upstairs bathroom while we were gone.

As we finished our furlough and prepared to move back to Bolivia, ending our time with a week-long missions conference, the #1 thing we looked forward to on our return was routine.  We talked about it often in the final month -- how nice it would be to be back in "our" house, with a schedule that doesn't change, tied to our work.

As I detailed in a previous post, furlough is a time of great instability.  It is often fun and enjoyable, but the stress of being continually unsettled wears on you to the point that you crave the "boring" structure of life in one place, with a fixed schedule.  Sounds just like what we live with here at Etnos . . . right?

Evidently not. 

In my last post, in which I detailed the events of Anne's arm breakage (she's doing well, by the way), I mentioned a few of the unsettling things that have occurred in our first three weeks back in Santa Cruz.  Allow me to lay them out a little more explicitly:

1.  We arrive totally worn out from the conference, goodbyes, packing, and travel

2.  Two weeks of cleaning, unpacking, and settling into the house

3.  Five days in, I begin teaching my classes. Kaylee starts homeschool a week later.

4.  A frog lives in the bathroom for several nights

5.  Visitors (whom we did not know) from the US

6.  I take on another hat, doing part time in the accounting office so I can cover for a coworker that is going on furlough in July

Learning how to run our monthly Etnos accounts with Karla

7.  Anne breaks her arm and I spend 2 days at the hospital with her

8.  A rat eats through the wires of the lights in our office (our most-used room in the house), prompting an unplanned remodel thereof.

9.  During said remodel, we find that termites have also moved in and are eating the joists.

Pulling out the ceiling FULL of mouse/rat nastiness

10.  Aforementioned rat plagues the house for a couple weeks, eating our bananas and avoiding all 4 types of traps that I set up.  Occasionally keeps us up at night.

11.  During this time, I have to take Anne into the city at least once a week for checkups

12.  Prompted by some generous friends, we start a new program on campus which causes massive stress (and several extra meetings) due to an unforeseen cultural issue.

13.  The rat visits Kaylee in the living room one evening, then runs up the stairs (where we sleep).  Not so much sleep that night.

14.  We discover that the rat has made a mess in our storage room, which leads to me spending a day patching holes and building another trap.

15.  Lydia turns 6, requiring an extra trip to town to buy her a bicycle.

16.  The UPS battery backup in the office bites the dust.  Another trip to town.

17.  We are in charge of the monthly Day of Prayer, adding more work for both Kaylee and I

18.  Lydia gets massively sick in her bed, resulting in midnight laundry (gross!!)

19.  We are approached by our leaders about the possibility of taking on some more responsibility

20. Today Anne starts daily physical therapy sessions with a lady from church.

Now, each of those things on its own isn't a big deal.  But to have all of that packed into 8 fast weeks was a lot, and we were feeling it.  We were tired, stressed, and fed up.  Trying to manage all of the distractions as well as maintain our daily responsibilities was becoming overwhelming.  We weren't sleeping well, either, which is never good. 

However, as we sludged through this past weekend, the future looked brighter and we went to bed Sunday night hoping and praying for a normal week.

Then, around 10:45pm, something started clattering around in the attic.  We hadn't seen or heard from the rat in several days, so we dejectedly assumed it had returned and was trying to get back in the house.  After listening to it clomp around on the very thin ceiling for over an hour, I tossed a poisoned banana up there.  Soon, our ears were greeted by a worse noise as it flopped around, evidently in throes of agony and death.  This lasted until after 2am.

So much for sleep.

In the morning, I could still hear scratching in the ceiling, but had no choice but to poke my head up into the attic, hoping to see a rat on the verge of death.  What I found instead was a very sick opossum.

Nathan: 1, 'Possum: 0

Because of the way our house has been cobbled together over the course of a couple of decades of remodeling, the attic is a mess of small spaces full of styrofoam, wires, spiderwebs, and rat droppings.  So I spent a couple hours trying to get at the opossum which had wedged itself down near the eave, between two sheets of styrofoam insulation.

Eventually she moved far enough into the open that I was able to get a good shot at her with my .22 pellet pistol and drag her out with a wire hook on the end of a pipe.

As I spent most of the remainder of the day patching holes in the wire mesh that covers our eaves, I remembered what it was that we craved so much on our return.

Routine.  Stability.  Structure. 

I mentioned it to Kaylee and we laughed (a good sign that we're still okay).  She reflected that maybe God was trying to show us that stability can be an idol just as much as anything else in life.  Are we relying too much on the security of home?  Does our comfort come from an unchanging agenda?  Are we seeking comfort and rest in a way of life, instead of in our Father?

