On the Journey

2008-11-20T13:58:00.002+08:00

Thanks for the great first post!

Just a reminder- by next Wednesday's team meeting:

Post an entry on what you think about the lifeboat idea. What areas of your life do you realize you are still in the lifeboat, trying to convince everyone else to keep you? In what areas of your life do you feel like you have made progress in getting free from that? How do you see "lifeboat mentality" played out all around you in the dorms and classrooms of Handong? I alluded at the end that Jesus can help us escape that mentality, but HOW, practically speaking?

These are some of the question you can answer if you don't know what to put in your response.

Remember to either put your name, or send me an email, (tsawin@handong.edu) telling me which entry was yours if you don't want to your teammates to know that it was you who wrote what you wrote.

Thanks! Thor

2008-10-08T13:44:00.003+08:00

A couple weeks ago at team, before the futsal game and the barbecue, i talked about "Christian freedom"- which is really another way of saying the Christian theological idea of "grace"

I presented a couple sayings:

"There is nothing you can do to make God love you more, there is nothing you can do to make God love you less"

"There is nothing a Christian MUST do, and nothing a Christian CAN'T do.... but there are many things which will give a Christian life, or undermine their life"

If you read Romans chapter 5:12 to Romans 6:5 I think you will see the following statement clearly grounded in the text:

"People don't go to heaven because of what THEY do, but because of what CHRIST did. Likewise, people don't go to hell because of what THEY do, but because of what ADAM did." (If you don't believe me, read that text in Romans!)

I would like you guys to post a comment of some kind on this idea- the idea of Christian freedom/grace. Are you comfortable with it? Uncomfortable with it? What makes it hard to believe? Or is it easy to believe for you? What would it mean in your life? If this is true, what kind of fruit would that bring? If this is not true what kind of fruit would that bring? What other things in the Bible would support or possibly contradict that teaching? I won't put a length limit, but please post something. This is a very important idea to at least consider, because if it is true that would make serious changes in the way we view our selves, our actions, our lives, and if it is not true, we also must them try really seriously to figure out what we WOULD have to do to reach God.

So this is the first team Homework- just a simple blog post :)

(Please put your name, or if you don't want everyone in the team to know that YOU wrote something, please tell me afterwards discretely which post is yours, so I can give you credit for that)

Thanks
Thor

2007-12-07T12:14:00.000+08:00

Ok-

I have had a bit of time to think and pray, and feel in a much better mental place to deal with this. It is sunny in Yanji, i have my thesis the-students-celebrate-it-is-over party tonight, and tomorrow i am supposed to have lunch with one of my students, and then MC our English Department Christmas party, which takes a lot of preparation, and i hope, on Saturday evening to meet with some of the Russian students from Yanda. Somewhere in there i need to make a worship set, and have worship practice, because I am leading on Sunday morning.

If i decide to keep pushing ahead with Korea, it may mean some crazyiness, but i could probably take some kind of a vacation in february that would be much closer to home so to speak. Ironically travelling within China would be just as expensive as the trip i had planned to the middle east, which was a really good deal, but it wouldnt be the end of the world- and there may be some possibilities that i could in fact get all of these documents by the start of school in February.

I have realized thought that part of me wants to stay at YUST a lot, to teach the thesis students, and the English Teaching methods class, and the pronunciation class.... To get to know some of the students better who i have built relationships with, especially our YUST russian speakers, who i feel like i have kind of neglected this term. I would love to continue to help Chunhua in her amazing work here.... Maybe i just need to figure out what i want.

God is being good to me, and sifting through many other problems and weaknesses i have, including a) my trouble in saying no to things that are asked of me b) my trouble saying no to one potential life because i want to live both potential lives at the same time... this theme has recurred often in my life...

Thanks for your support and kind words to me... i feel the power of your pr- already

Thor

2007-12-06T22:24:00.000+08:00

STUCK~!

So the rug was pulled out from underneath me on Tuesday, as my status here had suggested. On Tuesday, this was the beautiful plan for my life...
A) Go on fun trip to middle east after this term is over and see dear friends the VanSlotens, the Millers, Jerilyn Sambrooke, Ben Post, Jeremy KnappB) Have a great and meaningful job at a great university in Korea and make 30,000$ a year, at least 15,000$ of which i would be able to save to give me a head start for a very comfortable...C) 2009 entry into a PhD program, with plenty of time to apply.

BUT BECAUSE OF ONE SEXUAL PREDATOR MY BEAUTIFUL PLAN IS RUINED!!!

Korea passed a new law which stipulates that all foreigners wanting to teach in Korea must have an FBI background check, as it turned out that there were sexual predators who came into Korea on an ENglish teaching visa. As you know i am living in China now, and I had hoped to do my Korean visa here, before I flew to Turkey on January 3rd. I thought that i had been already hired at Handong, and that the visa process would be a speedily accomplished formality, given the numbers of foreigners who work as English teachers in Korea.
I got an email from Handong on Tuesday, not only informing me of the background check referred to above, but that i actually didn't have the job at Handong.... yet.

It said:
"that you were recommanded as a new faculty member. We're going to do a process for recruitment. I would like you to submit as below,
1. Application Form (refer to the attached file)
2. Original Transcript (Bachelor, Master)
3. Original Diploma (Bachelor, Master) * Your diploma will be return to you when you come to Handong. The diploma is for issuing your visa.
4. Work Experience proofs (Certificate of Experience and employment)
5. List of accomplishment in research activities.
6. Research papers since March 2003, or about three outstanding papers including doctoral thesis within the most recent five years.
7. 11 copies of your photo
8. Carbon copy of your passport
9. Criminal Background Record which is issued by your country"

Well I didn't know that i would have to go through a whole second review and interview process, which at best would be finished by the end of December. Even if I could possibly assemble all these documents to Korea, which would involve:

1.) sending a BA diploma from the US
2) getting MSU to reissue an MA Diploma which I have never seen, sent to my parents, then sent to Korea,
3) getting Work Experience Certificates from Lithuania,
4) sending a list of non-existant research activities, as i have been working at teaching universities,
5) getting what ever a carbon copy of my passport is and
6) convincing some Chinese policeman to notarize my fingerprints, getting it translated into English, and then sent to the FBI to wait 16-18 weeks for processing...

...even if it were humanly possible to get all of this done in the next few weeks, i wold still have to wait for their review process, and that would mean cancelling my trip to the middle east, giving up my position at YUST, all for a job i may not even get, mainly because of a document that may or may not take 16-18 weeks to issue....

So I am left with what i see as two options, which are equally scary...

1) Keep the great trip to the middle east, just stay at YUST, and give up the dream of working at Handong and having a real job for the first time in my life... It makes sense in some ways to finish out the year here. I probably have enough supportleft to do it. But then the question is THEN WHAT?? If i were to aim for an Aug 2008 entry date I would need to get my applications in YESTERDAY, and some of the deadlines have already passed... And instead of having a nice 15,000$ nest egg to start a four-year PhD adventure with- enough to maybe even get a car, i would be starting at a school, with no guarantee of a 4-year assistantship mind you, with a savings account of 0$!!

OR

2) Throw away the trip to the middle east and spend the next two months frantically assembling documents. This would quite probably involve a 1800$ trip to the United States to get a 18$ document from the FBI. However there is no guarantee at all that it would be even possible to be in possession of said document in time for the school year to begin on February 18th. So even though there is a possibility that i would be able to get this great job in Korea, there exists the very real possibility that i would be stuck in the US, with no document, no job in Korea, no longer this great and meaningful job at YUST, no possibility to get a job in the US. I couldn't even live with my parents, because there is no job in Traverse City that I could do, and even if i could find a job i would have no car to get there, and even if i could find some kind of job that i could walk to in some city, i would still have to pay rent somehow to live there. I have unlearned how to live in the United States, and I can't imagine how it would be possible for me to live and work there.

I just feel like Satan is really lying to me- that my skills are unneeded, that my education is all wrong. Several of the universities I applied to in Korea never even got back to me. Maybe my CV is horrible. Everyone says "oh great you know so many languages" but that doesn't help me get a job. WHo needs someone who can speak 6 languages kind of well? better if i spoke two fluently. I just keep picturing myself getting stuck in a dead-end job in America, just to be able to afford the car, which i need to get me to my dead-end job, alone and isolated.
And the annoying thing all this needed to be decided already- every day the plane tickets both to the middle east, and to the united states are getting more expensive. The longer the indecision goes on, the harder it would be to take any of the paths. And noone can give me any clear answers of if it is worth it to keep pursuing the job in Korea, or if it is worth it to try to aim for a Phd start in 2008. But what else would i do? I'm almost 30, and i feel my youth rapidly draining away. I always thought that by this point in my life i would know what the heck i am supposed to be doing when i grow up...

I know i have a lot to be thankful for. I really thank all of the people who have enabled me to be at YUST so far. This semester has been amazing in terms of opportunities. Know that this is written out of the tension and frustration of dealing with all this on top of a SUPER stressfull week of theses and course registration, being sick and sleep-deprived...

I know they say God will make away where the seems to be no way. I just can't see it!!!

2007-06-13T15:28:00.000+08:00

Can it be done already? (when its time to stop buying groceries)

I feel like I was just going along normally, and all of a sudden everything became a panic about final exams. How can the end pounce on me so suddenly? So many tests and review guides to create, grades to hand out, old homework to hand back, last meetings with people who are living, attempts to clean up the apartment.

I think my least favorite time in life is the period where it is not worth buying new groceries, as you will be leaving, and you have to creatively use or throw away the perishable goods that you have. The first moment you realize "oh man I have to start using this stuff up", then you know the end (or at least some end) is upon you. Goodbyes, graduations, appreciation dinners, special lectures, no time to appreciate the suddenly gorgeous breezes, as the Siberian winter has slid away into a sticky continental summer.

Will I use the summer well? I hope so! I want to apply to schools and scholarships, to start writing a book maybe, to work hard on Korean, to visit friends and supporters; we'll see how all that pans out. My track record isn't that stellar. I remember once I found my kindergarten report card, which read: Thor has many good ideas but he is not very good at finishing what he started. By the time he is halfway through one thing, he already has an idea about the next thing he wants to do. Man, isn't that the truth. Whatever happened to the well-rounded, jack-of-all-trades idea man. The capitalist economy doesn't exactly select for people who spend their days pondering about the flaws of Plantegenet England, the mysteries of Korean morphophonology, what exactly Jesus was trying to say with the parable of the day-laborers, what implications quantum mechanics has for postmodern theology, etc.... Oh well, I know Jesus loves me anyway, even if I'm not exactly cut out to be a cog in the great Capitalist machine.

In the meantime, I'll be staring out the window trying to extracate myself from a stack of overdue files.

2007-06-12T15:17:00.000+08:00

Irritations

So next week is the last week of classes, and no joke, LAST NIGHT, i got an email saying that the Chinese government university which runs some of the required classes for YUST students, just CANCELLED our last week of classes!!??? This is the most retarded thing ever. You teachers out there know that- how you can just cancel the last week of classes? The chinese government is SO inefficient about some things. For instance, for the thesis students which I had this semester, i was given forms 2 weeks ago, that were supposed to be filled out retroactively, in triplicate for each student for the entire semester. For each 12 page thesis, 20 pages of detailed forms had to be filled out. I swear it took me longer to check and double check all the paperwork, which of course was written in Chinese, than it took for the students to actually COMPOSE the thesis. And the maddening thing is- it doesn't matter anyway... Noone will read those comments. Noone can read the English anyway, let alone in my handwriting. It just has to be all done so that it LOOKS official, without having any substance. In many ways this country is like that. It doesn't matter what something actually IS, as long as it LOOKS good.

These little frustrations happen every day here. This is a country lurching forward into some kind of a chaotic restructuring, so quickly, that it has no time to catch up with itself. It does get quite frustrating, knowing that nothing at all is known in advance.

Listen to me- I sound like some kind of British colonial complaining about the "natives" and how they could use a good dose of 'civilization'. We humans want to change things overnight, especially when we stare right at something that makes no sense, and we know a better way. Still there are two pieces of wisdom I have to remember in those situations...

1) There is always a reason WHY things are the way they are. Something that appears senseless, usually has a historical reason why it developed the way it did. And there maybe some advantage in this system which "makes no sense", that is hidden to the mind of the foreigner. At least understanding WHY can help one be more patient. This is a country where for thousands of years already, people have gotten used to perhaps well-intentioned but non-practical mandates from arbitrary ruling authorities. That doesn't change in just 60 years.

2) There's a line from the movie "Power of One" I sometimes think of. When one character was frustrated with apartheid, his teacher said "history will prove who was right". The young character said "but history takes too long!". To which the teacher replies "You are correct, but it is never kind to those who try to hurry it."

In many ways I feel like the life of a foreign teacher is steeped in this attempt to try to hurry history along. I felt it at LCC, I feel it at YUST, and it is not all bad. But there have been very few revolutions in history that have actually worked or acheived what they set out to do. I hope I am not becoming cynical, but i guess there is a time to bend, as well as a time to stand up for what makes sense.

I have the sinking feeling that these are important lessons for me to be learning now, as I will need them at some point in the future.

Just the kind of thing that G_d likes to do, when you're not looking. He teaches you some kind of good character-building lesson through hardship. Hmmph... Oh well, thats the kind of G_d He is, and I know I'll probably thank Him for it later...

2007-04-07T11:16:00.000+08:00

Impressions of the last week

Walking by Yanbian University and walking into a huge cloud of vanilla-extract-smell. This is entirely curious as there is no bakery anywhere nearby, I have never seen vanilla extract anywhere in Yanji, and it is DEFINITELY a departure from the normal street smells one encounters here.

Saying good bye to a friend Hyunho, a Korean-Chinese who is moving to Japan to start a new life. I realize the chances of me seeing him again are slim. I realized with kind of a sense of tyranny that i now have good friends who live in, permanently,... lets count... 26 countries. No matter where I am in the world, my friends will be perpetually elsewhere. Even if i move to the states, my friends are scattered all over. Homelessness...

Sharing with a guy in my apartment about the Great Hope for us for Salvation, and feeling as if the needed words and analogies were pouring through me, and not from me. Hearing him say at the end, that he had asked many Xn's about this Great Hope, and that this was the first time he ever really got a good answer, that he could believe in. Praise Him

Sitting in a Good Friday service, where the litany was let by a British Anglican, the verse was read by a Korean Russian, the announcements by a French Chinese scholar married to a Jamaican, the closing done by a North Carolina Southern Baptist, as southern as they come, sitting next to my German friend Moritz, and meeting our new French teacher in French from French Guiana, planning with my Korean-Californian friend Jamie how we will say good bye to our Korean-Swiss friend Angela who is moving to Shijiazhuang to study traditional Chinese medicine. Yesterday alone i taught in Russian, had fairly substantial conversations in French and German, had Korean class, joked with Chunhua a bit in Chinese, and of course taught American culture in English...

My American culture lessons this week were on three hefty topics- Mormonism, Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny. SOO interesting. At least to me! And a challenge to teach these subjects to students who already have their firm ideas about American foreign intervention in world affairs, and American history. Teaching that class requires more than anything, detachment. I can't love America too much, and I can't be too critical of it. I am thankful for the overseas experience i have had, without which, i don't think i would be in the position to do this well....

Yesterday was one of the longest days of my life, and it was so nice to reward myself at the end with a bit of Brie cheese... from Changchun... acquired only with much ingenuity and luck. I have never thought to praise Him for cheese before until I moved to Yanji. :)

More and more I realize that I am not actually in China. YUST, and the world i find myself in, is so much more a weird mix of Korean, and YUST's own odd culture. If i try to tell anybody when i get back home what "china" is like, don't believe me- I haven't been there :)

I read American short stories every night before I go to bed, trying to inform myself on the breadth and mystery of the American culture, as i am teaching American Culture class. It has been a long time since I have loved literature so much. Funny that i had to move to Yanji to rediscover a fascination for things American....

Just a few random thoughts from a very busy week...

2007-03-10T12:23:00.000+08:00

Ok- so i don't know if i did something right, but suddenly I am able to blog again from my own computer. We will see how long this lasts. The only downside is that all of the commands are in Chinese, and the Chinese blogging vocabularly as of yet eludes me. :)

So hopefully i can post on here more often!

Snow- last week i went to church on Sunday, expecting it to be warm (3 degrees) as it had been all week. Upon leavning church we discovered an inch of snow. That kept coming and coming. By Monday a half-meter of snow had fallen. Then a true Siberian wind picked up. I know that technically, geographically, I live in the Siberian climate region, but i had never experienced a cold sustained wind like that one. The blizzard went for two whole days, and the buildings of YUST were humming and resounding like a giant teapot at boil, wind and snow pouring through the cracks of these badly sealed buildings....

Thursday and Friday got warmer again, and today 5 inches of beautiful fresh soft snow have fallen, and everything is back to winter. It doesn't feel like March though- i have experienced so many weird climactic shifts this winter.

One thing i can say- Yanji is going to be a mess when all this coal-dust stained snow melts in a city with extremely pour drainage, and a fine soil that turns into the most gooey sort of mud upon contanct with any sort of moisture.

That's what i have to look forward to, but for now i will enjoy the snow!

2007-02-26T10:23:00.000+08:00

Back to China

Well... I'm back in Yanji. I am not sure what classes I am teaching. I don't have the syllabus for the classes, nor my class lists, just borrowed some textbooks that might work. Two of the classes I may have are supposed to meet at the same time. I have no place to plug things in in my office, no internet connection, no printer, a chair that doesn't work, and no clue where to begin.

But, i have a warm little room, and nothing exploded or spoiled or died in my absence. I have a couple friends, other English speakers with whom to communicate, and my schedule is as of yet a blank slate waiting to be filled in.

I have a sunburned nose from Dubai, thoughts of that monstrous palm-treed, freeway-bound city in my head, guobaorou in my stomach, half-filled out applications for jobs and for grad schools on my computer, anxieties about my future, a cool new book about J-s in French which I got at the Frankfurt airport, Deutsche Welle on my TV set, and a resolution that since I can't avoid this coming semester, I am going to push through it and enter into it and be the best witness I can be, and be as faithful as I am able at the tasks that are appointed to me.

