The Harkey Blog

Christmas Resources

2011-11-27T22:00:00.003-06:00

Here's a quick list of some of our favorite Christmas resources for families:

Jotham's Journey, Bartholomew's Passage and Tabitha's Travels all by Arnold Ytreeide - historical fiction advent readings that really help you understand what longing for the Messiah was like from a child's perspective. (While we love the stories, we have sometimes found that the devotional portions don't line up with our theology, so we read the devotionals sparingly.)
Veggie Tales: Saint Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving - We watch this on St. Nicholas day and read Saint Nicholas: The True Story of the Christmas Legend. We don't celebrate Santa Claus, but there's no need to throw the baby out with the bath water. The real St. Nick was a Christ-follower who set a worthy example.
The Very First Noel - A cute, animated video, most appropriate for toddler, preschool and maybe young elementary aged children.
Adornaments - Cardboard, storybook ornaments representing Jesus as Light of the World, the Good Shepherd, the Door, etc. Devotional book included.
Little People Nativity - Any nativity set that your kids can touch, arrange and love is perfect.
Nativities in general - There is much to learn and discuss with your children as you view different artists' representation of Jesus' birth. One thing we did when our kids were young was to hide all the baby Jesus figures on Christmas morning and have the little ones search for them. Another year, we looked at Nativities in which baby Jesus is depicted in a cross shape. We talked about God's plan for Jesus to die on the cross, which was already determined when Jesus was only a baby in the manger.
Ordinary Baby: Extraordinary Gift - This is an absolutely beautiful story. (There are one or two sentences that I edit as I read it, again because of the theology presented.)

Sabbath Keeping

2011-11-27T21:15:00.002-06:00

Today as I was working my way through my Bible reading plan, I read Isaiah 56. In this chapter, God describes people who wholeheartedly follow Him as being Sabbath keepers. I was convicted enough by what I read that I changed my plans for the day. My errand-filled afternoon of checking off to-dos got moved to tomorrow, and I chose to not check off anything this afternoon.

My Sabbath afternoon consisted of a relaxing walk around the neighborhood with my girls, something they have been requesting lately, and a trip to a coffee shop where we enjoyed a special treat and read through some of our favorite Christmas picture books, including The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, The Nativity illustrated by Julie Vivas, Saint Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend and others. It was a great way to focus on Christ today and not on tasks.

My thoughts about the Sabbath, however, are not finished. As I have meditated on the Word today, I have wondered

How can I observe Sabbath without becoming legalistic?
What does God require of me, one saved by grace alone, in regards to Sabbath keeping?
What are some practical applications for Sabbath-keeping in 2011?
Do I more often profane the Sabbath by working and not resting on Sunday OR by adding too many rest days and times to my week so that Sunday is no longer special and set apart?

God is working on my heart as I think through these answers. I sense that obedience is not going to be easy.

Some Favorite Picture Books

2011-09-21T21:36:00.008-05:00

One of the most profound influences on our style and philosophy of education was my getting connected with a wonderful group of literature lovers in Northwest Arkansas. Each time I interacted with those ladies, I was introduced or re-introduced to classics. They lived their love for the classics by reading aloud to their children a minimum of two hours per day. I was inspired.

Recently, we began our study of 20th century world history. It's dark. That's all there is to it. (Daily I have to remind myself that God has a sovereign plan, and I cling to His hope.) Along with this study, our book selection has been on the somber side. To counteract that, I decided to bring back some of my favorite picture books and share them with the girls again. Some of them, Amelia is experiencing for the first time, even. This has been a delightful contrast to the hard truths of history.

Here are some of the picture books we have found to be real treasures (i.e. worth reading at any age).

A Hole is to Dig: A First Book of Definitions by Ruth Krauss

The Big Green Pocketbook by Candice Ransom

The Teddy Bear by David McPhail

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Dogger by Shirley Hughes

The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss

Jesse Bear, What will you Wear? by Nancy White Carlstrom

Pete's a Pizza by William Steig (but you must act it out!)

The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton

A Bargain for Frances by Russell Hoban

Leo the Late Bloomer by Robert Kraus

The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojcichowski

Unhurried

2011-09-16T22:18:00.004-05:00

Today was a good, slow day. I relish days without rushing. Those days tend to be less productive in terms of sheer numbers of tasks completed. However, they are far more peaceful and usually more conducive to building and maintaining relationships.

I enjoyed a slow, relaxing morning with my girls. We took the entire morning to get ready and do our household chores. I spent some time in the Word and did a few computer tasks. We did a little work in our front flower bed just because we felt like it. We ate a simple lunch and ran (only) one errand via bicycle. We rode on a portion of the bike trail that the kids hadn't seen in several months. We noticed the the beginnings of fall color and the similarities between the Spring Creek Trail in Fort Collins and the Scull Creek Trail in Fayetteville.

After that we spent about an hour and a half exploring the CSU Trial Garden. The girls drew in their nature journals, examined flowers, watched bees, called to me, "Mom, come look!" No one was in a hurry. We didn't have to rush, and we didn't even finish looking at all the flowers. We just enjoyed the time that we had.

We rode home, and made a few preparations to host our guests this evening, ladies from our Township (church small group). The girls decided to make place cards for everyone. Amelia took her dolls for a walk in the backyard. I decided to make a salad to go with the pizza we ordered.

We ate dinner with new friends. We learned a bit more about them and enjoyed playing a couple of games together. The girls truly enjoyed their time with these ladies. I am blessed to see them appreciate relationships with people of all ages.

There was a lot of activity in our day, but it was unhurried and simple compared to most that we experience. I was better able to enjoy each event than I am on the days when I am trying to cram in as much as possible.

Not every day can be like today. But I am grateful for this one, every moment of it.

Vocation

2011-09-12T16:35:00.003-05:00

My vocation is husband-lover, child-lover and home-worker. I am to fulfill that vocation while exhibiting self-control, staying pure, being kind and submitting to Brett. While that sounds old-fashioned to most, it's orthodox. It's the teaching of God's Word (See Titus 2). And so that God's word "may not be reviled", this is the vocation I have chosen.

This vocation is more than enough to challenge me. It's the most important calling to which I could devote myself. And as I become older and wiser, I hope to encourage other women to embrace this calling too, no matter how counter-cultural it seems.

Voluntary Simplicity

2011-09-11T12:16:00.003-05:00

We choose simplicity. We do not sell possessions because we are desperate for money. We are not worried about money because God, our Provider, owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He is completely able to provide everything we need. A simple(r) life is what we desire, in dependence on God, laying up treasures in heaven. We deliberately discipline ourselves to limit what we buy, consume and own. This world is not our home, and we don't need to accumulate things as if it were.

Are we perfect? Do we live as radically as some? Do we have it all figured out? Absolutely not to all these inquiries. But this is what God has laid on our hearts, and we are growing and learning. How has God called you to steward His gifts to you? How has He led you in regards to earthly possessions?

Treasures and Trusting God

2011-09-01T17:39:00.004-05:00

If you had told me a year ago that we would be raising support to cover our living and ministry expenses, I would have told you that you were crazy. This process is totally out of my comfort zone. But God has a way of working on our hearts, doesn't He? In my experience, He doesn't usually give us the whole challenge all at once. He gives us many opportunities for obedience as we grow to be more like Him.

Over the past few years, God has led me to part ways with many of my possessions. For one thing, doing so made sense in terms of moving. I didn't want to pack up stuff I didn't need or want. I didn't want to be burdened with excess stuff to organize and clean up each day either. Also, God was teaching me that possessions don't make me happy. In teaching me this, God also has been teaching me that I can live on less. I don't need new clothing to keep up with the latest styles. I don't need to shop or browse for new things to fill my home. In fact, if you do see me on a shopping trip, you'll notice me putting back at least half of the items I originally selected.

I am not saying this to brag. I am pointing out God's work in my life. I used to love shopping. When I was (much) younger, I prided myself on wearing a different outfit each school day during a 9 week period. Now you'll see me wearing the same few outfits over and over, and I am okay with that, most of the time. I don't need much in terms of clothing. What I don't spend on clothing can be spent on. . . .

Well, that's where it gets sticky. Right now, our income is very low because we're in the process of raising support. We haven't met our monthly support goal yet. (We're at about 8 percent.) Living on less helps that situation be a bit easier. But ultimately, my dream would be that living on less will enable us to give more, to be more generous. If I am not consuming so much buying gas, clothing and gadgets for my kitchen, what could I give? Whom could I support in ministry? I've already got a list, and it's growing.

I have been praying off and on that God will show me how I can be generous when I don't seem to have money to give. Since I have lived in Fort Collins, I have given food to beggars when I encounter them. We limit the amount of clothing our kids have/keep. They give away what they do not need, even new items. Sometimes we give our time, even when time seems like a precious resource. I prayed again today for God to show me how I can give when my income is limited. I want to be more generous.

Here are a few ways that others have been generous with us. We have received so much more than we have given.

Within 3 weeks of moving here, Maitlyn broke her arm. A Christian family we had just met gave us money toward part of her medical bill.
We loaned our car to a friend. It clearly needed new brakes. The friend returned the car to us along with a gift certificate to a local mechanic to get the brakes replaced.
One of our first monthly support commitments came from a family who is raising support themselves.
God, is his generosity, provided a home for us here in Ft. Collins which we rent very reasonably (less than the market rate, for sure). This home is twice the size of our home in Arkansas. We don't want to fill this home with more stuff. We pray that we can use this wonderful space for God's glory, hosting a Township in our home and showing hospitality in the name of Christ.

By letting go of things, I learned to demolish the idol of stuff. By taking a risk and moving to a new place, I learned to trust God for His provision. Now in raising support, I am getting to trust Him even more. In our home, it's truly a day by day thing. Give us this day our daily bread.

I want to lay up treasures in heaven. Even though I have learned much, I want God to show me ways I still worship the idol of stuff. I have a long way to go. God, help me to remember that this world is not my home and that I am only a steward of all the resources You provide. Change me for Your glory. Make me generous.

Bell Ringing

2010-12-14T16:59:00.004-06:00

We're all familiar with the Salvation Army bell ringers. We see them every time we go to the store during November and December. The girls love to put coins in the kettle whenever possible. Don't your kids?

Last week, during some free time, my girls decided to become bell ringers themselves. It all started with a broken bell ornament. Next came plastic containers pilfered from the recycling bin. Then decisions about where any donated money should be given. Maitlyn spent over an hour poring through Window on the World to get ideas for a worthy place. Elspeth decided immediately that she wanted to give to her new church, and Amelia decided that she wanted to help kids whose families are mean to them (abused kids) and/or kids who don't have any toys.

Elspeth and Amelia requested to go door-to-door in our new neighborhood to ring their bells and collect money. I wasn't feeling that brave, so I suggested that we ring bells to some of our friends. We have visited one family already and plan visits to two more during the next couple of weeks to ask for donations.

Throughout this whole project, it's been cool to see our girls' creativity and initiative as well as their desire to do something to make a difference in the world. They are on the road to being world-changers someday.

That's A Lot of Toys

2010-11-19T21:28:00.002-06:00

A new friend and her kiddos came over to play this week. I gave her a tour of our home, and upon seeing the playroom, she said, "That's a lot of toys." This new friend doesn't read my blog, at least not yet, but just in case she starts, I want to be clear that she did not offend me. More and more, I appreciate people who [nicely] speak their mind. I'd rather know what you think than wonder.

Her comment has caused some good evaluation on my part. For those of you who know me well, you know that I have been on a simplifying kick this past year. I have given away and sold countless possessions from my closet, my kitchen and my bookshelf. And my kids have probably given away or sold about half of their toys. And still we have a lot.

So, have I failed in my simplifying efforts? I don't think so. First of all, I am still in process as is the rest of our family. We have made a lot of progress this year. And secondly, I can encourage my children to live with less stuff, but I can't force them to do it. I can put systems in place to help them to clean things out, sure, but ultimately, they have to decide for themselves how to manage their stuff. We have a good dialogue going about possessions right now, I think, and I am hoping that we'll all grow as a result. My children often hear, "Well, if you are tired of cleaning it up, you are welcome to give it away." And sometimes they opt to do that.

Amelia finally parted with four toys that she outgrew a while ago. The trick for her was meeting some kids to pass them along to. She's very relational and found joy in giving to new friends.

The bottom line, though, is that something is still bugging me, and I haven't resolved it yet. My new friend is a sincere Christian (as I am), and her surprise at the quantity of our possessions was. . .convicting? Is that what I am feeling?

I know that I don't have to please her, but is God using my sister in Christ to bring to light an issue on which I need to work? Even though I/we have made significant progress in reducing the number of possessions we have, are we called to do more? Are we living in excess?

Let the wrestling begin.

Happenings and Challenges

2010-11-15T10:34:00.003-06:00

Baby: On October 22, our dear friends, Andrew and Virginia, had their baby. We are so glad that we are living in Fort Collins and that we got to meet Corinne on her birthday. She is beautiful. It's been great to have our long-time friends here as we adjust to life in a new place, and we are delighted to share life with them.

Church-shopping: We have visited 5 churches in Fort Collins so far. It's been a challenging experience for all of us, and we are learning a lot. We still have a couple more churches that we want to check out. All-in-all, we haven't had any bad experiences in our church shopping, but we have noticed the need for good Bible teaching and for the gospel to be proclaimed in this city.

Meeting new people: We're thankful for new friends we have met so far in Fort Collins. We have met a few families through a local homeschool group and homeschool events. We have also met a cool church-planting family through Twitter, and we are so glad that we have connected with them. We also met another Ft. Collins family on a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. We are definitely in a stage of our lives where we have to be "out there". We are introducing ourselves to strangers fairly often and hoping to make connections. Amelia had an interesting birthday party this year. We invited all the people we have met to meet us at the park for playtime and brownies (her cake choice). On her birthday, we had been here just shy of a month, and we were blessed to have lots of new friends for her to play with and celebrate the day.

Injuries: On the Friday prior to Halloween, Maitlyn broke her wrist falling from the monkey bars at City Park. At first, we didn't know that it was broken and weren't quite sure if we should just wait and see or seek treatment. A new friend here has past experience as an EMT, and he advised us to go to Urgent Care. Sure enough, she came away with a splint and got a neon green, waterproof cast the following Monday.

Last night, Elspeth got into the injury game. She was getting ready to cut out a Thanksgiving paper doll while waiting for our family devotion time. She [apparently] forgot her scissor safety skills and had the scissors pointing up while she was climbing onto a bench at our school table. Next thing we knew, Elspeth was screaming, "I'm bleeding!" with her hand to her head. I didn't know about the scissors yet, and thought she had hit her head on the bench, but in a few moments Brett picked up a pair of bent scissors with one handle completely broken off and about 1 inch of blood on the blade tip. The cut was on the right side of her head, near her temple. We rushed to Urgent Care first, and they decided to send us to the ER so that we could get a CAT scan if needed. Elspeth did get a CAT scan, which was normal, and a couple of stitches. We are so thankful that God spared Elspeth from serious injury.

Fun Stuff: We haven't spent all our time at Urgent Care and the ER. We have really enjoyed some cool homeschool field trips and other fun things in our new home. In fact, Elspeth informed me that she liked field trip school the best. Here are some of the cool things we've been doing: hike in Horsetooth Mountain Parks, trip to Science Toy Magic (an educational toy store run by a former science professor who may be Willy Wonka's brother), trip to the Fort Collins Museum and Discovery Science Center, trip to Denver Children's Museum, and a trip to Swetsville Zoo. We've also taken many trips to our new libraries and parks. This Friday, Lord-willing, we are looking forward to a field trip to Walker Mowers to see how their revolutionary mowers are assembled.

So that's our overdue update.

We're Here!

2010-10-18T10:59:00.006-05:00

We have made it to Fort Collins and are settling in to our new home. Unpacking is a daily project, which seems to be taking a long time, but we are making time in our schedules to spend time with friends, visit churches, meet other homeschoolers, get outdoors and explore our new community.

In no particular order, here are some tidbits about our life here.

Our Home. God has provided us with a great rental house here. About a year ago, after Brett and I visited Fort Collins on an exploratory mission, we brainstormed a list of what we'd be looking for in our home here. Of course, like all families, we had certain size and bedroom requirements, plus we need an extra space for Brett's office. We also wanted to be close to one of the many bike trails in town and near one of the 100-acre plus parks. We hoped to be in an established neighborhood with trees. . .and the list goes on. Our home meets almost all of the criteria we mentioned in that list, AND it's twice the size of our home in Fayetteville. We had thought we'd be living in fewer square feet, not more. AND it was just updated with new flooring on the main level (which we promptly initiated with a coffee spill), new light fixtures throughout, wall paper removal and fresh paint. There are certainly some odd things about the house, but that's what you get when you live in a home built in 1970.

Food. There's a great food review blog here in Fort Collins that we've been reading over this past year. Kristin takes the guesswork out of going out to eat. We try the places that she loves, and we end up loving them too. Our kids have gotten into the review mindset, and each time we try a new place, they give it a star rating. We've tried Buttercream Cupcakery, where somehow, we have paid for 3 cupcakes and have received 23. Brett went with our friend Andrew to the New Belgium Brewery tour. Also we've eaten at Larkburger, La Luz, Noodles, Ben and Jerry's, Beau Jo's Pizza, Chipotle and Raising Cane's. On the home side of food, we get our milk delivered in glass bottles from Morning Fresh Dairy, and we have really enjoyed shopping at the Larimer County Farmer's Market as well as the many, many natural food stores here in town. Thus far, we have discovered a local co-op as well as Whole Foods, Sunflower Farmer's Market, Vitamin Cottage Grocers and Sprouts.

Education. We are really enjoying the abundance of educational offerings here in Fort Collins. We have visited two of the three libraries already, and I have been glad to check out some items that were not available to us through our library in Fayetteville. We enjoyed a cool owl program (complete with live owls) from the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program and a trip to the Fort Collins Museum and Discovery Science Center (free admission one Sunday per month). We also took a day trip to one of the best educational places in the area, Rocky Mountain National Park. We hiked, observed elk and changing aspens, noticed the lower water levels this time of year and met another homeschooling family.

Church. We started our church-shopping this Sunday. It's a new experience for all of us, and we are eager for God to lead us to the place that is right for our family. There are definitely some great churches in our area.

Dry air. Since I have oily hair and skin, I have been looking forward to the dry climate here. However, while the dry air is great for my hair and face, it has been awful for the rest of my body. I have been itching like crazy and thus far, nothing has helped. I need to try my friend's suggestion of running a humidifier at night since I have already implemented the other things I know to do. I even dreamed about itching last night.

Friends. We are super-excited to be in the same city with the Stegers again. We are looking forward to encouraging one another and sharing lots of fun experiences together. And right now, we are anticipating the arrival of their baby girl sometime within the next couple of weeks. We are also looking forward to meeting new friends here and seeing how God uses them to shape our lives.

Help us Move to Colorado!

2010-09-27T09:38:00.003-05:00

We're getting down to the last few days before we move to Colorado! It's hard to believe that in 7 days, we'll be there...

We'd love to have you come help us with getting our house packed up and loaded. Here are the days and times we need help:

1. Monday (today), 10a-5p
-Packing, furniture disassembly, etc.

2. Tuesday, 10a-???
-Packing, furniture disassembly, etc.

3. Wednesday, 10a-5p AND 6p-???
-Loading the truck. We ESPECIALLY need some men to help on this day (in the morning is best) with appliances & heavy furniture. But we'll take anyone!

4. Thursday, 10a-5p
-Loading the truck
-Cleaning the house

*We hope to be finished by 5p on Thursday. Several of you have indicated Thursday evening as the time you're available to help. If that is the only time you can pitch in, just be sure to call or text first to make sure we are still working. Our numbers:

479-283-4435 Brett
479-283-4424 Elise

IF POSSIBLE, please let us know when you might be coming to help. That way we can plan around when we'll have helpers. We are so grateful to all of you for helping us make this transition! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

bharkey at gmail.com
elharkey at gmail.com

Packing and Moving Help

2010-09-20T14:25:00.001-05:00

Our time in Fayetteville is drawing to a close. We have 11 days to pack and otherwise prepare for our move. We need some help to pull this off. Would you please consider spending a couple hours of your time helping us?

Here are our needs:

Packing (w/Elise), furniture & playset disassembly (w/Brett):

Tues. the 21st, 10:30a to 5p

Wed. the 22nd, 9a to 5p / 7p to 10pm

Thurs the 23rd, 9a to 5p

Sat the 25th, 1p to 6p

Mon the 27th, 9a to 5p

Load truck (w/Brett)

Wed. the 29th, 9a to 5p, 7p to 10p

Thurs the 30th, 9a to 5p, 7p to 10p

Clean house (w/Elise) and deliver donations and trash

Thurs the 30th, 1p to 5p, 7p to 10p

Thanks in advance for helping us during this crazy time. Please email, DM or text us to let us know what day/time you want to help.

elharkey at gmail

bharkey at gmail

Owning vs. Renting

2010-09-05T21:26:00.002-05:00

God has taught me so much this year, and I have been struggling with how to process and express it all. I am still very much in the midst of our adventure. It would be nice, neat and linear to start at the beginning and fill you in on all the ways that God has stretched me over the past yearish. But I’m not going to do that, or else this blog will never be updated. I am going to write about some thoughts we have voiced during this past week.