Please pray for us. 

We want sleep.  We want a normal week (or day!).  We want our house to be a restful haven, free of pests.  We want to do our work in peace.  We want our kids to be healthy.  We want stability.

But all we need is Jesus.

Please pray that we would continue to flex.  That we would not break.  That we would adapt and persevere and follow God's will in faith.  Pray for the true Rest and true Peace that ought to be a part of our lives no matter the circumstances in which we find ourselves.  His order and His plan are perfect -- we just need the faith to follow Him.

Back in Bolivia!

After 8 fun, crazy months, we are back home at Etnos.  After a few days to catch up on sleep and start moving back into our house, I started teaching this morning.  This is the first time I am repeating a class at Etnos and I am excited for the opportunity to improve and adapt the material.

We want to say a big THANK YOU to all of our family and friends that made our time in the US special.  It means so much to us that you would take time to add us back into your busy lives for a short time.

In my last post, I mentioned the craziness of moving internationally and this time was no exception.  Our last full week in the States, we were at our home church for the annual Global Outreach Conference.  It was our first time since 2010!  It was a huge blessing, but a very intense and busy time, with activities every night and a few during the day as well. As a family, we had several opportunities to report on our ministry here and I taught a seminar on the importance of the local language and culture in cross-cultural discipleship.

The girls spoke about their life in Bolivia at Jr Church, their 4th presentation of our home assignment

We had packed as much of our things as we could before the conference started, but of course the two days we had "free" before we left were a little nuts as we packed suitcases to go and totes to stay.

We thank God that our travel went smoothly and that all of our stuff arrived safely.

Our house here had been cleaned before we arrived, thanks to our coworker-neighbors, but all of our stuff was packed into our office/classroom and a storage room.  The last 5 days have been a slow, fatiguing process of unboxing and cleaning everything so we can begin to live normally.  Kaylee finally finished the kitchen yesterday, so we can eat, at least, as soon as we get back up to speed on cooking here!

We still have quite a bit to do, so please pray for stamina.  As I write, Kaylee is in her classroom getting books and materials organized so she can start homeschool, probably next week.

Of course, the girls LOVE being back!  They have been chomping at the bit to return since around Thanksgiving and are so happy to be back in their home.

Lydia was overjoyed to have cuñapé again after 8 months of "famine"

Addi is happy to be back with Snowy

Anne has been devouring books she wasn't ready for when we left

And, naturally, they are spending as much time outside as they can!  We have been blessed with "cooler" weather with both temperature and humidity in the low 80s.

Butterfly hunters: we bought Addi and Lydia their own nets

They have been excited for RAIN and God provided today!

Church History

What do you know about your spiritual heritage?  Why do you believe what you do?

These two questions are the foundation for the subject I am teaching the first-year students this semester, the history of the Church from Pentecost to the Reformation (Part 1 of 2).  While it may not seem like a relevant subject for a missionary training program, it is fundamental to a good understanding of our theology and "how we got here."

Discussing the life of Justin Martyr

The fact is that we did not receive the Word of God in a vacuum.  Christ did not preach the Gospel to me personally.  So if I am going to trust it, I should know how it got from Him to me over the course of 2 millennia, through 3 continents, by way of several languages.

What is your concept of the Godhead, for example?  How do Jesus and the Holy Spirit fit into the clearly monotheistic Old Testament Scriptures?  Is Jesus God?  If so, is He the same person as the Father?  Is He different?  How different?  Did Jesus have a beginning, or has He always been?

Can you support your view from Scripture?  Or are you just repeating what you've been told?

This issue is at the core of the subject I am preparing for this week's class: the first council at Nicea in AD 325.

Sabellius and the other modalists had taught that one God has played different parts in the drama of history, expressing Himself in three distinct roles or modes.  Rejecting that view, Arius taught that Jesus had a beginning and was a distinct being, subordinate to the Father.  The majority of the Church was balanced somewhere between the two extremes, holding to some (perhaps) unexamined and (often) unexpressed form of our trinitarian view.

The upsurge of unbiblical heresy provided the catalyst the Church needed to refine and define its beliefs and understanding of Scripture.  It was nothing new in 325:  significant portions of the New Testament were written to combat the heresies of legalistic Judaism, mystical Gnosticism, and other deviations from the Truth.  And the Council of Nicaea was far from the last.  In reality, it was just the first of several councils that continued to debate different aspects of who Jesus was and is.