2007-02-19T04:07:00.000+08:00

De Poort

I have spent the last four days in the Low Countries, staying at the YWAM base in central Amsterdam, hearing amazing teaching, meeting new friends, hanging out and being encouraged by my old friend Emas Gricius, honing my Dutch. I visited my old pastor from Klaipeda, Roy Ball, who now lives with his wife Joke leading an Anglican church in Heiloo, and got to walk through beautiful dunes. I can see why the Dutch moved to West Michigan. Noord Holland looked almost exactly the same as Ottawa county! I got to take a crazy day trip to Brussel, Europe's capital, have deep conversations, go for a bike ride out among the villages along the IJselmeer and just take a long last breath before plunging back towards Asia.

People ask me am I read to go back. Honestly I can say no, not yet. But I suspect that my heart for China is waiting for me in the Yanji airport, ready to be picked back up again, ready to be investing in serving another 4 months. Kind of hesitant about it, but i also know that usually I never want to leave the place where I am. Am bracing myself for what will happen on Friday when i finally land, late at night, to pay 20 Yuan for a taxi back to my cold grey dormitory on the hill overlooking Yanji. Am glad i will have a week before school starts in earnest.

I am very glad i spent this time in Europe. I feel it was well invested mostly. Was not a tourist at all really, but have spent the time pouring into relationships, re-touching-base with many former colleagues, contacts and friends, letting God refine me and bring even more of my sinful nature to the surface where it can get tested and worked on. Pray for me there in China!

2007-01-26T19:18:00.000+08:00

Little Blue Book

I have a little blue book, which tells me I am an American. No, that isn't entirely meant, that my passport alone identifies me as an American. I have met many people in my life who have literally grown up in other countries and cultures and the only thing American about them is their passport. This is often the result of America's unique law, that if you are bown on American soil, you become an American citizen.

In fact if there is one thing i HAVE learned in China it is that I am more American there than i have been at any time in my life. In Europe I always felt like i COULD fit in; if i dressed appropriately, refrained from smiling, watched my language, I could probably get away with people not guessing my nationality. But in China there is no hiding the fact of who I am- no possibility of fitting in. Dismaying at first, but in a way very freeing.

So anyways- this little blue book. More than anything else, it has accompanied me on my journeys, since Apr 29, 1999. It is fraying, the picture is bulging out and looks doctored as a result of my passport having been in my pocket in numerable bus journeys, gotten wet in the rain, gone on camping trips, etc... It is chock full of various stamps and visas. It has been appended twice now, and the little book isn't so little anymore, but its also in pretty bad shape. I had trouble leaving both Romania and Poland with it this week.

So I intended to go to Vilnius to get a new passport. The Lithuanian embassy is i think america's most accessible and friendly embassy in the world, and i love doing stuff here. Normally its no problem to get a new pasport. one catch- my chinese visa, which i need to reenter china, is in my old passport. China does not accepted still valid visas in invalid passports- something all the sane countries of the world accept, so naturally China doesn't. So I can't get a new passport, until I get to China.

Getting a new one China not only requires taking up to four days off work, to negotiate the 24 hour train ride to Shenyang for the all of 20 minutes a week that the American embassy is open to the public, but also presents me with another problem. I have to get a new Chinese visa 2 weeks after my arrival in China. Not enough time to get a new passport. And if i get the new visa in my same old passport, then I am stuck again in the same situation- i can't get a new passport without jeopardizing my right to return to China.

So my only hope is for accomodating border guards for the rest of 2007. I will have to some how smile my way along on my old passport until at least July, the first chance I will have of returning to the US, getting a new passport, and if I return to CHina, applying for a Chinese visa, also in the united states, even though it is MUCH more difficult there. I am caught in a teufelskreis that i can't get out of.

So pray for the integrity of my little blue book. It has been a faithful little companion to me :)

2007-01-17T02:16:00.000+08:00

Eu nu vorbesc romana....

Right now i am sitting in an internet cafe, in Chisinau, Moldova. Alone. Things aren't so bad really- there is a lot of interest among Moldovan students for LCC, I just heard an amazing band of Moldovan folk music, and ate a really good meal of traditional Moldovan food. Yet I guess the phrase that describes how i feel best right now is "stretched too thin"... I think i have seen and experienced too much in too short of a time, and for one of the few times in my life, I am hit right now by an intense longing for a home. Where would that be? Yanji kind of, but i think i would be lonely there too this time of year. Klaipeda? The closest I have, and in fact it was hard to be ripped away after only a week in Lithuania and after such a warm reception to move on to Romania so quickly. Am glad i have a couple more weeks there! Lansing? Also many people I love there, but all are busy with their own lives, and were I there, i would also be a perpetual 'guest'. Traverse City? I love my parents and the countryside there, but i also don't have a life there. I guess maybe the best we Christians ever are on this earth are 'guests' and 'pilgrims'. a recurring theme on this blog i know....

Romania

Being in Bucuresti, it was a bit hard to believe that it entered the EU already. Seems a bit rushed, but just from outer appearances. The city is pretty haphazard, and i guess it reminded me more of Yerevan than anything else, except without the cafes or the mountains, but replete with many monumental buildings made of a kind of golden stone, thanks to Caecescu and a long tradition before him. I remember always hearing, from way back, stories from Nick and Carissa Minaar about Romania, and it is interesting to have finally seen it. Yes Caecescu's Casa Popului is gigantic, impressive, and a little bit sad when one considers how much it cost the Romanian peasant to build, and also the architechture that was destroyed to make way for the monster. Bulevardul Unirii may have been impressive in communist days, but now with the fountains dry, streets choked with crazy drivers, and random neon signs and billboards of every size and color, there is no word for it but ugly...

Driving across Wallachia, i was amazed at how visible Romanian geography is. there are three main parts, Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia. Wallachia is flat as a pancake and has no trees. So you can basically see all of it at once :) Then to the north are the snow capped tree covered mountains of transylvania. the border couldnt be more obvious. Moldavia (as opposed to Moldova) is made of long parallel valleys, still treeless. Romanian cities look much different than any other communist or eastern european cities i have seen. it is so fascinating how the elements are all the same, yet each former communist country has its own twist.

Entering the Moldovan Republic, after a relatively easy border crossing, the change was noticable, primarily in road quality, but Moldova, even in the dark, was incredibly hilly and covered with alternating thick forests and vineyards. Am very sad i wasn't able to see the countryside during the day! More to come about this trip later.

P.S. if only Korean were as easy to learn as Romanian- a fascinating Romance language with a huge slavic lexical influence (eu citesc = 'I read' treba = 'need'), postpositions borrowed from Turkish (studentul = 'of the student', studentilor = 'of the students'), and interesting high vowels. Also there is a crazy sound correspondence whereby what are velar consonants in most romance languages become labials in Romanian! {lakte(Lat.)=lapte(Rom.), okto(Lat.)=oapte(Rom.)}

2007-01-05T01:06:00.000+08:00

2006

2006 began with fireworks over Tuetting and Starnberg on the Starnberger See, surrounded by teenaged campers, with prayer and worship, in southern Germany. 2006 also ended in Germany, surrounded by German teens and 20 somethings on a soggy ridge over looking Wermelskirchen, watching a thousand fireworks, drinking sekt, and praising God for what he is doing in that little German city.

The year began and ended very similarly. How has it changed me?

I have skiied the Austrian Alps

I have stared at the North Atlantic from Europe´s highest cliff in Ireland

I celebrated my birthday with amazing brothers at an Applebee's in Marion Indiana- with as fun a group as can be gathered on this earth

I led a small but very moving Alfa course in Klaipeda

I had all kinds of complicated situations with the opposite sex

I renewed my love of the State of Michigan

I saw the museum of the Armenian Genocide, the museum of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the museum of Georgian History

I ate in a real Irish pub, ate in the back of a little bus in Kazbegi Georgia with a bunch of orthodox teenaged guys, ate in the world's most exclusive shopping center, ate donkey, stingray, and squid on the streets of Yanji

I worshipped God in Korean, in Chinese, in Russian, in Georgian, in German, and in English

I stayed with the Watson´s in Tbilisi, with Jon in Shanghai, with Kathryn in Wuxi, with my parents for two months, in a dorm at IWU, in Nigel´s house in Kill Inney Ireland, in youth hostels, on Jari´s floor in Helsinki, in a tent along the Gauja, in a guesthouse on the island of Hiumaa, in my little room 1303 at YUST, in the Hull´s house in Lansing, at the Brinkmans´in Lansing, in a cabin on Lake Superior, with Doug in Nashville, with Josh in Nashville, on a boat on the gulf of finland.

I presented at a conference in Narva

I taught German, and Thesis, and Linguistics, and English conversation

I started this Blog

I flew to Nashville twice to be in weddings, and discovered a great church there, and was best man for the first time in my life

I had an amazing guy´s small group every thursday in our orange apartment at Janonio 16, with guys from 10 countries

I spoke in Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Lithuanian, English, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Korean, French, and Spanish

I went to a Christian rock concert in helsinki, asia´s largest church in tbilisi, and the gigantic TSPM church in Yanji for Christmas

I carved a grapefruit for halloween, managed to find a scrap of turkey for Thanksgiving, watched fireworks over Grand Traverse Bay for the 4th of July, taught at LCC for valentine´s day, gazed at the proud skyscraper´s of beijing for mid-autumn day, had a cozy gathering at the Mueller´s apartment with my friends from YUST and some guests from the Silesian techinical school for Christmas.

I heard amazing teaching at the Exodus Conference, at Miesto Baznycia, at the Brueder Gemeinde in Wermelskirchen...

I have been really shaken to my core, stripped of illusions about myself, thrown into deep culture shock, tried and tested, and come out whole and breathing and living and still trusting God and still making the hard decision to follow him day by day.

I have shared the Good News about Jesus so many times in many different ways, everytime being amazed that i am bold enough to do that, and amazed that people actually are interested to hear about it

I have been blessed incredibly by my God and every person who has made my life possible, tenable, and rich- my family, my friends, my many supporters , my colleagues at LCC and at YUST...

Thank you LoRD for 2006... May i burn up for your glory as the Piper-lovers say, in the year 2007. Who knows what this year will bring? Bog ego znajet!

2007-01-05T00:44:00.000+08:00

Wirtschaftswunder

Have you ever seen the movie Auberge Espagnol? I know i wrote about it on here once, but i recommend it. Right now i am sitting in the Schmittman Kolleg- what we in the US would call a CO-OP affilitiated with the university of köln. It was 10 degrees today (ive even lost track of how much that would be in fahrenheit- i pretty much think in Celsius now), and me and my friend Kai went to the museum of the history of the federal republic of Germany today. It was so interesting to see how Germany went from the bombed out ruin of WWII to the modern society it is today- a country that i love, and that seems to be to me in no way connected to those old movies and war doceumentaries i see. I just can't grasp that this is the same country that in those old films cheered on Hitler in throngs.

I have been really struck by the affluence and efficiency of Germany. I should have expected that I know, but it really seemed like the trip i took to get here was from one world to another. It just seems impossible to believe that i could set out from Yanji westward and end up in the Bergisches Land, with its beautiful streets, rolling lush green hillsides, slated-walled houses, cafes, konditereis, modern schools, order, peace, quite, affluence, tolerance, freedom, harmony. You can get to all those things just by driving? It really seemes to me like my plane trip must have been from one planet to another, instead of just around our little globe.

Even the crass excesses and contrasts and luxury of Dubai felt like a completely other world. The desert, the wealth, the bravado, the striving for ever more luxury, that felt foreign to me, although in some ways it felt much more like China- a country where the attempts to outdo and impress with overstated architecture are everywhere. One thing that really hit me about Dubai was that it is really a pan-asian city. No one group predominates. There are Filipinos, Malays, Chinese, Pakistanis, Dravidians, Hindis, Koreans, Russian Central Asians, Europeans, every shade of Asian, all speaking English in its various beautiful forms, all come together in a brand new city built out of nothing in the Arabian desert. I don't think any city in the world demonstrates the true heart and future of the English like Dubai does. English is the language of Asia, of Asians, accepted and transformed by them. It is only a matter of time before English ceases to be thought of as a European language, or even an American one. There are twice as many English speakers by some estimates in Asia as there are in the United States.

My good friend Mike, with whom I teach in China, is a big documentary fan, as am I, and in between our exam giving, exam grading, goodbye parties, Bible studies, etc... we watched several episodes of this gigantic 50 hour documentary on WWII. It has really struck me in the last few days how the world has changed since my grandfather fought in that war. The Germany today would be unrecognizable to Nazis- a multicultural bed of postmodernism and tolerance, the heart of the new enlarged multicultural EU. Where 60 years ago i might have had to stare at all these young Germans that i have been visiting and spending time with down the barrel of a gun, now i can hear their stories, play poker with them, worship Jesus with them, pray with them, play with them, love them and be loved by them. Mao TseTung is surely rolling in his grave as the capitalist paradises of Wangfujing in Beijing ring up their yuans in designer Armani boutiques with Haagen Dazs and Pizza Hut. The once grandiose Tiananmen square now feels outdated ugly and rundown, surprisingly devoid of traffic, in contrast with the new mgea skyscrapers and frenzied business of the new centers of that great economic giant. The Great Hall of the People, rather than impressing, just makes one feel sad and used and tired. The Arab world- in the time of those documentaries a backwater of sheikdoms and baksheesh is now the heart of a brand new economic boom, transforming all of Asia and calling the Asians to itself. THe prospect for Islam has never looked brighter, the influence and power of the Muslim world has never been stornger, and i highly doubt that in a worldly sense, that Christendom, in the old sense of the word, possess anything that can counter these new rising powers- China, the Arab World, etc...

The world has changed so drastically. To me it feels like it has shrunk completely. We have the freedom to just move around this earth, in peacetime, in a way that was unthinkable in the days of those old WWII documentaries that i watch with Mike.

Tomorrow night i go to Klaipeda, and complete my first circumnavigation of the world. A journey that started at the little Klaipeda Bus Station to the moving goodbyes of my friends, will soon complete itself. I will have come back to where i have started; but as ever the Journey is still underway, and will continue to drive me ever ever on, the way it drives all my brothers and sisters around the world, till we reach our Final Rest in our True Home.

2007-01-01T19:47:00.000+08:00

Ok this blog has been sadly asleep for a long time i realize- a victim of the poor access to the Chinese internet and my own laziness. Hopefully now that i am on european soil, these green pages will be filled with overdue remarks and thoughts about my life in China... mal sehen... everyone makes those sort of resolutions.

on this first morning of 2007 i am sitting in a beautiful house in Dhünn Germany, rain falling on the shockingly green fields and rolling forests of the Bergisches land. My body clock could not be more messed up. I realize how lucky i am to lead the life i have been leading... Last night i stood on a rainy ridge watching fireworks shoot up from a thousand houses in the city of Wermelskirchen across the valley- the sky ablaze with red and green and gold in all directions, glasses of Sekt, conversations with newly met brothers and sisters, my stomach full of amazing and with-a-brand-new-appreciation enjoyed German dishes like Schichtsalat, tomato soup with basil, fresh bread, Marscapone with rasberries... The day before i was eating pitas from a lebanese fast food store in the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, next to the world´s largest indoor ski slope (yes snow skiing in the Dubai desert, under the shadow of the world´s highest building). I swam in the Persian Gulf and smelled saltwater breezes and palm trees, and watched the sunrise over the Arabian desert behind the skyscrapers of dubai from a pier in the Persian Gulf. The day before that I was wondering the dusty streets of the Forbidden City in Beijing under the choking brown-gray haze that is the Chinese sky, eating chachangmien in the backstreets of a chinese hutong, and wondering at the extreme contrasts and contradictions that are China.

I haven´t had time to process any of this, and over the last 3 days i have had 4 4-hour sleep periods, but I think i will adjust. I have some great appointments with brothers coming up in Germany, and i am VERY excited to get back to Lithuanian soil again, to see how much of that language i can still speak, to see my old friends. Even if it means i have to fly through wretched Frankfort Hahn airport. I am looking forward to getting there and having time to process and catch up to all the crazy adjustments i have been through.

See you in Lietuva!

2006-11-15T05:17:00.000+08:00

Crossing rivers

The other day I was reading in deut 31 the song that moses sang at the end of his life and looked across the river into a land that he could not enter. Several things all converged at one time. I can in some ways relate to moses. I too have stood across the river many times from a country I could not enter. I have looked over the rushing Nemunas at the guard tower across from Rusne. I have looked over the frigid waters of the Narva River, with two imposing castles staring at each other, the EU faced off against the Russian Federation, longing to wander the dirt, chicken-filled streets of Ivangorod. I have gazed across the Bug at Belarus, seen Iran on the slopes of a distant Mt. Ararat, and now I have looked across the shallow sandy Tumen river at the most off-limits country of them all. Staring across a river at another country is a surreal feeling. (pictures on flickr) Especially when the river makes such a difference. It is almost impossible to believe that one little sandy river, easily fordable, and with no apparent guard towers or resistance, separates the easy and privileged life I lead here, from the complete otherworldness of the country over there. Just thinking about what is going on across that river, in those villages that I could see (assuming that they are not fake villages planned for the benefit of onlookers- that might very well be the case), the hillsides with every tree felled down for firewood, the rice crops planted on improbable slopes by people desperate to grow more food, the ramshackleness of some very believable huts, and the tired farmers going out to pull in the late October rice…. It is a great reminder for what a difference a river can make, and how it is only by chance that I ended up in the world on this side of it, and that they ended up on the other side of it. I don't really know what to believe sometimes of the things I hear… but I do know that living with that nearby has changed the way I see the world and live. It is hard to complain about cafeteria food that you don't like when you can look up and see those mountains. It is hard to complain about a message that bores me, knowing how desperate some people in the world are to be able to have a meeting and get teaching.

Also moses was not able to cross Jordan because of his mistakes that he made. He, as far as we know from heb 11 and jude ascended to paradise, yet the consequences of his failings were not small, even though he led a life where many things did please the father. I am confident of where I am headed after death, but some times I wonder if there will be areas in my life where I always stay on this side of the river, and curious about the other side, because of the bad decisions that I have made/am making… Standing across a river from a forbidden country is a good thing for a X'n to do. And no- looking over the Detroit river at Windsor doesn't count. :)

Peace out.