Owning a home is so important in our culture that it’s referred to as an integral part of The American Dream. And it’s a nice dream, don’t get me wrong. We have enjoyed the past 9 plus years in our home. And it was great to own it, not just rent it because we changed the flooring and the wall colors and got rid of the hideous baby blue toilet. And we brought our three children home from the hospital to this house. It’s ours. (Or is it really? We are paying a mortgage on it, so technically, I suppose, we own only a small part of this house. )

And of course, we were investing, or so they say. The traditionalists will tell you that owning a home is a wise decision financially because you are not throwing your money away on rent. We are very blessed to be a family who will actually walk away from our house sale with some profit. But in the scheme of things, it wasn’t really a great investment. Besides our mortgage payments and the money that we spent updating our home, we have to consider all the money we spent on home repairs. If you add it all up, I’m sure we lost money on the deal. If we had rented, we wouldn’t have gotten to choose our favorite wall colors, but we would have had much more expendable income.

And when we were ready to chase a dream, even if we were mid-lease, we could have given one month’s notice and been on our way. The big downside to owning a home is being tied to it. We will have spent almost a full year (by our upcoming closing date) waiting for this home (which has been a blessing in so many ways) to sell. We know that God had a purpose for us to be here. We know that we learned from our experience. But. . .what if?

When we move to Colorado, we’ll be renting for at least a year while we get Brett’s business up and running. But maybe we’ll really like renting and the freedom it affords us. Maybe we’ll choose renting as a way of life from this point forward. The flexibility certainly appeals to us as does the fixed out-of-pocket cost. We won’t be paying for new appliances or new heaters or for a plumber when we rent.

So, for now, we are trading the typical American dream for a better American dream: a life of flexibility and possibility that costs less to maintain. We’re trading in the perceived security of having a place of our own for the real security of knowing that God is right with us wherever we are.

"Leaving" the Ministry?

2010-06-07T10:23:00.004-05:00

Brett and I have served in "paid, professional ministry" for all of our adult lives. (Well, he has for all of his. I, myself, have worked in the church for the majority of my adult life.) I fully support the concept of paid church/ministry staff. In our world today, paid ministry staff is an important part of the Church, and I don't see any biblical reason that a church shouldn't have paid staff.

However, I don't buy in to the idea that being a paid leader in a church or ministry somehow makes a person more spiritual. I am in not better standing with God than my brothers and sisters at The Grove because I happen to receive a paycheck for what I do there.

As we are making a career change from paid ministry to self-employment, we've had a few people wonder aloud, "Why are you leaving the ministry?" Even though we will no longer be paid for our work at a church, our family will always be involved in ministry. Ministry is the call of every Christian, and we intend to continue to pursue a lifestyle of ministry.

I am looking forward to exploring options in our new neighborhood and community. Will we share Christ with our neighbors? Will we welcome international students into our home? Will I have the opportunity to be a Titus 2 woman in someone's life? Will we serve the poor? All of these things interest me, and I am eager to see what opportunities God presents to us in our new home.

As we continue to abide in the Lord, ministry will be an integral part of our lives. It'll be cool to see how that plays out.

God's Will and Leading

2010-06-03T21:07:00.002-05:00

Someone asked me a very good question this Sunday at church, "Do you feel that God is leading you to move to Colorado? Or do you just want to move to Colorado?" The answer to both questions is a resounding, "Yes!"

For some reason, we have this idea that following God's will for our lives means opposing our wills. If there is something that we want to do, about which we feel passionate, that we enjoy, we think that God wants us to do the opposite. We believe that He wants to ruin our fun, test us to see how much we love Him and make us miserable.

I do not deny that God sometimes calls us to do hard things. But I have come to believe, over the years, that God uses the way He made us to bring glory to Himself. What I mean is this: God made me. He gave me certain interests, desires, likes and dislikes. He gave me spiritual gifts and natural abilities. As I walk with Him each day, I can honor Him by being who He made me to be.

Our family has had a love affair with Colorado for some time. Brett has had a growing interest in landscape photography. We believe that God gave us these interests and desires, and we've chosen to act on them. We know that God can work in and through us wherever we are and in whatever vocations we chose for our lives. And more than that, we think that when we act in a way that embraces the way that He created us, we give Him more honor. We are happy servants, cheerful givers, fulfilled people. By our actions, we say, "God, thanks for making me exactly who I am. I am enjoying who You made me to be. You are the master Creator and You don't make mistakes."

Fahrenheit 451 and Being an Odd Duck

2010-05-15T21:26:00.005-05:00

I read it for the first time about 13 years ago and picked up a copy at the Fayetteville Public Library yesterday immediately after reading this post. Finished it today.

The book speaks for itself, really. It is/was eerily prophetic and proclaims uncomfortable truth. In this post, I want to share only one excerpt that stands out to me.

Beatty speaking: . . ."Heredity and environment are funny things. You can't rid yourselves of all the odd ducks in just a few years. The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That's why we've lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we're almost snatching them from the cradle. . ."

The odd ducks are the world-changers and heroes of this world. I hope and pray that we are raising odd ducks in our home.

If it's been a while, you should definitely read Fahrenheit 451. It could change your life.

Follow Up Visit

2010-05-05T20:55:00.003-05:00

I went to the dermatologist today for a skin cancer screening. Skin cancer runs in my family, so I'm pretty used to getting screened every now and then. Today, I went to a different clinic, and I was cheerfully talking with the doc about how my dad once had to have a mole removed from the bottom of his foot and was on crutches for a time. The doctor says to me, "Be careful what you joke about because I am going to have to take this [microscopic] mole off of your toe to biopsy it." Serves me right, I guess.

Now, just to be clear, I am not concerned about this biopsy. First of all, I trust God with the results and know that He's in charge of my health. And secondly, I understood the main reason for the removal of the mole was that it was in a place that I don't/can't see in order to notice it if it does in fact change. And this is my fifth biopsy (not all skin-related). That brings up a question: How many biopsies does a person typically have in her lifetime? I am kind of hoping I have reached my quota. A related question is this: are doctors biopsy-happy, ordering biopsies for every little thing just to be on the safe side? And if so, how does this affect our overall well-being and care?

After my brief and simple procedure, the nurse, doctor and receptionist all "invited" me to come back for a follow up visit in 2 months, 1 month or 1 year for another screening. I became confused since all the recommendations were different. Why do I need a follow up exactly? If this biopsy comes back benign, what do I need to see the doctor about? Oh, he wants to be sure that the wound has healed properly. I'm pretty sure I can check that myself. If I'm having a problem, I'll come back in. No need to charge me $40 and my insurance company another $60 to $100. I certainly don't mind going to the doctor when I need it, but this seems like overkill. It's not as if I had major surgery or even stitches. I came home with a standard-sized band-aid and no medication. I think I've got it under control.

Bittersweet

2010-05-02T19:38:00.002-05:00

Participating in the process of hiring a new lead pastor for our church is bittersweet. I didn't expect to feel emotional about it, but I do. I am eagerly anticipating the next season for The Grove. I sense that God is going to do amazing things, and I am not going to be here to experience them. But it's not about me is it? I am truly rejoicing for my friends and partners in ministry.

April 30

2010-05-01T21:30:00.002-05:00

The federal homebuyers' incentive deadline has come and gone. But that's okay because I know that God doesn't need that incentive to sell our house. He'll sell it when He's good and ready and when we're good and ready. I'm not going to pretend that I don't wish that someone would make a reasonable offer. I do. But I trust God's timing, and I trust that He is working on me and my family--teaching us to trust Him more, helping us to get over the illusion that we are in control, prompting us to seek healthy closure here in Northwest Arkansas.

Whatever happens with our house, whenever it happens, God has a plan.

Simplifying

2010-04-28T22:56:00.003-05:00

There's nothing like a pending move to encourage you to simplify your life and minimize your possessions.

Since we moved into this house, we've been eliminating, paring down and simplifying quite a bit. We've had 2 garage sales per year and have slowly let go of things that we just don't need, don't like or don't serve us any longer.

Recently, it struck me that my possessions take a lot of time to maintain. Some of them need to be dusted. Some need to be picked up and put away. Some need to be washed. All of them will need to be packed. If I had fewer possessions, then I'd have less to keep track of and maybe more time to sit and talk with my husband or read a book to my kids.

I was reminded that God clothes us, even if our clothes don't look as beautiful as the flowers'. I decided to pare down my wardrobe. I kept 7 spring/summer outfits and a couple of items that I couldn't give up just yet (but probably will if I don't use them prior to our move). I kept my running shoes, Crocs for camping, a pair of brown Sketcher Mary Janes (which are still being evaluated) and my Chacos. I kept one summer purse.

My clothing life is much simpler. When I look in my closet in the morning, I have only a few choices. I don't have to look through several tank tops to find the one that works best with my outfit because I got rid of the tank tops that didn't work. I don't have to scan through clothes that I don't like anymore or that I used to keep because I spent money on them and I felt obligated to use them someday.

I am faithfully pursuing a fitness plan, and I am hoping that I'll be wearing a different size clothes very soon. And I'm trusting that God will provide the resources I need to purchase those clothes (or He may choose to provide them in a different way).

"Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or What shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Matthew 6:31-33

Disappointment

2010-04-18T20:55:00.004-05:00

About a month ago, we had a house showing that seemed really promising. The young couple were in from out of town and had representatives present from both sides of the family. They were oohing and aahing over the house, and we heard that there might be a second showing later in the day.

I "made" the kids sit on the couch and watch a movie so nothing in the house would get messed up. The prospect of a second showing was encouraging. About 4:30 p.m., we hadn't heard anything from the realtor. We called to see when we could schedule the showing. She informed us that they had made an offer on another home. I was devastated. I didn't even know how to process that information. It took me a couple of days to really get a grip and recover from my disappointment.

That brings us to this week. We had 3 showings, one of which was a second showing for a buyer who saw the house a couple of weeks ago. We got an offer out of that second showing. They didn't accept our counter offer.

We got another offer, pretty comparable to the first, from another buyer. They sat on our counter offer all weekend. They said things like, "This feels like home to us." and "This is exactly how we would decorate this house." But they are not ready to respond, either way really, to our counter offer. We are moving on--to square one, that is.

I don't feel nearly as emotional about these two losses, but I am still deeply disappointed for so many reasons: my desire to plan for the future, to move on to the next step of the dream that God has given us, to catapult our family into the craziness of transition knowing that the sooner we do that, the sooner we will be settling into new routines, a new home, and a new career and that we will be finished with this house selling business.

God is in the waiting. He's walking with us, I know it. But it's still challenging.

The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

2010-01-29T17:46:00.004-06:00

I am so glad that God brought this book into my path at this time in my life. As we are contemplating, planning for and implementing great change in our lives including career change for Brett and a move for us all, this book gives wise counsel.

The concept of choice has been an occasional discussion topic of ours (Brett’s and mine). We’ve talked about how Apple has done things right with a few choices for consumers and how the food industry has done it wrong, with an overwhelming number of choices in the pickle section alone. I’ve shared with Brett several times what an exhausting thing shopping at a grocery store can be for me. Buying eggs alone involves asking a number of questions. 1. What can I afford? 2. What is the “healthiest” choice? And according to whom? 3. What store might have a better price or a more healthful option? And am I going there any time soon? 4. How many eggs do I need? 5. Why does everything in this country have to be “grain fed”? Isn’t that bad for us? If eggs take that much thought, just imagine a product that has multiple ingredients.

But anyway, back to the book. Reading this book made me even more aware of the thousands of choices I make every day. Additionally through reading Schwartz’ research, I understand much more about expectations, comparisons, and adaptation in relation to choice.

Here are just a few of the things that I learned:
1. Something amazing can happen to you (for instance, you win the lottery). Initially, you are very happy, but over time, you get used to the money, and you may even be less happy than you were prior to winning. This occurs because you have a new normal. You have adapted. That new normal involves having lots of money and material goods. Now you need something more to make you happy.

2. Being grateful is a choice that we can all make that will change our happiness.

3. Limiting choices for ourselves is healthy.

4. If we keep special things (expensive dinners, using the nice dishes, dressing up, etc.) for special occasions only, we keep our expectations low and thereby keep our satisfaction higher. The more and more we eat fancy, expensive dinners, the more they become our norm, and it takes more to satisfy us.

5. Once you’ve made a choice, you’ll be happier if you stick with it rather than constantly re-evaluating your decision. For me, a good place to apply this is in curriculum selection. In the homeschool world, there seems to be a lot of pressure to find the perfect curriculum for each subject for each child in your family. I have only been homeschooling for 4 years, and the hours and hours I have spent agonizing over choosing curriculum have been unbelievable. I do not personally know any homeschool mom who has stuck with her initial choice of curriculum. Through reading this book, I have decided that I am going to stick with the curriculum that I have chosen from now on unless we encounter major problems. And by major problems, I mean that either my children are in tears every day or they can’t read or do math by age 10.

6. When we have too many choices, we usually freeze up and choose not to decide.

7. We can become paralyzed by all the “what ifs” of a choice.

There is much more that I could share, but I hope through this post, I have at least spurred you to think. And, as a bonus, here are a couple of interesting talks that pertain to this subject. (They are PG rated.--Thought you parents would want to know that so you can watch at the right time.)

Malcolm Gladwell on Spaghetti Sauce
Barry Schwartz on The Paradox of Choice

On my Bookshelf

2010-01-07T10:26:00.002-06:00

My friend, Virginia, posted on her blog about books she read in 2009. I read it, then I racked my brain to remember what I read last year. I know I did read--lots of books and parts of books, and a lot of children's books. I need to be better about setting aside time for my own personal reading.

Anyway, this is not an exhaustive list, but I did read The Help, The China Study, In Defense of Food, part of Parenting with Love and Logic (want to get back to that one), a quick skimming of Late, Lost and Unprepared (need to re-check that too), Crazy Love. And I truly enjoyed listening to The Witch of Blackbird Pond audiobook with my kids.

This year, first on my list are Three Cups of Tea, given to me by my Mother-in-Law for Christmas, The Paradox of Choice and Making it All Work. I'd love to read A Thousand Splendid Suns, too, but I'll have to gear up for that one.

I am super excited about youversion.com 's Bible Reading plans. I have chosen the chronological plan from their website, and I have it set up on my RSS feed reader. So far, this has worked amazingly well for me. I am already checking my RSS feeds each day and my Bible reading assignment shows up there, just waiting to be read. This incorporates Bible reading into an already existing habit of my life. Perfect.

Location, location, location

2009-10-15T15:33:00.002-05:00

Well, if I haven't convinced you yet, another awesome thing about our house is its location. We are in Root school district in East Fayetteville, which is very desirable. Also, we are perfectly located within Fayetteville. Nothing is very far away. Grocery shopping and a 24 hour Walgreen's are super close, and we're about halfway between the Joyce/College intersection and the library (one of our favorite places). Gulley Park is just a short walk or drive away.

We have favorite shortcuts to get around College Avenue traffic, too. We travel Old Wire up to Old Missouri as well as Old Wire down to Mission. We can get around Fayetteville quickly either way.

So, check out our house. And pass along the info to your friends.

We're selling our house

2009-10-14T16:21:00.005-05:00

So, our house is ready to be shown. We have absolutely loved living here and have so many fond memories in this place. But to a future buyer, that doesn't really matter. What a buyer may care about are the things that anyone could love about this place. Here are my favorite features of this house in no particular order.

1. Trees--Our neighborhood is filled with beautiful, mature trees. During the fall, it is so relaxing to sit in the living room and gaze out the bow window at the changing colors all around us. And during the summer, it's great to have our huge oak shading that same window.

2. Tri-level--We have absolutely loved having 3 levels in our home. Upstairs are bedrooms and baths only. It's easy to put children to bed upstairs and entertain guests on either of the lower levels. The separation of the three spaces has served us well.

3. Downstairs living area--We love being downstairs to watch a movie or football game, and the living area there is such a large space, it can serve many functions. Right now, we have it divided into a sitting/TV area and a creative/learning area for the kids complete with a table and chairs. (In the past we had a full sized pool table in the creative/learning area, and that was lots of fun too.)

4. Backyard--Our children have loved the spacious backyard. We constructed a level, cushioned surface for our large playset, and they have really enjoyed playing there. Even with the large playset, there is plenty of room for a garden, a hammock and lots of running around.

5. Updates--We have updated almost everything in this house. It's nice to have new floors, faucets, fans and fun colors on the walls.

6. Kitchen--The kitchen is a great size. I have baked homemade bread, made homemade pasta and even spent many days over the years cooking an entire month's worth of meals (for two families) in one day. All of these are pretty space-consuming tasks, and this kitchen was up to the challenge. There's lots of counter space and plenty of floor space too.

7. 3 bathrooms--Very handy for overnight guests and our 3 kids.

For a limited time, our home is For Sale By Owner. If you happen to know of anyone in our area who is in the market for a house, would you please pass along our info?

It's here and here.

Shameless Plug for Help

2009-10-02T16:00:00.002-05:00

As most of you know, we are working night and day trying to get our house market-ready. Lord-willing, we'd love to finish that process this weekend. We have gotten so much accomplished, and the house is looking really great, but we need some help to get the last things on the list checked off.

So this is our shameless plug for help. If you're in our area and want to stop by to help tomorrow (Sat., Oct. 3), we will put you to work. We'll even let you choose your task. You can work for even 1 hour and make a big dent in the pile.

Here are some of the tasks we hope to complete tomorrow:
1. Hauling off some firewood we "earned" through the ice storm
2. Washing the outsides of our main level windows
3. Ironing duvet covers, curtains, pillow cases
4. Installing new window screens
5. Installing a ceiling fan and 2 bathroom exhaust fans
6. Removing nails and screws to prep for painting
7. Cleaning baseboards
8. Playing with our super-cute and fun kids
9. Caulking
10. Touch up painting
11. Doing a little bit of outside clean up and landscaping
12. Miscellaneous cleaning (We promise it won't be gross.--We've already done that part!)

So, if you can help, let us know so we can plan for tomorrow. We'll be working from 9 to 6. If you're here at a meal time, we'll feed you.

Chasing the Lion

2009-09-24T21:11:00.004-05:00

Well, clearly we never blog anymore. But we've got big news and deemed it blog worthy...

As some of you may know, I have had a photography business going on the side for a few years. Additionally, I've had a dream of full-time photography for a while, but I've allowed that dream to stay just a dream. Well, Elise and I have been talking, thinking and praying about making that dream a reality for a few months, and we have finally decided to follow God's lead and take a step of faith. So, I'm going to be taking my business to full time with a long-term goal to focus on landscape photography. Initially, I'll do a lot of portraits and weddings (or whatever photographic work I can muster up), then after I build my landscape and nature portfolio, I'll begin to focus exclusively on fine art landscape photography.

I believe that part of my life's purpose is to inspire others to love and serve God through various creative expressions - including music and photography. Ultimately for me, photography is about representing the creation in a way that compels people to ask the deeper questions about who God is and what He is like. Think about this: humans are the only species on this planet that appreciate beauty. Photography is one way to reflect the beauty of God’s creation in order to cause people to seek after the Beautiful One, Jesus. I certainly will not cease to pursue music - that's in my blood and I'll always find ways, whether in the church or outside the church, to utilize my musical gifts to give God glory.

So, this is a BIG change for us. A very significant part of the change is that we will be moving to Colorado so we'll be close to the mountains where I love to photograph. Ansel Adams was often asked how he got so many great shots and said "I live here and shoot every day (in Yosemite), so the odds that I get a few good shots are better". For most of my life, Colorado is where my artistic spirit has really come alive. When we tell people that we're heading to Colorado, most people say "of course" because we have for so long had a love for that place.

So what's next for us, then? We hope to put our house on the market by the end of this month (September), and then the waiting for a buyer will begin (know anyone who wants a really great house?). Once our house sells, we will head up to Colorado to get the business going full steam. We have talked to the elder board at The Grove Church, and we plan to faithfully continue to work there until our house sells.

Leaving Fayetteville and The Grove Church will be hard for us. The past 10 years of ministry there have been some of the best years of our lives. I count it as a blessing that God saw fit to use me as the founder of this movement. This church is where our children were dedicated. This is where we learned by experience how to live in community. The Grove Church has been our family. But at the same time, we are truly excited about how God is leading us into this new chapter.

Probably the most significant part of this decision stems from my need to grow in faith. In fact, it was the realization that the only thing keeping us from pursuing this dream was a willingness to truly trust God and go for it. This decision requires tremendous faith on my part because I can’t do it all on my own. If God’s not in this, we will fail. Stepping out into the unknown like this is the first step in learning more fully what it means to trust in God to be our provider. One of many ways that God began to get my attention about trusting in Him with everything was in reading a book by Mark Batterson called In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day. In it, there is a quote that I love: "playing it safe is risky - the greatest risk is taking no risks at all." Truly, if we believe that God is infinite and can truly take care of our needs, then we have nothing to fear - regardless of success or failure. My inclination is to play it safe - but that's not the kind of life God calls us to. He calls us to complete dependence and trust in Him - and sometimes that means making bold decisions that force you to relinquish all control to Him.

