Is It Really Almost Thanksgiving??

Wow, the weeks just FLY by here!  We leave for America in just 11 short days and it is crazy to think that we have already been here almost three months.  In many ways, it feels like it has been just three weeks.

We are preparing to spend Thanksgiving next Thursday with two other American families: Eric and Stephanie, and Keith, Marla, and their 5 children.  Even though we will miss spending the holiday with our own families, we are so thankful to have these two wonderful families here to celebrate with.  I think we are eating at lunchtime, which means that we will have already polished off the pumpkin pies (and Josh is making a chocolate chess pie, Janice!) before most people in the States are even out of bed.

Josh and I were talking the other day about how it is difficult to communicate how excited we are about coming home.  We are just beside ourselves with anticipation over seeing our families and friends again, but not because we don’t like it here.  We do.  We really love it here, actually.  We felt the same way when we lived in Louisville.  We loved living in Louisville, but we still missed seeing the people we love.

In other news, we have gas!  Haha, no we didn’t have beans for dinner last night (although, as we learn Romanian, Josh has entertained the students with profound statements like, “fasole face gaz,” or, “beans make gas”), the gas company turned on our natural gas!  Now the radiator company is scheduled to come today and inspect our radiators and, if all goes well, we should hopefully have heat by tonight!

I don’t think we have adequately explained how much more uncertain this whole process has been than it would be in America.  They were originally supposed to have gas by this past spring (these are brand new lines, there has never been gas in our village before).  Then they have been saying it would be on in two weeks ever since.  Two different gas companies (the big company out of the capital, Chișinău, that is in charge of all of the gas, and the local company out of Orhei that is over our area) have been out here numerous times doing work and inspections.  There has never been a list of, “this is what we need you to do to pass inspection,” rather, every time someone came, there was a new list of things that needed to be done, sometimes even contradicting things that had been done before.  Bribes are common here, and we have suspected that they may have been dragging their feet hoping we would give them some bribe money, but of course we weren’t going to do that.

In Jude news, I don’t know that he will be walking by the time we get home, as many predicted, but he can stand by himself now.  He doesn’t like it though, I think because the floor here is hard tile and he knows how bad it hurts to fall and hit his head, and he is scared.  So whenever he feels me trying to wiggle my fingers out of his hands, he just sits down!  He does walks all over the place holding onto furniture, though, and is so much happier now that he can do that and crawl.

I guess that’s about it… we can’t wait to see everybody when we get home!

Homemade Pizza

I have become, out of necessity, quite a cook since moving to Moldova.  One thing that I have really enjoyed preparing is homemade pizza.  It is QUITE a job here, since there are no pre-made crusts, sauces, or toppings to buy.  It takes about 2 hours, but it makes about 3 meals for the two of us, so it is worth it.  The recipe is from Betty Crocker’s big red cook book.

I start with a basic bread recipe and let it rise twice, once in a bowl and once in the pan that it will be baked in.  While it is rising, I:

-brown ground chicken breast mixed with sausage seasoning, an onion, and 2 cloves of garlic

-let the sauce simmer, which is made of whole tomatoes in sauce, tomato paste, an onion, 2 cloves of garlic, sliced mushrooms, a green bell pepper, oregano, thyme, basil, sweet paprika, salt, and a dash of cinnamon

-grate the mozzarella cheese

Then I pre-cook the crusts for about 20 minutes.  I make 2 pizzas, so while the second one is pre-cooking, I can start putting the toppings on the first one.  Then while the first one is baking, I put the toppings on the second one.  We usually start eating while the second one is still in the oven.

It is extremely delicious, if I do say so myself.  I’m looking forward to making it for my mom when we are back in the States, because she loves pizza (and all Italian food, really) almost more than life itself. 

Our First Care Package!