2006-10-26T08:47:00.000+08:00

A great sunday

Sunday morning i woke up at 6:45- even though it is almost november, it is already full daylight at 6:45 here. I had arranged to meet one of my students from SKor to go to the Roman C Ch here in town. I woke up to snow falling heavily, and mountains blanketed in snow. In the soft morning light the frigid stone halways of our school seemed cold, exactly the kind of day to stay warm in bed. Instead I met my student, and upon discovering that the cafeteria was not open yet, invited him to my messy room for an impromptu breakfast of huevos rancheros, and cereal i imported from Shanghai. With gloves on my hands (we'll see how long it is before i lose them) and my sturdy boots on, we rode the little bumpy minibus down the hill to the quite unimpressive looking grey Catholic ch. The inside was as cold as the outside, reminding me of the cold cement st. casimir's church behind LCC. it was barely decorated, and mostly it was old korean ladies, covered with cheap white prayer shawls, braving the freezing cold and mud streets at such an early hour. Even though i only know a few words in korean, it seemed very familiar to go to mass- the same rhythms and components that people around the world do. An Italian priest intoned the mass in perfect korean, attended by two mismatched chubby korean alter boys. I got in a really good conversation with my student, which was the point. I was impressed at how orthodox and austere the service was, matching the building- no saints, no mary, no candles, or shrines or altars... just a simple straightforward homily about our Master.

Then i trudged back up the snowy hill to go to our english language service. An incredibly motley crue of nationalities, styles, personalities, conceptions of Xity. Mainly yust staff and faculty, some foreign students, other random people who live and work around yanbian. it was a great service. authentic. heartfelt if not professional worship songs, some great hymns. An honest message. in that room are people who have risked and are risking so much, that small gathering would not be the fellowship i would pick were i to live in the United states, but i do appreciate these little outpost fellowships, made up of random and assorted people whose only common bond is the Master, whose worship is unstudied and rough-around-the-edges yet real.

This was followed by the worst cafeteria meal ever- i only ate the rice, and tried a little bit of the grass, but the after-taste was, well, grassy. Had a good talk with Vic, from Georgia, over lunch, about our responsibilities here and the often conflicting situations we are put in. Watched 15 minutes of "America's Next Supermodel"- the weekly ritual of some of our english faculty. A great reminder why i am not living in the US :) The contrast between the old ChosunJok (korean-chinese) ladies i had seen that morning, muddied and freezing from the trek to mass, and these self-absorbed, b**chy models couldn't have been greater.

My muscles still sore from a three-hour long sweet American football game the day before (which necessitated me hopping back and forth between English, Russian, and German), i next headed to a faculty meeting. I love my life some days- where else can I play American football on a ghetto pitch overlooking the gritty coal smudged skyline of Yanji and snowcapped mountains receding toward NK, calling out plays in russian, as a Quarterback, and the next day attending a faculty meeting all in korean. The faculty meetings, which are usually inadequately translated and overly boring, are notorious here at YUST for us non-Koreans, but it wasn't so bad. I took my new Korean book with me, and learned all kinds of cool things. Did you know that Korean puts their causal complementizer ("because") inside their verbs, after the stem, but before the tense-agreement information (I node). I don't get how that is syntactically possible. How can the C information which modifies the IP be dominated by the I node??? I have been trying to draw trees to figure it out.

Chonun aju bapa-yo hangukmalul kongbuhaNEULAGO-yo.
I-TOP very busy-DECL Korean -OBJ study BECAUSE-DECL
"As for me, I am very busy, because i am studying Korean"

Chonun kayo choha- NEULAGO- yo.
I-TOP go-DECL be good BECAUSE-DECL
"As for me, I go, because it is good"

Only linguistics dorks will care about this, but that was more than enough to fascinate me during my meeting. I must say though, our president is really an inspiring man, and totally optimistic- his vision is contagious

After that, I got to take a delicious 35 minute nap. Then I went to the warm, yellow, cozy apartment of Richard and Susanne Schwemer. Richard was once an administrator for the Munich School District in Bavaria, and is here with his wife for a year teaching German. I really appreciate their insights and hospitality. They invited the whole German community here (of which I am an ingrafted part) to an amazing meal. We had pasta salad, bavarian onion bacon and cheese cakes, roast meats, with great german sauces, garlic salad, bread, and of course kimbap!(it couldn't be ALL german). I am amazed they could throw that together with ingredients found in Yanji, and it was the best meal i have had in so long. Had such a great conversation, laughing, talking about life here in Yanji. It was so filling, not just for my stomach. I reluctantly tore myself away, armed with my new flashlight (which i had gotten at our very Korean new teachers reception dinner the night before), and trudged through the shuddering bear apple-pear orchards, avoiding the complaining geese, through the darkness towards the little warmly lit chapel across the valley. There is nothing like being in a freezing and dark night and approaching a chapel with warm yellow light streaming out the windows, the sounds of Russian praise choruses growing louder as you approach. I really like that group of brothers and sisters, and that simple service (yes, the third one of my day). It is good for my russian, but i really appreciate their warmth and interest. We in my small group had a really good discussion about luke, and i just realized that man, these are really great brothers and sisters. I felt so much at home there, and joking on the dark road back toward YUST at the end of the evening.

I spent the last hour of my day cleaning my floor, then getting cozy under my blankets, enjoying the company of my electric space heater and huge plant, and red a short story by Chekhov in Russian, and some German poetry. Reading Chekhov in Russian was one of those things on my life list of things to do before I die. I read it slowly, and still need to consult my dictionary, but i am doing it! Cross one thing off the list! I still have on the list though to write a poem in russian.

So that's a day in my life

PS: One thing that has happened a lot recently is power outages. Today i taught my last class, a 4 o'clock class, in the dying light of twilight. When it got to dark to read, all the students turned on their cell phones and aimed them at the blackboard and it was light enough to see actually! So much for candlelight. Maybe thats why its almost impossible to find a candle here in Yanji. Still its kind of cool and cozy to sit around in the dark office and chat with my colleagues. Its also a convenient procrastination excuse.

PPS: im thinking of going to lithuania for my two month winter break, help out at LCC however I can...- looking at cheap ways to cross this great landmass... another good procrastination tool.

2006-10-17T19:39:00.000+08:00

Ok- some more random things i have either seen, or learned about life here, since my last posting to this blog, which was ages ago! Sorry for the uncharachteristic silence faithful readers!

- I was overjoyed to discover that cilantro is abundant in China, it being the food that i missed most in Lithuania. What surprises me most is that Koreans on principle HATE cilantro. Something about the smell/taste drives them crazy, kind of the proverbial liver/brussels sprouts for Americans. I will never understand this reaction to something as amazing as cilantro from a people who have no qualms at eating every sort of rotten fermented vegetable under the sun. (and under the waves!)

- In one day in Wuxi I saw:

a shagnasty comatose panda

thirty old chinese people doing the electric slide in a park

people beating dogs with sticks and getting them to attack their arms, which were covered by a protective shield

a giant topiary that was part brontosaurus part elephant

cats in a monkey cage

people throwing their trash (hard) at bears in tiny rancid cement zoo cages trying to get them to make noises

panda bear shaped paddleboats

boiled corn on the cob that was so soggy and nasty that i almost rolfed when i bit in to it

a bright pink fake pagoda

GIGANTIC hornets

- In Shanghai, I saw many old men with "stat sheets" on sons and daughters who were too busy working to actually meet people to date. The parents basically haggle in the park all day trying to match up propitious marriages either among each others progeny, or with helpless bystanders. Given that the prospective marriage partners are too busy to actually meet people, i would say this doesn't bode well for the quality of those marriages. I laughed watching the desperate scene, but was also stuck by the tragedy of the frenzied capitalism here. mao is surely rolling in his grave, if he were to see the parade of guccis and starbucks and western tourists.

- in the oldest building of Shanghai, there is a gigantic starbucks on the first floor. In the ancient temple complex in Wuxi, a McDonald's adds an authentic oriental touch. Even little Yanji is due to have its first Walmart this spring!! (which normally i would abhor on principle, but given that my chances of finding decent cheese and possibly even tomato sauce will skyrocket upon its opening, i must begrudgingly admit an amount of eager expectation on my part).

- China is an urban planners dream. I remember walking through the halls of the UPLA building at MSU thinking how cool the projects were that the students were doing, redesigning little parks or neighborhoods. Here China is redeveloping massive hundreds of square mile tracts of land into cities. The advantage of communism- no red tape. Seriously, the projects here are MASSIVE, and surprisingly well done. China is building a modern harbor way out in the middle of the East China Sea, based around what is currently a small cluster of islets. It will be connected to the hungry markets of the mainland by a huge superhighway bridge, 35 miles long. They are already in the middle of doing this. A building is halfway finished in Pudong that will dwarf the Sears Tower, all of Chongming Island is being redeveloped into a massive exhibition of green living and environmentally friendly city-scape. Gigantic concentric park cities, harbor cities, StarWars-like in scale and farm are sprouting along the Chinese coast. Jaw-dropping, absoultely jaw-dropping. I dont see how a country that hasnt yet figured out that concrete sealant could keep buildings from crumbling after 5 years, or how to run a waste management system can pull this off.

- I wasn't kidding about the buildings here. Everywhere you see construction, but the problem is that buildings that are only 5 years old look like they are 20 years old. the construction quality is so bad, that all these buildings will probably have to be all built again within a decade or two.

-the scale of shanghai is mind blowing. there is no center, the way we think of it. you can take an hour train ride through the city, and basically never experience a change of density. As far as you see, 50 story towers crowd each other out, along narrow streets, old style chinese houses are being torn down everywhere that they still exist to make room for these towers. I have experienced density, as in manhattan. But such density sustained over such a large area- that is something i have never come close to experiencing and can't describe. Even Hong Kong is squeezed basically into a very small area, instead of sprawling across a huge area, the way that Shanghai is.

- remember the 80's game frogger? it has nothing on crossing streets in Chinese cities. No vehicle ever has any intention of stopping, swerving, or arresting speed for the sake of a paltry pedestrian. I thought tbilisi was bad. It is a mystery to me i haven't seen any human roadkill.

- just a short walk from YUST i am in a total wilderness, total agrarian landscape. I am so glad that i live outside of Yanji up on this hillside. Even in these crystal clear golden october days, often there is a huge cloud of smog which totally blocks the view out over the city.

- i was able to go to the meat market all by myself.. i wish i could take pictures there, but i think they'd construe that as rude. Seeing the filetted dogs, and random pieces of meat and every available sea creature. First you buy the meat, then you take it to ladies who grind it for you in a meat grinder. There are 6 of them and they all yell at you and try to get you to come to them. I don't discern any difference in the grinding abilities among the ladies so it is always hard for me to choose which one to use as they all shout at me. The reward for this is sometime this week i will cook some ground lamb with onions and cilantro and eat it on homemade tortillas- on a day when i cant stomach the caf food that will be the perfect treat.

- apparently ice your muffins with your ersatz evaporated-milk/non-dairy-coffee-creamer frosting BEFORE you bake them in your toaster oven.

- i played Mafia the other night... in Chinese... the official party game of Chr'stendom. I think i have played mafia in 10 countries and probably 6 languages. a good way to learn some vocab

- When i was in Wuxi i went crazy on the western food- i was so happy. i ate at a mcdonalds twice, starbucks once, and TGI Fridays. I was never so happy to see a hamburger. You know the movie Office Space, where Jennifer Anniston has to wear all those "pieces of flair"? Well we (kathryn and I) had a waiter, who was so covered in flair that he could barely move. Buttons, ribbons, spangles left and right, the combination of that, plus a slightly nerdy physique and the awkward Chinese accent--- poor kathryn- was in tears... It was a perfect random end to a random day that included me randomly attending the prewedding reception of a chinese couple i had no clue who they were. they had a really bold event though, declaringly publically their belief.

-Wuxi has giant 5 foot fake water lilies that glow at night. i am used to fake many things here, including (according to kathryn) fake rocks, that make fake "nature sounds". but somehow these water lilies managed to pull it off.

- it is pitch dark by 5 pm, and there is no heat yet- i am freezing.

- i am slowly learning my way around chinese food- had two amazing successive dinners of ordered in chinese food at chunhua's flat.

- i feel like i could sleep forever here- little things are so draining. i need to be cautious that i dont get too much sleep.

- i finally got a korean textbook today- a gift from its author!! a korean sociolinguist who studied under Bill Labov and did the seminal study of sociolinguistics of Seoul korean.

OK enough trivia for now. stay tuned for more- these are the kinds of things i dont think its worthwhile to send out in a support letter, but are nonetheless maybe interesting to someone.

2006-09-26T21:04:00.000+08:00

Mantianxing-

So this Saturday we had an MT. MT is one of those words that are ostensibly in English, but which English speakers never themselves use. MT stands for “management training” and is a ubiquitous feature of Korean culture- the equivalent roughly of the English word “retreat”. Other examples of this strange linguistic phenomenon I have noticed are “Handy” for “mobile phone” and “Beamer” for “projector” in German. Borrowed from English, but misborrowed somehow. With the huge rate of borrowing from English, it is only natural that a few miscarriages will happen along the way I guess.

Anyway- we went to a place called Mantianxing… Which would be translated “Plentitude of Heavenly Stars Lake”. The English translations of these things always sound way more exotic than the Chinese originals. Anyway it was a great time to get away from the pressures of YUST, and even though I am still battling a bad illness, I am really glad that I went. The drive, on the road to North korea, was spectacular, and trite as it may sound, the best adjective for the day was “golden”. The rice fields ripe for harvest, the steep karst hills lining golden valleys, covered with craggy tamaracks, and silver maples, and some kind of bamboo-ey pine tree, yellow and orange and gold and brown and red. The roads are narrow here, lined with birches, the villages are neat and orderly, pink houses with blue rooves, an occasional red neon cross marking the site of a ch, and always that last line of mountains, on the other side of which is THAT country- the other side, that brooding presence to the south that is always on the horizon of our thoughts and minds. I couldn’t help, as I spent the day playing games with the English majors, meeting my advises, going on a lazy motorboat ride through landscape straight out of ancient Chinese paintings, thinking about the people who live on the other side of THOSE mountains. Especially as I spent a lot of the day talking with one of my advisees who is from the capital of that country- an energetic, smart young kid, with great English… not quite what I expected, honestly…

It was a good chance to meet my students, freshmen, hesitant and uncertain about their English, some older S Korean brothers, enjoy the lakes, and the pagodas, and the beautiful fall foliage. The only hitch is that one of our buses wouldn’t start on the way home, so we had to spend an hour all crammed into the buses. Eventually someone thought to jump the bus. It’s frustrating when you don’t know the language well enough to be involved in what is happening, or in the decision making process, but in a way, it is also kind of relaxing. There’s a certain kind of freedom that comes from being ignorant and powerless.

Random post, I know, but just wanted to write about our MT. Please check out the photos on my flickr page.

2006-09-15T02:36:00.000+08:00

Foiled again:

There are Five Famous Mountains in China, storied in song, and the nearest one, Eternally White Mountain, is only 5 hours away- tantalizingly close. From all accounts I heard, now is the best time to see the mountain, and if I were to wait any longer, I run the risk of running into winter. So after a couple foiled attempts to arrange passage to the storied mountain, my incredibly sacrificial and generous friend ChunHua gave up some of her precious weekend to get up at 3 am and arrange for big-nose me to go to the mountain. A new friend, Josh Kwan, a journalist doing a piece on Chinese Koreans hitched up with us (even though he had already been to the mountain) for the long ride. The lake is spectacularly gorgeous, with steep mountains, crashing down into the crystal azure waters of the crater lake, verdant beaches sweeping around the azure pool of blue, the stalwart rampart of North Korea on the other side of the lake. The fluffy clouds reflect in the water like a mirror as you look down on the lake from the crater rim, some 1,000 ft above the lake.

Unfortunately, all I saw was this:

Yes it was pouring rain, and frigidly cold, and the visibility was about 10 meters. So I had a 5 hour long bus ride, got completely soaked and freezing, basically for nothing. Yet I still had a great time- it was really fun talking to Chunhua and josh, seeing the foggy countryside of China, seeing beech and tamarack forests at the peak of autumn colors, and even seeing a waterfall in the mist.

Although my plan to gaze at yet another “axis of evil” power (I viewed Iran from Armenia in June) was foiled, and the most beautiful lake eluded my view, well I still got to eat corn cooked in a hot spring, see real mountains, drive up a windy road, try lots of fun foods, and spend some good quality time with ChunHua and Josh. We topped it off by eating some AMAZING bulgogi (a Korean BBQ kind of thing, eaten inside of lettuce leaves with chili bean paste and rice) and noodles. My stomach was a bit upset, perhaps from the donkey dumplings I had the night before, but the long day, despite the rain, the crazily loud and horrible Chinese variety shows inflicted on us unmercifully on the zigzaggy bus ride, turned out to be all-in-all a pretty good one. Sometimes my foiled plans, turn out to be OK after all… (as per the very first entry on this blog)

You can see more pictures of Changbaishan at my Flickr page

2006-09-15T02:35:00.000+08:00

Google Earth:

Whoever invented this thing was evil. And Jared is also evil for installing it on my computer. This is my latest Jones. Yesterday I spent an hour that I should have spent grading wandering the streets of Bandar Seri Begawan. You can see all of the houses built on stilts in the Brunei River, and walk from house to house on the wooden planks. You can see the 16^th century fake sailing ship parked in the lagoon in front of the most beautiful mosque in the world… You can dive bomb into the swimming pools in the luxurious courtyards of the Sultan of Brunei’s palace. This week I strolled up and down the Avenida de la Reforma in Buenos Aires, tooled past the Parliament Building along the highways of Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, and jostled among the sailing ships parked in the harbor of Valetta, Malta. Is this a cool program or what!!

2006-09-05T20:18:00.000+08:00

I am the foreigner that I hate…

We have met the enemy and he is us. G is dealing a lot with my pride of late, and judgmentalness (not sure if that's a real word- sounds like one, but my spell check says no).