Many have asked what town we are moving to in Colorado. And the answer is, we're not sure yet. We've got our eye on a few different locations including the Fort Collins area and the Boulder area. After we get the house on the market, we will be working hard at researching which city will be the best fit for our family and for my business.

Please pray for our family. Pray that our faith will grow exponentially. Pray for us to learn complete trust through this process. Pray that we can get our house ready and that the right buyer will come along soon.

We are really excited about this adventure. It's been a crazy, busy, wild ride so far. We are eager to see how God will provide for us and how things will shape up for us as we relocate.

Blogging Contest

2008-12-16T15:44:00.002-06:00

This post is for the blogging contest listed here. Tell a kid story in 22 words.

Eating dinner; mom "introducing" pinto beans. Elspeth says, "I wish I had a fairy who made me whatever I wanted to eat."

Halloween Costumes

2008-11-01T21:50:00.002-05:00

Here are the girls in their Halloween costumes. Maitlyn is Kirsten (an American Girl who lived in the 1860s), Elspeth is Mulan, Amelia is Kaya (another American Girl). Grammy made Maitlyn and Elspeth's costumes and Amelia's moccasins. Grammy's pretty amazing!

Brett also carved some pretty amazing Jack-o-Lanterns. Maybe we'll post some pictures of those later. Maitlyn's pumpkin was Snow White, Elspeth's was Aurora, and Amelia's was Tigger.

Generosity

2008-10-27T17:18:00.002-05:00

I am so thankful for the generosity of people. We, as a family, have been blessed by others who have given to us. Of course, our parents are always doing nice things for us and are very generous with gifts at Christmas, birthdays, etc. Most recently, Mom has been making some Halloween costumes for the girls.

Also, friends have blessed us with their generosity. A friend of mine recently passed on her full set of Calphalon cookware. It is well used, but definitely still usable to me and a big blessing. Last year, another friend from church passed along some flower seeds--a small thing really, but this summer, we have been blessed with a great cutting garden. We have fresh flowers on our table at dinnertime. Our budget wouldn't allow us to go out and purchase fresh flowers, but we've enjoyed a little extravagance because of someone else's thoughfulness.

These are just a few examples of the many, many ways people have been generous to us. In fact, since we work in ministry, our very salaries are paid through the giving of others.

In hard financial times, it can be easy to scrimp, and we all probably should. However, I hope that all of us, me first of all, will remember to give as much as we can when things are rough. Our small sacrifice could be someone else's huge blessing.

Monday and weekend

2008-09-22T16:25:00.003-05:00

We had a fun outdoorsy weekend this weekend. On Friday, the girls and I went with our Nature Study group to the War Eagle Marina campground. It's closed for the season, so we had it to ourselves. We walked around the loop, and stopped to enjoy a nature drawing lesson from Mrs. Knight. Then all the kids drew, painted, sketched in their nature journals. We checked out some cool rock formations and the kids climbed all over the place. We capped off our day with Jane's 3rd birthday party.

On Saturday, we hiked the Shaddox Hollow loop in Hobbs State Park. We found at least 20 different kinds of mushrooms on the trail. That was probably the most interesting natural element we enjoyed. Also, we saw a signal tree that was bent by Native Americans years ago. Brett and I ended that day by checking out a Chicago style pizza place in Bentonville. MMM. The girls got to spend some time with Meredith, and they loved every minute of it.

On Sunday, we had an awesome worship service at church. Then we enjoyed a Grovefest at Gulley Park. We couldn't have had a more beautiful day to be outside.

So, now it's Monday, which means back to work. Today we had a full school day, reading aloud various history materials, having Bible time, working on counting money and mental math, learning geography terms and listening to Aladdin (not Disney). We're reading it from The Arabian Nights: Their Best Known Tales by Wiggin and Smith. It's fabulous. Elspeth and I read a "Bob Book" together. Maitlyn and Elspeth worked on cursive and reviewed their phonograms, and Maitlyn did some independent reading from a book of Medieval Tales. We even worked in those important life skills i.e. chores. Now, the kids are getting some fresh air, and I am going to start dinner.

Game Night

2008-08-31T22:29:00.003-05:00

So, we had our first official "game night" tonight. Most families probably have theirs on Friday or Saturday, but Sunday works great for us because we consider Sunday sabbath and family day.

Of course, we have played games many times before, but we decided to set aside an hour or so after dinner on Sunday to be our official game night, so that we'd make a regular practice of game playing. We hope it will become a tradition. Tonight, we played Apples to Apples Junior and There's a Moose in the House. Fun was had by all.

School Days

2008-08-28T21:08:00.003-05:00

So, we're officially starting school next week. We've been doing a little bit here and there for the past couple of weeks, but I am hoping that everything at work will be squared away soon and I can focus on schooling the girls.

We're going to be continuing our study of chronological history this year. We'll be moving at a rapid pace starting at the Fall of Rome and finishing the year with John Adams' presidency. (I know, that's a lot of history.) So far I am learning a lot. Last week Maitlyn asked me if the Ostrogoths or the Visigoths conquered more people, and I said, "Well, I don't know yet. I have never studied this before."

We're also beginning a very intensive phonics program called Spell to Write and Read. And I'll be teaching Maitlyn and Elspeth to write in cursive.

So, here's to school. We've got our pencils sharpened, our books reserved at the library, and we're ready to go.

The Latest

2008-05-19T00:20:00.003-05:00

So, here's what's been going on with us lately.

Maitlyn lost her first tooth. Amelia started sleeping in a big girl bed (really just her crib converted into a toddler bed). Brett taught Maitlyn and Elspeth to ride their bikes without training wheels. Elspeth cracked her first bike helmet (good thing she was wearing one).

We finished our second official year of homeschooling and our first year of participating in a homeschool co-op. We have gone on several interesting field trips over the past few months including: The Jasmine Moran Children's Museum (courtesy of Nana), The Laura Ingalls Wilder home and museum in Mansfield, Missouri, Good Vibrations (a hands-on science exhibit), Aunt Barbara's house and menagerie (courtesy of Grammy) and Farm Friends.

Brett went to Florida to hang out with the Stegers and see Radiohead. He had an awesome time.

That's it for now. . .

Fall Family Photos

2007-11-29T13:59:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Wilson park to play and take some family photos. Enjoy...

Happy Birthday Mike!

2007-11-12T02:19:00.001-06:00

Today is Mike Harper's 40th birthday! This is in honor of him...

Harkey Halloween

2007-11-10T10:11:00.000-06:00

Here are the details on our Halloween celebrations. On the Saturday before Halloween, Brett carved pumpkins for the girls. In the past, we have carved only one pumpkin, but this year he proposed that we get three--one for each girl. That made for a big carving project for dad. About halfway through the project, he sent me to Target to buy one of those pumpkin carving kits with the little flexible knives. Let me tell you, that $3.99 was well spent. Amelia's pumpkin is the silly face; Elspeth's is the kitty face; and Maitlyn's is the cat with the moon.

On Halloween, we went to the Fayetteville Square from 3 to 5 pm to Trick or Treat at the businesses there. We have done this for three years now, and it is the best trick or treating venue for young kids. There are very few scary costumes. It's still light outside, etc. The girls got a ton of candy at the square. Then we headed over to Wilson Park where Brett took some photos of them in costume.

After that, we ate an early dinner at Backyard Burger. Then it was on to the Fall Festival at UBC. Our friend, Rachel, goes to preschool at UBC, and she brought us a flier about it, so we thought we'd check it out. It was really neat, and the girls had a wonderful time. The girls enjoyed pony rides, sliding on a huge inflatable slide, jumping in the inflatable bouncer, playing games, and eating fourthmeal (a hotdog to supplement their early dinner). Amelia's favorite part by far was the bouncer. We had trouble getting her out of it! I think Maitlyn and Elspeth enjoyed pretty much everything, and they got to see their friends, Rebecca and Rachel.

Fun was had by all.

Unit Celebration

2007-10-12T21:54:00.000-05:00

Tonight, we celebrated the completion of our first nine weeks of co-op, which also means the completion of 10 weeks of school. We gathered with the rest of the families in our co-op for dinner, displays and presentations.

We've been studying ancient history this year, and thus far we have covered Creation, the Worldwide Flood, The Tower of Babel, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Israel, especially the Holy Days, the Exodus, and the Desert Wanderings.

We started our evening by viewing each family's display. The children were allowed to choose their favorite items from their studies thus far. There were tabernacle models, salt dough maps, Egyptian paddle dolls, compositions, lapbooks, rock collections and more. Maitlyn and Elspeth were proud to show Brett all of their work thus far.

Then we enjoyed dinner together. Most of the dishes served tonight fit with our historical studies so far: Matzah, Matzah ball soup, lentil stew, hummus, olives, grapes, challah bread, charoset (the apple and spice mixture served at the seder), poppy seed purim cookies, honey cake and more. There was a also special table set up where each person could taste elements of the Passover seder.

We got to hear Brett play the shofar for us. Then each class of children presented something special. The Lower Grammar class (Maitlyn and Elspeth's class) sang Shabbat Shalom and performed a kids' version of the Ten Commandments along with motions. The Upper Grammar class described each part of the Tabernacle, and the Dialectic Class did a skit about the Passover Seder based on the characters in All of a Kind Family. Also, the Upper Grammar and Dialectic Latin students recited a prayer in Latin and its translation.

It was a great night. I think the kids are proud of what they accomplished, and I am proud of them too.

Chick fil a Princess Night

2007-09-21T21:49:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, our Chick-fil-a held a Princess Night. The girls and I met our friends Angela and her daughter, Grace. We had a great time. Of course, for Princess Night, you must dress like a princess. Even Amelia got in the act. I put our smallest dress-up dress on her and pinned it in the back to make it fit. She was very proud of her outfit and kept saying, "princess". I, on the other hand, did not dress like a princess, but I did wear a skirt, which the girls thought was very special since it's such a rare happening.

Princess Night was a pretty impressive shindig. First of all, all the kids got free kids meals. But that was just the beginning. The activities included limo rides!, decorating picture frames, getting nails painted and more. Plus the larger dining section of the restaurant looked like a wedding reception complete with white table clothes, chairs with bows and fresh flowers. Amazing, huh?

We had a great time at Princess Night, but unfortunately we didn't get to participate in many of the fun things that were available. We decided to eat first then play. While we were eating, the picture frames were getting used up, the film in the polaroid camera ran out, and the line for the limo became very long. But you know what, it was okay. My children and Grace were content dressing up, enjoying a meal with friends and playing together. They did get to have their nails painted, too, so all wasn't lost.

I am really glad that they had such a great time and that they were content with the things that they got to enjoy rather than focusing on the things they missed out on.

Here are some fun pics from our evening. (They were taken with my phone, so don't be too critical.)

By the way, Amelia felt that the throne was hers, so she tried to take it over after her turn. It was a singing throne, so it was pretty special.

Maitlyn's New Glasses

2007-08-18T23:43:00.001-05:00

Maitlyn got her first glasses a week ago. (Carole Joy Seid would not be happy with us. . .) For our friends far away, we thought we should post some pics so you could see how incredibly cute she looks. (And the impromptu photo shoot netted some pics of all the Harkey girls, so we're sharing those with you, too.)

What we're learning in school

2007-08-10T00:40:00.000-05:00

Here's what I love about homeschooling. . .(Yes, I am a complete nerd.) I get to learn all of those things that I either wasn't taught or wasn't taught well or just didn't pay attention to when I was a kid.

So, this year, among other things, Maitlyn, Elspeth and I are going to study an overview of Creation through the Fall of Rome. We are going to read great literature set in the time period. We're going to make cool maps. We're going to overview the whole Bible historically and study the cultures of the various Bible places. We'll study ancient Egypt for three weeks while we're talking about Moses, for instance. And we'll study Ancient Rome when learning about the early church. I am going to learn so much! Maybe the kids will pick up a little something too.

Next week, we'll be reading (what I mean is I'll be reading aloud and the girls will be listening) The Golden Goblet, finishing up A Place In the Sun and making Egyptian Paddle Dolls.

And in science, we're going to start doing some fun experiments on our rock collection that we bought at the Discovery Channel Store closing sale.

We're looking forward to our first meeting with our homeschooling co-op next Friday. There we'll get to make Egyptian clay pots, go on a Nature Study outing to the new Botanical Gardens and begin our Presentation class (where Maitlyn and Elspeth will learn to speak in front of a small group, starting with Show and Tell and expanding with other skills from there).

Amelia's Favorite Song

2007-08-09T17:38:00.000-05:00

So, if you know Amelia, you know that she has just about the happiest disposition ever granted to a person. She is a ray of sunshine for sure. Sometimes a very loud ray, but a ray nonetheless.

Since Amelia is our third child, she doesn't get the over-attention that our first did. (You who are parents understand this phenomenon.) Well, I am sure that I taught Maitlyn many, many songs via individual instruction by the time she was 21 months old. I probably drilled her on them to be sure that she knew enough of them. Poor Amelia has just had to learn songs the hard way, by hearing them on CDs, by hearing her sisters sing them, etc. Well, this week, I did take the time to teach my little ray what I feel is her life song--If you're happy and you know it. It suits her well and she does the motions with gusto. Perhaps you could witness her in concert soon.

Nothing Exciting

2007-08-03T23:25:00.001-05:00

After waiting so long to post, the pressure is on for me to say something really exciting. But sorry, I can't come up with anything.

During the past few weeks, we've said farewell to some good friends (with more farewells to come, I'm afraid).

Also, we went to a reunion of college friends from our campus ministry. On the surface, it didn't seem that anyone had really changed much, but perhaps we just didn't get much below the surface. One of my friends shared briefly about surviving brain cancer. That was pretty cool!

I did wonder if people thought that we had changed. Did they get below the surface with us? I don't think so.

Let's see, what else can I say. . .we're starting school on Monday. Perhaps soon there will be amusing anecdotes of the Harkey homeschool to share with the blogging world. Let's hope so.

Have We Fallen Off the Blogger Map?

2007-01-20T10:05:00.000-06:00

I know, we never post anymore. We're just living life and haven't had time to catch up on blogging. I usually spend my journaling energy on my scrapbooks, but here's a quick update. I'm not going to try to catch you up completely because that would be overwhelming. I'll just start with this week.

Amelia has become our most active wrestler. Every night after dinner, Brett wrestles with the girls, which means they play on the floor, chase, etc. Amelia has taken to this activity with gusto. She doesn't know her own strength, so at times she gets a little rough. This is, however, the main time she will actually attempt walking. She is up to 4 steps in a row, I think. I guess she gets so excited about the wrestling that the walking just comes out.

Maitlyn and Elspeth have invented a daddy game called "grocery". Grocery is a game that is nothing like its name. Brett lays on the couch and he is a "grocery". Then the big girls pretend that they are going to the grocery store and go to look at the grocery item on the couch. The item (daddy) comes to life and tickles them. Then the game usually trasitions into full out chase with Daddy hiding around a corner and jumping out to scare them. So, that's grocery.

Maitlyn and I are having fun with our home education. We're ramping it up a bit thisc semester after a pretty laid back semester in the fall. She's becoming a good money counter, and she can read more and more fluently every day.

Today, we are going to celebrate Maitlyn's birthday (which was Dec. 30) and Aidan Hodskins' birthday (which was Dec. 15) with a little fun at Chuck E Cheese. Both of the kids have already had a party, but they weren't able to attend each other's parties, so thus the special day today.

That's all for now.

Pocahontas, Ariel and a Kitty

2006-11-03T01:11:00.000-06:00

The little mermaid meets Pocohantas

The kitty

The "big girls" have had these costumes for several weeks and they have been anxious to wear them for real. And as for Amelia, she is the third child to be a kitty in our house...

We took all of the crew to the Fayetteville square to trick or treat. Then we had dinner at Tim's - our favorite pizza place in town. Afterwards we trick or treated at a few friends' houses and then came home to carve our pumpkin and hand out candy.

My First Wedding Photography Experience

2006-10-16T20:30:00.000-05:00

I know, I know... I never post here anymore. I've even been quoted as saying that "blogs are so 2005".

So, here I am, ready to swallow my pride and write a post.

I shot (no, not with a gun... with a camera) my first wedding a few weeks ago. Amy Hanson and Eli Roberts were kind enough to trust that I could capture their wedding day well. I took the responsibility seriously - I get one opportunity to get it right, you know! Anyway, I spent plenty of time in advance preparing for the day. Then on September 23, I dove in headfirst and shot almost 1400 pictures. The beauty of shooting with a professional digital camera is that I could shoot as many pictures as I wanted, ensuring that I would get more "keepers" for the final product.

Then came lots of hard work processing (digitally) and editing the shots. After a few weeks, it is finished! I am actually REALLY pleased with how the images of the day came out. Here are a few samples:

The beautiful bride

The dashing groom

The couple

Exchanging vows

And you can check out more shots here.

One really cool thing happened. I posted the pictures to Collages.net for family and friends to view and also so that people can order prints. Collages.net hosts millions of wedding and portrait photos for photographers all over the country. Each week, they choose a "Site of the Week" to highlight one photographer's wedding pictures or portraits. Well I posted the pictures on Friday night and on Sunday night I got an email from Collages.net saying that the pictures from Amy & Eli's wedding had been chosen for the next "Site of the Week"!! All I can say is wow! I don't know why I've been so blessed after shooting my very first wedding, but I'm not complaining!

All in all it was a lot of work and also a lot of fun.

musings about a recent trip to the dr

2006-09-29T10:46:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago, I went to the pediatric clinic because Maitlyn hurt her foot in a "playground incident". (That's the wording that was on the slip.) She's fine, but I just wanted to ponder a couple of things about my experience.

#1--There was a television in the waiting room. The show that was on was probably fine for an older elementary child, but was not appropriate for my younger children. I'm not saying it had foul language or nudity or anything like that. The subject matter was just too mature for them to understand. Additionally, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends NO television at all for children under 2 years of age and a 2 hour limit for those older than 2. So, why would they have a TV in their waiting room? Doesn't that go against the recommendations of their own professional association?

#2--Picture this with me. I have 3 children. The oldest one has a hurt foot. She cannot put weight on the foot, so she is hopping everywhere. She is holding onto me for balance. She's only 5, so she is not particularly good at hopping for long distances or even standing on one foot for an extended period of time. I also have a rather active 3 year old who likes to run circles around me where ever I go. Her movements are hard to predict and she "cuts me off" many times a day. Then I have a baby in a car seat. Have you ever carried one of these things? First of all, they are heavy. Second of all, carrying a car seat is a completely unnatural movement. It is very awkward.

So, when we are called back to the examining room, I am carrying a baby in a car seat, trying to corral an active 3 year old who is running circles around me AND supporting a 5 year old who is hopping on 1 foot. Things are a little dicey. It strikes me as odd that the nurse (or anyone else for that matter) did not offer to help us get to our room, or even get through the door for that matter. I clearly needed help. Someone could have carried Amelia in her car seat or helped Maitlyn to hop to the scale and then the examining room. After thinking about it, I wondered, is there some sort of liability issue here? Are the nurses and other staff prohibited from carrying a baby to a room or touching a hurt child to help her hop along? I don't know. If liability is not the issue, then is it just that the nurse did not care that we needed help? Isn't a big part of the medical field helping people? Anyway, we made it through. No one helped. Only once did someone even hold the door for us--and that was just part of the standard procedure of being escorted from the waiting room to the scale. It was interesting.

A tender heart

2006-09-26T20:57:00.000-05:00

Sunday, I was running a couple of errands prior to church with our three girls in tow, and I had just enough time to stop by the house, drop them off with Brett and make it to the Greenhouse to set up for that evening. On the way into the house, Maitlyn accidentally stepped on a shiny green beetle. She was very upset. In fact, we was so upset that I had a hard time getting away to head to work. She needed mom's comfort. Maitlyn is really a very tender-hearted girl. I pray that God will keep her heart tender and that she'll be heart-broken over a lost world, not just a squished beetle.

Elspeth is also tender-hearted in a different way. A few weeks ago, we read the parable Jesus told about the persistent widow. We called it, "The Woman who Never Gave Up". And we began a family prayer journal. We are praying for several people right now, maybe even some of you. Elspeth remembers to pray for people. She often reminds me, "We need to pray for so-and-so that God will give them a clean heart." Elspeth may be our prayer warrior.

On a completely different note (but still in the prayer realm), Elspeth does like to pray "wisely" as she puts it. She means that she likes to pray silently.

5 year old future world changer

2006-09-02T20:48:00.000-05:00

In the homeschooling world, people commonly talk and write about the fact that we are educating our children all the time. Some of the best things they learn don't happen during a phonics lesson or even a great field trip. One conversation around the dinner table could plant a seed in the lives of our kids that shapes their future forever.

Tonight at dinner, it was just me and the girls. (Brett was at his first ever Hogs football game, hoping to see them beat USC.) Somehow, we started talking about Claire, a young lady that used to babysit Maitlyn and Elspeth and now is in college in Chicago. Claire went to the Dominican Republic this summer.