I received our first care package today, and it was so exciting!  My Mom mailed it on October 2^nd, and it was delivered to me on November 10^th… talk about rush delivery!  She mailed us some Clif and Luna bars (which we love for morning snacks), some brown wool yarn that I had been using for a hat for Jude and ran out of ¾ of the way through the hat, some cute 100% cotton yarn (which is unheard of here), some teething tablets for Jude, a box of Lipton decaf tea (decaf tea is really hard to find here), a picture of us and our parents on our last day in the States, and, of course, a hand-written note, which was more precious to me than I expected. 

That got me to thinking… a couple of people at home had asked me what kinds of things we would appreciate in a care package, and I thought a list of things that are difficult or impossible to find in Moldova might make an interesting blog post.  If you are interested in sending us a package, feel free to email me for our mailing address!

Things we like, but cannot get here:
A1 sauce
Clif & Luna energy bars
Crest White Strips
100% Cotton Yarn
Fish Oil pills (I take them for my arthritic knees)
Super glue
Laundry stain remover of ANY kind
Pecans
Craisins (Cranberry raisins… Josh loves them.  They actually don’t have cranberries here at all.)
Chocolate chips
Brown sugar
Molasses (they make their sugar from sugar beets, not sugar cane, so they don’t have brown sugar or molasses, which is the byproduct of refining sugar from cane)
Cookbooks in English
Shortening
English Movies or TV shows on DVD (we don’t have a TV, but we can watch movies on the laptop)

Things we like that are very difficult to find:
Vanilla extract
Scented candles
100% Wool Yarn
Decaffeinated Tea (I’m very sensitive to caffeine and we drink decaf tea with dinner)

But whatever you do, don’t send any money in the mail!  Everything has to be inspected by customs, and sometimes they go through it before you get there, and the money probably won’t still be there by the time we get it.  J

2/3 of the Way Through our First Term!

Sorry, I’ve been so bad at blogging since we moved!  In my defense, it is hard to find time to blog when your internet time is so slow most of the time, and the one day a week that we go to use fast internet, it is very brief.

During the week, we can get online via dial-up internet in Josh’s office.  It usually connects at around 30 megabytes per second,  which is sloooooowwwwwwww.  On Fridays, we go to another missionary family’s house in Orhei to use their fast internet.  We Skype with our parents, upload pictures and videos, download a few American news podcasts, manage some online finances, and maybe one or two other things.  Just to do those few things, we are usually there about three hours.  We take turns entertaining Jude while the other does what we need to online.

Anyway… I cannot believe that we have already been here two months and only have less than a month before our 3 month “forced furlough” (as I’ve been calling it in my mind).  We wouldn’t have planned it that way, but there is a 3 months in, 3 months out rule until we get our living permits (which, Lord willing, will happen next spring).  It is a blessing though, because we are eager to see our family and friends again, and we need that time to raise some more monthly support.

I am particularly excited about the two weeks that we will be spending in Louisville for Josh to take some J-term classes at the seminary.  Jude and I will have all day each day to visit friends and places that we have missed since we left in May.  Josh and I are already planning out the different restaurants we want to eat at—Moe’s, Mark’s Feed Store, Great Wall, Thai Smile… yum!

Life here has been going really well, and going really quickly!  It seems like the weeks just fly by, honestly.  We are very blessed to have such an active little man, and he keeps us busy busy busy every minute of the day.  I was actually bored for a couple of minutes the other day (the house was clean, Jude was asleep, and I don’t have a current knitting project) and it felt so strange because I’m pretty sure it was the first time I’d slowed down long enough to be bored since we got here!

I don’t know if I’ve said this in a blog yet or not, but I have been quite the chef lately, and I really enjoy it.  I’ve made (completely from scratch, of course) pizza, sweet-n-sour chicken, roasted broiler chickens, meatloaf, soft tortilla shells, doughnuts, snickerdoodles, chocolate chunk cookies, chicken fettuccini alfredo, spaghetti with meat sauce, and more.  It is so fun!