Constantine and bishops with the Nicene Creed

Reading about the lives of the Church fathers and the things they wrote are an important step in understanding our own theology.  However, we can't simply take their word for it.  We must follow the example of the Bereans in Acts 17 and examine the Scriptures for ourselves.  My desire in this class is to provide the balance and perspective of both, not just imparting knowledge of past events, but challenging each student to reflect on why they believe what they believe and change the way they pass that belief onto others.

Although I love and have always tried to be a student of history, I am definitely not well-read enough on the early Church to teach spontaneously.  This class is more an overview than anything, with only 32 class-hours to cover 1500 years.  Even so, I spend an average of 15 hours studying each week to teach 2 hours of material in class.  The students would be fortunate to absorb one-fifth of what I learn each week!

I'm thankful for good sources:

• Kenneth Scott Latourette's A History of Christianity
• Bruce L Shelley's Church History in Plain Language 
• Wikipedia and Wikipedia (Spanish)
• I spend a LOT of time here and it's great to be able to jump from one language to the other on the same page.  It saves lots of time translating concepts to Spanish.  The downside is that it is so easy to get distracted going down very interesting bunny trails. ;)
• Iglesia Pueblo Nuevo
• I don't know anything about this church in Madrid other than what I have read on their site, but they have a phenomenal section on Church history, including an amazing collection of biographies, all in Spanish.  It is my first resource for homework reading assignments.
• The Christian Classics Ethereal Library
• More resources than I can ever hope to read, including Philip Schaff's preeminent works
• Dave Barnhart
• My friend and Church History prof at Montana Bible College not only gave me a good foundation for CH in his classes, he graciously shared his notes with me.

I am also thankful for Kaylee's faithfulness and patience with me, as this has definitely been our most stressful semester so far.  Especially during our 6-week-long kitchen remodel (Details and photos here), I was under a lot of pressure to complete all of my responsibilities each week.  In preparation for Thursday morning's class, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are pretty solid study and Powerpoint design from dawn to dusk, other than breaks for meals and campus responsibilities.  I can't say that I've handled the strain very well, either, so you might want to pray for Kaylee's continued sanity.  At least her kitchen is in one piece now. ;)

Easter 2015

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: 

          that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 

          that he was buried, 

          that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,  and 
          that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 

I Corinthians 15:3-5 ESV

We had a great time celebrating the Resurrection of our Lord yesterday!  God saw fit to give us a tremendous rain storm most of the day, which definitely gave it an interesting flavor. :)

We helped organize a campus sunrise service and were very thankful for our covered basketball/fulbito court that allowed us to be outside, but dry.

Our family had guard duty this week (one family stays on campus every Sunday, for security reasons), so we put some hymns on the stereo and had an indoor egg hunt with the girls, followed by a family Bible lesson and reading of the events of Easter Sunday from the Gospel of John.

We were glad for the opportunity to host our friends Dan and Judy for lunch.  They have been in the States the last 4 months and it was good to catch up.  During lunch, the storm knocked the power out for awhile, which made for a special ambiance.

After our guests left, Kaylee and I spent most of the remainder of the afternoon playing games and doing puzzles with the girls.  My parents came back around 6:00 and we ended the day by watching the children's version of the Jesus movie and The Road to Emmaus.  

Power Made Perfect

As I wrote about a couple months ago, the Grammar Analysis class I am teaching this semester can be difficult, especially for those who are not inclined to be analytical.  The coworker that prepared the materials for our last grammar class had used the subtitle "The Funnest Class" as a bit of ironic humor.  I decided that Analysis needed something a bit darker and more direct, so I used "The Thorn In Your Flesh." 

I did hope to get a laugh, but as I considered the implications of  II Corinthians 12:9, I realized just how appropriate it could be in this situation.  In this passage, God reassures Paul that his thorn had a purpose:  to demonstrate Jesus' grace and power.  I decided to include the verse as a daily reminder to prompt in the students the same reaction that Paul experienced in his own life: that they would rejoice in their weakness, allowing Christ's power to work through them.
 

The lead slide for my presentations

I expected them to get bored and discouraged with the material we were studying, and they did at times.  I'm glad to say, though, that in the past 4 months they have all shown remarkable improvement in their ability to break down language.  Yet, I know that most of them would say, "I'm not very good at this."

However, I can't take credit for their improvement either.

