The first incident happened while Toffer was in Nepal.  I have found that I am treated differently when I’m out alone and depending on the gender and ethnicity of the person I’m interacting with that can be a good thing or a bad thing.  Surprisingly the awkward situation I’m about to relate was from someone I would have previously thought would be appropriately friendly with me or just smile and move on.  Not so on this day.  Benjamin had been asking for days to go to our favorite Indian restaurant, though some of that might be that it’s the only restaurant he knows the name to because we ate there so often when we first moved.  We really like the food and the staff are friendly and like our boys, so I was game. It’s a place I know and felt comfortable going by myself with the boys.  We sat down to eat, half a dozen restaurant employees came by to talk to/play with the boys at various times, it was a typical meal.

I noticed a couple sit down at the table next to us, closest to Benjamin’s side of the table. I wouldn’t have expected either one of them to interact with us.  As we’re eating the woman reaches over and touches Benjamin and makes a comment about how much he’s eating. We get lots of comments like that because our boys eat a ridiculous amount of food for their ages, so at first I didn’t think a lot about it. Then she starts asking questions, while continuing to touch Benjamin while he’s trying to eat-rubbing his head, pulling on his arms, etc. I can tell he’s getting uncomfortable and so am I, but I didn’t know what to do. She asked how much Benjamin weighs, how much he weighed at birth, how he was born, and several other odd questions.  Then she asks if I take care of myself, which I thought meant if I had taken good care of myself when I was pregnant.  Her dining companion clarified that question by saying she meant partner/housemate.  Then she asked if all my children had the same father and is Benjamin’s father European (all Caucasians are called Europeans).  A few more odd questions that I can’t remember were asked after that.  For the record-I’m very much married to one man who is the father of all of my children. He’s half “European” and half Chinese (though at the store the other day he had a lady ask if his wife was Chinese because she could see it in the boys and apparently thought it didn’t come from him).  I don’t particularly like essentially being called a woman with loose morals. And I have rings on my ring fingers on both hands, so in any culture it should be easy to see that I’m married.  Regardless to say it wasn’t the nice, relaxed dinner with the boys that we were all looking forward to.

And for story number two.  We went to a neighboring country last week for a couple days, so we were staying in a hotel.  A vast majority of the people staying there were ethnically Asian of one kind or another, so like most places we go, we were really obvious and stuck out.  We ate breakfast at the hotel for sake of ease. They claimed it was an American buffet, but I don’t know a lot of Americans who eat fried rice or roti with chicken curry gravy for breakfast. Maybe just the concept of a buffet was the American part.  We actually liked the food as did the boys, so it was fine. Anyway, that doesn’t have much to do with the story except the roti part (which only Toffer ate with the curry gravy).  Roti is a sort of crepe-like bread dish that’s really tasty.  We first had it in Singapore a couple years ago and can get it here, too.  You can get it plain or with fillings.  For breakfast I like it with egg inside and a little sugar on top.

So, there’s a sweet girl (who looked like she’s actually from the country we spend most of our time in) making the roti fresh for breakfast. I stood in line both days to get it for myself and for the boys, so ended up going up more than once both days.  On the second day I went up a second time to ask said sweet girl to make me a roti with egg for Samuel. The guy in front of me in line sort of laughs and says something along the lines of “You like this very much. I see you have gotten much of it for two days now.” Wow-CREEPY!

Okay, first of all, most of what I ordered was for my toddlers and their aforementioned voracious appetites.  Apparently he wasn’t watching me too closely, otherwise he would have known that. Second, I’m not some silly westerner who is enjoying the novelty of this new food. We have a place three blocks away from our house that makes it and we eat there all the time.  Thirdly, you’re a creepy guy with a creepy laugh and I don’t like that you’re watching me. Please stop. Thank you very much.

And that’s my life, folks.

Many transitions exist in life and some are walked through much quicker and easier than others.  For us, we’re going through one of the most difficult transitions possible-a long-term cross-cultural move.  We’ve mentioned transition a lot, but I thought it might be helpful to write a bit more specifically about it.  In any transition there are five stages-settled, unsettling, chaos, resettling, and settled.  In our situation unsettling also brought a lot of loss, which brings grief with it, so we’re also experiencing the five stages of grief intermixed with walking (stumbling?) through transition.