Maitlyn wanted to know more, "So Mom, tell me about Claire's trip." I told her that Claire taught school in a village in the Dominican Republic. The children in her class couldn't read because their parents can't read. Their parents can't read because they don't have much money. Maitlyn said, "So they can't buy any books?" Right, they don't have any books in their home. They cook on a fire in their kitchens instead of a stove. Their homes have only 1 or 2 rooms. Maitlyn said, "They must not be very happy there." They don't have soap to take a bath with and they eat beans and rice every day."Well, I like rice, but I wouldn't want to eat beans. I wish I could take such a trip." Yes, maybe when you get older, you can take a trip like that. "And I could take my own food." Maitlyn also asked if they had clean water there in the village. I told her that I thought they did. She said, "Well, that's one good thing."

I told Maitlyn that it is important to tell people about Jesus and that it is also important to help people to have food, shelter, clean water and things like that. She said, "Is that what Claire was doing on her trip?" Yes, Claire was doing both things.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked Maitlyn what she'd like to learn about in school this year. She said, "China and India". We're hoping our friends Kristen, Whitney and Gennie can come and share with us about those places. Maybe we'll have to recruit Claire to come back from Chicago to tell us about the Dominican Republic too.

I hope that God will use these seeds in her life to grow her excitement about the things that God is doing all over the world.

First Day

2006-08-21T22:59:00.000-05:00

Today has been the first day of school at the Harkey home. Remember when you were a kid and you couldn't sleep the night before school started? Well, Maitlyn was up until at least 11:00 last night. I had been trying to talk up the start of school, but I didn't intend on creating that level of excitement! Anyway, homeschooling is a beautiful thing. The schedule says we're supposed to eat breakfast at 7:45 and start school at 8:45, but I don't think the kids were even awake by 8:45. I am glad that I didn't have to wake Maitlyn and send her to her first day of Kindergarten in tears because she was so tired.

So, what do we do all day at "homeschool"? you ask. Well, there are a lot of homeschooling philosophies out there, believe me. We prefer the classical education model, but that is not something that you really jump into at five years old. For kindergarten, a more laid-back approach is necessary, I think, unless you want to make your child completely stressed out. So, we are focusing on the most important skill that Maitlyn will need to continue her education: reading. We started phonics instruction with her when she turned 5, and we are continuing that. In addition, we are reading to Maitlyn and Elspeth as much as possible, trying to focus on really great books--Little House on the Prairie, Narnia, etc.

Here's what our day today looked like. (Don't worry, I don't plan to give the blow-by-blow account of all of our other days.) We started with Bible and reviewed the story of Joshua at Jericho. We used this really cool inflatable cube on which I wrote comprehension questions. Then the girls tossed the cube and answered the question on the top. They thought it was pretty cool. I have also learned that the cube is great for kicking.

Then Maitlyn and I worked on phonics. We've taken some time off at the end of the summer, so we reviewed a lesson we had completed before. She enjoyed spelling words with a magnet board and sounding them out. Then she read about 16 lines of text very confidently.

Next I read a few books to Maitlyn, Elspeth and Amelia. Then we talked about the calendar. What is a day, week, month and year? We learned a little rhyme about that. We counted days to various events. Maitlyn accurately pointed out that a month is not four weeks. I explained that it was close to four weeks. I don't think she was convinced.

Next we had preschool time for Elspeth. She picked puzzles as her activity. She did all of the wooden puzzles we own. Maitlyn chose a more difficult jigsaw puzzle out of a book about the ocean. We read about great white sharks and whale sharks. Maitlyn said that a Great White Shark is probably about as fierce as a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Sounds good to me.

For handwriting practice, we got to do something fun. We painted on the easel, practicing our downward strokes. Maitlyn and Elspeth both participated in this fun activity.

The grand finale was our first science "experiment". We made homemade Gak. Maitlyn learned the term "chemical reaction". If you know Maitlyn, you know she LOVES art, but she said that the Gak was her favorite thing of the day. I helped her to call two of her friends to ask them about their first days. She told them we made Gak.

After official school hours, Brett taught Maitlyn about all the continents, the poles and the equator. Then later he read a part of Wind in the Willows to all the girls.

We had a lot of fun today, and I am looking forward to a fun year. The plan is to read, read and read some more, then do hands on things that inspire a love for learning.

Lost Valley Dogwood

2006-04-10T19:46:00.000-05:00

A couple of shots of a Dogwood blossom in Lost Valley. Enjoy.

What has happened to me?

2006-03-24T00:02:00.000-06:00

I once was a post-er of great frequency
At times with some profundity
On returning from the country of Turkey
I wrote with much loquacity
Has time got the best of me?
Am I more interested in photography?
Am I incapable of telling thee?
Or have I become plain lazy?

A few parting shots from Lost Valley for you...

Bloodroot

Rose Verbena

Middle Eden Falls

The Simple Life

2006-03-13T22:12:00.000-06:00

At David's request, I will share a few of my thoughts on the Simple Life

When I think of the Simple Life, I am aiming for a life that is unencumbered. I don't want to be overwhelmed, bogged down, stressed out, mad and unhappy because of things in my life that are optional, i.e. things that are under my control. (I'm under no illusion that I can eliminate trials or hardship from my life.) There are things that I CAN and should do something about as a good steward of my life and my resources. Some of the things that I can manage in order to achieve a more unencumbered, simple life include: television and media input, busy schedules, sleep schedules, how much we accumulate, if we use or abuse debt, when I run errands, where I shop, social committments, multitasking, family dinner times, etc.

I first began to long for a simple life about 2 years ago, and I have been refining my habits and trying new approaches since then. Here are some things that I have decided.

1. An overly busy life is stressful for me and my family. Why jam-pack my life full of committments and make myself miserable trying to juggle them all? One or two things done well and enjoyed are much more valuable than filling every day with endless activity.
2. It's rarely worth the stress to run errands on Saturdays. Additionally, it is rarely worth the stress to shop at the Supercenter. Every time I go there, I feel like cussing when I leave.
3. Family meals shared at home around the kitchen table are extremely valuable and will continue to be a key component of our family life.
4. For me, multitasking is not a productive use of my time. Other than reading while I am feeding Amelia, I am trying to avoid multitasking. I don't watch TV while I make the grocery list. I am working to eliminate making phone calls in the car. I don't answer my phone when I am in the middle of something that is important (especially time with my family).
5. I can only do so much. I need to be okay with that.
6. Leisure is not a waste of time. Reading good books, spending time enjoying God's creation and being creative are worthwhile pursuits.
7. In general, television is not a worthwhile use of my time. I would rather get caught up in a good book.
8. I have what I need. I rarely need more stuff. I am okay with not wearing the latest fashion.(I'd better be since I get new clothing at a rate of once every couple of years.)
9. Having more stuff makes life more complicated.
10. Technology is a blessing AND A CURSE! (But I still enjoy my iPod.
11.Having a simple life usually involves eliminating some things (or at least making some choices not to add things). As I continue to desire and work toward simplicity, I ask myself, "Does this thing, activity or pursuit enrich my life?" If not, I probably need to eliminate it.

There is so much more I could ramble about, but I'll call it quits now. Part of my new Simple Life involves trying to get to bed at a decent hour.

Reading List

2006-03-08T14:39:00.000-06:00

As Brett can probably tell you, I have been reading like crazy lately. I have always enjoyed reading, but in recent years I always felt too busy to read. Well, now I have a newborn to feed, and reading is the perfect thing to do while feeding a little one. Here are a few of the titles I have been perusing:

The Memoirs of a Geisha (I can't put it down.)

The Well-Trained Mind

Knowing God

Managers of Their Homes

Honey for a Child's Heart

Living the Simple Life

In Praise of Slowness

Weight Loss that Lasts

The Total Money Makeover

By The Shores of Silver Lake

Early Mornings

2006-03-03T22:34:00.000-06:00

This morning, I woke up at 5:30 a.m., threw on some warm clothes, grabbed my camera bag & tripod and headed out the door to shoot some pictures. On the way out, I grabbed a Weinhard's Root Beer so I could wet my dry throat. As I was getting ready to turn out onto Township, I opened it and it spewed all over the place. Luckily, most of it went on the floor with a bit on my jeans and a bit on the steering wheel. I stopped by White Oak Station and grabbed a couple of napkins, then I was on my way.

My destination was Lake Fayetteville. I wanted to capture the sunrise color over the lake. Unfortunately there were no clouds in the sky, but I was already awake, so I thought I'd give it a go anyway. When I arrived, it was still dark, but there was just enough light for me to walk out on the dam and down to the shore. By the time I got set up, there was just beginning to be some color in the sky, so I started shooting. I'm pretty pleased with this shot:

Eventually, the color began to fade, so I packed up and headed back the car. As I was driving away, the sun finally began to rise so I stopped and watched it. It was huge as it came up above the horizon. It's amazing how fast the sun actually rises... it only took about 45 seconds from peeking up above the horizon to fully risen. Unfortunately, my camera was packed away by this time.

It was a photo day for me after all, so I decided to drive around a bit to look for something interesting to shoot. Unfortunately, I was so sleepy that I couldn't concentrate on looking for something to take pictures of. After about 30 minutes of just driving around like a zombie, I decided to head home to take a nap.

I got home around 8:00, talked to Elise and the girls for a while, then proceeded to sleep until about noon!

I went out later to run a bunch of errands and I wanted to shoot some pictures around Dickson Street - particularly the new Legacy Building that is being erected. Unfortunately, I didn't really get any shots that I liked because it is so congested down there that it's hard to get an interesting angle or composition.

Sunsets and Sushi

2006-02-27T23:30:00.000-06:00

Tonight, during dinner I noticed that there were some hints of color in the sky. We can't really see the sky very well from our house, which kinda stinks, so when I can actually see color out the windows, it means it will probably be a really pretty sunset. So I grabbed my camera bag and rushed out the door. As I drove down the hill, the sky was bright orange as the sun began to set and I didn't think I was going to make it to a nice spot in time to capture the color. I kept driving and saw a lone tree in a field that would make a good foreground subject just across from the 112 drive-in, so I pulled over, grabbed my camera, tripod and a couple of lenses and darted across the road to shoot.

Wow, was the color in the sky amazing! I stayed there for about 30 minutes and shot away. There were amazing oranges, reds, blues, pinks and purples. As I was capturing this beautiful scene I was reminded that this majestic sunset is but a sign that points to an almighty majestic God.

Here is one of the images:

You can check out more shots at my flickr site.

You can also check out a vivid description of the sunset at Jennifer's blog.

Woo hoo! 10,000 visitors!

2006-02-03T11:15:00.000-06:00

There have now been 10,003 visitors to The Harkey Blog. Thanks everyone for visiting even though our updates have been less than frequent lately!

Shadows and Tall Trees

2006-02-01T14:49:00.000-06:00

So, for some reason, I just can't get back in the swing of posting frequently to my blog...

Most of the staff from The Grove have now made it a regular thing to eat at Qdoba for lunch on Tuesdays. You see, they have this amazing deal: you buy a $15 Qdoba T-Shirt and every Tuesday if you wear it into the restaurant, you get a free entree. 3 lunches later, it pays for itself and you're eating free, baby!

So, yesterday, after we walked back to the office after lunch, I noticed these beautiful Gerbera Daisies that Jennifer Reeves had placed in the vase. Jennifer serves us by cleaning our offices each week and she often puts nice little touches around the office like fresh flowers or tasty treats. I was so struck by the beauty of these flowers, I went out to my car to grab my camera bag and started shooting away. About an hour later, I ended up with some nice shots.

This is one of them.

If you'd like to see more, just go to my Flickr site.

On an unrelated note... I've been listening to U2 a lot lately. I go through phases where I listen to them exclusively for weeks on end and then phases where I don't listen to them at all.

Of course, any diehard U2 fan would've recognized the song reference in the title of this blog.

And for a final unrelated note... the men's retreat was awesome. It was great to learn, worship, play and laugh with so many great guys from The Grove. I especially enjoyed spending time with the guys from my Community Group. It's pretty amazing how God has knit each of us together over the past several years.

And, of course, the Hot Pockets rule the Poker tables.

Highlights from the past few weeks

2006-01-09T00:57:00.000-06:00

Instead of trying to tell in depth what has been going on in the Harkey household, I thought I'd give a few highlights:

1. Christmas. We hosted our families here for Christmas. There's nothing quite like watching a 4 (almost 5) year old and a 2 year old get excited about the Christmas tree, gifts, Christmas lights, Happy Birthday Jesus cupcakes (with sprinkles, of course), and singing Christmas carols. One of my favorite gifts that they got was the Chronicles of Narnia (from us). Starting a day or two after Christmas, we started reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. We just finished that one and we're about to start The Magician's Nephew. Maitlyn is totally captivated, and Elspeth is even understanding a lot of the story. Amelia doesn't seem to be getting it yet, but she sure listens intently...

New "fairy wings" and "tinkerbell wands"...

Amelia's just excited to be there...

2. A week off. The Grove (our church and employer) can't afford to give traditional "Christmas Bonuses", so it does something even cooler. The office is closed for the week between Christmas and New Year's. That means that we get the entire week off without having to use any of our vacation time. Of course, services still have to happen, but with a little advanced planning, those were ready before Christmas. It was a good week of spending time with family. It always seems like this sort of time goes by too fast, though...

3. Maitlyn's 5th Birthday. 6 days after Christmas (Dec 30), we honored Maitlyn. God gave her to our family 5 years ago, and it has flown by so fast! We took her to eat doughnuts in the morning, then opened gifts. That evening, 3 of her friends, Sarah Cait, Mary Hadley and Peyton came with us to Fuddrucker's (her choice) for a Birthday meal. We took a Birthday cake that Maitlyn decorated herself with this cool edible paper that you can draw on with food-safe markers (thanks, Grammy), opened gifts and had a grand time. Then Mary Hadley spent the night. It's funny, Maitlyn seemed more excited about her birthday than even Christmas (just a little bit). I guess she loves to be the center of attention...

Maitlyn's new birthday scarf...

All the girls with the cake...

4. New Year's Eve. We gathered with a bunch of our good friends at the Harper's house for NYE. We had a great time of fellowship, playing lots of games, trying Stacey's family Margarita recipe and watching Dick Clark mug down with his wife on national TV at midnight. Oh, and Lafe finally won his first poker game...

5. NCAA Football National Championship. A bunch of us hung out at Rodney and Angie Driver's house to watch the game last Wednesday. It was just about the hardest thing I've ever done, but I rooted for the Longhorns. Actually, I just rooted against USC. I can't stand to hear them brag and I just wanted to see them go down. Is that cruel? Maybe. Rest assured, I'm back to my Longhorn hating ways. I hope we beat them 108-0 next fall...

You dress up real nice

2005-12-23T20:52:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, our Community Group all went to Bordino's for a special Christmas dinner. We made the reservations back in September so that we could have a room all to ourselves. Then when the day came, we all dressed up in our fancy clothes. Of course, we never see each other in our fancy clothes, so the beginning of every conversation always started with "wow, you look really nice."

It was a terrific time of great food and fellowship. These are some of our dearest friends, so it was a real joy to celebrate the season with them. We are truly blessed with a wonderful community of friends.

The picture above is Stu (with Christine in the background). He's always making a strange face in every picture I've ever taken of him...

The Free iPod Is Here!

2005-11-30T23:45:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been a while, but we finally got our free iPod! We started way back in February and got 4 out of 5 referrals pretty quickly. Then it sort of stalled out and I figured we would never get our final referral.

Then we got our 5th referral a few weeks ago and Elise now has a brand new 30 gig black iPod! It is even one of the new ones that does photos and video.

You can get one of your own - click on the free iPod link on the right.

The Aspen Daisy

2005-11-23T18:14:00.000-06:00

This happens to be my favorite flower. They grow wild on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains and I took this shot at the end of the summer on the Mantrip. We were in the Indian Peaks Wilderness of Colorado.

Kind of a random post, I know.

Vote for my Jones Soda labels!!!

2005-11-17T00:23:00.000-06:00

I put a couple of my pictures on the Jones Soda website for consideration to be a label on a bottle of Jones Soda. Help the cause by clicking on both of these links and voting for my picture:

Picture #1

Picture #2

Thanks!

She's finally here!

2005-11-16T22:13:00.000-06:00

Ok, I know it has been way too long since either of us have posted. We've been just a bit busy...

Announcing the birth of Amelia Clare Harkey!

Amelia was born at 6:32 a.m. on Saturday, November 5, 2005 at Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville, AR. She weighed 6 lbs, 10 oz and was 19 1/2 inches long.

Friday, the 4th, we had a Community Group guys night at our house. A bunch of us guys went to eat wings at Wingstop, then we came back to the house to play some poker and Halo 2. After our poker game, those of us still around went downstairs to play some Halo 2 and after playing for about 30 minutes, Elise sent me a text message (from upstairs) telling me that she thought she might be in labor. I took a break and went upstairs to help her time her contractions while the guys kept shooting each other. Her contractions were not really very regular, but they were pretty intense, so we decided to wait a bit and see if they became more regular.

We had planned to take the kids to the Harper's house when Elise was finally in labor. Mike was one of the guys here playing Halo 2, so we thought if this was it, we would just send the kids home with him. By the time we had finished playing Halo 2, the contractions hadn't become any more regular, so we sent Mike home.

Soon after that, the contractions got more regular and intense.

So, we packed the kids and our bags into the car and headed over to the Harper's to drop them off. Then we were off to the Hospital. We checked in at about 3:15 and quickly they had an IV in Elise's hand and were making plans for the Epidural. This was going to be it! The Epidural went fine (I didn't pass out this time - you'll have to ask me about that) and Elise labored along with no pain. Then just a couple of hours later at about 6:00, they told us it was time to push. Elise did great and within no time, Amelia Clare was here!

Actually, Amelia _______ was here. We hadn't decided on a middle name yet.

She looked great and unlike our other girls, she was born with black hair! They got her all cleaned up, packed all of the stuff away in the room and then left us alone for about 1.5 hours of quality family time with our new baby girl.

The rest of the hospital stay was a blur of friends and family coming to visit. Sunday morning, they told us everything with Elise and Amelia Clare (we decided on her middle name Sunday morning), and so we could go home.

We got home at about noon on Sunday. Grammy (Elise's mom) had been there since Saturday morning taking care of Maitlyn and Elspeth.

We are so blessed by God to have 3 beautiful, healthy girls. Thanks to everyone who has prayed with and for us for the last 9 months.

A day with Tim Ernst

2005-11-04T22:30:00.000-06:00

I attended a photography workshop with renowned Arkansas nature photographer, Tim Ernst on October 29. This was one of the shots that I took at the Buffalo River near Roark Bluff. As a part of the workshop, Tim processed one picture from each person's shots for the day in Photoshop to show how he processes digital pictures. I couldn't decide which of my pictures to use (I shot about 120), so I asked Tim and he chose this one. At the end of the day, I got a print of this done on Tim's Epson 4800 fine art printer that looks stunning.

Holy cow, macro shots are really fun.

Frustrating Experience of "Labor"

2005-10-26T20:21:00.000-05:00

Some of you have probably heard through the grapevine that we had a little hospital visit today, so I thought I'd write this blog to catch you up so that I don't have to retell the story so many times. If you want to get straight to the point. . .we came home with baby still in utereo. If you have time for the longer version. . .here it is:

So, I have been having quite a few contractions lately. I had contractions for 3 hours Sunday evening, and I started having some more yesterday evening sometime. I ignored them for a long time because Brett was gone to the David Crowder show in Tulsa, and I didn't want to think about whether I needed to call him to come home or anything like that. So, I pretty much went into a frenzy doing all sorts of things that I needed to do around the house. (I believe they call this strange behavior "nesting". :)) At any rate, I worked on lots and lots of stuff for the Greenhouse, did some laundry, unloaded the dishwasher, finished up the kids Christmas lists, re-checked my library books online, sent a lot of emails about upcoming work and community group stuff, etc. I was a very efficient woman.

By about 11 pm, I was definitely in some pain. I had a few more things to do, so I sort of casually timed my contractions as I was putting away laundry, watching the world series, etc. They seemed to be coming every 5 to 6 minutes or so. For a second or subsequent delivery, my clinic tells you to come in when you have contractions 5 minutes apart for 2 hours. Brett got home around 1 am from the concert. I was still having contractions. They weren't horrible (like a movie or anything), but definitely there.

Sidenote: With Elspeth, as far as I can remember, my contractions were similar to what I described above, not terribly painful, but consistent. When I went in to deliver her, I had already progressed really well (I was at a 5) and was ready to get the epidural right away (after blood work, IV, etc.). So, I had that in the back of my mind. I didn't want to wait too long to go to the hospital because I had progressed just great in a similar scenario with my last delivery.

So, we proceded to call Stacey to come and stay with our kids, we packed up our stuff into the car and we headed to the hospital at about 2 am. So, by this time, I certainly had experienced contractions for long enough to go in. I looked at the clock as I slipped into my not-so-comfy hospital bed. It was 2:25 a.m. I figured within an hour or so we'd know whether this was the real deal. Boy was I wrong.

