Happy Birthday Andy

Andy wanted to go out to eat at Black Angus for his birthday, so we went on Monday, the 13th.  And Andy did, as Andy often does, started talking about many things.  We talked about what it was like the day he was born and how his birth and life changed ours.  He has surprised us often since that day 26 years ago, and tonight was no exception.  For some reason, he said something about what would happen, where he would go when we died.  Then Becca said something about heaven.  Andy looked across the table at me and said, "When I get there and God and Jesus see me, they'll say, 'Welcome Andy.  We've been waiting for you.'"  And of course, he is right.  That is very similar to what Paul tells us in II Timothy 2:15, "Work hard so God can say to you, 'Well done.'"  (Living Bible)  The boy comes up with some things that really amaze us.  He is a very amazing son.  Happy Birthday Andy!!  

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Happy Birthday, Andy. Thanks Dustin and Abby for making it such a great day.  They bought us all tickets for the home opener of the Seattle Mariners.  We were able to take the bus and it let us off 2 blocks from the stadium.  Great ride and easy access to Safeco Field.  We got there in plenty of time as you can see from the picture.  Why are we dressed like that?  It was cold.  It was 36 when we got up this morning, and it was 46 at noon.  Far too cold for a baseball game.  We were 4 rows from the top of the stadium in right field.  We got to see all the action, but we were in the shade until 5:22.  When the sun hit us, we warmed up 18 degrees.  That was nice.  We got to our seats at 2 pm, the game started at 3:40.  We saw all the pre game as the stands filled up.  We were really cold and we left as the bottom of the 9th started.  We walked to the bus stop and were on the bus in 6 minutes.  Warm we were on the way home.  Abby called to tell us we won in the bottom of the ninth.  It was a great day.  Thanks Dustin and Abby for taking us.  

We are traveling to Johannesburg to have lunch with Jenn’s friend, and we are rushing to get there. We arrive in Joberg and Jenn calls to find out where to go, and we take a wrong turn, which means we’re going through Joberg, instead of around it. I finally find where we are on the map, but we still don’t know where we’re supposed to meet. Looking at where we are, I hope we don’t have to stop. We keep going and Jenn says, “I think we turn here.” We turn, but we’re not where we need to be. But as Jenn describes the area, her friend says, “Yes, you go three blocks, turn left and I’ll meet you at the gas station in 1 minute.” We do, she comes and we head out to eat lunch at a place called Carnivores.

We walk in and they have the menu posted. It has 19 different kinds of meat. What did you expect at Carnivores? All the meat is cooked over an open fire. They bring you a salad, and then they start off with the meats. They keep bringing you meat until you surrender (tell them to stop by lowering the flag on your table). Chicken liver was first, then chicken breast, chicken wings, lamb, warthog, wildebeest, ostrich, hartebeest, emus, blest buck, alligator, and I’m forgetting some. Oh yes, they also had beef. The oddest was the alligator. I said that all I got was fat. Then I was told that was how alligator was, mostly fat. It wasn’t bad, but not what I would ever order as my meal.

It was an experience. We got there later for the noon meal, and we were basically alone in the restaurant. Like they promised, the meat kept coming until we lowered the flag.
Then we went to the airport, and because we couldn’t check in online, we had to spend about 20 minutes checking in. Don’t know what the problem was. Jenn walks us as far as she could, and then we say goodbye. We go through security and Andy’s backpack sets off the machine. They look though most of it and ask if there are any aerosol cans in it. I assure them there isn’t. It goes through again, they show me the picture. I open the backpack and pull out Andy’s shaving kit. This is the one I found in the bathroom as I was looking for the phone. Instead of putting it in his suitcase, he put it in his backpack. He had a new can of shaving cream in it. Don’t really know why he brought it; he didn’t shave the entire time we were there. But we found the problem and I handed it to the security guy. We repacked the backpack and off we went. Had a good trip to Paris, and then waited for 3 hours for our connecting flight. We had a good trip to Seattle. I knew where my phone was, and we called Pam and told her we had landed. We made it through customs – no, I didn’t tell them about the ants we brought back; I didn’t know we had them. We got our suitcases and made it to the curb as Pam pulled up.

It is nice to be home. We miss Jennifer. But now we know some of what she experiences, we know a little about her living conditions. We have seen the passion in her as she shares Jesus with South Africans and with the staff at Thrive. It was a great time for all of us.

Reflections on South Africa

South Africa has a great deal of poverty. There were poor people everyplace we went. In Qwa Qwa the unemployment was 78%. When we visited in the homes, we only saw one male. We weren’t sure where the other men were if they weren’t working. We did see a lot of them walking or sitting beside the roads.