Basically I have become the American in some ways that I have always hated in other people. I am frustrated that I can't make myself understood in any language. I am grossed out by seeing the live silkworms wriggling in huge vats in the marketplace (we're supposed to eat those!!). Its day 10 and I already feel like I don't want to see kimchee again for at least a month. I crave hanging out with other westerners, and feel intimidated by the crowds around me. No matter where I go, there is nothing I can do to fit in… it is going to be painfully obvious no matter what that I don't belong here. I find myself thinking skeptically about the country I am in. I'm not embracing the inconveniences as colorful differences owing to a vastly different past, and an engaging opportunity to learn about another culture. Instead I find myself thinking superior thoughts about my culture, and judging the system I am in. In short- I find myself afraid of the unknown. I have never really been this way before. I devour languages normally, and analyze them and revel in them and love them. After sitting in 8 hours of meetings in Korean, I feel overwhelmed by the Korean language (Hangukeo). I don't feel like I have an in- I realize that I rely heavily on morphology to do my language analysis. That's why languages like Estonian and Lithuanian were so great for me. Korean has some morphology true, Chinese has very little, and I have a hard time hearing the phonemic contrasts I need to hear and a hard time parsing the words.

I know it is the first hump, and once things get going I will become more myself I hope. This is a bigger cultural jump than I have ever made before, and apparently even jumps like to Georgia or Armenia didn't prepare for me this. Or maybe they did, and it would have been still harder for me had I not gone there. I think the key thing is that its one thing to be somewhere as a tourist, it's another thing to live there, and know you are committed.

As much as I find myself sometimes wanting to just run away, I know I won't and I shouldn't, I know I am called to stay and to let this wave crash over me. I know I am being changed- I can feel it.

I am hearing incredible stories still, and I am very blessed and encouraged to see what is happening in this part of the world, people who are risking literally everything for the sake of what they believe- an intensity of life I have rarely seen. I see G answering that belief by manifesting H'self in powerful ways!

I sat in a little ch last night, cold autumn rain (yes its quite autumn already) pouring on the roof, singing pr songs in Russian, surrounded by Russian Korean bros and siss from central asia and maritime kraj, and I felt truly at home for the first time. The Russian language felt so familiar, and the students who had grown up in Tajikistan and Ussuriland and Tashkent, I was able to understand them in a way that I still feel unable to do with many here so far.

And a sign that I am maybe slowly becoming myself again…. I hammered out a little conversation in Chinese/Russian/English with a Mongolian student (brother) who speaks no Korean (the operating language of our college), almost no English, a few words of Russian, and only some Chinese… (I don't envy him… lift up Amo and his transition if you think to). And I loved it. Being bathed in those songs pointed upwards toward our source of peace, the walk through the rain, past the sunflower and applepear trees in the darkness of a September night, corrected my focus, gave me hope that I could in fact make it here. I know that My Best Friend is very active here, and I will be guided into those opportunities and relationships that I will need to survive and to thrive here.

2006-08-30T04:17:00.000+08:00

Check out new photos of Yanji at the new Flickr site here!

2006-08-27T21:36:00.000+08:00

Well i am sitting in sweltering heat. It is the second day i have had no power, and there isnt a breeze for miles around. But it rained all last night, and the upshot of that is that the skies are clear and i can now see the distant mountains strewn around the horizon of the bowl i live in. The downshot is that i bet the humidity is 85% right now, and no way to cool off. But as uncomfortable as I am, i am very thankful for all of your pryrs, as i feel much more comfortable here.

Today i was able to go to an above ground c, which has 6 meetings every sun day, with about 10,000 in attendance each week. The teaching at this particular one is unbelievably evng for a govt c, but this area is well known for being something quite unique in terms of its s atmosphere and climate. I have already heard incredible stories of faithfulness and provision, which i wont be able to share in full pry till i leave here. The building is surprisingly obvious, occupying a very conspicuous place in the city, and a huge neon crss, the famous sign of korean c. Not a new language for me in terms of c service, but in terms of country for sure- even though here and tai wan are supposedly the same country, i see almost no similarity.

Yesterday, our J saved my sanity and soul by giving me the opportunity to go outside of town. i went shopping with chunhua, then had lunch with some people from the english dept (everyone here is a female! the meetings are going to be very female-style..) i looked at the distant mountain which has been tempting me from my office window. It is called Mu er shan (Hat mountain). I asked Chunhua if it is possible to go there, and she replied "well we can go right now". I cannot underestimate for you how much i needed to get out of the city. As we took the #14 though the mud streets (the ground here is a clay that seems perfectly engineered to create a particularly evil kind of mud when wet), through the huge construction sites, we sound found ourselves on a country road, leading through real trees, up into the hills. The fresh air came as a shock to me- i dont think i have smelled anything so good or needed. We climbed the mountain from the parking lot, past Korean men dancing with drums at their picnic, lovers hiding in the knarled tamarack groves, and soon left the people, taking a steep switchbacking path up the mountain. It turns out that on the otherside of the rim of this bowl in which i live is the China of my dreams, the scenery of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Steep mountains, forested valleys, little villages with clay tiled roofs strewn across valleys of terraced rice paddies. The woods here are full of tamaracks, which are my very favorite tree, a gift from Gd to me... Just sitting up there, breathing clean air, feeling the refreshing breeze all around me, the beautiful little rocks, having an amazing conversation with my so-hospitable, and so-much-appreciated friend Chunhua about the s realities of life here in Yanbian... wow for the first time i was able to feel at home here and at ease, and to begin to get out of defensive mode, and to to concentrate on having a heart for these people and this place. I came back enlivened and refreshed, and even though i had no power or way to shower, my german neighbor Sandra invited me to shower at her apt. I have appreciated getting to speak in German, and being able to express myself completely without having to worry about how i need to modify my language. I am very thankful for the German community here, who has made me feel so welcome, and seems like a rope- a link to a world i love and know and understand. I am even over jetlag....

Some random things i have noticed so far about China (or at least Yanji):

It gets dark at 6pm here... already... All China is on the same time zone, even though it should have 5. So the result of that is it is light at 5am and dark by 6pm. I imagine that in the winter, it is going to be fully dark by 3pm here. That is going to be rough.

Asphalt doesnt seem to have been invented here. Mud however is here in abundance

Even though Chinese population is officially shrinking, or stabilized, huge new housing complexes are springing up everywhere here. Who is going to live in these places?

I had Uighur lamb kebabs for lunch today, ironically, something that Yanji Koreans are kind of well known for.

The sculpture park at my school is the weirdest thing i have ever seen. I cant wait to post the pictures on here.

My school has 1600 students, from 6 countries, faculty from many more. All the buildings are connected by a long elevated walkway that they call "The Great Wall" because it looks like the Great Wall of China.

I saw people selling monkeys on the street.

I saw an ox cart tied up in front of a 33 story brand new luxury skyscraper.

every floor of every dorm here has bona fide members of the party, who keep an eye on things

the rooves here are- to a surprising extent- blue

you cant buy ground meat... but you can take your real meat to a meat grinder stall and they will grind it for you

in the cafeteria, you are given a metal bowl full of random korean foods- mystery meat, kimchee, cold noodles, which resemble earth warms, and lots of chili paste. then they spoon a ladel of beef broth over it all, give you two metal chopsticks and you are good to go. Still, cant complain for 50 cents.

the bus ride into town costs 27 cents. as does a coke. a nice meal costs around 5 dollars.

the downtown here looks very modern and sweet, but you dont have to get too far away from that to discover that you are in fact, in a rapidly developing country (read mud, dirt, trash, potholes)

it will be beautiful here once autumn comes

the bed in my apartment is a huge double bed, which no joke, takes up about a third of the space in the room.

the cars here are sweet! way nicer than the ones in lithuania- youd think you were in sweden if you were just looking at the cars. however they are mixed with rikshas, motor scooters, all kinds of bikes, and even livestock, on the streets of yanji.

More to come, and photos too!

2006-08-22T03:02:00.000+08:00

Tomorrow morning I am leaving- I am hoping to be able to continue to update the blog from over there, although i may have to be more circumspect in what i say and how i say things. I kind of went through the past entries and sanitized them a bit.

I just read this amazing book about the history of Xnity in the country that i am going to, and man am I humbled. So much has happened there in the last 50 years, and so many regime and policy changes, and various approaches of the government towards these issues. There is so much i am excited to find out in person from the people who live and work and there.. things that i cant really find out electronically and from a distance

the tourist reports i have read about the city i am going to say that by that country's standards it is pretty clean and doing really well economically because of foreign investment from the country two to the south. ALso and most encouraging for me, it said that the area is filled with beautiful forests, especially in autumn, and that the Chch there is pretty large and growing. I was really saddened though to read the very hard and real stories of the refugees who swim across the border and take refuge in that town- i know i will see those people, and i have no idea how i will respond when i do see them. its hard to imagine what i can offer to people from that very very closed country, a reality that i cannot even begin to comprehend...

am i nervous about going? Yes.... less so than i would have been before going to Lithuania... randoml;y packing up and moving to a country where i know noone is definitely not a new thing for me. and i know far less about This situation coming into it than i knew about LCC coming into that. The things that is scary, but perhaps i may find freeing, is that in Lithuania i always had the pressure to kind of conform or fit in, because i felt like i COULD theoretically, fit in. Let me tell you- there is no way on earth i will be able to fit in there- i know so little about the two cultures, C and K, in which i will be living, i know almost nothing of the languages, and it will be obvious from a first glance that i do NOT belong there. I can still learn to be sensitive, but maybe i will find a bit more freedom to be "me" and just do things that probably a local person wouldn't be able to do.

I must say goodbye to bread, and cheese, and sweets, and all of the european foods i love. i must say goodbye to happy and friendsly indoeuropean languages. I must say goodbye to the jaded and trendy post-Xn environments in which i have grown accustomed to working in and doing my work in.

I must say hello to fish eyes and kimchee, and staring at signs for minutes, seeing if i can make out anything, and becoming functionally illiterate, and learning a whole new system of doing everything. Hopefully i will be also saying hello to good new colleagues and students.

Please p for me, that i will be able to find a (or several) good, encouraging bros, and fairly early on.

Thanks to you readers out there...

2006-08-17T08:59:00.000+08:00

I'm going to Nashville, and that's a fact!

Sing that to the tune of "Jackson" by Johnny and June Cash, as was stuck in my head the whole last weekend while i was in Nashville. I have an interesting relationship now with Nashville- a city I had little to no relationship with only one year ago. I just returned from my second trip to Nashville to be in a wedding in 6 months.

For those of you from LCC, you may have heard that Taras Mikhailiuk got married this last weekend. It was funny to listen to all those southerners trying to pronounce "Mikhailiuk". Taras surely faces an interesting period of adjustments. Kelly, his wife, seems an amazing woman, and im glad to have met her. Its hard to think of a family MORE different from the typical Belarussian family. Huge, gregarious, precocious, welcoming, kisses and y'all's flying around- the loving gigantic X'n family from the deep south that i have heretofore only seen in movies. It was a gorgeous wedding- especially considering it was done on only 5 weeks notice!

I got to hang out with my good friend Doug, whose wedding i was best man in in March. I really appreciate Doug's commitment to me as a friend. it was a huge blessing as well to get to talk to his wife, Audrey, an up and coming X'n music star! Since, at their wedding, i was only introduced to Ashley at the wedding rehearsal (an odd position for a best man to be in), i was really blessed to get to talk more at length and to hear her heart. It was great to go on a long rainy walk with Doug in the woods as well- thats how I'll always remember him.

I also was very blessed to go to New Song X'n Fellowship again- a church that i know now quite a few people at actually, primarily contacts from Exodus, and to stay with my amazingly encouraging bro Josh Coy, and to see Curtis Baker again... Every hour i have spent in Nashville has been a great hour for me! So many things seem to be pointing toward the fact that i need to commit to a community, and i know there is good community in Nashville. But i really don't want to live there! I'm afraid to say that- because its just like Gd to send you somewhere you don't want to go, because He knows it will be good for you. So in the meantime I am going to C_na, and i don't have to decide about moving to Nashville, or anywhere else just yet...

2006-08-17T06:13:00.000+08:00

Just some typical sunset shots from Northwest Lower Michigan :)

2006-08-17T06:00:00.000+08:00

Presque Isle River

2006-08-16T12:53:00.000+08:00

Northern Michigan, random shots

2006-08-16T12:45:00.000+08:00

Fayette State Park, on the Garden Peninsula

2006-08-16T12:40:00.000+08:00

View from Cut River bridge, on US 2, near Brevort. I love the way white pine trees look like pagodas

2006-08-16T12:32:00.000+08:00

North Manitou Island, from Pyramid Point

the three with the turquoise water are Elk Lake, the actual color, not far from my house. and Torch Lake is even more beautiful... crystal clear lakes with sandy bottoms

2006-08-16T12:25:00.000+08:00

The Boardman River valley- one of the best trout streams in the US- literally down the road from me

2006-08-16T12:17:00.000+08:00

the bridge over the Elk River in Elk Rapids, with East Bay beyond

me at the Marina in Traverse City

2006-08-16T11:39:00.000+08:00

TUEBOR!

Ok- so I seriously love my home state of Michigan. There are many times where i feel much more patriotic about being a Michigander (and NO it is NOT Michiganian!!) than about being an American. I have basically spent since July 1st in my home state of Michigan, excluding a few hours in Bayfield, WI, and an extended weekend this past weekend in Nashville (more on that above). In some ways it has been hard, as i have had no regular access to a car, and the American public transportation system sucks, so i have been bored sometimes, and feel far away from my friends. In fact i think in some ways God has, in this time, been stripping me of many of the things that i found my identity in; a job, doing ministry, friendships, academics, being surrounded by languages, being "good" at being a European. The thing that is left to me is Jesus...

But in many ways it has been a good time- i have had a lot of time to think and pray and come to grips with who i am when noone is watching except God, and a lot of times to learn to appreciate my homeland again, and some great bonding time with my parents and family members.

But back to my main topic of this post: the glories of the State of Michigan :) I have always come back here, to Michigan, no matter how much i wander in this world. I realize what a great neighborhood community i grew up in here in Traverse City, and especially what a GREAT church community i grew up in at University Reformed Church in East Lansing. I got all four of my degrees from Michigan State University, a university that is 90% Michiganders, and as i drive across the highways of this great state, the green exit signs pronounce the names of towns that are homes to great friends, people whose stories i got to hear while a proud Spartan, studying on the bank of the Red Cedar River.. Towns like Kalamazoo, Ontonogan, South Haven, South Lyon, Zeeland, Leland, Mount Pleasant, Mount Clemens, Pentwater, Coldwater, Sand Lake, Fife Lake, Grass Lake, Lake Odessa, Ionia, Sparta, Negaunee, Ishpeming, litter the landscape of my friendships and memories, as i drive down I-75 or I-94 or US 27 or US 131...

Did you know that Michigan has the longest coastline of any state, except Alaska?

That it takes longer to drive from Monroe, Michigan to Copper Harbor, Michigan than it takes to drive from Detroit to Florida?

That Michigan is home to the highest ski jump in the Western Hemisphere?

That Michigan has the highest mountains between the Alleghenies and the Black Hills?

That one of the most important battles of the War of 1812, which gave the US control over the Great Lakes, was fought at Mackinac?

Submitted with this post are some great photos of Michigan i have taken this month. Hopefully you can all learn to appreciate this great state along with me :)

2006-07-21T06:08:00.000+08:00

I was digging through some boxes of old stuff today- i found some amazing pieces of correspondence- letter i had gotten from and written to a woman i dated, letters from old friends, hopes for ministry, accounts of spiritual warfare, postcards from missionary friends around the world, the letter i wrote to my friend David the night before i really gave my life to Ch_t with his helpful explanatory notes written on it, photos from my freshman year in college (i looked like such a dork then- maybe i can blame it on mid-90's fashion), linguistics notes, handouts from previous Exodus conferences, etc.... That is a great thing to do now and then. In addition to feeling a little shocked at how closely i was once walking with the Sp_t compared to now, and the fire of the passion of my heart for Ch_t, i unearthed two poems i had written, presented below.

I don't write poems very often, and the first one is actually a song. Every once in a while inspiration will hit me. You can get a pretty good idea of my heart i think in them. (you can tell I'm influenced by John Greenleaf Whittier)

Last night i went for a hike on the Platte Plains Trail, a 5km hike, which dead-ends on a deserted beach on Platte Bay, the wide sweep of the bay, with the views of the several hundred foot high Sleeping Bear Dunes and Empire Bluffs about 10 miles to the right, and Platte River Point and Point Betsie 9 miles to the right, a gorgeous setting sun into clear water with a flawless sandy bottom.

Gd knew what he was doing when he made northern michigan

Enjoy the poems if thats your thing

2006-07-21T06:06:00.000+08:00

Snow

The winter snows
Its drifting flows
Engulf my way
Surround my sight
With pale cold day
And crippled light.
I’m all alone
And slowly shown
The gorgeous show
That stills the wood,
And far below
Ablaze with snow,
The silent and forgotten road.

The world froze
As Boreas blows
An aching drone.
Each trunk stands barren
Like a bone.
The living cold
Like Lethe’s flow
Makes time feel old
And long ago.
The tremulous and sighing trees,
The world brought down to its knees
In deference to this constant foe.

The hard earth knows what winter brings
And biding the concealing snow,
It dreams of coming golden springs.

The river’s stopped,
Its ledges topped
With drifts of white
And icy sheets.
And in the vacant winter light
In tempo with the coming night
The heart of winter’s stillness beats.
Night’s firm regime,
Pale twilights beam,
A cold owl call,
A stony pond,
No warmth at all
Or light beyond.
This lovely world
Remains my home.
The crystal, dazzling, starry dome
The sky that oversees it all,
The north wind’s groaning, plaintive, call
A beauty all its own, unfurled.