Here's a little hospital info for those of you who have not yet experienced the joy of having children. When you go into the hospital for "labor", pretty much the first thing that they do is "check" you. I will not go into detail about that here, but let's just say that when you are checked, you would like to hear the nurse say any number 3 or higher and words like "soft", "effaced" and "thin" are good. My nurse said, "you're at a 1 to 2" and used the word "thick".--These are not good signs that things are going to progress soon. (Also, until the nurses have determined that you are acutally in active labor, i.e. progressing, they don't really do anything--no blood work, no IV, no discussion of the epidural.--So, since the nurse didn't even mention any of these things, I felt that we would probably get sent home.)

So after the nurse did her checking she told me the name of the doc on call and said that she'd check with him to see what he wanted to do (i.e. release me or keep me there). After about another hour, 3:30 a.m., the nurse came in to tell me that the doctor said he wanted to keep me until the morning just to see what would happen. Not that I actaully SAW this doctor or anything. Now, I know he looked at my chart and talked to the nurses and made a plan, BUT he never set foot in my room, even though he was on the floor from 2:25 a.m. (when I got into my bed) until 7:00 a.m. I thought, well, maybe he's really busy delivering a baby and he can't come in right now. I think at this point, the nurse asked me to pee in a cup to see if I had a bladder infection. (Apparently a bladder infection can make you have contractions that are not true labor.--I have never heard about this before, but I peed in the cup anyway.)

So, I waited. I watched some lame television. Brett slept on a rock hard pull out bed with no sheets. I got very thirsty. I tried to ask Brett to get me a drink. For any of you who have ever traveled with Brett or lived with him, you know he is an extremely hard sleeper. So I had trouble waking him up, and I couldn't reach him to tap him on the shoulder or anything, which is my usual method. I couldn't get out of my bed because I was hooked to 3 different wires to monitor my "contractions", the baby's heartbeat and my pulse. Finally, after my saying his name 10 times or more, Brett finally stirred. I said, "I am really thirsty. Can you find out if I can have something to drink?" He fell back to sleep. I asked him several more times. Finally he actually "woke up" and started to walk out into the hall to try to get me a cup of water. He got to the door and he asked me, "What am I supposed to be doing, again?" At that point, I realized that he was not going to be able to complete this task in his state of exhaustion, so I told him to go back to bed, and I buzzed the nurse. She brought me some delicious fayetteville tap water, straight fromt the lake. (Another sign that no one thought I was in labor. If you're in labor, they give you only ice and popsicles.)

Somewhere around this time, I got checked again. Still at a 1 to 2. Not a good sign. Still no doctor, and apparently I had to stay until morning. I asked the nurse about the bladder infection. She said that I did have a slight infection so that could be a part of the problem. So, if I got sent home maybe they'd give me some medicine. At this point, I was pretty discouraged. I had been at the hospital for about 2 hours without making progress, but for some reason, they didn't think I should go home. So, I watched more lame TV and waited until 5 am to call my mom to fill her in.

After I left a message on my mom's answering machine. (She was in the shower.) I tried to wake Brett. He had a 6 am meeting on his schedule, and I thought he should call the guys and let them know he couldn't make it. I couldn't ever wake him up, so I stayed awake until 5:30 so that I could call someone about it. Finally, after that, I decided to try to rest. Apparently I wasn't going to receive any informaiton any time soon, so I'd better get some sleep. From about 5:45 until about 7:00, I cat napped on and off. Meanwhile, I was still having "contractions". At about 7:00 a.m., I called Stacey to let her know the lack of news. Then my mom called me back and I told her the latest.

My new nurse (shift change at 7 am) came in. She asked me if my contractions were getting stronger. I said "yes". She asked, "Do you think that is because you are getting tired?" Well, I have no idea. How would I know that? THe whole reason to come to the hospital is to have a medical professional interpret your symptoms for you. She told me that the doctor (the new one on call) would come in sometime in the next couple of hours to evaluate my situation. So, he finally came in around 8 am. I got checked again, still nothing promising. He said that #1 I did not have a bladder infection. #2 I had a irritated uterus. This apparently means that I was having contractions that were not true labor. He described to me how to tell true labor from what was currently happening to me. He told me to get some rest and drink lots of water because dehydration can cause the irriated uterus thing. He was nice, and I didn't have the guts to ask why I had to wait over 5 hours for someone to come in to give me this info. Even though there were signs all along the way that I would get sent home, I still felt that they gave me a false sense of hope by keeping me there for what ended up being 6 hours. I was frustrated that doctor #1 never took the time to step in my room and explain to me what was going on. (It wasn't busy at all, so I don't have any explanation as to why he didn't come in.) I was frustrated that the nurse told me misinformation about the bladder infection. Most of all, I was frustrated because I still have no earthly idea how I will know when I'm really in labor. THe doctor said in so many words, "You'll know." Hmmmm--then why was I there this time. You'd think after 2 other pregancies, I would know, but apparently not. I don't want to go in to the hospital again and wait for hours to figure out that I am not in labor. And at the same time, I don't want to wait so long that i get there during the really painful part of labor and have to wait to get my epidural.

At 8:30, the nurse gave me a sleeping pill and a lecture about getting some rest. We signed out and came home. That sleeping pill worked great, and I slept from 9 am until about 4:45 p.m. Now it's time to just wait.

I do want to say one more thing. Even though this was a very frustrating experience, I know that God knows when this baby will come. He is in control, and I most definitley am not.--Being in the hospital sure shows you that. I trust Him even in the frustrating times.

A Tea Party

2005-10-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

Maitlyn and Elspeth were having a tea party yesterday. Maitlyn came to tell me, "Elspeth isn't being polite at the tea party." I went in to see what Elspeth was doing. She was quietly sitting at the little table, pretend cutting with her knife and fork. Maitlyn said, "She's cutting too fast and she's drinking out of the sugar."

A Great Saturday

2005-10-16T12:29:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a great day. I started my day at NU U Day Spa with a "relax" spa package. I received a gift certificate from NU U back in March (before anyone knew I was pregnant) for some work that I had done for The Grove. I saved my certificate for just the right time--3 weeks before my due date.

I had an aromabath, starting reading an interesting new book, "The Next Christendom", received a facial and had a 50 minute massage. Boy did I need that massage! I had been having alot of shoulder and neck pain for about 5 days prior to Saturday, so again, the timing could not have been more perfect. Virginia asked me what was my favorite part of the spa package, and I have to definitely say the massage is the best part. So, if you have to choose just one, always go for that.

After the aromabath, it seemed like I was waiting for a long time. I didn't really know what came next in the agenda, so I just sat there for a while, then I looked around the place for some water to drink. Finally, I found a lady to get me a cup for water, so at least I knew they hadn't forgotten about me. I found out later that the lady who gives the facials was running behind, so that is why I had to wait so long. BUT to make up for my wait, she gave me a gift certificate for another 1 hour and 15 minute facial (valued much more than the mini-facial I got yesterday). Sweet.

After I finished my massage and got dressed, my two silly (in a good way) friends, Stacey and Virginia barged into the bathroom and kidnapped me. They had toy guns and everything. It was funny. They blindfolded me and drove me to Powerhouse for a gathering with some friends from the Grove. (They made me listen to country music on the way there!) The group of friends treated me to lunch, brought wipes and diapers for the new baby and gave me a gift certificate to get a manicure and a pedicure. We closed our time together with prayer for Baby Harkey and our family. What a sweet surprise and blessing! I am grateful to have such thoughful friends to celebrate with me.

After I went home and hung out with Brett and the girls, I had to take a nap. Even though it was fun, all that activity was tiring for a pregnant lady! :) That afternoon, Brett, Maitlyn, Elspeth and I went to Sears and Lowe's to buy a new dishwasher since our old one died. Later, Virginia came over to watch Maitlyn and Elspeth so that Brett and I could work on baby names (something we desperately needed to do). Thanks, Virginia. We made lots of progress!

So, there's my great Saturday. Thanks friends!!!

A post from Elise?!?

2005-10-14T23:58:00.000-05:00

10 Years ago:
I was 24, married 3 years and lived in a one-room apartment at the Wesley Foundation in Norman, Oklahoma. The apartment was in the back (front?) of the sanctuary. It was never meant to be an apartment--It was actually supposed to be a storage room, I think. We had a mini-fridge, a microwave and a sink in our room. To go to the bathroom, take a shower or cook dinner, we had to walk all the way through the sanctuary and through the entire rest of the building. I had to take a shower in the men's restroom before the building opened each day! (But, hey, we lived there for free.) Our plan was to be in seminary at Asbury Theological Seminary during that fall, but God closed that door in a major way, so we lived at Wesley. I worked at Foley's selling shoes on commission. Brett and I both job-searched all over the country, going to interviews in Silsbee, TX, Florida, Dallas and other random places. We ran up a lot of credit card debt, too. That fall was one of the hardest times in our lives, but God sure taught us a lot.

5 years ago:
I was pregnant with Maitlyn. I worked full time at Fellowship Bible Church for Student Ministries. Brett was in his second year of pastoring/worship leading the Grove. We were beginning to look for houses. We lived in a 2 bedroom duplex on Dawn Drive.

1 year ago:
Brett and I just got back from a trip to Colorado, which was supposed to be my first back-country camping experience. Because of weather, we only camped in the back-country one night, but it was still fun. Brett and I love to spend time in Colorado. (I heard he's from there.) I was in the midst of planning Mission to Mexico 2005, gearing up for the busyness of November through March.

Yesterday:
I did some laundry and rechecked a couple of library books online. The girls were unusally fussy, so I enforced mandatory rest time--they had to stay in their beds for an hour while I rested. (I told them that they couldn't go bowling unless they stayed in their beds.) We bowled with our cool Community Group at Ozark Lanes. The coolest people dressed 80's, but I couldn't find my sweater. Maitlyn and Elspeth had a great time bowling. Afterward we went to Fuddruckers for some dessert. It was fun.

5 snacks I enjoy:
homemade rice krispee treats
sonic diet coke
restaurant tortilla chips and queso or salsa
cereal
starbucks white chocolate mocha

5 songs I know every word to:
Little David, play on your Harp
El Shaddai
Jesus Loves Me
Jesus Loves the Little Children
Silent Night (all the verses)

5 things I'd do with 1 million dollars:
invest
travel
give--especially in fun and specific ways--like buying stuff for operation christmas child or meeting a very specific need
buy books, especially for my kids
buy good groceries--any kind of fresh produce or meat that we want, etc.

5 places I'd run to:
home
colorado

5 things I'd never wear:
a bikini
other than that, I'm old enough to know that you should never say never

5 favorite TV shows:
the 10 o'clock news
college football
friends

5 Biggest Joys:
teaching my kids something new, especially if it involves a field trip (going someplace cool)
sleeping late
reading just for the enjoyment of it
hanging out with Brett
eating at a good restaurant

5 favorite toys:
Hmmmm. . .do I have toys?

5th line from my 23rd blog:
I haven't written 23 blogs.

5 People I shall now tag:
Brett, Dave, Aaron, Gennie, Lafe

Video iPod

2005-10-12T23:57:00.000-05:00

Apple announced today that they are finally releasing an iPod that plays video. That means you can now put your own videos on it, play music videos and download current TV shows the day after they air.

Now the next step seems like movies. Can you imagine flying across the country or the world with movies, music and pictures in your iPod?

Makes my 40G 3rd generation iPod look like a dinosaur... I should just relax and be thankful for what I have.

Welcome Jane & Parker!

2005-09-30T01:22:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Chris & Carrie Tucker on the birth of Jane Tucker on September 18, 2005 and Parker Kelley, born on September 28, 2005!

Jane Tucker & Carrie

Parker Kelley, Patrick & Lindsey

Coldplay Under The Moon

2005-09-30T01:07:00.000-05:00

So, a week ago, me, James, Andrew, Jason and Cass drove 3.5 hours to Kansas City to see Coldplay. We took off around Noon from Jason's house and later that afternoon, ended up at the Plaza. We walked around for a bit, drooled over some cool stuff at the Apple store and then went to Cheesecake Factory for a tasty dinner.

Thank you, helpful Cheesecake waitress lady for suggesting that we share a HUGE appetizer sampler and 2 entrees. It was just right.

We then drove to the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Bonner Springs, KS. I *thought* that this was just a suburb of KC. Apparently it is a town about 20 miles out of KC. We hit this huge traffic jam about 30 minutes before the opening band, Rilo Kiley was to take the stage. After about 45 minutes of slowly driving through this traffic jam, we realized that it was all concert traffic! Well, we finally made it to the venue, parked and walked to the amphitheater.

Our tickets were in 3 different places, so after deciding on a rendevous point, we split up and went to our seats.

Oh, and I waited with James while he bought a shirt.

Our seats weren't bad. They weren't great either. I'm a bit of a concert snob, so really the only seats I would get really excited about are front and center. And we weren't front and center. We were middle and right.

Oh well, I could still see pretty well.

Sound was ok. At the first, the wind was blowing a bit and sort of messing with the sound. Finally the wind died down and it sounded pretty good.

Coldplay was awesome. They are one of my favorite bands right now. X&Y is the album of the year, in my opinion (Death Cab's, "Plans" is second best). Some highlights of the show:

1. The big yellow balls filled with gold confetti (released during "Yellow")
2. The red light that Chris Martin swung around his head in the middle of "Fix You"
3. They played "Swallowed in the Sea"
4. They covered Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire"
5. I know it is probably cliche, but I loved "Fix You"
6. The big LCD screen behind the band
7. The countdown/countup on "Square One"
8. The rest of the songs they played...

After the show, we traffic jammed it up for a while, then jumped back on the interstate for our late-night ride home. 3.5 hours and a couple of Red Bulls later, and we were home (at 3:30 a.m.!).

I'll never forget the freewheelin' 80's!

Insomnia

2005-09-14T20:32:00.000-05:00

For several nights lately, I have had a hard time going to sleep.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a night owl. I have always been wired this way. When I was a kid I would hide under the sheets and read books with a flashlight. But when I finally do go to bed, I usually have no trouble going to sleep within moments. Until lately.

It started a few weeks ago when Jason, Spencer and I were going to the Buffalo National river really early in the morning to shoot photos. That night I went to bed at Midnight and couldn't fall asleep until 2:30. I had to wake up at 4:15. Then again, a few nights ago, I went to bed and just laid there for about 1.5 hours before I could fall asleep. Again, last night I couldn't sleep. I just laid there in bed listening to the thunder and watching the lightning from the storm.

The real problem is that the next day I end up feeling like a zombie. Exhausted.

I don't know what's up with my internal clock.

Binge and purge

2005-09-12T01:37:00.000-05:00

So, you see, I wrote a billion pages of blog material when I returned home from Turkey, and I guess I got just a bit burned out. It's not that life hasn't happened since June 12, it's just that I've been too busy to write about it. So here are a few highlights of the rest of my summer:

1. Our family went to Colorado for a wonderful vacation.

We spent almost 2 weeks in Estes Park, CO. This is one of our favorite places. We love the mountain air, the beautiful scenery, the zillions of outdoor activities and the slow pace of life. Our kids really love putting their feet in the water and the chipmunks. We hiked a lot and camped on 4th of July (Elspeth's first time to camp). We discovered a great new restaurant in Boulder called BD's Mongolian Barbeque. I took tons of pictures (I'll put some on the blog soon). Much fun was had by all.

2. We enjoyed many evenings playing in the backyard.

Back in April/May, many of us spent many hours transforming our back yard from swamp into super cool fun zone. It involved Bobcats, sledgehammers, shovels, mud, railroad ties, mulch and sod. Needless to say, our family and friends have had a blast chillin' on the new grass and the kiddos have had a blast playing on the new playset. The finished product:

3. I went on a sweet backpacking trip with a couple of good friends.

Justin, Stuart and I went to Colorado for the Mantrip. As Justin puts it, "we hiked over 2 mountains and around another." It was a sweet time backpacking in the Indian Peaks Wilderness area in Colorado. We sang at the top of our lungs in the car all the way there and all the way home. We hiked until our bodies gave up. We ate amazing backpacking food. We ate even more amazing food when we got off the trail (BD's again). We saw amazing sights. We sat out on a rock in the middle of Mirror Lake until late in the night smoking Cuban cigars, watching shooting stars and talking about life. We made huge campfires (some of which may have been prohibited). I took bunches of pictures (again, I promise I'll post some here).

4. I've spent lots of time on photography.

In addition to the 3 aforementioned trips where I took tons of pictures, I have spent lots of time taking pictures around Northwest Arkansas. Spencer, Jason and I got up super early a couple of weeks ago and drove out to Roark Bluff on the Buffalo National River to take some first light pictures. I sold one of my guitars (and some more stuff) on eBay so that I could buy a sweet new wide-angle lens (Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM). I've spent lots of time post-processing my pictures in Photoshop. It has been tremendously enjoyable. Here's a shot from the Buffalo:

5. And we've basically been trying to catch our breath in between all of these things.

It seems like our summer was quite hectic because we traveled and did so much. So we rarely had much time at home to just "be". For instance, because of my schedule, every time I was in town, I led worship at The Grove. Practically all summer I never had a chance to just sit and be a participant in a service. It was an amazing summer, but I am looking forward to slowing down a bit this fall.

So with that, I vow to get back in the rhythm of blogging...

Turkey Slideshow

2005-08-19T01:23:00.000-05:00

I put together a little slideshow with some of the pictures I took in Turkey. To view it, click here.

Music courtesy of a couple of great Turkish bands, Kardeş Türküler and Mor Ve Ötesi.

13 years

2005-08-18T22:09:00.000-05:00

As of Monday, we have officially logged 13 years of marriage. What a precious gift from God! I am so grateful that God brought Brett into my life, and that God has been with us and sustained us through everything. I am even more grateful that God has blessed us with an alive, thriving relationship. We're not just going through the motions or living in the same house, we are working as a team (most of the time), sharpening each other and just enjoying each other. It sure is nice being married to someone I enjoy spending time with.

Brett, I love you. Thanks for being a great husband and leader of our family. I look forward to every future moment that God gives us together.

Comments...

2005-08-18T10:48:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I got some spam as a comment on the post below. I deleted it. And for some reason now none of the other comments are showing up. AND you can't even add NEW comments now.

What's up, blogger?

Anybody know how to fix this?

A bit of Colorado

2005-07-29T13:42:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, our family traveled to Colorado for vacation. I plan on writing more about our trip in a later blog post, but I thought I'd share one picture from our trip.

This is in one of our favorite spots in downtown Estes Park. There is a park behind the main street (Elkhorn Avenue) where the Big Thompson River and the Roaring River join and they have all of these cool areas for kids to play in the water. It is a very relaxing area. I coaxed Elspeth out onto this rock and surprisingly, she posed for me to shoot some pictures.

I added a little glow and some grain to give this picture an earthy yet ethereal feeling.

Square One - Turkey, Day 15

2005-07-20T03:18:00.000-05:00

Saturday, June 11, 2005

We rode the airport shuttle through the dark streets of Istanbul. In the middle of the day, it took us at least an hour to get to the Side Pension when we arrived 2 days ago. Now it only took us 20 minutes to drive back to the airport. We arrived there at 3:30 a.m. and quickly checked in at the KLM desk. Apparently the Dutch are really effecient because they already had our boarding passes printed and waiting.

We walked over to our gate and plopped down to wait for our 5:50 a.m. flight. I borrowed James' CD player to listen to the new Coldplay CD. I put in my headphones, laid down on the chairs with my head on my backpack and listened. Wow. From the very first song, "Square One", this CD was amazing. By the time I got to song 4, "Fix You", I was actually quite emotional. I'm not sure if it was because this amazing trip was coming to an end or because the music was just that good. It was probably a combination of both things. I listened to the entire CD alll the way through.

After listening, I decided to go to the restroom. Across from the restroom was the duty free shop, so I walked around for a minute or so looking to see if there was anything I could/should buy. Since I just didn't need any liquor or cigarettes, I passed. Then I remembered that our Turkish friend, Deniz, works at the duty free shop during the night shift, so I started looking around to see if I could find him. When Mandy came by, she asked what I was doing and I told her I was looking for Deniz and did she remember if he was supposed to work that night. She thought he was, so I continued to look for him. Finally, Jay came by and I told him I was looking for Deniz. He said he was sure that I would find him... in the Antalya airport! In my sleep-deprived stupor, I forgot that we were in Istanbul and not Antalya.

So, feeling just a bit foolish, I walked back to the gate.

We got on our flight to Amsterdam with no problems. I don't really even rembember this flight. I think I listened to the Coldplay CD one more time and slept some.

We landed in Amsterdam at around 7:00 a.m. We weren't due to be at our gate until something like 1:30, so we decided to go into the city and look around for a while. We got through customs quickly and headed out into the mall in the front part of the airport to buy train tickets to get to Amsterdam Centraal (downtown). First, we tried to buy our train tickets at an automated machine with a credit card. It wasn't working for some reason, so we went to another machine and had the same result. Finally, Dick and I went to the ticket counter and bought our round trip train tickets for something like 7 euros each.

We went downstairs to the train stop and soon a sleek yellow and blue double decker train whisked into the station. We jumped on - there was actually no one there to check our tickets, so I guess we could have ridden for free. Soon we were on our way to Amsterdam Centraal. This train was fast and smooth. It was cool to see the city from through the windows. It made me want to go spend more time in Europe. Everything was very clean and modern.