It seemed that the care of infants was totally in the hands of mothers or grandmothers. A lot of grandparents cared for their grandchildren. One family would take their 7 year old son to a town an hour away and leave him with his grandparents for 2 weeks at a time. They didn’t see him for those 2 weeks. There didn’t seem to be much playing with the children either. The infants were put on the backs of the women and held there by blankets wrapped around the women.
There was no recycling that we were aware of in South Africa. Pop cans were garbage. There was more aluminum in the cans there than in America. When I would pick up a soda pop can, I would think there was still some pop left in the can because it was heavier than our cans. No recycling of paper products either. There wasn’t a lot of litter along the roads, however.

The food was good, and fairly inexpensive. I had a 17 oz (600 g.) T bone steak dinner for $5.25. Some stores didn’t have a lot of variety, but they had some of everything we wanted. Snack foods cost about the same as here, however. Peanut butter was made differently, potato chips were about the same, they didn’t serve potatoes like we do. Often we were served a corn meal porridge for breakfast called pap. I really liked it. It tasted a lot like cream of rice, but I think it had more flavor. They also served it thicker with a sauce you could put on it as part of the meals for lunch and dinner. I liked it so much, I bought some to bring home. I’ve made it a couple of times here. I really don’t like corn meal, but this is totally different. It is white and finely ground. I paid 70 cents for 500 grams.
They also used a lot of cream. The soft serve ice cream seemed creamier. They had shelves of cream. They sold full milk, what we would call whole milk, in refrigerators like we do, but also in boxes that keeps at room temperature for 6 months. Once opened, it needs to be refrigerated. A lot of people used that milk.

Lesson from a South African Teacher

I will be forever indebted to one teacher I met on that first Leadership Summit day, Impact. We were talking about Christianity and how people need to experience Jesus. He said, “Christianity is not a religion, it is a life.” WOW! That really stuck to me. I’ve heard so many times, “Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship.” And it is, but from the South African teacher, it is even more than a relationship, it is a LIFE! That covers it fully. Christianity is not something that we practice; it is the way we live. It is not put on and taken off, it is not a relationship that can be broken, it is life, it is what we do, day in and day out. Our lives are not different depending on where we are or who we are with or the day of the week. It is the same, all the time. It is a life. It is us. It is Jesus in us. That is Christianity. I knew that, I know that, I’ve preached it for almost 40 years. But for him to put it the way he did. That made it simple, yet profound. It is so true. Christianity is a life. And as people who believe in Jesus, it is THE LIFE, it is the only way to live. Like Peter said when Jesus asked him if he was going to leave, Peter replied, “Master, to whom shall we go? You alone have the words that give eternal life.” Where can we go but to Him? Once we have tasted the living water, everything else is worth nothing.

Monday Morning and No Phone

Monday morning, we got up a little early to pack the truck and head off to Johannesburg to meet a friend of Jennifer’s, have lunch and catch our plane.  It didn’t leave until 8:30 at night, so we had lots of time to enjoy the day.  However, we got up and as I was weighing the suitcases and getting them ready to go, I realized that I didn’t have my phone with me.  I brought my cell phone with me to Africa, but couldn’t use it, of course.  We would need it when we arrived back in Seattle to call Pam, our friend, to come pick us up.  I knew I had seen it earlier in our trip, but couldn’t remember where it was.  No one had seen it.  I looked in my carry on bag, no phone.  We looked in all the other carry on bags, no phone. Then we started to look in the suitcases.  Marty had packed them all the night before, and now I went though them all.  No phone.  Could the guy who stole my razor taken the phone too?  No, I’m sure I had seen it since then. 

I look again in the carry on bags.  No phone.  I look again in the suitcases.  No phone.  This time, as I go through the suitcases, I remove everything, and then put everything back.  As I do, I hear Marty saying, “So much for me neatly packing things ahead of time.”  I make sure the suitcases are packed, weighted, and put down in the truck.  Side note.  There is a 50 pound limit in the US on baggage, but if you fly from South Africa to the US, the weight limit is 70 pounds (32 kg).  If I would have known that, I wouldn’t have worried about one suitcase weighting right at 50 pounds. 

