Linguisticking
I should probably start by saying it’s a real fight not to turn this post into a 50 page dissertation complete with a cover page and works cited, but for the sake of all of our sanity I’ll avoid this. I wanted to do a quick post about my recent experience in language learning, and some of the quirks I’ve experienced with moving fields for the summer and encounter a different dialect. The danger is that linguistics and languages brings out a weird combination of nerd and adventurer in me, maybe that’s why I studied it in the first place. When it comes to the Arabic language, my… Read more >>
Hall of Kinda Sorta Fame
Well, I’m officially closing in on an important milestone, 6 months overseas! Technically I still have a bit more than a week until I officially hit it, but today is my posting day so it’s going out. To celebrate, I wanted to highlight a few of my small and major victories, as well as some of the minor setbacks I’ve experienced. Small Victories: -Sticking the landing on my first attempt at entering a bus that was also refusing to stop. Sometimes they just slow down, throw the door open, and clear a seat. -I baked a cake, twice. -Not burning the house down whilst using American appliances.… Read more >>
The Wind Blows
In the Bible we are told that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God that works in and through us, is pretty stinking cool. What I mean by that (“stinking”) is that it does a whole bunch of things at once that we are unable to do. It’s teaching us, guiding us, making us more like Jesus, proving we are God’s sons, and some other pretty neat things I don’t have room to write about. One interesting thing Jesus also said about the Spirit is that is works like the wind. That is, it blows. We don’t quite see it or where it comes from, but we see what it does. I’ve gotten to see this side of the Spirit… Read more >>
John's Parable
“Why am I out here in the desert?” John asked us in his heavy Ethiopian accent while a sly smirk inched towards his cheek. He was all too keen to answer his own question so we kind of shrugged. We had come out into the desert this morning to pray and spend some time together, but I think John had maybe caught onto something else. “That is what I asked myself” he continued, “and then I saw this tree”. He motioned towards a lone tree sprawling towards the desert sky and told this story: “I see this tree, and it is alone. There are other trees here too, but they are all alone. I… Read more >>