our fourth anniversary

Adam surprised me with a dinner out for our fourth anniversary yesterday. I'm pretty sure it's the nicest (only?) restaurant in town. Two wonderful ladies run this small (one table) restaurant called "Mount Olive Restaurant" and last night we were the only two there.

You should have seen the meal they prepared for us: fish in sauce, beef in sauce, gozo, bread, rice, fruit salad composed of pineapple, bananas, papayas and passionfruit, Coke, cake and coffee. It was an amazing feast! And there was a nice ambience as well, with our table lit by a single light bulb hanging in the center of the payote (round outdoor shelter) where we ate.

I'm thankful for a great husband who loves me, our two boys and most of all Jesus.

Christmas Day

Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love’s sake becamest Man;
Stooping so low, but sinners raising
Heavenward by Thine eternal plan.

Christmas this year was different—we were in a new place, and were celebrating for the first time without any other Molitors or Huntleys. Of course we missed our families. But we had a wonderful Christmas. As I stood in front of the single kitchen window washing dishes on Christmas morning, feeling the sunlight pour in on my arms and listening to Fernando Ortega’s Christmas album on the Ipod, I couldn’t help but be filled with joy. The thought of God loving us so much that He would become one of us is too wonderful for words, and remembering that reality was really the brightest spot of the day.

The morning started out just right, with two bouncy little boys joining us in our bed (they wake up so early here!) to snuggle.

I tried to make pancakes with Christmas cookie cutters to shape them in fun ways, but they just turned out pretty much like normal pancakes—roundish blobs. They tasted nice anyways. The boys opened presents, and John even squealed in delight when he saw the truck Adam had bought for him. Here is Sam in his new Golden Gophers jersey from Grandma talking on his cell phone to Grandmama (“Hello, Grandmama, hello!”)

The real excitement of the day came a little later in the morning. John was playing with his truck on the porch when a boy we don’t know came up to the porch and greeted us all. He hung around on the periphery of the porch until Adam went inside. Suddenly I heard Adam exclaim from inside the house, then watched him zip out the door and run past me at the speed of lightning! The boy was making off with John’s truck, but Adam was gaining on him. The chase didn’t last long, as the boy threw the truck to the side of the path and disappeared into the neighborhood. Watching a high-speed chase was exciting, but of course it was really sad to see such a young boy with his heart bent on stealing.

the beautiful sunset view from our front porch

the boys early Christmas morning

enjoying Christmas dinner together

talking to Grandmama on the toy phone

Later in the afternoon we ate dinner with the Zubots and Kathleen. Since Kathleen, Esther and I had all bought potatoes the day before, we had tons of potatoes for the meal. Esther and I had also bought green beans on Christmas Eve, so we cooked up a lot of those too. (In case you’re wondering, we didn’t actually plan the meal until Christmas Day). Adam went into town to search for some meat, and came home with a huge delicious chunk of hot, fire-smoked beef he had bought in town from some Muslim meat-sellers (most other people here wouldn’t be working on Christmas Sunday). With all that, plus an Austrian type of cake that Esther had baked in a bundt pan inside a pot over the fire, we had quite the feast.

observers' paradox

At GIAL we learned about what's called the "observer's paradox." When you decide to observe a cultural situation, wishing to be an unnoticed bystander...but your presence ends up being so noticeable that it changes the whole situation you were wishing to observe...this is called the "observer's paradox."

But tonight I found a new definition for the term. Often, there are groups of little observers that crowd onto our and Zubot's porches to watch us do the normalest of things. Events of greatest interest include -- us eating, and the kids taking baths.

So as we got ready to eat supper on the porch tonight, three little girls approached the porch, politely shook hands with us, then sat down on a bench to watch us eat.

"Are you just here to watch us?" Adam asked curiously.

"Yes," they replied, smiling. They were pretty cute.

So we played our part as the "dinner theatre" for a while, and then I decided to take advantage of the situation. So I asked them if they minded me taking some pictures of them, and they readily complied. All in all, it seemed like a pretty good trade to me.

along the Bangui-Berberati road

Here is a picture of the road on our second day travelling from Bangui to Berberati. The rainforest is beautiful!