As I’m doing this, Marty asks again, “Did you look in your carry on?”  “Yes,” I assured her, “4 times.”  We pray, we look around Jenn’s place.  We find Andy’s bathroom kit and he puts that in his backpack.  Finally in desperation, I look again in my carry on.  What I use is a bag that I inherited from my son, Josh.  It has a lot of places to put things, besides the laptop.  I had looked in all of the places 4 times.  Well, all the places except one.  As I opened it, I remembered that on a previous trip, I had put our boarding passes in this particular zippered pouch and couldn’t find them for a long time.  We were at the counter and panicking.  Anyway, as I opened the pouch, I remembered putting the phone in there so it wouldn’t get lost and I’d know exactly where it was.  Boy, did I feel silly after finding the phone just where I had put it.

But we had spent almost an hour trying to find the phone, so we ate breakfast bars and cereal at Jenn’s and off we went to JoBerg to meet Jennifer’s friend. 

Our last Sunday in Africa

Sunday we went to a different church. This one was in the area where the mission team had worked the preceding week. During their visits, they invited people to come to church with them. It was great to be there and see the people God had touched that week come and be with the team.
This church had less music than the other two, and the service started at 9. This was the shortest service as well, lasting only 2 hours. This was also the only church we attended where the regular pastor preached. It was good to be there and hear his passion for the Lord.
They took three offerings. One was for the church, one was for the Sunday School, and the last one was for the pastor’s food. There were people who brought up sweet corn, some potatoes, some brought money, others brought other produce from their gardens. It was like churches in America did in the early part of the 1900’s. They called it a pounding. At Christmas time, the congregation would give the pastor a pound or more of food. The first church we were in did this one Christmas. However, they neglected to tell us what that meant. Three days later we opened the presents from the church to find a pound of bacon wrapped and under our tree. Seeing the church do that for the pastor in South Africa brought back memories of that Christmas.
After the service, they had a meeting for the members, so we left. As we were outside, we were taking pictures. When many of the young children saw the camera, they would come running up and get in the picture. We were surprised that some young adults asked if they could be in the picture too. One of them is in the pictures you see here.
One the way home, we stopped at Kentucky Fried Chicken and bought some for dinner. The chicken tasted familiar, but it was a little different. Jenn says everything in South Africa is different. However, they did have great soft serve ice cream. It was creamy, cold and flavorful. What made it even better was the fact that a nice sized cone was 25 cents.
We got home and Andy and I finished caulking and plugging holes in Jenn’s place. Marty was packing our things away, getting things ready for tomorrow so we wouldn’t be rushed packing the car. Our plan was to eat breakfast at Wimpy’s, a restaurant that is usually connected to a “one stop” gas station, convenience store, etc. I guess it would be like having a Denny’s next to an AM/PM store, Circle K, Quickie Mart, etc. More about that tomorrow.
We spent our last evening in South Africa at the “living room” (where the team and interns gathered most evenings for fellowship and games) and said goodbye again to the interns and the mission team that was there. It was great to hear their stories of how this mission affected their lives. One couple said that as they were visiting in the houses of people, they realized that they didn’t know their own neighbors in America. They were going to do things when they got back to get to know the people around them better. Others were sharing how they saw the hand of God at work in the places they went and the people they talked with. God is working in South Africa. We are so glad to be a part of His work.

I had been driving around Thrive when Jenn was busy, and today, Marty drove.  She looks right at home driving from the right side of the vehicle.  The hardest thing for us was when we would be at an intersection.  I would constantly think we were turning into traffic when we would be turning with traffic.  Jenn did a great job driving us all over the country.  

Back at Thrive fixing Jenn's house

We had a great time at the Ocean.  We enjoyed each other, the Ocean, the pool, the food and the relaxation.  We left on Saturday morning, and made it back to Jenn’s in the afternoon on March 7.  There waiting for us were some ladders and some caulk.  I had told James, the property manager, that I needed those things because I was going to begin sealing up Jenn’s new place so the wind wouldn’t blow in as much as it had. 

Whenever the wind blew at the chalet we stayed in at Mt. Everest, the drapes would move in the wind.  One night it blew so hard that the bed we were sleeping in moved.  It woke both of us up.  At first we thought it might be an earthquake, but then we heard the wind and felt the air moving in our room.  From then on, I kept thinking of how cold the winters are there, and how cold it would be in Jenn’s place.  I committed myself to trying to stop the wind from moving Jenn’s drapes.  As I mentioned earlier, these cabins were not designed to be used year round. 

Andy and I started caulking the front of the house.  We saw some spots where the boards didn’t match.  Remember, these houses are made of the round part of logs to make it look something like a log cabin  There were places where the round of the walls met the round of the roof, and they didn’t match very well.  Then I came to a place where the floor joists for the loft were sticking out of the side of the wall.  I thought something looked strange, and I examined it closer.  I could see inside the house.  There was a gap of about 3/8 of an inch all along the bottom of the joist. I could look in and see most of the room.  We got that hole filled, and then kept going around. 

