A life less comfortable

Yesterday I went to the Harrisburg PA farm show complex with a couple of dear friends. We walked into the massive building and the organic odors of animals greeted us with a firm handshake.  We were there for the Christmas craft show.  We walked up and down crowded aisles filled with arts and crafts, both ordinary and remarkable.  There were twinkling lights and scarves and toys and treats and it went on and on and on.  I wanted so many things.  There was a lady there painting with needle and thread on silk.  The threaded art was truly amazing.  There were these guys selling spa stones that could file your nails and remove the very hair on your legs!!  Crazy! There was a man from Alabama selling the most remarkable knives that cut through squash like it was butter.  I know Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of our savior but I found myself longing for the material things all around.  I found myself wrapped up in a delicious melody sung by the craft booth sirens wanting to s

Last evening our Life group (small group) gathered in another church's parking lot to go through the Compassion International experience tent.  Normally our life group members take turns every Monday evening hosting a time of worship and discussion of the Word hinged on the previous sunday's sermon during which the kids head to another room for their own time in the Word with some kind of activity.  However we decided to check out the Compassion Experience since a couple of families in our group sponsor Compassion kids.  It is a tented immersive event where you walk through a trailer made up into a series of rooms that represent someone's life somewhere in the world.  You put on headphones and carry an ipod preprogrammed with a story of a child's life that was profoundly changed by Compassion sponsorship.  It is brilliantly put together and packs up easily in an eighteen wheeler trailer that moves the experience from place to place. After all in our group arrive

For the first time I saw a very venomous snake while I was out and about a week or so ago.  It was a green mamba, vibrant green sunning itself and stretched across the dirt path like a bad omen.  I gasped aloud and froze.  Thankfully it sensed my presence and made a startlingly rapid retreat into the nearby brush.  It seems with our surrounding neighbors burning off brush during the dry season it is causing snakes to take refuge at RFIS and our property.  Makes sense but a bit unnerving.  A long snake skin had been found not far from my sighting.  A cobra was seen near the chicken coop where my daughter, among others, cares for the chickens being raised for the agriculture science class.  Then just days later one of our beloved guard dogs Puma disappeared. Denise had been looking all over our property and next door at the school, to no avail.  Hours later the girls studying in our living room heard a pitiful wailing of a dog nearby.  Steve and I checked it out and Steve found Puma un

The other day Steve, Megan and I were hanging out in the kitchen.  Megan told me I needed to stop mentioning my up coming midlife crisis.  She then told Steve he needed to get over his laundry obsession with our 12 teens and their unclaimed, unmarked laundry that he has recently begun hiding.  Steve and I laughed at seeing ourselves through Megan's eyes.  Steve said if someone had told him a year ago that he would be hiding laundry from our house O teens he would laugh them out of the room.  Often reality proves to be stranger than fiction. The thing is I can't seem to get my mind around the fact that very soon our baby girl will be graduating from high school.  I've hardly recovered from Joe graduating and starting college.  You see we haven't lived full-time with our kids since they were in 8th grade for Sam, 9th grade for Meg and 10th grade for Joe.  We moved away from the states when they were 9, 11 and 13.  We placed them in French public schools for a year and t

22 years ago on this date Steve and I met at the Hot Biscuit diner in Kilgore, TX.  My roommate Susan and our hall-mate Cindy and I had gone to the Denny's type restaurant to study and have iced tea with multiple free refills (if we had had money we might have even shared an order of fries!!!)  We were studying and occasionally chatting when we noticed directly across the nearly empty restaurant some guys about our age studying in a corner booth.  The next thing we knew the waitress was walking from their table to ours with a sheet of paper.  She gave us the blank notebook paper saying the guys over there wanted our names.  We gave our names and she crossed the restaurant and said the same thing to the unsuspecting guys.  So over the next hour we wrote all over that sheet of paper, front and back, with the waitress wearing a track in the industrial low-pile carpet between our tables as she delivered our messages.  Steve said his name was Ferris and he had a girlfriend, his friends