I’d better wrap this up.  Please continue to pray for us and for what God is doing here.  There is much, much, much kingdom work to be done in Moldova, and these students will hopefully be just a small part of that work.  Also, please pray specifically for our church in Vatici, that we would be obedient to the Lord in all we do, and that we would actively engage the people in the village with the Gospel, and that the Lord would change people’s lives for his glory.

On a practical level, please pray that our natural gas will get turned on soon!  It is very cold now, dipping below freezing most nights.  The students are crammed into just a few rooms with electric heaters, and we have one small electric heater in our apartment as well.  We are not freezing, but we are not exceptionally warm either (especially when the hot water heater stops working… which is pretty frequently).   The gas heat will also be more cost-efficient for the camp than running the electric heaters.  They are saying it should be on in two weeks, but they have been telling us two weeks since we moved here two months ago!

Thanks to everyone for reading and praying!

Moldovan Culture and Health

Moldovans have some ideas about health that seem, to Americans, to be very outdated.

One of the most amusing things we have encountered is that the Moldovans are afraid of wind getting in their ears because that is, of course, how a person gets sick.  They would rather sweat to death in a hot car, house, or classroom than open a window.  Many women wear scarves over their heads not out of religious modesty convictions, but because they tie the scarf over their ears and it keeps the wind out.  And what happens if you do get wind in your ear?  You draw it out by putting the mouth end of a lit cigarette in your ear… of course.

It was actually a team from our home church who rode, in the blazing July heat, in a van with no air conditioning from our northern camp to our central camp.  The Moldovan who rode with them, knowing that the Americans would want the windows down, sat in the backseat with a winter coat and toboggan on, afraid of getting sick from the wind.

Moldovans also do not generally eat or drink cold things, and especially don’t give them to children, because they believe it will make them sick.  If they get some juice out of the fridge for a child, they will warm it up in the microwave.  At camp, there is a night where they give out ice cream, and we are told that one mother asked her kids to be sure and let it warm up before they ate it.

Children here are generally dressed very warmly.  The first few times we took Jude to the market, it was very hot and we had him in his usual t-shirt, shorts, and no shoes.  It seemed like half of the people there stopped us and would talk to us in Romanian, motioning toward Jude.  I don’t know what they were saying, but I’m pretty sure it was something along the lines of, “Your kid is going to die because you don’t have enough clothes on him.”  Similarly, Josh has been chastised twice already in grocery stores for getting Jude too close to the refrigerator section.   Josh summed it up well when I mentioned needing to get Jude some warm winter clothes and he said, “I don’t think there is much of a difference between warm winter clothes and warm summer clothes for babies here.”

Daily Life in Moldova

I can’t believe we have already been living in Moldova for a month now.  By now, we have settled into a generally predictable routine and our week days have a busy rhythm to them.  Here is a sample of what most of my days look like:

5:30am- Josh wakes up

between 5:30-7:00am- Jude and I wake up

We take turns playing with Jude while the other eats breakfast, drinks coffee, and gets ready for the day

8:15am- Josh goes to his office to prepare for class at 8:45

Jude is not a morning person and is usually pretty grumpy until his morning nap, so I play with him until he gets tired.

9am- I start trying to get Jude to fall asleep.  He fights sleep ferociously, so this is not an easy task.  I put him in the backpack carrier and either go for a walk outside if it is nice or sing and pace around the house.  This may take anywhere from 5 minutes to… the rest of the day.

(Assuming Jude falls asleep within 30mins-1hour.) I have my second cup of coffee and rest for a minute.   I then do the morning dishes, straighten up the kitchen/living room, put in a load of laundry, and try to make myself clean something.  Jude usually wakes up by now, but if he doesn’t, I may take a moment to rest and knit.

Jude wakes up from his morning nap usually in a pretty good mood, if it was a decent length.  I let him play in his walker and I clean/do laundry for as long as he will play happily.  Then we play together for a while.