About 15 minutes later we were at the train station - it was a huge station just like one that you would see in a movie. In fact, it is the same train station you see in the film Ocean's Twelve (thanks to my friend James for that fact). We quickly made our way outside and there we were... in Amsterdam!

Not sure exactly where we wanted to go, we just started walking in what seemed to be the main direction to the center of the city. We were surrounded by old churches, old buildings, tons of shops and restaurants and a very diverse crowd of people. Amsterdam is a very cosmopolitan and pluralistic city. There is pretty much every type of person there and you can pretty much do anything. There is legal gambling, legal prostitution, some legal drugs (marijuana, for instance), legal abortion and basically legal euthanasia. We walked for several blocks and realized that we were hungry for breakfast, so we started looking for a good cafe.

And it was cold. Somehow, I had thought of this and had brought a pair of jeans and put them on in the airport, but I was still a bit chilly. We found a nice cafe for breakfast on one of the side streets. The restaurant was pretty smoky, but the food was pretty decent. Like Turkey, apparently there are no smoking/non-smoking sections in The Netherlands.

We thought about trying to go tour the Anne Frank house/museum, but we weren't exactly sure how far away it was, so we decided against it. In retrospect, I wish we had gone to the Van Gogh museum, since he is one of my favorite painters. I guess that means I have to go back some time...

As a side note, why do they get to call their country Holland AND The Netherlands? And why are the people called Dutch? Why aren't they called Netherlandese or Hollandish? Can anybody answer these questions?

Well, I just looked up part of the question on the web and found out this: "Holland - popular reference to the country known as The Netherlands. Holland is actually a province (state) in The Netherlands" Now you know.

That still doesn't explain why they get to be called Dutch.

Anyway, after breakfast, we walked a few blocks to a big plaza. It felt very European, there were tons of people milling around, artists painting, people dressed up as strange creatures and statues trying to make money (there was someone who had painted themselves silver and they were doing an impression of the tin man from the Wizard of Oz), TONS of pigeons, statues, etc. And there were millions of bicycles. I know, many of you are thinking, "millions? Come on, Brett, there couldn't have been millions!" Well, there were, I promise. (Ok, I looked this up too, there are only 600,000 bicycles in Amsterdam...) And they were all these very Dutch looking bicycles. You know, cruiser style with the baskets on the front and the little bells on the handlebars.

We even got to see part of a TV show being filmed. We might have been in one of the shots, so if you are ever watching Dutch TV and see someone that looks like me... it is me.

After milling around for a while, we decided to keep walking. We just picked a street that looked cool and took off. We ended up seeing some great houses, more bikes and great views of the canal system. You see, there are tons of canals and boats. You can pretty much get around the city by boat, bicycle and train better than by car. They actually recommend that you not drive in the city because it is just easier to travel by various other means.

Yes, those houses are leaning

We walked around for a couple of hours just admiring the architecture and feel of the city. After a while, Jay got hungry and we stumbled upon a shop called "New York Pizza", so he went in to grab a slice. When he came out, I snapped a quick picture of him.

What a tourist...

Finally, it was time to head back to the train station. I quickly decided that I would come back to this city someday. In just a matter of a few hours it had completely captivated me and I was sad to leave.

We walked back through the plaza and to the station, then boarded. I listened to a bit of Coldplay as we flew across the city. What a feeling... listening to Coldplay in Amsterdam. I think the album X&Y is quite European in feel anyway, so seeing Amsterdam out the window of the train as I listened was a visceral experience I won't soon forget.

When we got to the airport, we quickly walked back through the terminal to our gate and soon boarded our plane for the long flight back across the Atlantic. This time our destination was Detroit and our plane was a KLM plane (our other trans-Atlantic flight was a Northwest Airlines plane). Let me tell you, this was the coolest plane I have ever flown on. It was a typical widebody jet in a 3 seats, 5 seats, 3 seats configuration. The cool thing was the LCD screens in the backs of the seats in front of each of us. I have actually experienced this before, but this time, each of our LCD screens had on-demand entertainment. We each had a remote that popped out of our armrest that would allow us to choose from dozens of new movies (some still in theaters), dozens of TV shows, dozens of music stations, dozens of video games, several games (like trivia) that you could play with other people on the plane, interactive maps where you could get facts and figures about various countries and cities, etc. It was amazing.

A couple of hours into our 9 hour flight, they served us a meal, then I decided to watch a movie. I couldn't decide between Million Dollar Baby or Hitch. Heck, why not watch both?!? Since I wasn't in a serious mood at the moment, I decided to watch Hitch first. It was lighthearted and very funny.

Soon after I finished the movie, I decided to listen to my iPod for a while. Suddenly I got quite nauseous and dizzy, so I took my headphones off and began to put them in the seat pocket in front of me. Apparently I lost consciousness and fell forward, then to the side. There was a doctor 2 seats away from me who witnessed the entire thing and quickly roused me. After I came to, I was again quite nauseous and broke out into a cold sweat. The doctor asked if I was epileptic because initially he thought I had suffered a seizure. Then he asked if I knew anyone else on the plane and I pointed to James in the row in front of me. He tapped James on the shoulder and woke him up, then asked him if he knew me. James was quite out of it at first, so he said he didn't know me. Finally, he realized what the guy was asking him and said he did know me. Eventually, we determined that I hadn't had a seizure, but just passed out, probably from dehydration and just sitting too long. After a while, I got to feeling better, so I got some water and walked around the plane trying to get the blood flowing again. After about 30 minutes of pacing around the plane, Jay joined me in the back and we talked for a while with one of the stewardesses who had bought some 20 or so bottles of wine in the duty-free shop in Amsterdam to take home with her. She claimed that she bought it there because it didn't have any sulfites in it like the wine you buy in the U.S., but Jay and I decided she just drank a lot.

Eventually I sat back down in my seat and the rest of the flight was uneventful.

We landed in Detroit and had to pass through several long, slow lines through customs. I'm sure they wanted to make sure that we weren't terrorists or something.

Then we headed to our gate. On the way, I exchanged my last bit of money (Turkish Lira and Euros) back into American Dollars. Then I realized that I could call Elise on my cell phone since I was back on American soil. I called her and we chatted for about 20 minutes. Then I grabbed a salad at McDonald's and went to meet the rest of the group at the gate.

We had about an hour delay, then finally got on the plane. Once on the plane, they told us that we would be unable to use the bathroom because of some kind of mechanical problem. After a bit of a delay, the pilot came back on the intercom and announced that we would be changing planes because they felt like it was inhumane to make us fly on a plane without a bathroom. Something about FAA regulations...

Once we got on a working plane, the pilot said that drinks were on the house! Of course, aren't drinks always on the house on planes?

An hour and a half later, we landed in Northwest Arkansas. After we got off of the plane, we gathered up in a circle and said a quick prayer thanking God for an amazing trip and for his protection while we traveled. Then we walked to the terminal. As I started down the escalator, I saw Elise and the girls waiting for me. Maitlyn and Elspeth had made signs that said "Welcome Home, Daddy" on them and they were really excited to see me. There were lots of hugs and kisses all around.

Soon I grabbed my bag from the carousel, said goodbye to the team and we left the airport. Mission Turkey was officially over.

This 2 week trip to Turkey was amazing. In many ways it was life-changing for me. I now have a different perspective on the world and various cultures. I was able to see God at work in many ways. I hope that by journaling about my experiences, you have gotten a taste of some of what I learned, felt, thought and experienced. Thanks for reading - Brett.

A mosque, a church, a palace, oh my! - Turkey, Day 14

2005-07-18T21:41:00.000-05:00

Friday, June 10, 2005

I woke up this morning and took a shower with plenty of hot water and lots of water pressure. Thank you, God. Then upstairs to the roof for breakfast. The breakfast at the Side Pension wasn't quite as good as at the White Garden back in Antalya. Cucumbers, Tomatoes, Rolls, Simit, Olives, Cheese and Tea or Coffee. I sat down at an empty table and soon James and then Mandy joined me. Just after James sat down, someone from our group at a neighboring table pointed out that he had something in his hair. He was still quite sleepy, so it took him a minute to get his bearings and realize what they were saying to him. It turns out that at the same time, the waiter was asking him what he wanted to drink and he was telling the guy "Su" (water). Somehow, the guy didn't understand and got a bit frustrated because James was distracted by trying to figure out what was in his hair. Chill out waiter guy...

After breakfast, we walked a couple of blocks over to the Blue Mosque. This is a massively huge mosque. As we started to go in, we had to take our shoes off and put them in a bag. We walked into a huge room that was decorated with thousands of geometric designs paited on the ceilings and on the stained glass windows. This mosque was built between 1603-1617 and was Islam's answer to Ayasofya (see below). They don't let you walk into the middle of the room where they have prayers (which were scheduled to happen later on the day we were there). It was impressive and all, but I experienced a real heaviness in the room. I was also struck with sadness as I realized that thousands of people had worshipped a false god in that room. We looked around for about 30 minutes, and then walked out.

We then crossed a huge courtyard with a fountain in it, crossed the street and headed over to Ayasofya (also known as Hagai Sofia), or The Church of the Divine Wisdom.
This church was built by Emporer Justinian in 537 A.D. Many people say that this was the greatest church in Christendom until St. Peter's Basilica was built in Rome a thousand years later. It is awe-inspiring, to say the least. It has this massive dome in the middle that was said to be the largest dome in the world until the 60's when the Astrodome was built. It was later turned into a mosque when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople. The muslims then proceeded to paint over the thousands of mosaics in the building (there are over 30 million gold tiles) because they don't believe in iconography.
Now, the government is in the process of uncovering those mosaics as it has become a historical building and is no longer used as a space for public worship. In fact, there is this massive scaffolding that is about 17 stories tall that rises up to the dome so that they can restore it. It is so tall that there are 2 elevators installed in the scaffolding for the workers. They are also leaving up the HUGE pieces of arabic script that was installed at each corner of the great room by the muslims. The building inspires awe. It is not the awe of religion or God, since it is church or mosque no longer. Rather, it is the awe of age, of history and of miraculous architecture. When Emperor Justinian walked in on December 26, 537, he proclaimed "Glory to God that I have been judged worthy of such a work. O Solomon! I have outdone thee!" We walked around and marveled at the building for at least an hour and a half. I tried my best to imagine thousands of believers gathered in this space worshipping God. That must have been amazing.

One thought that continued to echo through my mind as we toured these two magnificent spaces used for worship was that they are just buildings. Just bricks and mortar. They are temporary compared with the eternal God. They will someday crumble, but he will rule forever.

Our next stop was Topkapi Palace. This was home to the Ottoman Sultans for nearly 400 years. It is a sprawling campus right on the Bosphorus. While impressive, it didn't really hold my attention like the Blue Mosque and Ayasofya did. We walked in dozens and dozens of different buildings on the campus. By the time we were finished, I was tired and hungry for lunch.

Upon leaving the palace, we met up with another missionary that we knew in Istanbul, then we walked across the street to a kebap restaurant. We scarfed down some amazing kebaps - I was hungry no longer.

Next stop was Yerebatan Saray (Sunken Palace Cistern). This is an underground cistern that can hold up to 21 million gallons of water and dates back to the Byzantine Empire, when the city was called Constantinople. There are hundreds of columns holding up the ceiling and some really cool medusa heads at the bottom of a couple of them (they are turned on their side or upside down to show that medusa has no power).
After the cistern, we walked back over to our pension to gather anything we would need for our night. We were planning on meeting Yüksel in an area of town called Beyoğlu and then going to his house for dinner. After a little freshening up, we took off again. We rode a bus to a part of Beyoğlu called Taksim Square. This area of town is considered the heart of modern Istanbul and was developed and inhabited by many Europeans in the 19th century. We met Yüksel and then proceeded to walk down Istiklal Caddesi (Independance Avenue). This is huge pedestrian mall and is compared to Times Square in NYC. There are hundreds of shops, restaurants, coffee and tea houses, galleries, cinemas, banks, consulates, etc. In the 19th century, travelers spoke of Istanbul as the Paris of the East and it was said that they were usually referring to Istiklal Caddesi (then known as the Grand Rue de Pera).

After walking for about 10 minutes, James and I realized that we had already passed about 3 music shops... Coldplay! We almost sprinted to the next shop that we saw and were excited to see that they had a huge display in the front window for Coldplay's new album X&Y. Now, let me say that I didn't NEED to buy the CD in Turkey. I was just going to borrow James' CD player to listen to it later, so I could have just used his CD. It wasn't even a different CD than the one I could have bought in the states (sometimes bands release different bonus tracks in different countries). It even cost more in Turkey than it would have in the U.S. (about $20). However, I didn't care. I wanted to say that I bought it in Turkey. I wanted it in my grubby little hands. So I bought it (so did James and "I") and was satisfied.

We continued to walk down Istiklal Caddesi for about an hour and a half. We occasionally meandered into a shop or down a side street, but mostly we were just taking in the sights and watching the people. We stumbled into an old church at one point and walked in for about 15 minutes to observe some sort of small mass going on. The cathedral could have sat about 800 people, but there were only about 20 people up in the front. I couldn't really hear what they were doing very well, but I don't think they were speaking Turkish. There were tourists (foreign and Turk alike) who would wander in and observe for a few moments before heading out to the hustle and bustle of Istiklal.

Finally we were starting to get hungry, so we made our way from Istiklal to a subway stop. We rode the subway north to the end of the line (about 20 minutes). Then we got into 2 taxis and rode for another 20 minutes or so to some northern district where Yüksel lived. We had by now traveled for miles through Istanbul and everywhere as far as the eye could see was just more city!

We went into Yüksel's house and met his parents and a cousin and an aunt (or something like that). His family was extremely friendly and welcoming. We spent some time talking with them and then dinner was served! We started with soup and salad. I think many of us thoght that was the meal. It was very filling. Then they brought out these huge plates loaded with chicken, beef, lamb, spaghetti, rice, bread and some kind of green beans. We were stuffed. We then made our way to the chairs and couches and proceeded to chat with the family. It was a good time of getting to know them and getting to tell about ourselves. Yüksel's family are Alevi Muslims. Alevi is a branch of Islam that is quite tolerant and open. Because of that, we were able to share about our faith quite freely and they seemed genuinely interested. I know that Yüksel has heard the gospel many times before. Now we were able to share some with his whole family. More seeds planted...

They brought us çay (tea) and then these huge plates of baclava. I was already very full from dinner, but I did my best to stuff down some baclava. After the baclava, they brought out these huge bowls full of fruit. It was at this point that I had to call it quits. If I put another scrap of food in my mouth I was going to hurl chunks. Jennifer was sitting at the kitchen table with some of the women from their family and allegedly she bravely shoved copious amounts of fruit in her mouth so that the family wouldn't be offended.

Well, it was getting late and we had to be at the airport by 3:30 a.m., so we said our goodbyes, embraced Yüksel's family and left. This time Yüksel and his father drove us back to the Side Pension. After about 30 minutes we arrived and said some more goodbyes.

An interesting note... in Turkey, it is common to greet and part with someone by kissing them on each cheek. This usually only happens among members of the same sex - men with men, women with women. Usually Turks won't engage in this process with you unless they know you well, but for some reason, Turks seemed really comfortable with me because they would often do the double kiss thing with me. On our first day in Turkey, we were instructed that if a Turk does lean in for the kiss, we should let them lead regarding which cheek to kiss first. This way you could avoid an inadvertant lip smack. Well, on Thursday night as I was saying goodbye to Yüksel, he leaned in for the kiss and I forgot to let him lead. Long story short, we came within millimeters of a full on mouth kiss! Luckily we both pulled out at the last moment while the team cracked up with laughter. Well, tonight when I was saying goodbye to Yüksel, I made sure to let him lead and we did the cheek kiss without incident.

At this point it was about 11:30 p.m. Our airport shuttle was picking us up at 2:30 a.m. Some people went up to their rooms to catch a little shuteye. Some others just stayed up. I decided to grab the camera and take one final walk around Sultanahmet. Why sleep when I could spend a few hours in one of the most amazing cities in the world, right? I walked around for a while and shot a few pictures. For a while I just sat on a bench in the courtyard between the Blue Mosque and Ayasofya and reflected on the trip. I was sad to leave this amazing country. I was ready to see my family, but sad to leave. If I could have flown them there to be with me I would have been comfortable staying for quite a while longer.

Finally I headed back to Side Pension and went upstairs to shower and pack my bags for the trip home. I finished just in time to head downstairs to meet everybody and jump on the shuttle to the airport. Jennifer was going to stay in Turkey with the M's for the rest of the summer, so we said our goodbyes to "I" and Jennifer, then got on the shuttle and were off to the airport.

Istanbul (Not Constantinople) - Turkey, Day 13

2005-07-17T00:44:00.000-05:00

Thursday, June 9, 2005

We woke up early, ate a quick breakfast, then took off for "L"'s apartment for some team debreifing time. We spent 2 hours discussing our experiences over the past 12 days. The goal was to discuss what we had learned, what God was teaching us, what God was calling us to do, etc. We shared, then spent some good time praying for each other about how we would apply the things we were learning from our experience here in Turkey.

After our debreifing time, we walked back over to the Pansiyon to bring our bags down from our rooms. I settled our bill with the White Garden Pansiyon, then joined the rest of the team in the garden to hang out before we were set to leave for the airport at 11:30. "P", "T", "L" and "I" joined us and brought some meat filled pastries for us to snack on. We spent about 45 minutes chatting with them, Metin & Salim from the Pansiyon and Catherine while we played games with her son, Conlaodh.

Finally, our ride arrived. We said our goodbyes to everybody (except for "I", who was going to join us on our trip to Istanbul). We said our goodbyes to everybody, then piled in the van and we were off for the airport. There was a bit of an awkward moment when we got in the van and "I" slammed the van door and then our driver (another missionary we knew in town) yelled at him. Then Jay turned around and sang "awkward..." and I thought I was going to lose it. Jay and I were in the front seat, so when the driver got in the van, I had to try my best to not crack up.

We got to the airport and started checking in when we realized that a couple of people in our group didn't have their paper tickets for our flight to Istanbul. If you remember, we had quite an ordeal back in Amsterdam with our tickets. Because of that, we had tons of different tickets and papers. Well, somehow, Jennifer and Megan didn't have their tickets anymore (they thought we would be E-Ticketed). By some provision of God, we had an extra ticket to Istanbul that "I" had purchased a few weeks prior for Jennifer. So now all we had to take care of was a ticket for Megan. We realized that it was in the trash can back at the Pansiyon, so we called "T" and had her go get it and take a quick taxi to the airport to get the ticket to us. She arrived about 5 minutes before we were set to board the plane. We made it on the plane just in time.

I specifically remember laughing a lot on that 1 hour plane flight to Istanbul. I don't remember why we were laughing or what we were laughing at, but for some reason it was incredibly funny.

We landed in Istanbul and grabbed our bags. Then we met a friend of Megan's named Yüksel. She met him in Florida last summer when she was at Kaleo. He was working at a waterpark as a part of a program that college students in Turkey can participate in called something like "Work and Travel", where they can go to some other country to... work and travel. Anyway, Yüksel turned out to be a really cool guy. We were heading to the old city in Istanbul, called Sültanahmet, which was quite a ways away, so Yüksel piled half of our team in his Jeep Grand Cherokee and the rest of us jumped on a Havaş (bus). We rode the bus for about a half an hour, then got on a train that took us to the heart of Sültanahmet.

I was already starting to get the sense that Istanbul is quite different than Antalya. In fact, Istanbul makes Antalya look like a sleepy little seaside city. Istanbul has this incredible energy and life. Not to give too big a history lesson here, but...

Istanbul straddles the Bosphorus strait (which is the gateway to the Black Sea). One side of the city is in Europe and the other side is in Asia.
It has been the seat of several massive empires, including the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.
There are now an estimated 15-17 million people in Istanbul.
Istanbul sets the cultural pace for Turkey (kind of like New York City in the U.S.)

I quickly got the sense that I was going to like this city very much.

We waited for a while at the Sültanahmet train stop for Yüksel and the other half of our team. Somehow, we forgot to give them one of our cell phones, so we weren't sure exactly how to call them and they were late. Finally, they found one of our numbers and called us saying that they would meet us at the Side Pension, our lodging for the next 2 nights. We walked a couple of blocks to Side and there they were.

Our Pension was in the heart of Sültanahmet, and about 2 blocks from the Golden Horn, a part of the Bosphorus that juts into the heart of the city. We were 1 block from the Blue Mosque (one of the largest mosques in the world) and Ayasofya (once a church, then a mosque and now a museum, it boasted the world's largest enclosed dome until the Astrodome in Houston was built in the 60's). We were staying in quite an amazing place!

We got settled into our Pension. I roomed with "I", so I was looking forward to some good time of hanging out and talking before we left Turkey. Our rooms were very nice. Each of them had these huge heavy wooden doors and really nice bathrooms with lots of water pressure (which was lacking at the White Garden Pansiyon in Antalya). All of this for something like 40 bucks a night per room!

We then gathered downstairs and with Yüksel as our guide, we took off to walk around Sültanahmet a bit, with the Grand Bazaar as our ultimate destination. This covered market dates back to 1461 and is one of the largest covered markets in the world. There are an estimated 4,000 shops in the Bazaar! I guess this was one of the first malls.