Settled means you are in a place where you have a sense of belonging, you have friends, a general routine, things feel normal and comfortable a lot of the time.  Unsettling (or uprooting if you go by plant terms) is when things begin to change in the process.  For us unsettling in some ways started when we initially said “yes” to HCJB Global, though the majority of it was the last few months we were in the US.  It’s when things become uncomfortable and the realization of the changes that are ahead become more real.  During the unsettling period we said lots of good-byes, sold off or gave away most of our worldly possessions, did many things for the last time before the big move, etc. After unsettling comes chaos-the stage when very few things feel settled, normal, or comfortable.  Then comes resettling-the time when a new normal is beginning to be established, friends are made, life has a little more order and sense to it.  And finally, we come back around to settled-a time with routine, a place where you are known and know others, a normalcy and things that are comfortable.

Right now I’d say we’re pretty much smack dab in the middle of chaos. Chaos is the point when life is just about survival mode, few things seem settled or normal.  It’s mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually draining.  It makes our brains fuzzy and our bodies worn.  We ask each other questions and literally cannot come up with answers.  We aren’t doing anything wrong nor is chaos a spiritual attack, it’s simply part of the process in a transition and one that can come up even years later for those of us who live overseas.  In some ways transition is never fully complete for us because so many variables exist in our lives.

We’ve been told that we came to the field under some of the highest stress conditions possible-two toddlers, expecting another baby, right before my birthday and the holiday season.  The only thing that would have made it more stressful is if we’d not had family and dear friends to walk us through our last days literally to the security line at the airport and if we’d not had lovely team mates who have done everything from feed us for a week when we first arrived to house hunting with us to making sure we got Christmas shopping for the boys and each other done.

Life for us at this point is very much day by day and very often hour by hour.  Some days are easier than others.  Some days we feel more confident about living here and figuring things out, other days we all go to bed just wishing we could go home.  The great thing is that it’s okay to feel anything and everything we’re feeling.  And everything we’re walking through, experiencing, feeling is typical and normal.  We’re very much over any honeymoon stage (though the aforementioned stressors made our honeymoon period fairly short).

We’ve had a few people ask us if we’re adjusted, the kids are adjusted, we’re feeling at home, etc. No, we’re not and it would be completely unreasonable for us to think that after less than three months that we would be.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now-it will take us 12-18 months to adjust, which means we’re maybe a quarter of the way through the process.  We think that by the holiday season this year (yes, months away from now) we’ll probably be feeling fairly settled here. We’ll have our household well established, we’ll be involved with a church, we’ll have made friends, we’ll know where and how to get most things we use, and we’ll have found our new normal.  The added transition of a new baby thrown in the mix does not make the process any easier and could lengthen the entire process for us, though we also won’t know how to do it any other way and it might not make as much of a difference as I think it could.  It’s also possible that this being the only home Tadpole knows might help us feel a little more at home ourselves.  We’ll see when s/he arrives how that impacts our current state.

We knew going into this that we were signing up for a difficult life.  The thing about it is that I’ve not found anything in scripture that says following God and His plan for our lives is supposed to be easy-full of financial stability, good health,low stress, and happiness.  Look at the life Paul led.  If he had believed that following God and taking His love to the nations would result in life, love, and the pursuit of happiness then he would have been sorely disappointed with the way his life turned out.  He probably would have been a lot angrier with God about the whole shipwrecked, beaten, imprisoned thing had he believed that the path he was on would be an easy one because it’s the one God put  him on.

Transition is difficult. I’m not going to sugar coat our experience and make it seem like we’re tra, la, la-ing through it all, which I feel like maybe I have at times.  We have had times of happiness and fun while we’ve been here. We’ve seen God provide in some really amazing ways and I don’t want to discount that at all.  I keep feeling like because we are what we are that we should have all these huge “ah-ha” God moments.  We honestly haven’t. What we’ve had is this steady presence day in and day out and something happen at least once a day when we can say “That can only be explained by the hand of God” (i.e.-meerkats at the zoo we visited in a neighboring country-a bigger God moment than you can imagine).

We’re going to continue walking this walk, following this path.  One day it will get easier to live here, we’ll be more settled and more established.  We’ll miss things from home a little less-hopefully not the people, though.  We’ll keep doing “thank you God for…” with the boys at the end of the day to remember that God is always worthy of thanks and praise no matter our circumstances.  And we won’t try to rush the process of transition because of other people’s expectations or our own desire to feel less chaotic and out of sorts.  We’ll continue taking life a day at a time and as time goes this will feel more and more like home and things we do will feel more and more normal. Until then, we’ll give ourselves and each lots of grace and do the amazing work God has called us to.