2006-07-21T05:56:00.000+08:00

Northland Psalm
by me Oct 1999

From the big lake comes the sighing
Of a chill surrounding breeze
And the echoes of it dying
Lost in far dune-crowning trees

Now the gulls have ceased their crying
And we pause a while in ease
‘Neath the winter-friend Orion
And the dazzling Pleiades

In the night sky we can find them,
On this autumn night they shine
Who can bind them or untie them?*
Every one of them is thine

In the vastness, low and hovering
Barely floating, clean and pure
Hangs the waxing moon uncovering
Tranquil shadows on the shore

As the waves are gently breaking
Liquid whispers, big lake heaving,
Rocking cedars, pensive, quaking
Their voice into the nighthymn weaving

In the lake gleam bits of starlight
And the moon slows in its mirror
On the dunes, diffused and soft-white
Moonlight finds us awestruck here

What a wonder lies before us!
All around His heartbeat beating
Who are we to join the chorus?
All our works are dim and fleeting

Hear Him love us with each wavebreak
On the beach spread out below us
In each moment, feel His heartbreak
Drink His love and let Him know us

On each ghost tree see Him dying
In the dunegrass hear Him calling
Once defeated, watch Him trying
To deliver us from falling

In the Passage**, almost hiding
Stands a beacon, in its role
With its lonely pulsing guiding
Mournful freighters through the shoal

High upon the bluff we feal Him
In this silence hear Him roar
Grass and sand and waves reveal Him
As no sermon has before

Though the wavesong bids us linger
And the starry skies entreat,
Though in bluffs we see His finger,
Though the lake-bourne airs are sweet,
Though the steady breeze restores us,
Though the moonlight makes us yearn,
Though His father-love reigns o’er us,
We must leave, though to return.

As we go, not seen before, a glimpse catch where lake meets sky
Low and dim glows an aurora; now and then its streamers fly
Pale and green and shifting slowly, thinking of it, I remember
What a night so still and holy on a dunetop in September.

*A quote from the book of Job
** The Manitou Passage in Lake Michigan contains several islands and dangerous shoals along the main shipping route for freighters

2006-07-13T23:53:00.000+08:00

ahh.... Northern Michigan... it is a beautiful place to live- noone can argue with that

2006-07-13T23:35:00.000+08:00

Follow your heart.... not

At LCC where i was just teaching, there was a class for first year students called LIFE group. basically it was to practice English writing while writing about less formal topics. One them that i read over and over in my life group journals was "you just have to follow your heart, and then you'll be happy :) "

Reading this statement always brought a strong reaction- the kind you get when you see an overly sappy commercial, or hear a Miss America candidate say "I am going to bring about world peace, can't we all just get along?".... this statement is so thrown around in our culture that people don't realize it has absolutely no meaning whatsoever, nor any power to give any meaning to one life...

You see the heart is often our worst enemy. "Following your heart" most often means do whatever i want to do, regardless of the consequences to others or myself, and no reason to feel guilty- my heart made me do it. Jeremiah 17:9 says "The heart is deceiptful above all other things- who can trust it?". The heart, the metaphorical seat of our emotional passions and desires gets us into trouble more often than not. I find myself often engaged in a war against my heart, which more than any other part of my self (mind, body, spirit) seems determined to draw me away from Gd's life-giving plan for me, and his fullness of life.

When we follow our heart, pastors run away with their secretaries, people cheat on each other, people sleep with each other before they are committed, people buy huge things they don't need, people seek revenge, people hold grudges, people lash out, people become emotionally dependent or enmeshed, people kill steal and murder, people view themselves as better than others, people envy and judge.

Gd has given us the power to NOT follow our heart, which leads us down a dangerous road. He has given us a mind that warns us that our heart is unreliable, and a spirit which holds us back from making the dangerous leaps that the heart would demand from us.

And even happiness itself is ephemeral at best- happiness is conditional, a pure cocktail of chemicals, something that evaporates as soon as the conditions which induced those chemicals change. So many people seek happiness as an end. When truly happiness should be seen as the occasional side effect of joy. Give me X'n Joy anyday over happiness. Joy is something that is unconditional, that is experienced equally at a funeral as at a wedding, in prison as in freedom, joy can meet and incorporate sadness, grief, confusion, frustration, and come out on top. Joy is the unchanging hope that we have in a Gd who is beyond us, the Great Author of our Story, who has a plan to grow us and make us more like Him and will never abandon us.

I wan't to conclude with some sweet lyrics from my all-time hero, Don Chaffer of Waterdeep

I believe the heart's a theatre

And that the actors on its stage

Are playing dreams, but they're impostors

and the devil pays their wage...

I believe the passions of that drama

that we're certain is for real

is a diversion for our senses

while the director(Satan) comes to steal

Ever since i was a little kid i didn't want to run away

But it scared me half to death to think that I might have to stay

I've had a hundred scarecrow certainties

built a wooden drawbridge for my brain

But it all comes down, when i see your(Js') face against the windowpane

2006-07-13T23:23:00.000+08:00

Liberal

One of the things i have noticed on my return to the US is the old conservative-liberal debate, which i think is really a false dilemma. Everyone is quick to try to label each other "conservative" or "liberal", but really there are so many different dimensions to which these things can apply. There are matters of fiscal policy, foreign policy, social policy, environmental policy, moral issues, etc.. and it seems sad if most people just dogmatially choose only one end of the spectrum in all these matters which are very different.

The thing that is hardest, is that when you talk to Xns, or listen to n radio, the "liberals" are the enemy.

Liberal means "free"... I don't know when American ns forgot this message, but Js says that he came to set us free, he said that all things are permissible but not beneficial. Evng Xns should be the most "liberal" people of all, fully embracing their freedom in Ch_t, not trying through manipulating or legalism to keep people in bondage. The New Testament is very clear that adherence to the law has no power to change a person or give him the strength to resist sin.

It is a sad day when evnglcl Xns have allowed themselves to become on "enemy terms" with the word that means "freedom". Don't you think people already see the church as just a bunch of rules, that they could never adhere to? Evngcls need to be liberating and preach the message that one is truly "liberal" in Ch_t, not bound by traditions and legalism, but free to live in one's calling. If the world saw Xns celebrating our freedom, maybe they would be more drawn to Js

2006-07-03T23:48:00.000+08:00

The Loon is my favorite bird

When missionaries first came to Michigan, they were able to get spiritual breakthrough among the Ojibwa by comparing Js to the loon (Maang) in the Ojibwa myth about the creation of man. Basically Gd (Gzhemnidoo) saw that there was nothing in man that was appealing or attractive to him, and he cast man into the depths of lake superior (Gzhegaami). The loon however, deepest of divers, swam down to the bottom and breathed life into the man. Again and again the loon dove, and eventually the man rose back to the surface, lungs inflated with air. Because of the loons sacrifice, Gd restored man to life. Loons are incredibly faithful birds, mate for life, and take excellent care of their chicks.

Last night i was walking through the forest, and fighting against my heart. If you have never heard a loon cry, there is no way to explain it- the haunting call full of sadness, but always seeming to end with a note of hope. The bird was voicing my heart's prayer. Js is reminding me in this time, that like the man in the Ojibwa myth, i am completely hopeless on my own power. So much of what i try to do- my ministry at LCC, my fight to try to stay pure, my fight to believe that Js himself is sufficient for me- is done out of my own strength and power. But I am realizing that as I try to minster and live and breathe out of my own strength, that i can do nothing but sink downward downward into the icy depths of the great lake. So much of what i do is to impress other people, and my battle towards holiness is fueled more often by a desire to not disappoint others, out of a fear of what people would think of me if they knew of my sin, than out of a desire to not grieve the Js who loves me and saved me and gave evertyhing for me. I care more about what people think of my sin, than what Js thinks of my sin, and i am tired of that.

A very trusted brother spoke the truth to me last night-- he said that to have been dissapointed in yourself means that you trusted in self. Self can do nothing (Jn 15- read it from Js' lips) I apologize that i have trusted in self. To those of you at LCC i ask forgiveness that i have been ministering their out of my own flesh, my own wisdom, my own understanding, rather than that of Gd.

Js is breaking me apart right now, and grinding me up.... he is wrestling me, and he is slowly pinning me to the floor, getting me into a hold that i cannot get out of, no matter how hard i struggle (not unlike what my roomate Janis does to me when we wrestled in the evenings :) ). But being pinned to the ground by Him is so much better than not touching him at all... i havent felt this close to christ in a long time- to feel him pressing against me, pushing me, revealing all of my weaknesses and how vulnerable i am and how my own flesh will never avail me in this fight-- i will take this minute-by-minute fight over calloused and cynical distant Xnity anyday. I am thankful that Js is throwing at me more than i feel like i can handle, because it builds and fuels my relationship with Him, and after all, the biggest Xn cliche of all, yet it is so true....

Js doesnt want my rightwousness, he wants me. Js-following is not a religion but a relationship. He is commited to my growth, not my comfort.

And with most of who i am, i can say I thank Him for it.

I thank you that as i sank into the dark depths, Js you dove into the water and breathed life into my lifeless lungs. I thank you that because of your act of sacrifice, i can be presented before god again, and stand unafraid, even in the middle of so much doubt and turmoil...

2006-06-27T11:32:00.000+08:00

me and the Liffey River in Dublin

me at Slaibh Liog, Europes highest cliffs, at 1,600 meters, in county Donegal.

me and Marina Proseckina, a former student, one of many Lithuanians in Dublin- Irish food in a pub in Sligo

2006-06-27T11:06:00.000+08:00

My hometown

Today i wandered the streets of my hometown, the city of Traverse City, on the shore of the West Arm of the Grand Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan... and i am stuck with a dilemma.

What do you do when the people who are supposed to be your people, your Volk, suddenly no longer feel familiar to you in anyway, and feel just as foreign and weird as the strangers you saw on the streets of Dublin, Ireland just a couple days before...

What do you do when your hometown, the place you lived for 18 years, the place that raised you, the place where you roots, feels as unfamiliar as any random medium-sized city in Germany or France or Armenia or anywhere else...

Is it a sign i have been travelling too long? No seriously, i was wondering down Front Street today, and nothing seemed familiar- new buildings everywhere, gigantic cars, huge lanes on the asphalt streets, concrete sidewalks, the overheard snatches of conversation that seemed so trivial and superficial in a dialect of English whose rates of nasality are notorious among linguists... the Northern Cities Vowel Shift now has Traverse City firmly in its grasp. The foods seemed all like gift boxes and not real foods, the fashion seemed different, even the hills that once seemed to me so large and awe-inspiring and beautiful, even the azure expanse of the bay, with the turtle shaped island in the middle of it... all these things felt rather small and understated compared to the cliffs of Ireland, or the Caucasus mountains... people say my town has a "european feel" in its downtown. I have no idea what they mean...

and these aren't Americans- i expected to be somewhat shocked by americans behavior on arriving in chicago... these aren't just Michiganders, my home people, but these are NORTHERN michiganders, my home tribe, the people i always felt such a close affinity with when i met one at Michigan State University... And even THEY feel weird to me. What do i do now?

i tried to exchange 100 Euro today, and the lady at the bank just laughed and said there was no bank within hundreds of miles that would exchange Euros....

even my parents house seems totally different to me...

and yet... i appreciated the friendliness of people, and the very interesting conversations i was able to get in on the sloooooooooooow amtraaaaaaaaaaak train to Grand Rapids.

I was in some sort of existential crisis today about homelessness (6 weeks in the US is long enough to feel the full shock of readjusting, yet not long enough to feel like i should fully readjust)... until....

.... I went on a walk in my neighborhood. When i saw a painted turtle sunning itself on a floating birch log, surrounded by lilypads, and the deep earthy smell of a forested, sand-bottomed northern inland lake... when i heard its plunk as it dove into the water, when the mini black squirrels rushed infront of me up into the branches of a white pine, when the hammering of a pileated woodpecker resounded across the coves and stream bed.... then i felt home. My friend Casey wrote in his blog that he felt frustrated by america, until he came to tennessee and felt the true south, and then he felt home.... i guess for me, the painted turtle, mkinaak, sitting on a log of wiigwaas, in the small gaami, the wind sighing in the zhingwaakaag , is what it took to make me feel like home.

a lot more to blog about- had a two day whirlwind tour of Ireland, etc... but my jetlagged self must go to bed...

2006-06-21T15:09:00.000+08:00

Leaving Lietuva

Today is my last day in Lithuania- on tap; stuffing clothes into my bag and seeing how much over Air Baltics 20kg weight limit i am, taking a box to the post office, taking all the kitchen implements back to the dorm, writing a couple letters, a beachside barbecue, enjoying the longest day ill have ever experienced in my life, and the shortest night.

It is al so surreal.... a place is home, and then suddenly, its not...

2006-06-19T17:46:00.000+08:00

An orthodox youth group from K'ut'aisi I met in Kazbegi

2006-06-19T17:42:00.000+08:00

Mts'kh'eta Georgia- the sister city to my hometown. I have a really cool story about this town- ask me about it. THis is looking down the valley of the Mt'k'vari River, from a gateway in the Jvari Church, built in the year 545!!!

2006-06-19T17:33:00.000+08:00

Last night i had a bunch of friends over for a kind of good-bye party. Thank you so much- Aciu labai visiems kurie man padare mano laikas cia Lietuvoje tiesog nuostabu... As turiu tokia gera bendroumene cia, ir dabar man labai liudna mastyti apie isvaziuoti ir pradeti nauja epocha savo gyvenime... bet as niekada ne pamirssiu Lietuva. I got a beauiful card, and a dove! I have never held a dove before, and letting it go was very symbolic and cool. I have a Lithuanian hat and a T-shirt that reads "100% Lietuvis" :) We had a really cool worship time, and it ended by going to the beach at Karkle cemetery, and enjoying the beautiful sunset sky (which is around 11:45pm this time of year here in Lithuania)

I will miss spaghetti dinners with peope randomly strewn about our assemblage of furniture on the scratched hardwood floor at Janonio 16, the sunlight shining through the orange curtains, the cheerful mix of Lithuanian Russian and English which constantly surrounds me, the piles of shoes by the doorway....

sigh

Dieve- as zinau kad tu visad su mumis, su manim.... Tai buvo irgi man labai sunku isvaziuoti is Amerikos, pasilikti visus Amerikoje gyvenancius draugus, ir tavim pasitiketi kad tu man duotum gera ateiti, naujus draugus, naujus galimybes garbinti tave ir augti kaip krykscionis ir kaip vyras. Ir tu esi su manim ir busi su manim, ir niekada mane ne pasiliksi. Bet stiprink stiprink padrasink mano klaipedoj esancius brolius ir seserys. Stiprink baznycias cia klaipedoje, ir isgelbek daugiau lietuviu.

2006-06-16T16:46:00.000+08:00

Reflections of Armenia (Hayastan): monasteries of Haghpat and Sanahin in Alaverdi, Armenia; Last bell celebrations in the main square in Vanadzor, Armenia; Me and Mt. Ararat in Yerevan, Armenia; Me on the Hanrepetutyan Hraparak (Republic Square) in downtown Yerevan.

2006-06-16T16:39:00.000+08:00

Our taxi driver in Alaverdi, Armenia was Anastas Migoyan, the nephew of the man who invented the MIG fighter jet, and yes that is the last remaining original MIG in his backyard. He showed us pictures of his uncle with Castro, Stalin, Kennedy and Nixon. Not too many people have met with all those leaders! Alaverdi was a sad town, high unemployment, but beautiful monasteries from the 1100's that are on the World Heritage list

2006-06-16T16:18:00.000+08:00

Caucasian mountain scenery in and around Kazbegi, near the Russian border. In three days of walking, I climbed over 10,000 veritcal feet, and felt it

2006-06-16T16:13:00.000+08:00

Borjomi mineral water park. Water from Borjomi is famous throughout the former Soviet Union. Here Georgian school kids are pushing each other to get water from the well in the park newly reopened by Ukrainian president Yushchenko and Georgian president Saakashvili

2006-06-16T16:08:00.000+08:00

Off the tourist path in tbilisi- Tbilisi is the city of balconies- it is their symbol

2006-06-15T22:29:00.000+08:00

Typical scene- didube bus station where all the marshrutkas head out across Georgia, and where you can buy old car parts, live chickens, basically anything you can imagine

georgian military highway- notice the cows in the road on the bottom left

2006-06-15T22:24:00.000+08:00

Me standing in Azerbaijan, the first country that ive walked into, without official clearing customs

2006-06-15T22:02:00.000+08:00

ivy colored wall in old tbilisi- with Mother Georgia statue (truly monolithic) on mountaintop far above. the catherdral at right is the seat of the Georgian Orthodox Church
Davit Gareji monastery on the Azerbaijani border- up to 700 monks once lived in these caves before they were slaughtered by the turks

Asia's largest church- holds 30,000 people- was amazing!

Globalization- McDonalds and Coca-Cola on Rustavelis Moedani.

Old Tbilisi

the Mtkvari river in Tbilisi

2006-06-15T21:18:00.000+08:00

8 things that would make it easy to live in the Caucasus
1-2. Hospitality- This is worth two points! Almost aggressive in its intensity- I know it sounds cliché- everyone comes back from a trip and says “the people were so hospitable”. For Caucasians it is a solemn responsibility, a joy, and I was continually floored by the incredibly depth of openness of the Caucasian people. I have been groomed here in Europe to be so suspicious of anyone who approaches me, but time after time, waiting for a catch, I found that there was no catch, that these strangers just genuinely wanted to make things easier for a foreigner

3. t’k’mali- cilantro-ey tomatillo-ey goodness in a bottle

4. wilderness- even though some of the usual third world problems with trash disposal were there, I was amazed at how intact and pristine the natural areas of the Caucasus were- hiking in the Kazbegi preserve or Borjomi national park were absolutely gorgeous- you’re never too far from a mountain in the Caucasus

5. openness- people are just open to each other in general, something I miss after the relative closedness of Lithuanians. The two ways I appreciated this the most was in the openness of people to strangers- making eye contact, touching, asking questions, being very interested, and the openness of people to talking about spiritual things. Faith is a public discussion topic in the Caucasus and it isn’t hard to get people talking about it at all- people seem to be very hungry about spiritual questions, especially young people

6. views- horizons are amazing- almost always are there mountains everywhere- the Caucasus has beautiful forests, look outs over canyons, river valleys, vast agricultural valleys, snow capped ridges, church studded skylines- you name it.

7. café culture- eating outside is a huge part of the culture- and long evenings when it is finally warm enough to be outside- seeing all the young people in your city dressed in black (even very poor people dress up very nice to go out in public in the caucasus)- sipping cold coffee drinks and just relaxing, chatting with the people around you.