As I look back at the past year, I can honestly say that I love teaching.  I have enjoyed preparing lessons, giving lectures, and doing personal tutoring.  That said, these verses have been just as important for me.  I, too, have gotten bored and discouraged.  I have so much to learn about all three of those aspects of teaching that I just mentioned.  There are so many ways I need to improve.  I'm completely new at this and I have had days where I return home from class wondering if I actually communicated anything worthwhile at all.

Some say, "You never really learn something until you teach it" and I agree.  I would also say, "You don't really know what fluency in a second language is until you try to teach in it."  I feel like I have been completely stretched and wrung out in both my understanding of grammar analysis and of Spanish.  I often have to "hunt" for words to describe concepts, because I still lack some of the technical vocabulary in this area.  I sometimes get to the end of the 2-hour class so mentally fatigued that I can't utter a simple sentence without some glaring, basic error in pronunciation, gender, or subject-verb agreement.  And for a grammar nerd, that's the worst thing that can go wrong!

That's why this passage is so beautiful.  In the end, it's not really about me or my performance.

No one really knows what Paul's "thorn" was.  There has been a lot of conjecture and a lot of good ideas, but the fact is that he left it unnamed. I believe that the Holy Spirit kept it hidden so that we could more freely apply this passage to our own difficult situations.  If Paul had specified what his difficulty was, we would tend to categorize it and put the application of this passage in a box.  As it is, we can take hold of the hope that is offered here and rest in Christ's work for us and through us.

Now, I wouldn't go so far as to say that my inexperience and inadequacy could be described as "a messenger of Satan," but they are a sign of weakness.  And that's discouraging.

Kaylee has also experienced this.  Although she speaks well, she struggles to express herself clearly in Spanish at the level at which she is accustomed to communicating in English.  She is uncertain of cultural cues at church, around campus, and as a hostess in our own home.  Yet God is using her, too, as she faithfully applies what she does know.  She has had some good opportunities to advise and counsel both students and staff ladies, in the past few weeks especially.

We are not here in Bolivia because we are great missionaries, or great disciplers, great Christians, or even great people.  The reality is that we are not great anything!  We are weak.  We have problems. We struggle.  We are uncomfortable.  We are inexperienced and have so much to learn.  And that's a good place to be.

If we really contributed anything to this work, we would have something to take pride in.  I don't know how others view us, but because we recognize our own weakness, we can see that it is Christ who is working in us and through us.  It is His power that is shaping us and maturing us.  If anyone else is blessed or changed by what we do, it is only because of His power being perfected in our weakness.

A similar message hangs above our kitchen sink

Grammar Analysis

Grammar [gram-er] noun 1. A subject that you took in school and either didn't understand or promptly forgot;  2. A necessary evil that you fear, because of 1;
3. Something that fascinates you, because you're a little bit weird and 1 and 2 don't apply to you.

My focus at ETNOS this semester is Análisis Gramatical, which, as you might guess, is the Spanish translation of the title of this post.  I have the responsibility of teaching our 8 students the fundamentals of morphology and syntax during 4 hours per week.

The purpose of the class is to prepare the students for the linguistic phenomena that they will encounter while learning an indigenous language and give them the tools to understand and explain the way it works.

The most challenging thing about this class for me is that, just like you, my students fall into one of two basic categories when it comes to grammar: love it or hate it.  It is a difficult subject and, in many ways, you are either wired for it or you're not.

For example, take this basic homework problem that I gave to the students earlier in the semester, a collection of data from Pocomchí (Guatemala).  Some of you will be able to identify the verb roots and subject and object affixes within 5 minutes or so.  Others will stare at it for 20 seconds, not care, and move on to something else.

We use material prepared by SIL Mexico

Obviously, my students don't have the option of blowing it off.   For those without the wiring, the process of remembering terminology, finding patterns, and diagramming the material is often frustrating.  As the professor, I have to find a balance in the way I present the concepts, so that the students at both extremes keep moving forward without either group getting lost or bored.

Last week we moved past this stage of the linguistic process (morphology) and have transitioned into syntax.  Syntax is even more exciting (sarcasm alert) because it is the analysis of phrases and sentences.  Naturally, this includes sentence diagramming, an activity that some of you may have done in school.  Our method is different than what is normally taught, so it can be applied to any language that may be encountered.