We do still have a tree and we brought some number of our ornaments with us to decorate. We still have Christmas music to listen to (though “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” gets skipped). And we have a kid-friendly nativity set to display.  Benjamin has been very concerned about whether Jesus needs a fresh diaper and Samuel asked if Mary had toes when examining her as we put it up.  No,  Jesus doesn’t need a diaper change and yes, Mary has toes.  So much of getting into the spirit of Christmas has to do with what’s around us that it’s honestly been harder to do it this year.  We haven’t found a church yet, so we’re not even connected to a local body of believers to share this time of the year with.  It’s hard and it’s weird.  It’s made us think/talk a lot more about what Christmas means. And it’s made me think about what it was like the night Christ was born.

Mary and Joseph were in a barn.  They had no comforts of home or even creature comforts of the day. Scripture doesn’t say if anyone else was at Jesus’ birth with them helping Mary through labor, delivery, and helping care for her and Jesus after He was born.  Even if there were people she didn’t know them.  They had no big meal, tasty treats, or fancy drinks.  They weren’t decked out in their finest clothes purchased just for the occasion.  They weren’t concerned with whether or not the twinkle lights were twinkling properly or the stockings stuffed just right.  They were probably mostly in survival mode-overwhelmed, exhausted, just trying to get from one moment to the next.

I can somewhat identify with that kind of Christmas-no family, very few people around who we know or are known by, some number of the creature comforts we’re used to gone, and being in survival mode-that’s more like our lives right now. And that’s okay.  The reason we live this life is so that people can know about Jesus-his birth, life, death, and resurrection-and they can celebrate Christmas with joy not because of presents and peppermint lattes, but because He came to save the world.

Ironically some number of stores here actually have “Merry Christmas” signs up (they also display signs for holidays from other belief systems-they just don’t coincide with Christmas here) and those who play Christmas music are playing mostly Christmas carols/hymns.  Some carolers were even singing at Ikea the other day when we were there.  All of this in a country where at most 10% of the population believes in Christ and His birth.  While it’s strange, it’s also amazing and my prayer this Christmas as I’ve been out and about is that God will embed the words of those songs in the hearts of those who don’t believe in Him and that He will use something that simple to turn hearts to Him.  We honestly miss many of the things we liked about this season as we celebrated and anticipated Christmas, but I can’t be upset about the opportunity to pray over very lost people in a dark place who desperately need the love of Christ.

If you have a shopping list, then you have to figure out the best place to go to get as many items as possible in one trip.
If it’s more than groceries, it’s likely that the mall (which has a grocery store in the basement) is the best place.
If you’re going to the mall, you’ll have to park in the car park.
If you park in the car park, then you’ll have to make sure you remember where you parked, how you left that area of the car park, and to take your ticket with you.
If you finally get inside the mall, you have to look at your list and figure out which stores you need to visit.
If it’s electronics, you’re likely going to level 3, if it’s home goods, you’re likely going to level 4.
If you parked in the basement car park (which is much better than the very confusing multi-story car park), you’ll have to take the elevator to one of those floors.
If you’re going to level 4 you have to get off in the really fancy furniture store (some of the furniture actually has Swarovski crystals on it) and tell the kids not to touch a single thing because anything in the store is worth more than everything you own and then some.
Then  you start trying to find the things on your list, going to multiple stores and sometimes having to change levels.
If you have to change levels you have to find one of the seemingly hidden lifts (elevators) to get to the right level.
And then you keep shopping.
If you have groceries to buy, that’s usually best to do at the end.
If the grocery store doesn’t have the brand you’ve figured out you like you’ll have to try a new one.
If they just don’t have the item, you know for sure that you’ll have to go to a different store later.
And once everything you can find has been purchased (sometimes with trips back to the car in between to drop stuff off) you’ll have to pay your parking fee at the autopay station.
If you have to pay at the autopay station you need exact change including bills.
At the autopay station, which is constantly saying “please insert payment, please insert payment” or something along those lines, you put bills in hoping that they’ll be accepted.
If you get your fee paid you have 15 minutes to leave the car park and you hope you can remember how to get back to your car and get the kids in within the time limit.
If you finally leave the car park you drive back to your house and look over what’s left on your list to decide where the best place is to go next.
And if you have to go shopping it’s likely you’ll have to park in a car park…

Shopping is quite the adventure and I seriously had a day when I had about 12 items on my list and ended up having to go to three different grocery stores to get everything on it and I think it took me three days.  Oh, I miss Kroger!!  We have figured out a few things that we like (and finally have 2 brands of milk that we like the taste of and are actually 100% fresh milk from the case-most of the milk here is boxed and on the shelf with a use by date somewhere months into the future) and where to buy those things. A lot of things we’re still trying and deciding what we like, what we don’t, and what we should try next.  Many items we’re used to buying just don’t exist here or are pricey.  And there are shopping options-like fruit stands and wet markets-that we still haven’t tried and will soon.  Most stores don’t have websites, so even trying to research say, where to buy a couch, is difficult because information is not as easily available and large, spacious stores with lots of options are rare.  It’s all part of the never ending ways life is different and the countless adjustments we have to make to live here.  I often wonder if I’ll ever figure it all out and decide I likely won’t, but at least I know that I go to one store to find the bread we like and another to buy cheap bananas and to have them weighed and priced in the produce section.