8. the languages- amazing kartvelian and Caucasian languages, using alphabets of their own devising, clusters of glottalized consonants “clinging together like mussels, and just as hard to swallow”, copious amounts of concatenative morphology, polypersonal verbs, ergative past simple forms….. a linguists dream.

8 things that would make it hard to live in the Caucasus
1. Bargaining for prices all the time with taxi drivers- can’t there just be a fixed fare?
2. The heat- I am definitely a child of the north

3. Driving- Have you ever passed someone who was themself passing someone in the presence of oncoming traffic and livestock on a two lane road before? In Georgia- no big deal? Or ridden in a taxi with no ignition, no brakes? Hotwiring and shifting into neutral are easy Georgian solutions to those problems!

4. Sad stories- in a society that suffered an almost total collapse of its manufacturing sector, you hear story after story of chronic unemployment

5. Walking uphill- I’ve always lived in flat places, and walking up the steep hills carrying your groceries in the hot weather could get tiring

6. How many khinkali can someone eat in a month?

7. The ubiquitous presence of the Orthodox church- and suspicion toward all evangelicals and outsiders- I would have to develop a well studied and carefully thought through theology of orthodoxy- are orthodoxy and evangelicalism in someways compatible? What would jesus say about these questions? A complicated matter

8. work ethic- basically “relax”. Sounds nice at first maybe, but can make a simple task like boarding passengers onto an airplane into a complicated process involving contests of wills, shouting, inefficiencies, frustrations, just to give it a “Georgian” touch.

2006-06-12T03:01:00.000+08:00

Hayastan

There are fewer countries i have had more conflicting experiences with than here in Armenia. A sad country, poor and rich, beautiful. I have met the most hospitable people i have yet met on earth, and some of the most conniving too. In Kazbegi Georgia last week we met a german woman who has motorcycled all over the third world meeting people, living with them, and she is a confirmed humanist, a believer that all people are good. She has never had trouble in all her time motorcycling around the world as a single woman. And i must tell you my experiences in the caucasus so far have mostly been similar. Yet today in Sevan, on the shores of Lake Sevan, it is a city used to tourists. People are used to being able to make a living by taking advantage of others, and we had to really fight to keep from being ripped off, and we weren't able to relax or trust at all. It reminds me of animals. Animals that have never had contact with humans before are usually pretty tame and friendly. When they start getting fed, they get aggressive and lazy. Maybe its the same way with people. We are generally friendly and hospitable, but once we learn we can get an easy meal out of taking advantage of someone, all the greed and laziness lurking in the human heart comes to the surface....

What do you guys think?

PS- if you ever want a city with an amazing cafe culture- where beautiful young people of all sorts hang out enjoying the pleasantly warm evenings all night long in a city of 3000 cafes- come to Yerevan, Armenia

PPS- i have a hundred storeis to tell about the caucasus later- if you have ever thought of coming here, please do!

2006-05-31T20:41:00.000+08:00

საქართველო

Please pray for me starting tomorrow as i head off to the Republic of Georgia. While by all accounts Georgia is safe, beautiful friendly and ready for tourists, it is nevertheless as far off the beaten path as i have yet gone, and still a country which has two regions not under the control of the government, is in a border stand off with Russia, and plays host to repeated raids from the Chechens who live accross the border in Chechnya

The plan is to see the great Caucausian cities and monasteries, meet locals, enjoy my favorite cuisine in the whole world, get into conversations, mountain hike a bit, see some local churches, find out whats going on there in the realm of linguistics and English teaching, maybe make a cross border excursion into Armenia.

All made possible by AirBaltic, the Latvian airline, and its new 40 LVL flights from Riga-Tbilisi.

If any of you can get to London cheaply, you can now get to the Caucasus (Baku or Tbilisi) from there, via Riga, for under 200 bucks. Not a bad deal eh?

Pray for my Russian to come back

That Jerilyn and i could bless the Georgians and get into good conversations, that demonstrate our willingness to learn, but also our willingness to share about The Gd we serve

The chance to find a good georgian chch

Safety from theft, injury, stupidity, and frustration

May it be done
in jesus' name

Amen

2006-05-31T20:13:00.000+08:00

Eesti Vabariik (Republic of Estonia)
ferry to Hiumaa

Rapeseed field. typical may baltic scene

Ok so Estonia has made a better impression on me. Maybe i was too harsh in my thougts about Narva last time; I think partly it was the weather, partly just the reminder of what the Soviet Union did to Estonia. This last week i got to view this country more extensively than I ever had before, and let me tell you- i love Estonia!

Highlights of the 4 day trip:

Climbing inside a 5 story rusted out Soviet conning tower from WWII on a deserted peninsula in Hiumaa

The sun reflecting of the many bays and brightly colored pastel houses under the castle walls in the beautiful city of Haapsalu

Climbing a Soviet Ski Jump in a not altogether comforting state of decay for beautiful views of the windswept forests and hills in the ski resort town of Otepää

The most beautiful spot I have ever yet found in the Baltics, a deserted beach under the pine trees at Surfers paradise, on the westernmost point of the westernmost peninsula on the island of Hiumaa... complete with a refreshing dip in the Baltic in late may

Climbing Europes oldest lighthouse on the Kõpu peninsula in Hiumaa, the thick whitewashed walls brushing against my sides and emerging out onto a beautiful view of the island

Walking around Tallinn at midnight with light bright enough to be able to read a book by- the white nights here are truly amazing, and make up for the darkness that we live most of our lives in in the Baltics.

Rainswept skies, rainbows, tamarack trees with achingly new green needles, old churches, huge erratic boulders, beautiful highways

Latvia had a few well kept secrets too-

Rundale palace, I would have never guessed something like that would be in the Baltics

The restaurant in Valmiera... by far the most delicious restaurant i have ever eaten in, and one of the cheapest. We ate what you would pay 25 dollars for in the states for 2 dollars. I hope it doesnt get discovered!!!

What a great test run for Georgia!

2006-05-24T15:30:00.000+08:00

New City

There is an addictive feeling about landing in a new european city, at the train station, or bus station, or airport, and having to figure the city out. You step off the train, and immediately have to figure out what language you are going to work in, how to get the currency, what direction is the old town in, do you buy a bus ticket at a kiosk or on the bus, is metro or bus better. And there are a million things to notice- what are the names of the main squares? what time period was the cathedral built in? how do modern buildings blend with the old? who is on the currency? how are people dressing? what is the racial mix here? what does fast food look like? how much time do i have before my next connection and how much can i see in that amount of time?

Looking at the streetplans with green parks, blue rivers, purple pedestrian zones, yellow main squares.... man it is a huge rush for me. i love exploring.

How many times have i gotten to go and explore a new European city?

Well the list below is of European cities and towns that i have gotten to explore on foot- not just driving through- but really getting to walk around and get a feel for the place.

Ones with an asterix I have spent the night in. Ones with two asterixes, I have spent the night in somebody's home who lives in that city.

Not a bad list over 12 years of European travel, eh?

Alaverdi, Armenia
Altheim(Alb), Germany
*Amsterdam, Netherlands
Arromanches, France
Avignon, France
Bacharach, Germany
Bari, Italy
*Berlin, Germany
Binz, Germany
Bled, Slovenija
*Borjomi, Georgia
Bratislava, Slovakia
Buyukada, Turkey
Cavtat, Croatia
*Cesis, Latvia
**Cologne, Germany
**Dubrovnik, Croatia
**Dublin, Ireland
Druskininkiai, Lithuania
**Frankenthal, Germany
Frankfurt, Germany
**Freiburg, Germany
*Friedrichshafen, Germany
Gardabani, Georgia
Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
**Giessen, Germany
Hamburg, Germany
Happsalu, Estonia
Heidelberg, Germany
**Heilbronn, Germany
Helsingborg, Sweden
**Helsinki, Finland
*Helsinor, Denmark
*Herceg Novi, Montenegro
*Innsbruck, Austria
*Interlaken, Switzerland
**Istanbul, Turkey
*Kardla, Estonia
Karlsruhe, Germany
Kaunas, Lithuania
**Kazbegi, Georgia
Klagenfurt, Austria
**Klaipeda, Lithuania
*Kobenhavn, Denmark
Koblenz, Germany
Kotor, Montenegro
*Krakow, Poland
Kretinga, Lithuania
*Kuresaare, Estonia
*Kiev, Ukraine
**Lezhe, Albania
**Liepaja, Latvia
Lindau, Germany
*Ljubljana, Slovenija
**London, UK
*Lucerne, Switzerland
Ludwigsburg, Germany
**L’viv, Ukraine
*Mainz, Germany
Mannheim, Germany
Mont St. Michel, France
*Mostar, Bosnia Hercegovina
M'ts'kheta, Georgia
*Munich, Germany
*Narva, Estonia
*Nimes, France
*Nurnberg, Germany
Nykoping, Sweden
Oostende, Belgium
Palanga, Lithuania
*Paris, France
Parnu, Estonia
Pescara, Italy
*Prague, Czech Republic
*Regensburg, Germany
*Riga, Latvia
Rijeka, Croatia
**Rivne, Ukraine
Rothenburg o.d. Tauber, Germany
Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany
*Schwaebisch Hall, Germany
Shkodra, Albania
Siauliai, Lithuania
*Sigulda, Latvia
*Slav’sko, Ukraine
*Starnberg, Germnay
**Stralsund, Germany
**Strasbourg, France
*Stockholm, Sweden
*Stuttgart, Germany
Sveksna, Lithuania
**Tallinn, Estonia
Tartu, Estonia
*Taize/Ameugny, France
**T'bilisi, Georgia
**Tirana, Albania
*Ulm, Germany
Vaduz, Liechtenstein
*Valmiera, Latvia
**Vanadzor, Armenia
*Veliki Lyubin, Ukraine
*Vilnius, Lithuania
**Wermelskirchen, Germany
*Warsaw, Poland
Wien, Austria
**Yerevan, Armenia
Zdolbunov, Ukraine
**Zolotonosha, Ukraine
**Zurich, Switzerland

2006-05-22T20:20:00.000+08:00

What am I getting myself into??? My new "village"!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aweigend

2006-05-22T20:10:00.000+08:00

other peoples pictures of the Gauja till i can find our own ones :)

2006-05-22T20:03:00.000+08:00

Gauja

Last week i went canoeing on the Gauja River in Latvia. It is one of the most wild rivers in Europe (with the exception of the rivers in northern sweden and finland, which are too cold to canoe in May for sure- Latvia was stretching it). Basically it was the perfect combination of things- I forgot how much these things are essential to life:

Blooming lilac trees in the spring
Smelling honeysuckle flowers drooping over the sidewalk
Floating beneath ancient sandstone cliffs with a Panamanian hat to keep out the sun, while sipping from a box of cheap spanish wine
Conversations about God and the inticracies of relationship and what conversion really means over a campfire, roasting gobs of mini-marshmellows to make S(elga s)'mores
Riding on lazy Latvian trains through the pine forests
Speaking Russian every once in a while

Thank you Js for the random little things you rain down around us

2006-05-22T19:41:00.000+08:00

Praying

Last night my friends Rasa Ieva Donatas and Vaidas came over to pray for Klaipeda and the youth of the city.

It was such an amazing time.... we prayed for two hours, and the time just flew by.... it hit me too than i can pray for two hours in Lithuanian and follow everything that is going in, and even pray in Lithuanian myself now. I'm so thankful for the investment i put in language learning early on.

Praying with those dear broliai ir seseri klaipedeciai for this place i realize how much my heart has put down roots here, and how sad i am to think about leaving- in fact even though i know i am leaving, i havent really thought about it yet. It 100% feels like i will coming back here in the fall.

Dieve palaimink musu Klaipeda, palaimink jaunima, kuris cia gyvena, palamink visus klaipedecius, ypac vaikinius, kad uzaugtu nauja genaracija krykscioniskuju lyderiu tame mieste. Issaugok visas baznycias, ir meldziausi kad bazynicios cia arciau dirbtu, viena su kitomis, kad pastatyti tavo karalyste tame tarpe.

god i dont want to run from this place just to pursue novelty, if you want me to return here, let me know how and when please

2006-05-22T19:29:00.000+08:00

Eurovizija!!

One of the most informative things i have encountered in my time here is the Eurovision SOng Contest, by far the highlight of May for European countries, especially i imagine, in eastern and central Europe.

Basically each country picks a new band to represent their country at the European Finals. The countries who scored in the top 10 places the previous year get an automatic bye to the finals, and the other countreis have to compete in a semi-final round. Europeans all vote by SMS (a message on the cell phone) who they think is the best country, but you can't vote for your own country. The top 14 of that round join the 10 automatic finalists to form the final round; a night of pure cheesy but interesting entretainment when 24 of the Council of Europe's countries battle each other for the title of Eurovision song contest finalists. Some previous winners that i have heard of before were Nana Mouskouri, ABBA, Lulu and Celine Dion.

My favorite part is when they call all the capitals of the countries at the end, collecting the votes from each city, waiting to see which band will emerge as the winner. The hosts basically call a country like, Liechtenstein, and them some smartly dressed young guy greets the host in their language (this year it was Greek) and then awards their points, "Ve from Liechtenstein gif our tvelf points to Svitzerland!". It is done on the electoral system, so a country like Andorra or Malta has as much points to award as does Russia or Turkey.

It is a real lesson in European politics as well as tastes. Why would Ireland award its 12 points to Lithuania? The huge Lithuanian community in Dublin has something to do with that! Why would Germany give its 12 points to Turkey? The same reason you can buy Doner kebab on every corner in Germany's big cities. Why would Greece vote for Armenia and Armenia for Greece? They are united by a common factor: Their hatred of Turkey! Its no surprise that Estonia votes for Finland, and if Belarus didn't give its 12 points to Russia, i think Lukashenko would personally track down everyone who voted for a decadent capitalist nation seeking to destroy the great Belarussian state, and throw all those people in jail.

The history of triple entendres and triple alliances is still alive and well in europe, and influences even our pop music :)

I hosted a big euro-vision party, with thai meatballs, couscous, a cornucopia of lithuanian snacks, and a floor crowded with students and alumni from all over europe cheering on their countries. i love those moments- playng a host is my favorite thing almost.

Who won this years contest? A bunch of Finns dressed up like monsters from Halloween XII singe "Hard Rock Hallelujah". Who'd have thunk it.

check it out at www.eurovision.tv

2006-05-14T02:06:00.000+08:00

Savartinas

Today i went to the Savartinas, or the much less fancy sounding English word: the dump. In Klaipeda's dump live around 100 people in houses they have built themselves, and making a living however they can from selling things or finding temporary work. I really didn't want to go earlier today, but pretty much you have to admit- if Js lived in Klaipeda probably the first people he would have gone to spend time with are those people living on the trash mountains.

It was pretty standard short-term missions fare; deliver food to the people, sing Xn songs (mostly in Russian, as I heard that people were mostly russian there, only to discover that there were way more Lithuanian speakers... i need to learn more lithuanian worship songs by heart), and meet and great people and hear their stories. THe Salv'n Army (Isganymo Armija) has a regular ministry to these people with weekly services and all. We went under their aegis. What surprised me the most was the people- these are people who are so easy to dismiss, to forget about and ignore. In fact the EU has passed legislation requiring that these people move out of the dump, out of the only home they have ever known. But these people were very thankful and appreciative, eager to tell their story, eager to share about their lives, ask questions of us, even eager to try to sing along and listen to the songs that i was trying to play in a language i kind of know, on a guitar that was kind of in tune, and a voiced straining to be loud enough that all people on that grassy hilltop might hear it.

These are real people with real stories and beautiful to Gd, as cheesy as it sounds to say that, and i am thankful that i had that opportunity. I wasn't shocked or disturbed by the poverty ( i dont really know yet what that says about me) or the dirtiness of people's hands or clothes. I guess the next time i hear on the news that it is -20 degrees in Klaipeda, i will have some new faces to pray for and think about and hope that Gd is taking care of.

2006-05-11T17:30:00.000+08:00

If anyone wants to understand why I have a heart for Europe, and what Js would have to offer young Europeans, I recommend you watch the movie

"L'auberge Espanol" (the spanish hostel)

It is basically i thought a fairly accurate portrayal of the lives of "typical" young Western europeans, based on my experiences here. A French Erasmus student (it was so funny seeing how the Erasmus program was depicted here) moves in with a Belgian girl, a Dane, a Spanish girl , an English girl, an Italian guy and a German guy in a small apartment in the Barrio Antico in Barcelona. Hilarity ensues of course, as well as raising issues about what it means to be a new European.

The thing that moved me the most though was really how the characters in this show were just living for love and sex and the next party and friendship, and these are the highest goals they are chasing after. The deep deep truth of Chst, which speaks to the inmost and deepest part of ourselves, the restoration of the connection with our creator, the power Js has to forge deep friendships rooted in Him, the beauty of His Truth about our Sexuality and its true purpose, love that is not self-interested but self-sacrificing, placing the eternal things above the ephemeral pleasures and stimuli that last but a moment, and leave people feeling emptier than before.... the Truth, in a word, was conspiculously absent from the lives of those characters.

It made me hunger to show young Europeans that there is more to Gods plan for our sexuality than just hook ups, there is more to life than just getting a good job or finding a "true love", that there is a greater story we are all invited to take part in, that faithfulness and honesty and sincerity are not old-fashioned, that friendship is based on more than just having things in common or going through some experiences together, that there is pain involved in divorce, and casual sex, and homosexual experimentation, and a life whose high point is going out to the clubs.

It may come across judgmental for me to say these things, but basically watching that film made me long to point to a way that is bigger than myself, and more powerful than myself, and the answer to every deep question stitched into our fragile human hearts.

2006-05-11T17:05:00.000+08:00

Immigration

I picked up two professors from the Vilnius airport last friday and they asked me what is my view on the "immigration problem"

My answer was "what immigration problem?"

No seriously. I read on BBC that people in the US are all mad because someone translated Star Spangled Banner into spanish.

I seriously do not see what is the problem with that, and why anyone would care.

Yesterday my friend Fabian was turned down for a visa by our hardworking INS officers. He just wanted to visit friends in Minnesota who had even bought him a plane ticket! It was just a dream to see America and to spend time volunteering with a church there.

And they turned him down for no reason- he had all the documents in place.

Seriously seeing immigration from this side of the ocean will really make you change your viewpoint.