11:45am- I do a quick straightening of the house.

12:00pm- Lilia comes for our Romanian lesson

1:00pm- Lunch in the cafeteria.  We take Jude’s walker and a bib and give him some bread while we eat and he just walks around the big open space so happily.

1:30pm- After lunch Josh will usually play with Jude for a while so I can get laundry off the line or fold laundry or take a shower or something.  Laundry is a lot bigger job when you have to put it on and off a clothesline!

2:00pm- We start the afternoon nap ritual, which is like the morning one.  While he sleeps (if he sleeps), I usually clean/do laundry/knit/nap with him depending on how much I was able to do in the morning (a.k.a. how long his morning nap was, if he napped at all).  Sometimes I will keep him in the backpack and go downstairs to Josh’s office to do my “internetting” while he sleeps.

Jude wakes up and, while it is still nice outside, I try to take him outside to play.  I may put him in the backpack and put more clothes on/off the line.

Josh usually finishes in the office around 4 and plays with Jude while I prepare dinner.  If dinner doesn’t take so long to prepare, sometimes we go for a family walk around campus.

6:00pm- We usually eat dinner around this time.  Then I play with Jude while Josh cleans up the kitchen. (Josh chooses this!)  We used to go for family walks after dinner, but it is already getting dark too early for that now.

8:00pm- Jude usually goes to sleep around this time.  After he’s asleep Josh and I can sit down and enjoy some hot chamomile tea, read, knit, and study Romanian.  We are usually in bed by 9:30 most nights.

Whew!  I know that makes it look like I spend my entire day cleaning and doing laundry, but I don’t usually get that much free time because Jude doesn’t usually nap that well (at least not recently since he’s been cutting teeth).  Some days I literally spend my entire day trying to get him to fall asleep or at least to not be grumpy.

I don’t really know why I felt like my daily schedule would be interesting to anybody except maybe my mom J, but I just felt like sharing.  It feels good to have a busy rhythm to my days, but man, it can be exhausting.

Please Pray for “Pavel”*

On Thursday, one of our students left school.  “Pavel” is an orphan from a nearby village.  He has a Christian testimony and is a very kind, bright, and thoughtful young man.  He loved Jude and always wanted to play with him or bring him treats.  He even gave Jude a stuffed Pooh toy that an American missionary gave him when he was small.  We knew it must have been special to him for him to have held onto it this long and brought it to school with him, but he insisted on giving it to Jude.

“Pavel” had never been required to have self-discipline and had never learned the necessary study skills required to be a student at the Bible Institute.  Although the entire staff attempted to help him, he remained too intimidated by the workload to continue his studies.

Please pray that the Lord would be merciful to “Pavel” and would mature him into a Godly man with a purposeful life.  Pray also for “Pavel’s” younger sisters, ages 12, 16, and 18—that they would be saved (if they are not already, I don’t know) and that they would grow to be Godly women.

According to our Romanian tutor, who works a lot with school-aged children at the orphanage in Orhei, “Pavel’s” problem is not unlike the plight of most orphans here.  After graduating from the orphanage at 15 or 16, many tend to drift along without any roots, self-discipline, or purpose.  They know nothing but living on the charity of others (for better or for worse), and are often quick to take advantage of it.

Approximately 80% of girls who graduate from orphanages in Moldova will become prostitutes.  Sometimes they choose it, and sometimes they are promised a good job in a nearby country (waitressing, cleaning, etc.) and arrive only to find out they have been sold into sex slavery.  The same percentage of boys will end up in juvenile detention centers or prison.

Pray for these kids, that the Father of the fatherless would be their comforter and refuge.  Also, consider how the Lord would have you to tangibly affect the lives of the fatherless.  Would you give money so that they could have food, shelter, or Christmas presents?  Would you give your time to mentor a young person in your area with an absent mother or father?  Would you, through adoption, show a child the same unconditional love that the heavenly Father has shown you by making him or her your son or daughter forever?