1. Our gracious, loving God and the amazing, saving grace He extended to me
2. Toffer-I could go on and on about the wonderful man God gave me as a husband
3. My dear children-Samuel, Benjamin, and Tadpole
4. Our families
5. Our Friends, especially the ones who have made an effort to reach out to us since we moved
6. Training-I will always be thankful and grateful for the 3 weeks we spent at MTI and the people we spent that time with.
7. The organization we serve with
8. Our team here in Southeast Asia-they’ve been invaluable during the past month and a half
9. Our house-there’s space for the kids to play including a large patio outside and we even have an oven that fits the 9 x 13 dishes we brought from the US
10. Our car-it’s big enough for our family (most vehicles here aren’t) and is even a manual!
11. Internet-I know opinions differ on the internet and ways of connecting on it, but in our situation we’re very thankful for it because it’s our only connection to people in the US right now
12. A complication-free pregnancy (so far, which is longer than we got with either of the boys)
13. A natural-birthing advocate doctor who will let me have the birth I want
14. My boys wanting to listen to or sing “One True God” by NewSong when we live in a country where most people worship false gods
15. My boys like to pray and Samuel sometimes asks to pray for very sweet or deep things, not just thanking God for toys (though that has come up a couple times (:  )
16. Our faithful prayer warriors
17. Our faithful supporters
18. The import grocery store that carries some tasty treats from home and makes good bread that’s cheap
19. Living in a gated community with guards that is less expensive with a larger home than other places we looked at and it’s a small, safe community
20. Thunderstorms-Samuel is not fond of them, but they bring a much needed cool to the air and some of the lightning is incredible
21. Lots of good good-byes in the US before coming here
22. Our week of family time the first week of October-we NEEDED that time to be together and to shift gears after so many good-byes and leaving everything we’ve ever known
23. Humility and learning more and more how little I deserve God’s love and how much I really need Him
24. “Verses”-memorizing with Samuel and new things God has shown me
25. That friends bought some of our things before we moved and will make their own memories with them
26. All the places in Murfreesboro we loved and miss
27. Our home church in Murfreesboro
28. Seeing all of our siblings within the last few months before we moved and most within the last few weeks and getting to see so much family this year
29. That we invested in our lives in the US up until the moment we got on the plane
30. Being in God’s timing and not our own
Bonus:
31. Good last holidays in the US (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter) over the past year

One of the sessions during training was grief and loss.  We usually think of those topics in relation to losing a person, but there are a lot of other losses we experience in life and grief comes with them.  We experienced a great amount of loss with choosing to go down the path we are on.  I say choose because we could have chosen to say no and not do what we’re doing, but I also want to be clear that not all choices are easy and doing what’s right and following God where He leads does not mean there is not an incredible amount of pain and difficulty in the following.

We left MANY people who we love-our family, dear friends, supporters, church family, etc.  Yes, we can email/call/Skype/etc, but nothing is the same as sitting in a room with someone and being able to physically interact.  One of our very dear friends had a baby less than 24 hours ago and I wish I could be there to give her a hug and hold that sweet baby girl and congratulate the dad and baby girl’s big sisters.  That pain, that loss of interaction, will be much worse when it comes to my sister-in-law having a baby within a week of Tadpole being born and the knowledge that our kids could be over 2 before they ever meet.

And then we go to the loss of the familiar-everything here is different.  Even Sprite tastes different here.  The only thing we’ve found so far that tastes just about the same is Baskin-Robbins ice cream.  And the only thing I’ve found that seems to smell just the same is the Gap store we found last weekend.  Driving here, as we’ve said, is very different. The housing is different. The foliage and critters are different. Even the road kill is different-I never encountered a large lizard as road kill in the US.