Just in the last few hours we have had 2 significant conversations with 3 different students about various issues relating to character development.  Steve likes to call those special conversations held in our office with said student seated in a large rocking chair "come to Jesus" moments.  When we casually ask a student to come to our office for a talk they visibly stiffen and become very serious asking, "Am I in trouble?"  These talks almost always end in hugs and better understanding all around. This week the kids are attending spiritual retreats.  The high schoolers are off campus about an hour away having their retreat and the middle schoolers are having daily programs on the school campus.  Since 9 of our high schoolers are away our middle schoolers asked if they could have friends stay the night.  So here we are with 3 of our own middle schoolers and 5 extra for company for the next two nights.  We got off to a great start with a lovely enchilada dinner bu

Aww, so inspiring isn't it?!  People leaping off rocky cliffs into rippling green waters.  There are a few already in, wading and watching.  Get it... wading and watching... waiting and watching...  never mind.  So technically they aren't wading since they are fully immersed but the alliteration is lovely.  The image has some kind of soft sepia muted color filter lending a dreamy quality.  It looks so daring and exciting and inviting.  It calls out to the wild abandon within.  I like it.  However as my blog title indicates, I've taken the leap and been treading water in that murky sea of discomfort for some time now.  My life is less comfortable.  Living as a foreigner is challenging.  Leaping, so to speak, from land to sea is an all-in thing.  There is no turning back mid-jump.  Foreign cultures are a fascinating mystery that unfurls forever .  Foreign language snarls and snags and tries to entangle and pull at you like a vicious undertow.  Unfamiliar foods are both de

You think you know a guy...  I mean I've been married to the guy for over 20 years.  Then suddenly, while we were getting ready for our walk/run this morning, he walks in the room holding up what look like a pair of spandex bicycle shorts.  They are completely unfamiliar to me.  I assumed it was unclaimed laundry from the basement ( it happens a lot around these parts living with 12 teenagers).  Steve's face is alight with delight as he excitedly exclaims, "Look Honey, it's my old baseball sliding shorts!"  He goes on to show me the pocket in the front to hold the athletic cup.  It's like he's reunited with an old friend.  "Wow" is my only response at this point.  Then I ask, "when did you get those?"  He takes a moment to think back and responds, "When I was 15!"  Wait, what?!  "You've had these 'sliding shorts' since you were 15??"  He responds with, "You never know when you might need sliding shor

We live behind tall walls.  It is necessary.  We have guards 24/7 and even with these precautions we experienced a break in earlier this year.  We weren't the target of the armed masked bandits but our guards were taken and detained as the bandits feared our guards might hear and intervene during their robbery of the school next door.  So, unfortunately, walls and guards are part of smart security in these parts.  The tendency for me is to stay behind these tall walls except for shopping trips, going to church and other errands.  Our kids walk to school through a gate connecting the two properties.  Steve and I walk/run at the school within the walls.  We can even occasionally catch our kids in PE class when they are on the soccer field.  Funny story... Steve was running yesterday at the school and happened upon Sam.  Steve decided to jokingly pants Sam (Steve only slightly tugged at Sam's shorts and did not truly pants him).  When the class looked up they saw Sam pulling up hi

I have jokingly referred to this year of being dorm parents in Cameroon as THE trip Steve has taken me on to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.  And this year is definitely a trip!  As well as truly being a gift.  I want to share just a few of my favorite things about being in Cameroon.  We have come to love the kids at UBAC.  Just last night I was helping some students with their homework when I shocked Sharis.  She had been holding her laptop when I walked by and brushed past her and felt a gentle electrical buzz coming off that brief contact.  So, of course, I convinced her to hold her laptop again to see if a shock could be induced.  By this time Steve had come up and was making contact with me to see if he could feel any current.  In that moment I glanced up and noticed Megan and Amy (studying nearby) watching us quizically, a human chain of weirdos connected to an unbelieving Sharis tentatively holding her laptop.  She was zapped on her ear, at our point of contact.  She shr