Along the way, we got so many friendly waves from people whose mud-brick houses are built near the road...like from this cute little baby sitting by the fire... Considering what a long way we travelled, we passed surprisingly few vehicles. But there were a few, including this one that I thought was carrying quite the load considering the roughness of the road:

do

We arrived in Berberati three days ago after two days on the road – the second day a very bumpy one on a dirt road. The more westward we got, the more rain-foresty the view became. The trip went very well, and although the rack on top of our car broke, it broke only a few miles out of Berberati, so we were able to get to our new home with all our luggage intact! Because the place we live is on an open compound (no walls, just a lot of grass and trees surrounding our home) we are already having quite a bit of interaction with our neighbors.

 

Early in the evening a couple days ago, I decided to take the boys to explore a small food market just beside our house. Women work in their fields during the day, then bring their goods to sell at this market in the early evening hours. Some women were selling piles of cooked caterpillars, called do (pronounced “dough”) in the Gbaya language. I was intrigued by the piles of crinkly black caterpillars, but they looked far from appetizing.

 

As I was threading my way back home through a long row of women sitting on stools selling tomatoes, greens, peanut butter and bananas, I heard a woman exclaim appreciatively in Sango, “The little white boy eats caterpillars too!” I looked down at the three year old holding my hand and trailing slightly behind me, and saw that, indeed, the back end of a little caterpillar was just disappearing into his mouth. Upon being questioned, he affirmed that yes, someone had given it to him, and yes, it tasted good!

 

 

moving -- couldn't do it alone!

Tonight some dear missionary friends in Bangui came over to play games with us, and they brought supper. Then they insisted that we keep the leftovers to eat in the next few days! And over the next three days, we have people making meals for us three more times! This is how our community here is helping us get ready for our move to Berberati. It’s tremendously helpful and encouraging, and means that instead of focusing on making food, I can keep stuffing space bags full of clothes and trying to figure out how to arrange the Tupperware to take up the least room in our truck.

 

I am truly overwhelmed by the help and support of fellow missionaries here who have really become like family to us, even over the course of less than a year! We will miss friends here in Bangui when we move out to Berberati, and among those we will miss dearly are other missionaries. But we anticipate coming back to Bangui for various reasons, so it is not like we are saying a final goodbye to them.

 

As I was contemplating the wonderful friends that God has often brought to surround us at times we need them most, I reflected that a year ago, we were also in the process of moving. I remembered how when Adam left our Dallas home a couple days before me in order to drive our car to NC. Meanwhile, I stayed in TX with the boys to finish up packing and then fly to meet Adam.

 

While I was “husbandless” for a couple of those final days, many friends came over to visit and help me pack. One friend even stayed up most of the final night with me, helping me finish packing suitcases. I looked back at some photos today, dated “December 9, 2010” and saw photos of a smaller Sam and John in the little living room of our Dallas trailer, surrounded by piles of suitcases, and also by many dear friends.

 

Whenever it comes time to move somewhere new, I find it hard to imagine making new friends that can be as special to me as the people I already know. But God never ceases to provide new friends, and a support network, whenever we arrive somewhere new.

 

And then, of course, comes the inevitable goodbyes when it is time for the next move, and I am forced to add more names to the mental list of “people that I miss.” That is okay, though. My heart is filled with happiness when I think of all the people who have so lovingly poured into our lives and become part of our extended “family.” I am so thankful for them all.

a long journey before Christmas

One perk of missionary life is that you get all sorts of interesting stuff left behind when fellow missionaries move or downsize. We inherited a couple small artificial Christmas trees, and quite an eclectic assortment of used pieces of Christmas wrapping paper, homemade paper snowflakes, candles and decor, and a small stuffed Santa.

I started getting some things in shape for decorating, such as washing Santa and the red napkin and hanging them out to dry. We also have the more precious Christmas items we brought from home -- stockings for the boys, a couple photo ornaments, and a small stack of December books about things like Christmas and snow.

But nothing is going to be getting decorated quite yet. Because instead of getting ready for Christmas here in Bangui, we will be decorating for Christmas in a new house, out west in the small town of Berberati! After waiting for months to hear if and whether we would be moving, we finally have the word that we are indeed going to move. Around Dec. 12 or 13, we should be making the all-day journey across CAR, along with our colleagues Neil and Esther and Kathleen, to our new home. A new chapter of life is about to begin.

Starting to get ready for a big move reminds me a littlel of Mary and Joseph and the trip they took to Bethlehem just before the first Christmas. Travelling always carries with it a sense of the unknown, and yet we know that God will be going with us and will be preparing the way before us. And He has many purposes, most that we probably have no idea about yet, for why He is bringing us to a new place.