Please pray for the students:
     -for patience with me as an inexperienced professor
     -for understanding and appreciation of the need for a solid understanding of grammar in the language-learning process

Please pray for me:
     -for wisdom as I teach and work to help the students understand difficult concepts

In other news, we are taking a break from normal classes this week to take a trip out to Oromomo, a village of Chimane/Yura people in the jungle northwest of here.   Another staff member and I will be accompanying the students for a week-long adventure starting tomorrow, Tuesday.  Please pray that it will be a good experience for the students and for Kaylee and the girls as they do without me for a week.  Lord willing, I will post a report with photos in about 10 days!

Solar Cooking

Here at Etnos, most of the class schedule is semester based.  However, a couple times per semester, there are 1-week module classes that focus on a particular aspect of missionary life, normally something technical.  Recent examples: electrical basics, inductive Bible study, rustic living, literacy teaching.

This past week I was given the opportunity to start off the new semester teaching the Solar Cooking module.  Now, I had absolutely zero experience at cooking with sunlight, but I was eager to put the Tinker side of my brain to work.

Toolbags + a big mug of tea = happy Profe

We started off the week with a short, one hour lecture on the basics of sunlight, the greenhouse effect, and solar ovens in general.  Then I divided the students into three teams and turned them loose to look on the internet for a plan and turn in a materials list by noon.

The next morning, we broke out the tools and got to work.

One team was made up of our three single ladies.  They had the brilliant idea of taking the casing of a discarded AC unit and patching the holes by riveting on sheet metal.

Measuring and cutting patches

Drilling for rivets

 Another team was made up of our Argentinian couple, Matias and Naty.  They built a single-wall wooden box with complex angles to better catch the sunlight. 

Leo and Polette, the Chilean couple found a very complex design that was meant to make the make the most of the sunlight, but made with lots of angles.  Dennis joined their team and they got to work on the structure, first.

 After lining the interior with thin plywood, they insulated it with styrofoam

Dennis cuts styrofoam while Leo and Polette measure and fit it

Meanwhile, the girls had finished their metal interior and asked for help building a wood exterior.  They built it with about 1.5" void on five sides that they filled with wood shavings from the planer, to insulate.  Other than a few difficult/dangerous cuts, I merely advised them as they set to work cutting and screwing things together.

Eliana taking a turn with the circular saw

Mati and Naty were the first to finish and did a trial run.

Howard came over to check it out

Friday was the big day.  Would the ovens actually work?

We started setting up at 8:00am and by 8:45 everyone had food in their cooker, ready to go.

Mati and Naty tried chicken burgers and roasted veggies

 

Leo, Polette, and Dennis did whole eggs, potatoes, and veggies

Eliana, Kristen, and Eli put in chopped veggies (in water) and eggs in a pot

Addi and I even tried our hand at it with just two mylar windshield covers.  It worked!

Chicken and rice soup packet

Got it up to 143.3F, just a couple degrees lower than the others!

While we waited for our food to cook, we cleaned up the workshop, then spent some time talking about the week.

All of the ovens got up to about the same temperature, about 150F.  I believe that they could have gotten much hotter if we had used real glass mirror reflectors instead of the mylar.  Maybe we'll do some fiddling and try again another time.

But at least they all worked!

The girls' "scrambled" eggs and veggies

Chicken burger, anyone?

Dennis enjoys a baked egg

My little sweeties had chicken and rice soup for their afternoon snack :)

All in all, it was a good week.  We did some "outside the box" thinking, the students had a chance to build something using unfamiliar tools and materials, and we had fun together. 

Winter Break 2014

The first semester of the year came to an official close on June 27.  Since then, we have had winter break until classes start up again on July 28.

Our first week was pretty much eaten up with unfinished responsibilities with the CLA program, but since then we've had two and a half weeks pretty much to ourselves.  We have taken time to prepare for next semester, do some personal projects and spend time with the girls.

Although we're in the tropics, when the south wind (surazo) brings a storm up from Antarctica, in can get pretty chilly, especially because the house is uninsulated and very drafty.  We have thoroughly enjoyed having a fireplace!

We watched a few World Cup matches with friends.

Watching USA lose to Belgium with their friend Nathaly

Kaylee took a break from homeschool as well, but has done a few Spanish and money classes with the girls.

We still lack some furniture, so I built custom closets for Kaylee and I.

Kaylee's

The kitties took refuge in my warm toolbags during lunch

Nathan's

We attended a wedding at our church.  That was a good culture event. :)

Then, on Monday, we hit the jackpot!


. . .but I'll save that for another post. ;)  In the meantime, there are more photos of our breaktime fun here.