A view of the Grand Bazaar

We split up into a couple of groups and wandered around the Grand Bazaar for about and hour and a half. It turns out that the other group got a little lost and turned around, but finally they called us on the cell phone and we found them.

Then it was off to find a place to eat dinner. We finally decided on a nice place near our Pansiyon. We had a wonderful dinner at the nicest restaurant we had eaten at yet on our trip. I got sea bass, which was amazing and we had dessert as well. It was a really enjoyable meal.

It was already getting a bit late (around 9:30), so after dinner, most people headed back to the Pension to get some shuteye. Some of us decided to walk around to take in some of the sights. I took this opportunity to get some nice shots of the Blue Mosque.

After shooting for about 30 minutes, Jay came up to me to tell me how friendly the people in the city are. As I was shooting pictures, apparently, he had converstions with several people who were really friendly. One guy even asked if he wanted to go drink some beer, which he declined. We had a bit of a laugh, then Jay went back to the Pension and I continued to shoot pictures. After I was done shooting, I packed up my camera and tripod and then a guy stopped me asking if we could talk. He said that he was Turkish, but lived in Cologne, Germany right now and was back home visiting. He quickly asked if we could go get a beer together. I got a really strange feeling that something fishy was going on, so I said no thanks and headed back to the Pansiyon. As I walked away, I noticed that he was already walking up to someone else to talk. I began to theorize about what this guy was doing. Either he was some sort of con artist. Or he was a homosexual and was trying to proposition me. Or he was a male prostitute. Or some combination of the 3!

I walked over to Jay and James' room and as I told them about my experience, Jay and I realized that this was the same guy who asked him to get a beer and we agreed that something just wasn't quite right about the guy.

Jay and I decided to head out to a cafe to chat and maybe grab one last Efes (the local beer). James, being underage (at least here in the U.S.) decided to stay at the Pension. So I took my camera back to my room and we headed out. I sent a text message to "I" (who was hanging out with Megan) to see if he wanted to join us. Jay and I found a cafe a few blocks away from our Pansiyon and "I" soon joined us. Jay ordered an Efes and me and "I" ordered a very popular, traditional drink in Turkey called Rakı (pronounced "rahk-a"). It is made from aniseseed (the same stuff that gives black licorice its flavor). They serve it in a short narrow glass and it is clear. Additionally, they serve it with mineral water. What you are supposed to do is pour the mineral water in the Rakı, which then turns it a milky white color. In fact, the nickname for Rakı is "lion's milk". We all hung out for about an hour chatting. One of my favorite things about our trip was experiences like these when several of us would just hang out and chat. It was very refreshing.

A couple of funny observations about the Rakı. It is a very mild liqueur, so by drinking one, we suffered no effects... sort of. Mind you, we didn't feel any of the traditional sensations you feel when you drink alcohol. Instead, it made my tongue numb. And "I" claimed that it made his scalp tingle. Weird.

Anyway, after chatting for a while, we all headed back to the Pension. I wrote in my journal for a while, then me and "I" continued to talk for quite a while. I think we finally turned in at around 2:30 a.m.

It had been a very good day.

How many people can you fit into a Turkish apartment? - Turkey, Day 12

2005-07-16T23:06:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

I woke up this morning and ate breakfast, then we had a team time. We spent some time encouraging one another by mentioning actions or qualities in each person that were admirable. It was a good team bonding time. After that, I washed some clothes again in the sink. Some of the members of our team had appointments to meet with various Turkish friends to continue relationship building. I didn't have any appointments until the afternoon, so after washing, I read some and went up onto the roof of the Pansiyon to enjoy the view.

Around lunchtime, several of us walked out onto Işiklar to eat at the potato place (James has so appropriately named it "The Flying Potato"). After a leisurely lunch, we all split up to meet with various people. I had some time, so I found myself just wandering around the old city trying to enjoy my last full day.

These ruins were just about 2 blocks away from our Pansiyon. We passed them almost every day on our way to wherever we were going that day. They were actually behind an iron fence and I wanted to sneak in and take pictures, but never actually got around to it. For this picture, I just stuck my camera through the fence.

I met with Metin, the associate pastor in the afternoon. I was never told what the goal was in our time together, but I tried my best to encourage him and pray for him. He shared the story of how he became a Christian. It took a while for God to get through to him, but eventually Metin chose to follow Him and soon became involved at the church in Antalya. A bit later he began working at the church doing basic janitorial and security stuff, then eventually was asked to become the associate pastor. Soon he will be moving to Ankara for a year to receive some Bible training. It was inspiring to hear his story. I prayed for him to end our time.

We eventually all met at Paul's Place, the coffee shop at the church, and walked together over to Hüseyin's apartment. Hüseyin is from eastern Turkey and is a college student studying art at the Akdeniz Universitesi and we had spent quite a bit of time with him over the past 10 days or so. He had invited us over for a meal of Kurdish food for our last night in Antalya.

Hüseyin

We walked the 10 blocks or so to his apartment and all of us along with about 7 Turkish friends packed in. We all gathered in the living room for our meal. While we sat on the floor, the meal was served in the middle and we ate family style. We had a spicy beef & vegetable stew type dish over a bed of rice. Although we were crowded and it was hot, it was a very enjoyable meal with great fellowship.

Jay and his "Turkish Brother", Camil

After dinner, we split up into 3 teams to play movie charades. Each team brainstormed 5 movies to be thrown in the hat, then we took turns trying to get our team to guess which movie we picked. Our team got the most difficult movie titles of all, including "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly." (Come on, try to pantomime "Good" "Bad" and "Ugly"). Needless to say, we lost badly.

After our charades game, as we were sitting around talking, my stomach began to hurt. I think "The Flying Potato" was beginning to take it's revenge on my digestive system. It really wasn't any huge deal, but I was going to need to spend a little time in the bathroom to take care of the issue. However, since we were in a small, crowded apartment with about 25 people, I knew if I took care of my issue there, it might be a bit embarrasing... so after saying my goodbyes, I walked back to the Pansiyon. Ah... the comfort of a private bathroom...

It was only about 9:30 by now, and I really wanted to soak up a little more Antalya before heading off to bed, so I grabbed my camera and took off to walk around Kaleiçi. I didn't really even take very many pictures, but I wanted to just enjoy one final night in the old city. I was in quite a contemplative mood, so it was good to be by myself.

Then it was back to the Pansiyon to do a little bit of packing and head to bed.

Baclava! Baclava! Baclava! - Turkey, Day 11

2005-07-09T23:21:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

At some point on our trip (I think it was in the Amsterdam airport on the way to Turkey), we came up with some code words for our team. Here they are:

Baclava! - means "I'm in trouble", or "get help quick" or danger" (usually said 3 times rapidly)
Warsaw! - a battle cry
Schnitzel - a universal term that could mean pretty much anything

These words were used many times on our trip, usually accompanied by much laughter. Little did I know I was going to be able to eat some baclava today.

This morning, we had some free time. After breakfast and team time, I just chilled out around the pansiyon and washed some clothes in the sink. I wore one change of clothes and brought 2 others for the entire trip, so I did laundry in the sink every other day. This tactic was a first for me - it was awesome to have light and small luggage for our travels. It also allowed me the room to bring my camera and associated gear.

Around 11:00, James, "I"and I were off to the Joy Store (a CD shop in town) to pick up the new Coldplay album, X&Y! I was very excited to purchase the CD. James had brought a CD player in addition to his iPod just so we could listen. Of course, I didn't have a CD player with me, I just had my iPod, so I wouldn't be able to listen to my own CD. That didn't matter, I wanted to buy it anyway, just to say that I purchased the new Coldplay CD in Turkey. We were bitterly disappointed to find out that the 'ol Joy Store didn't have it!

Dejected, we walked down the street a bit to a Canon Camera store. I had filled all of my Compact Flash cards (2.5 gigs) with pictures, so I wanted to have them dump the pictures onto CD-ROM so that I could continue to take pictures. This process took about 20 minutes, then we were off to the church to meet a couple of folks for lunch.

Dick, James, Jennifer, "I", me and a missionary we'll call "T-money" all walked to a little outdoor döner place called Golf (I guess because they had astroturf?). We all ate while "T-money" shared about his ministry. He works with a group based out of Istanbul and their primary focus is to train and equip local pastors in Turkey. He was a pastor of a couple of churches in California, but had sensed that God was leading him to Turkey a couple of years ago, and so here he was. While helping to put on training events in the region, he also works very closely with Ramazan, the pastor at the church in Antalya to train and equip him for ministry. It was inspiring to hear about how God is using him there.

After lunch, all of us headed back to the church.

Dick, Jay and I from our team, the "M" team in Antalya, "T-money" and the pastors of the Turkish church had planned to meet to discuss small groups. Apparently, the church there had attempted to start a couple of small groups in the past, but they had failed. Now, they were interested in how to implement groups into their ministry, but were seeking some help from us. Since both The Grove and Fellowship are heavily focused on small groups, this seemed very natural for us to share some of our experiences and convictions about them. Jay was the one who mostly shared and discussion ensued from there. There were a few times that I stepped in to help clarify what Jay was saying for the sake of our Turkish brothers. I believe that it was a fruitful meeting. However, some of the ideas shared, like releasing leaders to do ministry within their small groups, will be challenging culturally for Turks to adapt to. I pray that God will guide them on their quest to release the ministry to the people.

After the meeting, or team was set to meet with all of our Turkish friends in front of the Burger King (this and the McDonald's were the only American fast food chains I saw there) to go on a photo scavenger hunt. We divided up into teams and were off to shoot pictures of our team doing silly things in the old city (posing like Charlie's Angels in front of the fountain in the park, picture with an ice cream vendor, etc.). One of our assignments was to tell a story with 4 pictures. We decided to tell the story of how Jennifer and Pelin were walking through the park when James tries to steal Pelin's purse. Jay (the hero), then proceeds to clothesline James, and gives Pelin's purse back while they all proceed to kick James to a pulp.

After the scavenger hunt, we headed over to a teahouse to chill out for a while before dinner. I proceeded to take some random pictures of people without looking through the viewfinder. Later, at Zeynep's Kitchen for dinner, I did the same thing and captured some great moments on our team. It seemed like we were always laughing...

After a tasty meal (I don't remember what we ate), we split up into 3 groups to visit some families from the church. I was with Jay and "T". We were slated to go visit an elderly couple. They call the husband "dede", which means grandfather. I don't remember ever hearing the wife's name. Apparently, she isn't a Christian and doesn't really attend the church.

We walked for several blocks to their apartment building. When we got to the door, we rang the doorbell several times. (A small aside here, most doorbells in Turkey actually sound like birds chirping...) When no one came to the door after several minutes, we prepared to head back downstairs to the street and head home. Well, just then, the door opened and there was dede and his wife, looking a little surprised and shocked that we were at their door. They slowly invited us in, we took off our shoes and settled into the living room. Dede had been watching TV and had it turned up pretty loud, so that is why they hadn't heard the doorbell. Apparently, there was a bit of a communication mix-up and they hadn't been told that we were coming to visit them this evening. They seemed to take it in stride. The wife proceeded to drench our hands in this lemon scented cologne that is common in Turkey. Then she retreated to the kitchen to prepare some Turkish Coffee. Meanwhile, we began a slow laborious conversation with dede. It seemed that they were pretty tired and were planning on heading to bed pretty soon, so we decided not to stay too long. Also, the wife began to appear quite irritated that we had arrived unexpectedly, so we were getting the cue to keep our visit short. We talked about their family and how they met. We tried to ask dede about how he came to become a Christian, but somehow, we never really got the full story. He showed us his Bible as well as an old Koran he had from before he was a Christian. I think he said something about reading them both and comparing them. I wasn't sure if that meant that he believed that both of them were truthful books. Maybe it was just a difficulty in translation.

Dede's wife brought out the Turkish Coffee and we thanked her. Turkish coffee is served in little mugs that resemble espresso mugs. They grind up the coffee really finely and usually mix it with sugar. Then they boil it and pour it into the mug. You then have to wait a while for the grounds to settle before you drink it. It is usually really strong. This evening, dede's wife didn't put an sugar in it, so we were in for a real treat (note the sarcasm in my voice). Additionally, Jay had never in his life drank coffee of any kind, so here we were, trying to be good guests and we were going to have to down some really strong black coffee. Jay was a good boy and drank about half of his little mug. I was really proud of him for forcing it down. I drank my entire cup, which didn't turn out to be as bad as I expected. Usually, I add tons of sugar and creamer to my coffee before I can drink it. The idea of strong black coffee isn't my favorite. However, this coffee was really smooth, so after a bit, I drank it with ease.

After some more slow conversation, we thanked them for hosting us, took a picture with them and left. Even though it seemed that they were glad that we left, I think dede was encouraged by our visit. I pray that God will use our time there to plant more seeds in his wife's heart.

Since our visit was pretty short (only about an hour), and the night was young, we decided to head to a pastry shop on Işiklar Caddesi to have some baclava. Several of us had been talking about how tasty baclava was for our entire trip, and we finally were going to have some. Baclava is a flaky pastry with lots of layers. The baclava that I have had in the past had some sort of fruits or nuts inside and was soaked in honey. Baclava in Turkey usually only has nuts and instead of honey, it is soaked in sugar water. We got a couple of sampler plates and dove in. My favorite was the walnut - my least favorite was the pistachio. After eating way too much baclava (it is very rich), we took off for our pansiyon. It was only about 9:00.

On the way to our Pansiyon, we stopped and chatted with the Ali Baba guys for a while. We showed them pictures of our family, friends, and Arkansas. They seemed really interested in knowing more about our homes and families. After a while, there were quite a few teenagers all walked up and down the streets, so the Ali Baba guys seemed a little on edge each time they would walk by. I never did find out what was going on, but these guys didn't seem to like all of the loitering around. After hanging out for an hour or so, we headed back to our pansiyon.

The other two groups hadn't returned yet from their visits to families. Jay decided to go for a walk out to the harbor to write in his journal and think. Since I was still pretty hopped up on the caffeine from the Turkish Coffee and it was only about 10:30, there was no way I could go to bed yet. I wandered around Kaleiçi for a while, then I settled in the garden at the pansiyon at one of the breakfast tables to write in my journal. After a while, the other 2 groups returned and headed upstairs to bed. I continued to write, occasionally taking breaks to talk with Salim, the desk clerk, and to Catherine and Conlaodh when they came in.

After I was finished writing in my journal, I went upstairs to Jay and James' room to hang out and chat. It was late and soon we were all feeling quite sleepy (apparently the caffeine buzz had finally worn off). I tried to get comfortable on James' bed without falling asleep, but after a few failed attempts, I headed upstairs to my room and crashed.

Purple And More - Turkey, Day 10

2005-06-30T00:11:00.000-05:00

Monday, June 6, 2005

We woke up Monday morning and after breakfast we all walked out to the corner of Işiklar and Attatürk to meet some friends who were going to take us out to a poorer area of northern Antalya. When we got there, we prayer walked for about an hour in several different groups. I was with Jay and Jennifer. We were a bunch of white folks walking through neighborhoods that probably never saw white people. We stood out in a major way. As we were walking and praying, there was a point when I could see 4 different mosques from one vantage point and they were all within about 2 blocks from where I was. You could tangibly feel the spiritual oppression in that place.

When we gathered back together, we started to attract a whole bunch of kids. There were probably about 25 kids that had flocked to us – it was awesome. For some reason, it seems like children of all cultures are really beautiful. We had a good time joking around with them and showing them pictures from our digital cameras that we took of them.

After a while, we walked over to a women’s center that was sponsored by the local government (I think). It was basically a place where women of the neighborhood could come for all kinds of classes, ranging from reading to cooking. It was the nicest building in the neighborhood and our friends there were really trying to build a good relationship with the administration so that they could do English classes there. They wanted to do this as a way to build relationships so that they could share the gospel with them. We sat around for a while drinking çay (tea) and talking with some of the leaders there. Then we bought some head scarves from them that the women had made in a sewing class. They had something like 8 scarves and we bought every last one of them. It was probably more than they had sold in the past 6 months.

When we left, there were several boys in a field flying kites… made from newspapers. It was one of the most resourceful things I’ve seen.

We soon left and drove to a place called Düden Falls. This was a spot about 1 mile away from where we had prayer walked. I was caught off guard because I expected it to be quite a ways away somewhere in the mountains. Instead it was in a completely flat area where the earth just gave way to erosion at one point and created a dramatic waterfall. We spent about an hour walking around and admiring the river and the falls.

Then we hopped back in the van and drove to Akdeniz Universitesi. We headed over to the outdoor food court and ate at Han Pizza. After lunch, we prayer walked in groups. My group walked a long ways, but mostly in the vicinity of the medical school and University hospital.

After prayer walking, “T” and I rode the Dolmuş back downtown to meet Metin, the Associate Pastor of the Church while the others walked down to the beach park. Metin wanted to order a computer from Dell and needed some help configuring it, so I offered my assistance. We met him in a smoky internet café (there are no non-smoky internet cafes in Turkey) near his apartment. Ordering the computer took a while because the connection was slow, but we eventually got it worked out. I took the opportunity to check and send email before we left.

We bid Metin farewell and rode the Tromvay to Konyalta (where the beach park is). We walked down to the beach and started looking for our group. After calling them on the cell phone, we found out that they were hanging out at the Nargile Salon. We first stopped at a little food spot and grabbed a snack of potato and cheese filled pastries. Then we walked to where the group was. After we found everyone, we all decided to grab a bite to eat at a restaurant near the beach. By this time, several Turkish friends had joined us. We found a restaurant and ate at tables outside. I ordered a chicken sandwich (cız mayonnaise). When my sandwich came out, lo and behold it had mayo on it. This was kind of funny because in Turkey, they pretty much put mayo on everything. Each time, I requested no mayo and they always got it right. This was the one time that any restaurant made a mistake. I guarantee I wouldn’t have had as successful of a run in the U.S. Half of the time when I order a sandwich without something on it here in the U.S., it comes out wrong.

After dinner, some of us had planned on staying at the beach park to see a great Turkish rock band, Mör Ve Otesi play for free. The others headed back to Kaleçi and to the pansion. On Friday, “I” handed me his iPod and insisted that I listen to Mör Ve Otesi, saying that they were the biggest band in Turkey. They are from Istanbul and their name translates to “Purple and More”. I really liked them, so on Saturday, I went by a music shop and bought their CD. Then on Saturday night, we heard that they were going to play FOR FREE at the beach park on Monday night. Sweet. Free show. Big Turkish rock band. I’m in.

So me, James, “I”, Jennifer and some Turks walked over to where the show was going to be. They weren’t letting anyone in for another 30 minutes, so we hung out and chilled. Finally they let us in, so we headed inside. There was no opening band, but Mör Ve Otesi put on a great show. Other than the fact that their lyrics were all Turkish, they sounded just like any good band from the U.S. I did notice one interesting thing. First, a bit of background. Turkish men are very affectionate with one another. It isn’t unusual to see 2 guys walking down the street with their arms around each others necks. Or even holding hands. So at the concert, several times we would see a line of 5-10 guys with their arms around each others necks. Then they would all jump up and down in unison, keeping the line intact. We tried it with some of our Turkish friends, but apparently it takes special skills that Turks learn at a young age because we Americans failed miserably at it. Oh well, we still had lots of fun trying.

After the show, we had to walk all the way back to Kaleçi because the Tromvay stops running at 9:00 and the show didn’t end until somewhere around 11:00. About halfway there, “I” and I walked Peylin (a Turkish girl that had been hanging out with Jennifer) back to her apartment while the rest of the group headed back to the Pansion. Apparently her neighborhood wasn’t the safest of places for a single girl to be walking by herself late at night. When we got to her building, we met her dad who was just coming home from a fishing trip. He offered to cook us some fish – he was just getting ready to cook it up for supper – at 11:30 p.m.! We kindly declined, saying that we had already eaten. He did insist that we taste his homemade red wine, which he was carrying in a 2 liter bottle. We tried the wine and complimented him on his winemaking skills. He thanked us for walking his daughter home, we bid them farewell and took off for the pansion.

About halfway there, we came upon a beautiful area in Antalya where you could see the old clock tower and two beautiful mosques that are lit up at night. I had wanted to take night shots of these landmarks, but we hadn’t been in this exact spot at night until now. I asked “I” if he would mind if we stopped so I could take some shots. He agreed, so I spent 30 minutes or so taking shots.

Then we walked back to the pansion. We actually sat outside the pansion for quite a while talking about life and such – we probably talked for another hour. Finally, we both got quite sleepy, so he headed back to his apartment and I headed upstairs to catch some shuteye.

Another amazing day.

That's Not Grape Juice, Son - Turkey, Day 9

2005-06-28T17:25:00.000-05:00

Sunday, June 5, 2005

I woke up around 8:30, showered and went down to the garden for breakfast. I took my Bible and talk notes with me. After I ate, I spent some time working on the final draft of my teaching for church later that day. The garden was a splendid location to prepare to teach. Warm sun on my face, birds chirping, good food. Maybe next time I teach at The Grove I will request a “study week” in Antalya.