Every American is an immigrant from somewhere. Europeans benefitted from a time of realtively lax immigration laws. Isn' t it a bit racist to say "its ok for Europeans to have unrestricted immigration to the US, but as soon as it starts being Mexicans and Asians, then we should pull up the ladder after us"?

Todays immigrants also want to learn English. The biggest opponents to bilingual education are immigrants themselves, who desperately want their children to learn English. Many of the people trying to move to the US could write a much better essay in English than the average american could. remember too that it took the Europans often a couple generations to learn English when they first moved to the US.

ANd why should everyone have to learn English, and the lazy Americans go throughout the world just expecting everyone to know their language? I think immigrants to the US should learn ENglish yes, but i think Americans should learn Spanish as well. Spanish is the first language of 16% of our population after all.

In Finland swedes are only 5% of the population, yet over half of the finnish population can speak Swedish. THey are commited to honoring and respecting their minority populations.

It is WAAAAAY harder for a Finn to learn Swedish than an American to learn Spanish. After all Spanish is the easiest language in the world for English speakers to learn.

Nevermind the fact that states such as California Texas Arizona New Mexico and COlorado are only part of the United States because we sent an invasion army and surrounded Mexico City and threatened to burn it to the ground unless they ceded us those lands. The areas were most Spanish-speaking immigrants live were forcibly taken from Mexico anyway, and were in Mexican hands way longer than they have been in American hands. Look it up: it is called the Mexican Cession

It only makes everyones life more interesting and colorful to speak many languages and have a multi-lingual society.

America- no sea racista! Dije no a racisma! Commenca a apprender espanol! Es bueno para tu futuro y para el futuro de las genercaiones siguantes tambien!

(Pardon my Spanish, it is my 6th language, and has suffered in the time i have not been living in the states, as i have been concentrating on learning other languages)

My dream for America is that hard working people will freely be able to visit and work in the United States, the same way that Americans are able to freely visit other countries.

After all Americans, you could have been born an Albanian, as which you would "need a visa to go to the toilet" as my Albanian friend Marian once said.

Americans aren't inherently better than anyone else, nor do we deserve more than the Belarussians Albanians and Moldovans do. Nationalism is a very dangerous thing.

I step off my soapbox now.

2006-05-11T16:48:00.000+08:00

Language dork....

I am such a big one.

Ma ei räägu eesti keelt!

In November 2004 I was with my friend Jon in Tallinn, Estonia and we decided to go to the Lutheran mass at the cathedral. We were given a program of the readings and music. Since i didn't know much estonian, and i didn't want to be disruptive during the service. i figured out where the Lord's Prayer was in the program based on the repetition patterns, and began isolating all kinds of Estonian morphemes out of the data. I figured out I would say about 8 sets of case endings, the verbal morphology, the pronomial system, the main christian vocabulary, and by the end of the mass i had a pretty good idea what we were singing about in the responsive choruses in Estonian.

Now i am making little flash cards to start learning the basics of one of the most difficult languages in the world: Georgian (Kartuli)

Georgian has not one, but 6 ejective consonants! It has cases i have never heard of before! i am such a dork. I love learning these new squiggly words beginning with impossible consonant combinations. I kid you not, mtvshkhra is a possible Georgian word.

ბამარჯოგად ერდი შაშლიჩ დუ შეიკლეგა! gamarjobat erti shashlyk tu sheidzleba

I can now order a shashlyk politely in Kartuli. I am ready to go.

Thanks for all of the people who have had to put up with me talking about vowel shifts, bantu gender systems and aboriginal languages over the last 5 years. Thanks for feigning interest.

Its nice to know that there is something you are good at. :)

ბმათლოგდ tänan kiitos paldies ačiū danke merci gracias grazi multumesc спасибо дякую hvala zdravo dekuji дзякуй takk obrigado faleminderit teşekürler

2006-05-08T18:33:00.000+08:00

Apology #2

I think i was a little bit too downhearted in my last email. I know not all LCC graduates were abusing alcohol either. It was just the general feel and it was how i was feeling. Just to let you know, i think i want to be honest with my thoughts on this blog. of course at any given moment we can't see all sides of the issue, and often in hindsight we have different understanding. But i am the kind of person i want to own what i am feeling at any given moment, and that is what i was feeling.

I know obviously that not all Lithuanians drink. I also got sad about the alcohol problems even at Michigan State University. I mean we had three drunken riots in the time i was there, for no good reason- i even got tear gassed in my own dorm. So its not that LCC is way worse than anywhere else. its just that i think everywhere in the world, abuse of alcohol makes me sad. people use alcohol to escape or to free themselves from themselves.

this last week has been a great one, and this highly uncharacteristic weather may have had something to do with it! there have been cloudless days in the upper 70s for the whole week. I have gotten to be out in the sun, and to go to the beach like three times this week. The cherry trees are blooming, the chestnut trees will start next week. The new green in Lithuania is something incredible. I almost feel like who took away the real Lithuania and replaced it with this lush verdant sunny country?

We even had a forest fire this week, out on the Curonian spit- you could see helicopters with the buckets for dumping water flying back and forth.

I have had to say a lot of goodbyes this week too. It is hard to keep track anymore of who is even still around. I don't know how many of my friends and students here i will get to see again, but i hope so- one never knows. i have had some random connections with people over the years.

So to all you who live in Lietuva- marvel at the tulip flowers, soak in the sunshine, and make your friendships count this week. For those of you who don't live here, nevermind us while we go enjoy the spring that the rest of the world got two months ago :)

2006-05-02T21:44:00.000+08:00

Graduation 2006.

Well another graduation has come and gone. My life has been set by the rythyms of graduation for a long time. More speeches, more awards, more flowers. Maybe that is the thing that sets Lithuanian gradiations apart the most is the flowers.

I said goodbye in the last week to a lot of students- sometimes hurriedly, sometimes in the formal of one final meeting. i think i got to farewell most of the people that i wanted to. Many of the students who just graduated, i will never see again. I can't help but wonder if LCC really changed their lives in anyway. It sure doesn't seem like it sometimes. i wonder if they ever really put together that the reason that we are doing this is because we love jesus, not to build our CVs, or because we are nice, or because we are Americans.

One thing hard about being there is that i wonder often if people see our acts that come out of serving christ and just think it is becase we are nice people, or because thats what americans do.

At the graduation party (the official one) i was feeling pretty discouraged and antisocial. There it was just a reminder to me; the copious amounts of alcohol, the varying states of inebriation, that we can never effect the change we want to see in someones life; only god can do that. Looking around that room that night i felt discouraged... no one would ever guess that these were students from a Xn college. They are even thinking of taking the name Xn out of LCC. Maybe that is a good thing. Each table (of around 4-7) students was equipped with vodka brandy cognac etc...

Students here act like it is their right and responsibility to get drunk. of course they are adults and can do that. I just cant get my head around the fact why people run so often to drunkenness when there are so many better alternatives. in a culture where alcoholism is causing such throrough and devastating problems, it seems like noone has any hesitations about throwing back some hard liquor to have a good time. It is just sad.... it doesnt make me angry... it doesnt make me hopeless.... it just makes me sad.

The contrast was brought home when i went to Skandalas afterwards with some of my latvian friends. At that table were 3 people who had become xns while at LCC beacuse of LCC. The contrast couldnt have been more great. We talked about what Gd was doing in our lives, how we fit in in the grand scheme of life, the importance of xn encouragement, and stood in a circle to pray together for each other one last time (that is until the people in the upstairs apartment started spitting on us).

Why would people ever choose Vodka over Js????

2006-05-01T14:59:00.000+08:00

Easter.

People often ask me if i miss my family on holidays, and i do, but sometimes i think it can be a more meaningful interaction with the holiday itself when you do something you aren't used to doing. This year on Christmas i was wandering through the streets of a deserted munich, prayed with an Old Croat woman in an empty church lit up with thousands of candles, talked with a drunk stem-cell researcher who said there is no Gd, and if there was he was going to hell. Walking around that dark city made me think of the dark world that Gd entered as a baby, and what Christmas was really for.

This year for easter, I had a great day! I went to my church (City Church- it is kind of a baptist church, about 200 people or so) and we had an excellent service about the meaning of the cross. Then afterwards we did something really cool. We with some of my best Lithuanian friends bought a cake and cookies and i brought my guitar. We went to visit a family who lives in Melnrage- a seaside suburb of Lithuania. Melnrage during soviet times was GHETTO and full of Gypsy people. Now because it is right on the sea, it is home to millionaires and palaces. That is a very interesting demographic mix in the village. Anyway, this family lives in a small coal heated two room apartment. That is normal for Lithuania, except this famliy has 10 kids!!! 12 people are living in that tiny space. Im sure that live isn't very easy for them- the bathroom was not very good, and there wasn't much around, but they were very hospitable and friendly people!!! We played a lithuanian song for them, talked for a while and wished them happy easter. Then we walked down to the beach and just enjoyed the sun shining on the waves of the Baltic Sea.

Later in the day we had an Easter dinner party. Looking around that room, i felt very emotional, as the people that i pretty much love most in lithuania were gathered into that room. The whole evening was almost all in Lithuanian too, and these are people who aren't as transient as the LCC communtiy, but real Klaipedeciai (Klaipedans). These are my "family" here, and it was great to see how all of us young and single people Gd had taken and given us to each other as a family to serve him.

My friend Emas was there, recently returned from a YWAM discipleship school where he travelled across Asia. He is a VERY encouraging brother to me, and a great friend. i went to visit him in Amsterdam in October.

His fiancee Irma, a student of mine, a sister in christ, and my landlord, was the host, along with her Latvian roomate, Renalda.

My good and long standing friend Adomas was there, as well as my brother Valeri, who goes to my church, and from the very first time i went to that church befriended me in an intentional way- he constantly points me more towards Chst.

My friend Rasa was there, an LCC alumna, with a huge heart for youth ministry- i love the way that she will turn conversations to prayer always, and the way that the youth of klaipeda are a huge burden on her heart. She wants to start some kind of a youth ministry here, and we have been praying about what that might look like.

My two younger brothers Algis and Donatas were there- both huge encouragements to me- guys who love Gd and make me smile every time i see them. Both were pretty involved with YWAM here while it was still going, and i have been especially meeting often with Donatas this spring.

Donatas' girlfriend (and my linguistics student) Sanita was there, as well as a girl named Gintare who is very actively involved in my church.

Anyways i was very blessed to spend Easter dinner with this family, we rolled easter eggs, we sang african american and lithuanian worship songs, we walked to the football stadium and played red rover, we prayed for our city. That was a very great Easter day.

2006-04-14T19:11:00.000+08:00

Today is Good Friday/Karfreitag/Didysis ketvirtadienis.

Today i went to a Taize service held at LCC in honor of the day. I can't help it, but today i really miss MSU. I miss going to the MSU chapel on GOod friday, for the Chi Alpha wship service, with the nails, and the altar call, and the whip, and all the imagery. The wship at Chi Alpha at MSU was still pretty much the best worship I have ever had in my life. It was so consisently amazing- one of the only places i have been, where you could have probably stood on your head and the neighboring worshippers would hardly have notice, because they were all consentrated on and enjoying god so much- that unhurried pace, the amazing musicians, 5 songs could go for like an hour! I just really miss MSU and the things Gd was doing there in spite of my sin, and the way he was moving in such a special way. He probably is still moving in those ways, and i just am in a distant place.

I miss waking up in the loft in 244 Phillips Hall, looking through the old window sill out at the ALumni Chapel there. I miss my roomates there, Jon Ehrlich and Matt Herwaldt. I miss SCF (Spartan Xn F'ship) meetings. I miss that sense of urgency and community, and like we were in the middle of a great work of Gd and people were coming to know him. I miss getting woken up by Josh Hull and Brian Sinischo coming over at 8 am to eat breakfast with us in the Phillips Hall caf, managed by ex-roomate Ryan Wiersma (moose). So many brothers march in and out of my life... i get so overwhelmed by it all sometimes. Most are married now of course, and have one to several kids. And here i am, this good friday finds me in someways in the same life stage i was when i was 18- no wife, no house, no property, no kids, no car... and yet i dont and cant regret the choices i have made. Even though maybe some choices have been made because of fear, Gd has worked every decision for the Good. I have experienced so much. And some people would ask me "arent you lonely" because i am single. Of course all humans are lonely. But i think people are even lonely WITHIN a marriage. My answer would be, and honestly, no not really, i am not really that lonely. I have learned at MSU how to build intentional community and to be real with my brothers, and to engage people, and to ask them questions, and to be a friends. And i have never felt without family. One of the Psalms says "Gd takes the lonely and puts them into families". Whether those are actual families, or the pseudo-families which Gd builds, whose common blood is the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ...

So here's to my brothers and sisters at MSU, past and present.... My thoughts and pryers are winging to the banks of the Red Cedar River, under the Elms, and past the great Katsura Tree in front of the library, the bicycles and pita stops, and ivy colored slate rooves.

2006-04-13T00:26:00.000+08:00

Aš beveik niekada nerašau liteuviškai, ir šiandian aš noriu. Aš žinau kad aš klaidingai ir ne visai tiesingai parašysiu, but man lygi, tik noriu pabandyt. Aš iš tikrųjų myliu lietuvių kalba, ir jeigu tik dėl to kad aš dabar turiu vieną quasi-slaptingą kalbą. Betkur aš važiuočiau tame pasaulyje, beveik niekas nesupras mane, lietuviškai kalbedamas, ir kai ąš gerdu kitų lietuvių, kaip pavaizdžui ant Eifelo bokštes, yra toks instantinas jungtis su tais žmoniais, nes aš irgi biški lietuvių išmokau. Man gaila kad ne daugiau žmonių nekalba lietuviškai. Per tų trejų metų, aš taip pasistengejau išmokti tą kalbą, sužinoti kaip teisingiai terti tą kalbą. Bet gal geriau taip. Jeigu visur kalbedama lietuviu kalba butų, ta reišketų kad ta brangia kalba ne taip ypatinga butų. (Ir aš myliu tą žodį "ypatinga" irgi :) mano megstamiausis žodis) Aš kaip pailsėsiu mano draugus čia lietuvoje, kai aš į kiniją važiousiu. Aš niekada niekur užsenyje taip ilgai gyvenau, kaip čia klaipedoje. Tai stebuklas man kaip greitai aš kaip namuose jaučiausi čia, nes Lietuva ir JAV labiai skirtingi šaliai. O lietuva tevynė mūsų, tu didvyrių žemė: tu ne mano tevynė, bet man vistiek brangi esi. Mano didvyriai irgi nebuvo lietuviai, bet aš tikiuosi kad betkur aš gyvensiu ir keliausiu užsenyje, aš galesiu pakeisti žmonių nuomenes apie tą mažą, nežinomą, brangią, šaltą, žalią, margį, nepriklausą Lietuvą. [tiems kurie negerai lietuvių supranta- ne pasinervinkite. aš nieko blogą nerašau čia :)- those who don't speak lithuanian- i didn't write anything bad here :)]

2006-04-11T20:24:00.000+08:00

So today i got word from YUST university in C_, that they are counting on me coming to teach in the fall. Ever since my days at MSU and hearing about Y__T from my friend C_H_ it seemed like the ultimate far away place. I never thought that i would really go there. I thought that C_ was a closed door to me, as i hadn't heard anything from there in a long time. But now it seems like i am going. Wow- that is really scary. I am excited about what i would learn there, and it feels right to me, and i have good reasons to go. But i am scared about just how different Asia is. Europe seems normal to me. More normal to me in some ways than north america does. But asia seems definitely the "other" I am humbled and excited to learn from my K_ and C_ brothers and sisters.... but is this really real? is this happening?

When i opened that email is the first time it really hit me i wouldnt be in lithuania in the fall, to meet the new freshmen and to see how Maxim and Sergej and Kolja and Fabian and Eizens and so many other people i have come to know here would be doing. it is exactly the same feeling i felt about leaving traverse city to move to lansing, or leaving lansing to move to klaipeda. it should be no surprise that i feel the same way about leaving klaipeda. I really do think though that this is a place i will come back to. i know i am nomadic, but i am not that nomadic. you cant invest yourself in a place and country for 3 years, and leave it forever.

www.yust.edu

so iki pasimatymo Klaipedai :/

2006-04-11T19:38:00.000+08:00

Apology....

So unsurprisingly, i discover again that i am kind of a jerk

I didn't mean to hurt anyone with the post about Xn girls. I guess my mom said always growing up "dont write anything down you don't want the whole world to know about". I just had had several incidents in the past few weeks, where i had NO intentions, and still people perceived by just listening to someone or asking them question about their day, or sharing how my day was, as me being interested in dating them.

I was just confused how am i supposed to have a normal interaction with the sisters in my life, without communicating anything i dont mean to. I put it on the blog in a moment of frustration. I still am kind of confused about what the balance is without seeming mean or disinterested, but also without seeming INTERESTED.

It is confusing because the world i live in at LCC is very heavily female, and there are very few Xn guys around here, and sometimes i think that makes things more difficult in terms of interacting in a careful way with girls. The smallest things you do, things that as a guy you aren't even AWARE of, can sometimes be misinterpreted.

I know that i have a responsiblity too in how i act. i didn't really mean to demean the intricacies of these situations. the longer i live the more i really understnad in some ways that guys and girls really DO think very differently.

So forgive me if i hurt anyone unintentionally.

One trusted sisters said to me that girls dont even really want to be friends with guys unless it would lead to something more. Is that true? I dont feel like it is, but maybe i am supposed to stop trying to build close friendships with girls unless my intention is to lead to marriage.

so yeah men are pigs, and i am sorry sisters that we are often so dense and clueless and don't understand how you are thinking

2006-04-11T01:54:00.000+08:00

A day in my life (at least in January)

I am posting this, even though i wrote it a long time ago. But if you want to get a glimpse of some of the incidental things which happen to me in a day in Lithuania, read on....