And the loss of knowledge of surroundings.  We’ve been quite adventurous, but still don’t know what areas to avoid.  We know that the area we live in is generally safe along with the areas either direction of us, but beyond that we have to just feel things out and watch ourselves.  It’s probably why I find it somewhat unnerving to be watched everywhere I go because I’m the pregnant white girl with two little boys.  I knew it would happen, but we’ve been a few places where we are the ONLY white people in the building (including a couple large shopping centers) and it’s a strange feeling. And that leads into a loss of privacy to an extent, though we are thankful  that we don’t think neighbors will be particularly nosy and invade our privacy like we know happens in some places, but we’ll see. I could be wrong on that count.

We definitely have experienced times of grief over everything we left and have lost.  There’s much, much more than I can recount here.  I’m thankful we knew to anticipate this and to know that it’s healthy to grieve those loses, some that we will likely always grieve.

Right now we’re all missing home, which is normal and expected.  If we didn’t miss home it would be a pretty sad statement on how we felt about where we lived and the people we left.  We’d rather miss people, things, and food and have invested in our lives in the US than to not have invested there and not really miss anything at all.

I don’t say all of this to garner lots of sympathy, though prayers and encouragement are much appreciated.  I’m just trying to give you another glimpse into our lives and what we’re experiencing as we walk this path we’re on.

At this point we are getting within hours of the one-week mark for being in our new Asian country. It was about as you would expect with 2 small children and a variety of bags that are supposed to tie us over until our shipment arrives with the rest of our belongings.

Saying goodbye was hard, not only because there were so many but if felt like they kept on going for a long time. We’re now starting to say hello to our new culture, coworkers, and way of life.

Right now we have a temporary place to stay while we are finding a new place to call home. We hope to have that worked out soon and move in as soon as is feasible. The boys have been dragged around to a lot of places and miss somewhere of their own where they can be themselves.

For all of us we’ve been sampling some of the tastes of Asia while occasionally stopping somewhere familiar to eat a meal that seems a little more like we’re used to.

Getting around is a little easier now that we have a car to use while we find something permanent to buy. It’s been interesting/strange/terrifying/confusing to not only learn how to drive in a new area with its own peculiarities and rules but to be doing it while driving on the “other” side of the road. Becky and I have been getting in some practice and are starting to feel a little more confident.

On the work end of things I’m mixing a little bit of training in with settling the family. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to help at home and work as I have the chance to.

There is a lot more to say and we’ll be updating a little more frequently soon. The adjustment continues and the stress of making heads and tails of things when not all of the signs are in English can take it’s toll. Even with the stress we are excited to be here and to see what God is going to be doing with our family as we begin to serve.

For those of you who don’t know, I lived in Ames for five years of my life-sixth through tenth grade-and my mom grew up about 30 minutes away from there in a tiny town called McCallsburg.  We realized as we were getting close to Ames that the three previous trips there had been for weddings and were short trips and that the last time we were there for any appreciable amount of time without scheduled activities was almost 10 years ago to the week.  I was a bit giddy about the opportunity to actually spend time in Ames-to see the places that shaped me for five years.

As we drove through the streets I could point out houses where so and so lived (and most of so and so’s parents still live).  We drove by the elementary school where I went to sixth grade (Samuel thought the playground looked cool), the now-closed middle school (a much-needed new one was built close-by), and the high school. It made me feel connected to a part of my life that I think I’d become somewhat disconnected from.

We spent time with my mom’s sister and her family and my mom’s brother, including a visit out to the family farm so the boys could ride on a tractor.  Great Uncle Dan was more than willing to do this, though Samuel insisted that Mama also drive him around in the tractor. I complied and Toffer posted a video on Facebook for those particularly interested.  We also went to Iowa State University’s campus where my grandfather was a botany professor for years and years and my parents, brother, and several other family members attended at various times in the past five decades. It was bittersweet to stand at the office that used to be my grandfather’s office and see someone else’s name on the door.  And it was bittersweet to go to the farm where I used to ride the tractors with my grandfather and then go eat my grandmother’s home cooked meals and know that I will not see them again until we are reunited in heaven.

We crammed a lot into our days in Ames. I loved getting to see so many friends and catch up with supporters there.  I loved showing Toffer places he hadn’t seen in previous trips and especially introducing our boys to a part of my family’s history that they hadn’t seen yet. And what I loved the most is that Ames still had a feeling of home, even after not living there for 14 years. It was nice, it was comforting. What was so great about it was that I felt such freedom to be able to call more than one place home.  Murfreesboro is just as much home as Ames is and I hope that our new place of residence in Asia will also one day feel like home without having to feel like I’m giving up something I left behind.  Ames will always have a feeling of home. Murfreesboro will always have a feeling of home. And I hope one day the city where we will live in Asia will also feel like home.