Looking at the gable ends of the house, I realized that we couldn’t caulk from the outside, so I went inside and saw a little insulation stuck in the cracks where the walls and roof met.  That was the solution.  We found some insulation at Thrive, and I took a screwdriver and wedged it into the cracks.  It helped that there was a wind blowing – the wind blew at Thrive a lot – and I could feel where the air was getting into the house, so I would pack and pack until I couldn’t feel it blowing in anymore.

We were able to get most of the one end done and then it was time for dinner.  We made it to bed because Sunday morning we had to leave early to make it to church.  

The Ant Saga Continues

A little break in the report on our trip to South Africa to bring you up to date on the ants in Marty’s CPAP machine.  There has been nothing simple about this entire ordeal.  Who knew going on a safari in Africa would follow us to Washington? 

On Saturday, I started to take apart the humidifier – and I took it apart outside to keep the ants from getting loose inside the house.  Whoever built it used star screws, evidently to keep amateurs from taking it apart.  But, of course, they are not dealing with an amateur with me, so I find the right driver, and I take the bottom off – no problem – only a couple of ants in there, and they are quickly extinguished. 

Then I start taking the other piece apart.  There are three screws holding it together.  I am able to get two of the screws out, but the third one is in a hole that is smaller than the hex shaped driver I am using.  The hex bits are the ones that fit a drill or fit the handles that come with 6 heads so you only need to purchase one handle and the smaller bits.  Anyway, the screwdriver is too big.  I’m anxious to get it opened up and ants killed.  Can’t do it.

Unable to disassemble the humidifier, I turn my attention to the CPAP machine itself, same problem.  The holes are too small for the hex drive to fit, so I place all the parts in 2 zip lock bags and wait until I can get a screwdriver that will fit.  On the way to church that Saturday night, we stop at our friendly ACE hardware.  I take in the CPAP machine to make sure we get the right size screwdriver.  We do, $6.69 poorer, I leave the store. 

Sunday afternoon, the sun is shinning.  Cold outside, but at least it is not raining.  I get the CPAP machine apart and find 2 small shriveled up ants in there, and one is moving.  Quickly his life is snuffed out.  Clean. No more ants in the machine.  I put it back together and tackle the last screw on the humidifier.  Oh no!!  The screwdriver is too big for the screws in the humidifier.  I try a number of different ways, and after 23 minutes of searching, find a regular screwdriver that fits the star head.  I turn it; slowly the screw begins to move.  It releases its hold and reluctantly comes out.  The parts come apart revealing a plethora of ants.  I shake them on the bench I’m working on.  I crush them easily.  I shake and more fall to the deck.  They meet the same fate as the first group.  I shake again, no more ants come out.  I look inside.  The 17 remaining ants inside are holding on for dear life.  I shake, they hold on.  I reach my finger in and crush some of them; others flee to a small crevice.  I can’t get them out.  I get a small tool.  Too big.  I take them into the bathroom and put the part in the sink.  I learned that ants can stay underwater a long time, learned that in South Africa (see prior post), but I didn’t think they could stand hot water. I’m pouring on the water.  They hang on.  The water gets warmer.  They hang on.  The water gets hot.  They begin to give up the ghost.  I’m winning!!  I scrub.  I shake.  I pour hotter water on the little buggers.  I think I hear a cry as they let go and swirl down the drain.  Am I free from the curse of the African ants?  I look closer.  There are 4 still hanging on.  I get pour more hot water.  The last one lets go.  I examine all the parts.  ANT FREE!! 

I dry off the parts; I make sure there are no ants.  None.  I put the humidifier back together.  It goes together smoothly.  I make sure I have all the parts installed.  Whoops.  One ring is still in the sink.  I take it apart again.  The part fits nowhere.  But it has to.  It came out of the humidifier.  Where does it go?  I try all the places again.  Still it does not fit.  There is not place for that ring. Then I realize what had happened.  The ants brought that ring with them.  They must have used it as a play ring for the young ants.  It simply did not fit anywhere.  That must be how it got there.  The ants brought it in, just for the little ants to play with – and maybe to drive me buggy. 

Got it together, I keep the spare part in with my other spare parts.  I filled the humidifier with distilled water.  Turned it on.  The heater worked.  The machine worked.  Air came out the proper hole.  We are good to go.  I tell Marty the good news.  She looks at me incredulously and says, “I’m not using that thing!  Too many ant memories.” 

Anyone want to buy a slightly used CPAP machine with humidifier?