Hello all, and Merry Orthodox Christmas. As I write, instead of celebrating Christmas with their families, many of my students are on board trains and buses, for 30 hour journeys crossing the wide expanses of Ukraine and Belarus, floating by aging apartment towers and the endless rolling plains that make up most of eastern Europe. Others are slowly grinding their way across Latvia or lithuania on ancient German buses, whose temperature gauges are permanently stuck on “Sahara” and frequent their favorite watering holes, owned by some friend of a friend to imbibe caffeine while their passengers get ripped off, even if it means getting their two-story bus stuck in the 20 cm of wet thick snow that have fallen in the last few hours. Not to worry though. People here are impossibly patient, as I am becoming. I think the biggest thing that hits me when I do see Americans again, is how terribly impatient they are.

My parents thought it would be nice to send out a letter, that is a little more personal in tone, one that describes more of my daily experience. I agree, but trying to answer the question of “ a typical day” is as hard in a foreign country as it ever was in the united states. This world has become my real world and my home, and consequently I don’t notice the many small details that you may notice, or I may have noticed at first. I don’t feel much like a missionary anymore, as I feel just like a regular person, living a real life in a real city, that although on the surface may look quite different than Lansing, Michigan, is really a city just like any other city, and in which live 200,000 humans. Although these humans may be Lithuanians, and Russians, and on the surface live totally differently than you may live, I remain firmly committed to the fact, that that which makes us human is still much more significant than that which makes us Lithuanian or American or Catholic or Methodist or Liberal or Fascist or whatever… Cross-cultural understanding is valid and important, and yet all human hearts are at their root the same. We are all the great-great-great..-great offspring of Noah, and all have the same hunger for relationships, the desire to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, have the same memory of being created for a world in which we were in perfect relationship with God and others and the world, and the haunting of that memory and the disappointments of the reality which faces us attend all humans.

Nevertheless, I will try describe some of the little things about me as I am here, things I might never otherwise stop to write down, and things which may in some way, interest some of you.

I wake up very often in the dark. The dark this time of year feels omnipresent. The hope that comes from the lighting in the spring is something felt to a degree I never felt even in northern Michigan. Buses begin rolling down the cobblestone streets at 6 am, ever more frequently. Each passing car on the cobbled Janonio street shakes our building, but I have learned to sleep through them as faithfully as the trains at my beloved MSU. The blinking red lights of the Casino Pokervegas sign flit through my curtainless window as the traffic slowly increases. As I stare through the perpetually fogged up window of my bedroom I can usually see students gathering outside the dormitory across the street, forming a circle of cigarette smoking, the most communal of all lithuanian experiences. I still have no idea what is in that dormitory, as all kinds of people come in and out of that building, and I can see such things as a cafeteria, a car repair shop, a beauty school, odd rooms with large piles of random wood, and the Spartan-at-best decorated rooms filtered by soviet-era gauze curtains. I head to the shower… often the washing from the day before is still in our german washing machine, the shampoo in my shower, like almost every product in my apartment, is written in 4 languages (the breakfast cereal is written in 15! I know now how to say “ingredients” in just about every imaginable Eastern European language- handy, no?). As I am usually in a hurry in the morning, my typical breakfast is dark bread, the kind that can only be found in eastern Europe, and may be the single most important culinary contribution of this region to the world’s pantheon of great cuisine, and as I just enjoyed a lovely visit in an old wooden house in the heart of Russian Liepaja, Latvia, I have homemade black currant jam, fresh from the dacha, to put on it. The milk here is either what you would call fresh-from-the-cow, or irradiated so that you can leave it out for weeks without a perceivable change. Just as well, as I like both kinds equally.

Many mornings, if it is after 8:00, I just stop by the House of Buns, next to my own Stalin-era building to have one of many assorted freshly-made buns for breakfast, purchased for 20 American cents each. My usual order is one with forest berry or chocolate, and one with chopped fat pieces. Nothing says breakfast like chopped fat pieces in dill butter baked inside a fluffy fresh pastry! My daily dilemma is how to go to school- the 20 minute walk through the frigid morning air; past the giant great dane in front of the canary yellow cement house, up over the railroad bridge, and down the elm-lined Kretingos street, past a stately array of gray 5-storey soviet apartment towers, mixing with the school children headed to the German-specialty school, across the under-construction national highway to lcc. It is cheap, and good to work off the extra calories I have obtained by ingesting such light and airy dishes as potato meal soaked in potato starch, formed around a pork and onion ball, deep-fried bread with garlic and mayonnaise, fried pork and onion balls, inside dough or independently, etc… It is a surprise that I haven’t gained any weight in my time here. The big difference is I think in the quality of the food. Everything I eat is unpreservatived, unchemicaled. Your stomach really feels the difference when you eat what you are supposed to.

Anyway, on days where I am feeling I don’t need the exercise, and I can afford the 30 cents, I walk to the bus stop in front of the Navalis hotel, past the soviet “Lowland” movie theater, and the mega-dentist-plex, about a five minute walk, in order to wait at the bus stop to take the faithful No 3 bus. Or, on mornings where I am feeling particularly rich (50 american cents), or pressed for time, I can take a “marsrutka”- a wonderful invention which I believe would solve all of the United States’ public transportation needs. It is basically this- take a van, say 15 passenger van, make an aisle down the middle. This van drives back and forth along a regular route through the city, and you can stop it by standing on the side walk and holding out your hand. Once inside, and once you’ve passed your 1.50 to the driver via a bucket-brigade of passengers, and received your change, via the same bucket brigade, one can stop the van by a simple set of commands “stop here” “after crosswalk stop” “after driveway stop” “here let-me-out!”. Add a driver who has a virgin mary dangling from the rear-view mirror, a passion for Russian wedding music, a deep seated need to prove his masculinity by passing every other vehicle on the road, and voila! The marsrutka! It is the fastest and closest method, but unfortunately the most expensive. Some experiences are worth paying for.

Another thing that is a part of my daily life is shopping. I am on the European plan of buying groceries every day, just for that day. Now when I think about it the thought of loading up a minivan full of groceries seems so strange to me. I buy what I know I can carry. The supermarkets here aren’t THAT much different than at home. Of course you find different foods in them, but they are clean and every month more foreign foods appear. The list of things that I really want but can’t get has shrunk considerably, and now consists of corn tortillas (or at least tortilla flour), fresh coriander, lavender, dr. pepper, and not much else. Klaipeda is in a new trend now- the hypermarket. They just built two new hypermarkets, shopping malls basically each centered around a mega-grocery store. Actually as much as I hate shopping malls, I think it would be interesting for someone to see what the Lithuanians have done with the concept of the mega-mall. As I walk past the battlements of various pizza parlors overlooking the indoor ice skating rink, and boutiques selling the latest fashions from Helsinki, Berlin and Stockholm I can’t help but think what the Soviets would have thought in 1990 if they knew that after fifteen years their beloved socialist state would look like this. Many good things were lost with the Soviet Union, many bad things gained. But still as Lithuanians celebrate 15 years of independence this week, it is only a small minority I think that really regret their spectacular revolt in Vilnius 15 years ago.

Which brings me to another topic- outside my kitchen window, I can see the lithuanian third army headquarters. Watching the ongoings of the lithuanian military has become a humorous part of my life. The main building looks pretty nice, but out back (the part I see), there are a few soviet buildings which are slowly being dismantled and mined for bricks (literally brick by brick). And then there is a row of “military vehicles” which is basically non-matching soviet made pick up trucks with various assorted colors of tarp covering the bed to serve as transport carriers. The soldiers occasionally are standing in the yard smoking and chatting, and periodically an officer comes by and tries to line them up, but neither the officer nor the soldiers seem to take this too seriously. I think it is a good thing that Lithuania joined Nato, because if a new Russian empire under Putin ever decides to invade, I have a hard time believing that the Lithuanian third army is going to be able to do much about it 

Once I am at school, my life seems pretty boring. It is basically sitting in my office grading papers or trying to prepare lectures, or catching up on emails or news, or, when I am desperate to procrastinate, I have a new vice called maps.google.com. Sometimes I will be sitting there and wonder “I wonder what the beach front of Tripoli, Libya looks like?” and the crazy thing is you can zoom in and scroll around Tripoli, Libya, and see every tennis court and car and tile roof. One could almost see Mohamar Qaddafi! And you can do this for anywhere in the world- as a geography major, this is a great temptation. If I manage to resist that temptation, my office is in the busiest part of the school, and there are always people talking outside my office in Lithuanian, Russian or English. I always hear such interesting conversations going on outside my window, that I often can’t resist popping out and joining. I will occasionally also hear uproarious laughter from the staff lounge across from me, and of course you have to find out what’s so funny. I am amazed I get anything done.

My favorite part of being at school is the passing periods- between classes things become a zoo. I know most of the students at our school after 3 years, and you can always get in such good and short conversations. My very favorite thing is it is rude in this culture for a male to walk by another male without shaking hands. Therefore on my way to class, about a two minute walk I usually shake hands with about 30 people. I feel like one of those spider monkeys, swinging from one hand to the next. When I have my laptop and homeworks and handouts and books, then it becomes a well-honed balancing act (literally) of greetings in many languages. In general I find my students in lithuania to be extremely motivated. It is a joy teaching here, and I am getting very very spoiled teaching eager and motivated undergrads from many different countries. Teaching in an American State University would be very frustrating for me after this experience. Especially the students from “east” of here, meaning Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova, seem so hungry to learn anything that you can give.

Sometimes between classes, if I have a break, we will brave the cold run to the other building at our school where the gym and cafeteria is. The frigid temperatures encourage one to make that walk quickly. You pass the flagpoles, where if it is the independence day of any of the 22 countries represented at LCC, there will be a flag raising ceremony, like the Olympics! Speaking of Olympics, I am sad that this is the first Olympics I won’t get to see. I don’t have a tv and getting cable is hard for just one month. I will be either bumming off friends who are lucky enough to have Eurosport, or checking on the internet. It will be a good test for me, a confirmed Olympaholic. Life just isn’t the same without curling!

All is not lost though, because in the near future I will be going probably to the great Soviet bobsled in Sigulda, Latvia, where in addition to seeing four castles in one city (Sigulda was the border between the livonians and teutons for many centuries), one can bobsled down the soviet bobsled for only 2 Latvian lats! So my Olympic dreams can live on.

I had a very typical Lithuanian experience the other day. On the bus to Germany me and my co-teacher friend Jen sat behind a Lithuanian family. In our conversation it turned out that they said they would be really interested in coming to our church. So we went over the other night in order to renew the invitation to church the next day. Thus we got to spend what is a typical Lithuanian weekend evening, the kind of thing you can’t buy for money. The family, the Jonuzsai, were at home, and also had another old family, very old friends, over to spend the evening. How do typical Lithuanian families spend the evening? Well it involves Svyturys beer (the best beer in the whole world), dried fishes of various sorts, many strips of smoked pig ear, and lots of long tales about travels in Sweden, Oman, about Soviet pioneer camps, about the independence demonstrations back in 1991, the vagaries of trying to learn English and adapt to the rapidly changing world of the European Union, fishing stories, and general hilarity. And at the end of our long unhurried evenings (Lithuanians rarely pack their schedules, and a dinner suffices for the evening entertainment- waitress would never try to kick you out of a restaurant or hurry you away- they are salaried and not tipped, which makes the service, well distant, but it is nice to enjoy an evening without waiters coming by every five minutes…)

2006-04-08T21:00:00.000+08:00

These two castles have faced each other across the Norova river for centuries. A very fitting tension of east and west. The European Union/Russian federation border runs along that river today, with one castle in capitalist western democratic Estonia, and the other in whatever you would call Putin's neo-imperialist Russia. The tension is palpable. The Russians destroyed the Estonian city and settled it with ethnic russians who are now pragmatically Estonian Eu citizens with ambivalent loyalties. This was one of the most depressing cities i have ever seen

2006-04-08T20:58:00.000+08:00

Tallin at night

2006-04-08T20:50:00.000+08:00

Me on Toompea hill in Tallinn, Estonia- April 2nd and still snowing. This was on my way back from a conference in Narva, Estonia that i presented at. I got to hang out with my bro Jari in Helsiinki in Finland before hand which was sweet!!! i got to go to a Finnish Christian rock concert, find out what god is doing in the young Finnish church, and have good fellowship. The weather couldn't have been worse though, and i dont have any pics from there. I will miss my bros in Europe so much should i ever move away from here!

2006-03-23T22:59:00.000+08:00

A lost brother

You know that place in the B that says you shouldn't have fship with an brother who has turned away from the fth? I always thought that verse was kind of rude, and not Js' heart. I thought at most that it was an option for us... that it might help that unbeliever if they realized that they were cut off from Xn fship, and they might realize what they had lost and wake up to their sin. But anyway it was a choice that we Xns had to do or not do...

now i am wondering more if you CANT have fellowship with a such brother because it is impossible to. Once you have shared the deepest things in life, how can you go back to have a surface level relationship? that is so unsatisfying. And if you try to have a deep relationship, the Xn can't help but speak and think and share about what Js is doing. I mean we as Xns hide our lives in Chst, if i talk about myself, it will be about chst. And a brother who doesn't want to hear about Chst anymore, well how can they hear about me then? And when they share whats going in their lives, it only hurts more, because you remember how they once too, were walking in fth.

I don't think anymore that this is a choice paul is giving to us, but rahter an observation... once a Xn has turned away and doesn't want anything more to do with fth, well it is almost impossible to have any kind of a friendship with that person.

2006-03-13T22:42:00.000+08:00

Janonio Street- Home Sweet Home. Janonio gatve, kur as gyvenu

2006-03-13T22:41:00.000+08:00

My apartment building in Klaipeda. Mano namas Klaipedoje!

2006-03-13T22:40:00.000+08:00

In my apartment in Klaipeda- its sometimes chilly in there :)

2006-03-13T22:38:00.000+08:00

me on new years day 2006! Silvesterabend 2006 am Starnberger See

2006-03-13T22:36:00.000+08:00

Me as a camp counselor at Word of Life camp, near Munich. Hier bin ich Gruppenleiter bei Wort des Lebens am starnberger See

2006-03-13T22:08:00.000+08:00

So sometimes, especially when I am sitting in airports, I like to make lists. It is a fun way to think back on my life and to pass the time. Occasionally on here I would like to post these lists from my journal.

Today’s list: airports I have flown out of (or into)

United States:
Traverse City, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Detroit, Cincinatti, Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis, Miami, NY-JFK, Chicago O'Hare, LAX, San Diego

Europe:
London Stansted, London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Amsterdam Schiphol, Berlin Tegel, Berlin Schoenefeld, Muenchen, Frankfurt am Main, "Frankfurt" Hahn, Nimes, Beauvais, Klagenfurt, Pescara, "Stockholm" Skavsta, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw Chopin, Prague, Kyyiv Borispil', Keflavik, Istanbul Ataturk, Tallinn Ulemiste, Helsinki Vantaa, Dublin, Tbilisi

Others:
Belize Ladysmith, Corozal, San Pedro (Belize), Monterrey, Brisbane, Sydney Kingford Smith, Townsville, Taipei, Tokyo Narita

As you can see I spend way too much of my life in airports (49 and counting). They are a good place to people watch, and to journal, and to spend way too much money on food of dubious quality. But usually they mean that you are on your way somewhere interesting. I think an airport sums up the stange mix of loneliness and adventure that is travelling.

Favorite airport: Amsterdam Schiphol- the whole word is literally passing before your eyes.

Airport I hate most: "Frankfurt" ghetto- Hahn. Unfortunately this is the airport i am most likely to often see in my near future.

Denied

2006-03-12T15:22:00.000+08:00

Well the biggest drama in my life the last two days brought a lot of things to a point for me. I was supposed to go to Ireland, to take a drive around the Ring of Kerry on a date with Gd and to visit a former student of mine who lives there now. it was supposed to be perfect. I had an hour and a half at Frankfurt airport to go through customs pick up my bags and take the nice bus to Frankfurt Hahn airport. Because of a broken seatbelt, the plane was dealyed 40 minutes! I still had plenty of time, until it came to the baggage claim. I was waiting for my bags, and if my bag had come in the first 4/5 of the bags i could have made it to the bus. But no, my bag was the frigging last bag, so i missed my bus by 3 minutes... that's all. I lost the chance to go to ireland becuase my bag was just a little behind other peoples, not to mention the fact that i lost a lot of money in the whole deal- the rent a car, the flight back and forth. I tried everything, but there was no way that i could make it on time to the frankfurt hahn airport... I was so frustrated. I wondered though what god was going to do out of the whole deal, and it turned out he showed me a lot....

Gd brought together several things that I needed to know…. First, was the need for Js himself. You see Xns aren’t saved so that we can become moral. First of all we don’t become moral, as Xns we sin so often, and it is impossible for us to even become moral out of our own power. Jesus didn’t save us to be moral people. Xns aren’t saved so that we can be happy either. Any Chst follower can tell you that there are so many hard days. The B never tells us anywhere that Gd wants us to be happy. The B in fact promises us that life will get even harder for those who follow Chst. No, J saves us to be in a RELATIONSHIP with him. And the enemy of a relationship is self-sufficiency.

To be honest I have gotten very good about going around the world on my own, without seeking much help from J, or spending that much time about it. An event like knowing I might miss my connection, and in fact missing it, just throws me back into reality: I can’t control anything on my own. J, sometimes, who is jealous of our affection, will throw something into our life from time to time to remind us that HE IS. I spent a LOT more time with J because of this event than if everything had been smooth sailing.

The other thing that is easy for me to forget is that Gd values PEOPLE over EXPERIENCES. Not that going to Ireland was going to be entirely void of time with people, but its just that I sometimes grieve more about a lost experience than a lost relationship. Experiences are easier to control, and relationships are always elusive and always difficult. Experiences can become a kind of subtle addiction- a chase for novelty- another hit of interest or beauty or adventure to try to dull the bottomless ache that is in the heart of every human being. We were created for relationships however, and the relationships that we have here on earth are designed to show us ourselves better, and to point us to the great relationship with Gd we were meant to have.

So I still haven’t been to Ireland, and I missed a great experience I am sure. But getting reminded of these things that I so easily forget is worth 30 Euro I guess. And I got to instead spend a great day with my friend Kolja in Gießen, Germany, who took me in on very short notice. I met some great brothers in Chst, got to bicycle around a German university town, explore the heart of evnglcl Xndom in Germany, where the only evnglcl university, the largest evnglcl church, the headquarters for CCC are all located. I just hope that I don’t have to be reminded of these things the hard way in the future.