*We have changed his name to protect him

Hello from Moldova!

This is my first post from our new abode, Moldova!  In case you need a quick brush-up on geography (because I sure did the first time I heard about this place), here is a map to show you where in the world we are:

See the dark blue sliver of land between Romania and Ukraine?  That’s us.  We live about 45 minutes northwest of Chisinau, the capital city.

We have gotten moved in to our apartment at the camp and Josh is in his first day of “real” work today… an all-day meeting planning how the Bible Institute is going to run.

Let’s see… what interesting things can I say about Moldova? 

1.  Two common trends for men here are mullets and capri pants.  I’m trying to get Josh to buy into both of these trends.  “Be all things to all people,” right?

2.  Electric clothes dryers are very hard to find!  We will have a washing machine, but will be drying our clothes the old-fashioned way- on a clothesline.  I had mentioned to a few people before we left that I hoped there would be room for a clothesline.  Not only is there room, there is already a MASSIVE one right outside our apartment because they dry all of the sheets and blankets for the camp on it, and the Moldovan family who lives here dries their clothes on it as well.  I’m told that in the winter, your clothes freeze dry.  I’ll probably stick to indoor drying racks when it’s cold. 

3.  The tap water here (at the camp, not in all of Moldova) has a very strong sulphur smell.  Yes, like rotten eggs.  I thought it would be nearly impossible to get used to at first, but Josh and I were just commenting this morning that we already don’t notice it hardly at all.  It is also a little brown from all of the minerals in it (it is well water).  Apparently the pipes need the mineral-heavy water to coat them, and purer water erodes the pipes.  We buy big 2-liters of water for drinking, and we have a pure, spring-fed well that we use for cooking.  Yes, that means walking down to the spicket and filling up my empty 2-liters with water.  I always said I wanted to be about half amish, right?

4.  There is a big store in Chisinau (pronounced Kish-now) called Metro that is kind of like a Sam’s club.  That’s where we got most of our stuff on the first day.   But most people buy things from local markets called bazaars.  Some are general bazaars that sell everything from plumbing fixtures to underwear to fresh produce, meat, dairy, and bread.  Other bazaars are specific.  Yesterday morning Josh and Eric went to an auto bazaar that was all cars.  I’m told that there is also a kind of bazaar that is all electronics.  I took pictures of the bazaar in Orhei that Stephanie and I went to yesterday, but can’t post them yet because I’m not on our computer.

I guess I’ve written enough for now.  Jude is starting to get restless.  Speaking of Jude, he has been an angel (almost ) through all of this.  If you haven’t heard already, he slept 7 of the 10 hours from DC to Moscow- an obvious answer to prayer!  We have had trouble falling asleep at night, but last night we went to bed around 11 and he only woke up twice between then and 8:30!   That’s even better than he was sleeping before we moved.

I love everybody back home and will post again soon!

Busted! Hilarious video of J

Hubs took this short video the other night when J was playing in Memaw’s spice cabinet (his new favorite toy, btw).  It is so perfectly hilarious that I just have to share!

In other news, we leave tomorrow morning for Moldova!  We can hardly believe that it is real.  Our plane takes off at 8:30am, so please pray for us beginning then and for the next 20 hours, which is how long it will take us to get there. 

My First Knitted Wool Soaker

I have posted pictures of the other 2 wool soakers that I’ve knitted, but this is actually the very first one I ever knitted.  I made this approximately 4 months ago, and I’m sure it would have fit him quite well then.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to actually putting it on J until last week when I finally got some fitted diapers (for J to wear under it) in a swap.  Oh well, we will keep it around for (Lord willing) future babes.

I used the free 1932 soaker pattern, and it was very simple except for having to pick up stitches to make the leg cuffs, which was frustrating enough to almost make this good little baptist girl cuss.