At 10:30, our team gathered in our room for some team time. We started with some songs as usual. Our window was open (it was never shut during our entire stay) and our door was open as well, so anyone in the pansion could probably hear our singing. After a couple of songs, there was a faint knock on the door, startling most of us from our closed-eyes state of worship. There stood Catherine, an Irishwoman in need of medical assistance. Apparently she had been bitten by a mosquito or something and her finger was swelling to the point that she couldn’t take her ring off. I rustled around in the first aid kit for a minute and found an antihistamine. I gave her several doses so she could make sure to take care of the problem. We talked with her for a few minutes, then she left and we resumed where we had left off. After some more singing and sharing, we closed with some prayer time.

I then changed from shorts into jeans. Most Turkish men always wear some kind of long pants, no matter how hot it is. Since I’m not Turkish and since I’m incredibly warm-natured, I had worn shorts every day since our arrival as had pretty much everyone on the team. This (and many other reasons) caused us to draw attention to ourselves. Since I was teaching in church that day, I decided to throw on the jeans.

We met downstairs around 12:30 to head to the church. We saw Catherine again and got to meet her son, Conlaodh (pronounced “con-la”). He was almost 4 years old and a very cute kid. We then walked to the church, long pants on and Bibles in hand. We just telegraphed “we’re not from around here” in about 4300 different ways.

We got to the church, which was bustling. The International Church (made up of foreigners living in Antalya) had just let out and the Turkish Church was about to start, so there were quite a few people around. We went upstairs to grab our seats. Ramazan (the pastor of the Turkish Church) prayed for me. Then it was time to start. The room was full! In all, there were probably 50 Turks in the room. It was very inspiring to see the beginnings of a church in modern Turkey. I was reminded that God’s Spirit had never left this place, Men and women had just chosen to deny him as God.

Zeynep (who led worship at the youth group the night before) led us in worship again with the help of a young man on the piano. We sang quite a few songs and then Ramazan stood up and said quite a few things in Turkish. I have no idea what he said, but I got the impression that he was welcoming them and maybe delivering some announcements. We sang some more songs, then Ramazan called our group forward to sing a song. We had prepared “Holy Is the Lord” beforehand (they had asked us several days before to sing in church). Ramazan read a Turkish translation of the words to the song, we stood up in front of the church, James played guitar and we sang. It is always a very interesting experience to sing a song in English in front of people who don’t speak English. I’m pretty sure they enjoyed it.

After our song, Zeynep led the congregation in a few more songs. Then Ramazan introduced me. I taught on Galatians 5 with Zeynep as a translator. I chose this passage because of Paul’s emphasis on the idea that we are free as Christians and shouldn’t enslave ourselves to the law (legalism) or to sin. I thought this might be particularly applicable in Turkey because Islam is certainly enslaved to legalism and of course, all of mankind has a propensity to enslave itself to sin. It also gave me the opportunity to present the gospel in a clear and concise way.

Afterwards, I was told that this was the first time that anyone had ever taught expositionally through a chapter or section of the Bible at the church. I think typically most teaching there is topical in nature. This person told me that they really appreciated what I did and the style I did it in.

After I finished, Ramazan got up and shared a few words about communion and then we started singing and taking communion. The elements were served from the front and people lined up to go get the bread (cracker) and juice. When I got to the front of the room, I ate my cracker and then grabbed the little plastic cup and downed it… to find out that it was wine. A little surprising, but not necessarily shocking. I’ve been in places before where wine was the standard instead of juice. However, some of the others on the team were quite surprised. James took communion after me and when he sat back down beside me, he said something like “how about that juice?” We intently observed the rest of the team’s faces as they partook. Jennifer was the funniest. Now, Jennifer is famous for funny faces, so when she downed that wine, she made the most hilarious face. It took all of our self-restraint to keep from laughing out loud. We found out later that it had been Jennifer’s first ever taste of alcohol. I remarked that it was actually a pretty cool thing that her first taste of alcohol was while taking communion in Turkey. I have to say that taking communion was quite an emotional experience for me… not because it was wine. It was because I was in the midst of other brothers and sisters in Christ who were doing their best to live for God under difficult circumstances. I was reminded that God’s Spirit is present everywhere and I was grateful that these believers, though they were small in number, had recognized Him as the truth and they had given their lives to him.

After church, we had some fellowship time out in the garden drinking coffee and talking with various people from the church. I spoke with several young men who had questions about my teaching. I was glad to be able to spur them on in their faith.

After a while, our hosts gave us the signal that it was time to leave. We were planning on going to the beach with the youth group to play some volleyball and swim, so we needed to grab some lunch and our swimsuits first.

After a quick trip to the pansion to get our beach stuff, we ate lunch at a little place on Işiklar that served yummy köfte sandwiches. They grilled up our order in a hurry and we wolfed the tasty things down in time to walk the 100 yards or so over to the Tromvay stop. We met several people from the youth group there, got on the trolley and were on our way to the beach. Once we arrived at the end of the line, we all got off and walked the ¼ mile or so down the hill to the beach. We stopped at the first open volleyball court we saw. The name of the beach was Savbeach. For the next 2 hours or so, we all had a great time making fools of ourselves on the volleyball court. Americans and Turks playing side by side was great fun. Ramazan, the pastor of the church played with us for quite a while – I learned that he is really competitive and one heck of a volleyball player. I like to think of myself as quite the volleyball player also, but in truth, I’m pretty average because I’m sho… er, vertically challenged.

"Iceman"

Jennifer took this with my camera... classic

Eventually our paid time at the volleyball court came to an end. Many of the turks had already taken off for home, but we wanted to stay and enjoy the beach for a bit more. We headed down to the water. Some folks just sat and relaxed and several of us jumped in and let the sea toss us about for a while. Now I can’t even remember why, but I do remember laughing and laughing out there in the Mediterranean. After a while, we did our best to body surf on the meager waves (this is a sea, folks, so the waves aren’t really much at all). That caused us to laugh even harder as we mostly only succeeded at filling our pockets with small pebbles.

Wanting to take advantage of our time at the beach, after swimming, we just sat around and talked for a while. I succeeded in filling James’ small-mouth Nalgene full of pebbles almost right before his eyes. He never even knew what I was doing. When it was time to leave, he picked up his water bottle and incredulously asked, “who filled my nalgene with rocks!?” We all laughed hard and I confessed. James and I had a good time on the entire trip joking and laughing with each other.

We walked up to the Tromvay stop and jumped on. After riding back downtown, we walked to a little shop on Işiklar that served baked potatoes stuffed with whatever you wanted. It was a like the Turkish version of Flying Burrito – you would just point to each thing that you wanted in your baked potato and they would put it in. Boy, did these hit the spot! Not only were they really good, but we were all starving, because by this time it was about 9:30 p.m. and we had been exerting ourselves on the beach all afternoon.

After eating, about half of the gang went back to the pansion while the others of us went back to “I”’s house to make phone calls back home. We all hung out in the living room drinking Türkü Cola (basically flat coke – think RC Cola), while each person took their turn calling home. When it was James’ turn, he called and didn’t get an answer, so he left a message. As he was walking back in the living room, the phone rings and “I” picks up. After a bit of a confusing dialogue because he was expecting the person on the other line to be speaking Turkish (she was indeed speaking English), he realized that it was James’ mom calling him. I said “dude, your mom just star-69’ed you in Turkey.” That was a surreal, the world is smaller than I thought it was moment. When it was my time, I had a great conversation with Elise and talked to each of the girls. Elspeth really talked quite a bit – more than she ever had before on the phone with me. I could tell she was growing up while I was 1/3 the way around the world.

After we made our phone calls, we headed back to the pansion. I needed to stop by the ATM to pick up another wad of cash to pay for meals and such for the next couple of days and James went with me. After picking up cash, we started walking back and we both marveled that the ice cream guy’s cart was still open even though it was late – something like 11:30 p.m. I looked at James… he looked at me… I said “you want to get some ice cream?” and he said “you bet I do”, so we walked over to get some. I think James labeled it “Haagen-Dazs II – Turkish Deception”, since this was the second covert ice cream buying operation I had been on while on our trip. This time I had an accomplice. The guy was making fresh waffle cones when we walked up, so when he served us our ice cream, our cones were hot because they had just come off of the waffle iron. That was the best waffle cone I have ever had.

On our way back to the pansion, we stopped and talked to the owner of Ephesus Pizza, Mehmet. He was standing outside his restaurant just chilling. He said hello and struck up a conversation with us. We walked past his pizza place at least twice every day and it was always empty. The building looked really cool, so I’m not sure why noone ever ate there. We talked to him for quite some time about his life and his family. Turns out that he is from Turkey, but lives in Seattle and has lived there for 20 years or so. He owns the restaurant here in Antalya with his brother or something, and was here in town to sell it. He had been there for a couple of months and I think he was lonely and missed his family. It was a little sad – I think he was glad we stopped and talked with him for a while. He said that he also exported stone or tile or something like that from Turkey to the U.S. and then he took us into the restaurant to show us these amazing mosaics that he had made with his own hands. They were phenomenal! There were mosaics on the floor, on the walls and on the doors. After a while, we bid him goodbye and headed on back to the pansion.

When we got to the corner where the Ali Baba Carpet and Kilims shop was, we saw Jay sitting there chatting with the owners. Apparently when he had gone back to the pansion a few hours earlier, they talked him into joining them for a card game that is a little like spades with some variations. He agreed and sat down to win the game (with some help from one of them)! Apparently, it is usually a drinking game, but they couldn’t talk him into whiskey, so instead he got a beer and nursed it for the rest of the night. James and I decided to stop and sit and join in on the conversation. Not wanting Jay to feel alone, I purchased an Efes Dark from the corner store that these guys owned and sat down to nurse it alongside him. We sat and hung out and talked for quite a while. Eventually, the guys started to close up their shop (at 12:30)! They insisted that we stay and chill out while they closed up. It was a nice night and we were in the mood to stay up and act like Turks, so we agreed. After a while, Catherine, the nice Irish lady from the pansion and her son ambled down the street and stopped by to talk with us. We talked with her for about an hour while playing with her son, Conlaodh. Apparently they were acting rather Turkish in their time here in Antalya as well – sleeping late and staying up late. We had a great conversation with her about Ireland. I’ve always been fascinated with all things Irish, so I thoroughly enjoyed our talk. Apparently, she had been teaching Irish (the celtic language) to young children back home in Navan (about an hour north of Dublin) and was here in Turkey learning Turkish. She already spoke German, French, Irish and English, so she was learning her fifth language! She had been in Istanbul for a few weeks and had just arrived in Antalya for a little rest and relaxation. She was considering a teaching job in the country that would start in the Fall, and wanted to really experience the culture before she decided to stay. I asked her the question that all Americans want to ask anyone Irish – “do the Irish like U2?” It was funny, because both James and Jay agreed with me that this was the burning question on their minds as well. Her answer was “I think they’re lovely.” Burning question answered.

At about 1:30, we all decided to walk the 50 feet to the pansion and turn in. It had been quite a day. Great team time, Turkish church, volleyball on the beach, swimming in the Med, Turkish baked potatoes, “Haagen-Dazs II”, Mehmet, the Ali Baba guys, Catherine, and staying up late experiencing Turkish community and hospitality. It was a day that I won’t soon forget.

Simit's Not Meat, But It's Not a Pretzel Either - Turkey, Day 8

2005-06-23T20:55:00.000-05:00

Saturday, June 4

This day marked the halfway point of the trip. It felt like we had just arrived.

After breakfast, we walked through the park to meet "I". This morning we were going to serve the poor in Antalya while we prayer walked. We split up into 3 different groups and each group went in different directions. All over Turkey there are these carts where guys sell a bread called "simit". It looks like a round soft pretzel. I never did take a picture of any of it, but here is a picture I found off of the internet:

My group bought some simit and walked through Kaleiçi to Cumhuriet Cadessi, which is the main artery through Antalya. We then walked through the city looking for poor people who were begging for money. There actually weren't very many beggars, so we walked quite a while before we found someone to give bread to. When we did find someone, we would hand them some bread and say "İsa Seni Seviyor" which means "Jesus Loves You" in Turkish. We gave away our first batch of simit and bought some more. Then we turned up another busy street and walked for a long ways without seeing any poor people. Eventually we gave some bread to an old poor man. We made our way back to Kaleiçi to meet the rest of the group at the church.

We then walked to a streetside döner restaurant on İşiklar Cadessi. After lunch we walked over to "I"'s apartment. That afternoon we were supposed to lead a children's program at the church, so we were meeting to plan and prepare. I had been asked to preach at church on Sunday, so I went to "I"'s room to prepare my teaching while the group prepared for the children's time. I popped my headphones in and started working on Galatians 5. James had been asked to share a short message at youth group later tonight, so he also sat out the children's activity to prepare. At around 2:30 the group (minus me and James) left for the church. We each cranked up our iPods, turned on the ceiling fan and went to work. I finished up my preparation at about 4:30 and we weren't scheduled to meet the group for dinner until 5:30 so I laid down on the couch and took a quick nap.

After my nap, James and I walked to Zeynep's Kitchen to meet the rest of the group for dinner. They shared some stories about working with the kids - I think it was a fruitful time.

After dinner, we walked to the church for youth group. It has been my experience that in many countries, "youth group" really means people in their teens and 20's and that was definitely the case here. About 12 Turks came - most of them were in their 20's and to my knowledge, most of them were Christians. A girl named Zeynep (not to be confused with the restaurant "Zeynep's Kitchen") led some worship songs with a guitar. They were almost all american worship songs that had been translated into Turkish, which was cool because even though I didn't speak Turkish, I basically knew what we were singing about. I do wish for them that they had more of their own songs, though.

After singing a few songs, Jennifer stood up and gave her testimony while Zeynep translated. Zeynep is only 17, but she speaks fluent English and translates quite a bit. She even translates theological books into Turkish! After Jennifer shared her story, we sang another couple of songs and then James taught about Ananias and Sapphira and how we should give freely to the Lord while Zeynep translated We then sang a few more songs before we finished. The entire meeting was rather subdued, which I think is pretty normal there.

After the meeting, we all hung out in the garden, drank coffee and got to know our Turkish brothers and sisters in Christ. It was encouraging to hear their stories and see how God had called them to Himself in a place where there are so few other believers.

We wrapped up our hang out time at around 9:30 and headed back to our pansion. It was still early (at least on Turkey time), so we did some shopping at Alibaba Carpets and Kilims. This was a shop that was about 30 yards from our pansion and we had gotten to know the guys who worked there over the past few days. They were very friendly and several of them spoke English, so every time we would walk by, we would stop and speak to them. The 2 owners were brothers and I think everybody else that worked there was related in some way. One of the brothers lived in Paris in the winter (he was married to a Parisian). These guys actually owned several shops all next to one another - the carpet shop, a ceramics shop, a small grocery/snack shop, and a tour company. They were running a first-rate business. "I" had told us a few days before that these guys would be one of the best places to buy gifts because they would treat us fair and give us good prices, so several of us decided to buy some gifts to take back home. Man, those guys went to town showing us rugs and blankets! They were pulling out all kinds of fabrics designs and patterns. Several of us bought rugs/blankets, some people bought pashminas (a cashmere scarf), some people bought ceramics, etc. After a while I decided on a blanket for Elise and a couple of other gifts. We probably spent an hour shopping with these guys and they did give us great deals. After it was all said and done, we all took a picture together with them.

After dropping our goodies off at the pansion, Jay, "I" and me decided to head out onto İşiklar Cadessi to find a cool cafe where we could grab a beer and talk. İşiklar Cadessi is a busy street filled with streetside cafe's, restaurants and shops. We found a nice little place and pulled up to a streetside table. Efes is the name of the most popular beer in Turkey (Efes is actually the Turkish word for Ephesus, a famous city in western Turkey - Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians to the Christians in Ephesus). So, we thought, "where else could we ever drink an Efes but in Turkey?" Jay got an Efes Normal (light colored pilsner) and "I" and me got an Efes Dark (dark porter). We munched on peanuts and popcorn, nursed our beer and had great conversation. We probably sat out there for a couple of hours just telling stories and enjoying fellowship with one another. It was an outstanding time.

Finally, we decided to call it a night. "I" walked in the direction of his apartment while me and Jay walked back to our pansion and fell quickly to sleep.

The Mountain Of Eternal Flame - Turkey, Day 7

2005-06-22T19:14:00.000-05:00

Friday, June 3, 2005

Today was designed to be a chill out day. For 4 days straight, we had been intensively and intentionally building relationships with Turks. Saturday and Sunday were shaping up to be really busy days as well, so we built in a day of rest and that was today.

After the traditional breakfast at the pansion, we arranged to have 3 Taksis (the Turkish spelling for Taxi) pick us up. "I" and "L" met us and we rode in the Taksis across town to a bus stop. There we met "T" and all of us jumped on a bus bound for Olimpos. Not the Mt. Olympos in Greece with the Greek gods, this was an ancient city (2400 years old) nestled in the mountains and situated right on the beach. The Mount Olimpos here in Turkey actually has an eternal flame on the top of it. There is apparently an ancient natural gas leak from the top of the mountain which you can light and roast your hot dogs! Alas, we never ventured up to the flame.

We rode the Havaş (bus) through the rest of Antalya along the coast and up into the mountains. The mountains rise right out of the sea, so even though we were driving up in the mountains, we were very near the sea. The mountains were stunning - lots of pine trees. I remarked that the next time I come to Turkey, I'd like to do some backpacking in those mountains. We rode to a small store up in the mountains which ended up being a bus stop. There we got off of the Havaş and waited for another bus that would take us down into Olimpos. The guys threw the frisbee while we waited. Ralley Türkiye was in full swing, so every few minutes a rally car would go speeding down the road on the way to another checkpoint. We were throwing the frisbee around in the parking lot, and inevitibly, it would go into the road every now and then. Luckily none of us got run over by a rally car on the way to retrieve the bee.

After about 30 minutes, the next bus came and we piled in. This one took us down into a beautiful valley. We entered the Olimpos area, which is managed by the Turkish board of tourism or something like that. There are literally thousands upon thousands of ruins sites in Turkey and they don't really have the budget to keep them all up. As we were driving into Olimpos, there were several vendors selling fresh fruit and vegetables as well as a number of treehouses/bungaloes that you could rent for lodging. Apparently, Olimpos is a haven for hippies from around the world. They rent a treehouse for a few days and commune with nature or something like that, then backpack on down the road to some other hippie haven. When the bus stopped, we got out and purchased a few snacks. Cola, Light Cola (for James!), fruit, cookies, chips, etc. The chips we bought were made by Doritos and were called Doritos Turca, which probably means Turkish Doritos. Ah, globalization... They were basically Doritos with lots of oregano on them - very yummy. One of my favorite things to do in other countries is try their snack foods. Of course, then I always wish that I could get that particular snack food in the states.

We then changed into our swimsuits at a pay restroom and paid our entrance fee into Olimpos. We walked for about 1/4 mile down a trail that paralleled a stream and passed several ancient ruins from when this area was a large city. More on the ruins later... We eventually came to a stunning beach. The stream emptied into the Mediterranean here and mountains rose up on both sides of the stream. There were several large sailboats anchored out in the bay. These were boats that were sailing along the coast, stopping in beautiful places like Olimpos. What a life.

The great thing about the beach here was that it was completely uncommercialized and very uncrowded. There were several people around, but we were all quite spread out so it was very peaceful. The water was a gorgeous deep blue. We settled on a nice little spot on the beach and spread out our stuff. "I" was assigned to walk back to the village to pick up our lunch, gözleme. Jay, James, Dick and I decided to swim out into the bay.

This bay looked exactly like something you would see in a pirate movie, so as we were out in the bay treading water, we had a great time making jokes and acting like pirates. I remember laughing really hard and trying not to drink too much salty seawater.

This brings me to a quick explanation. For years, I have had an alter-ego that many people know as "Trip Brett". You see, sometimes people from church or wherever only really see me on the stage at The Grove or in some "official" capacity. In those settings, I have to be fairly serious - there's just not a lot of room for goofing around when I'm leading worship at church. Well, on trips for some reason, people often get a chance to see the goofy side of my personality for the first time. Many people on trips like this have enjoyed the escapades of "Trip Brett" and this trip was no exception. Prior to leaving for Turkey, several people on my team had only really gotten to know me in our training meetings, which were fairly serious and business-like. So, while we were still in the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, I had warned my team that there were soon going to get to know my alter-ego. I think it was somewhere in the Amsterdam airport when "Trip Brett" really emerged (maybe it was the Haagen-Daaz). I really enjoy "Trip Brett". Lots of people have told me that they really like "Trip Brett" as well. There is something so enjoyable about laughing an goofing off - I'd like to indulge this side of my personality more often back here in Northwest Arkansas.

So, "Trip Brett" was in full force out in the bay. Now back to our story...

After a while, "I" emerged from the trail with a couple of bags full of gözleme. This delectible treat is known as the Turkish pancake. It's basically this flat bread/pastry rolled up with stuff inside like cheese, potatoes, spinich, etc. I ordered potatoes and cheese (though somehow mine only had cheese in it). So, I settled down with my lunch of gözleme, Doritos Turca and Cola.

After lunch, most of us laid out on the beach and took naps. At least I know the guys around me seemed to be napping. I certainly did. What a great relaxing time - beautiful sights, swimming in the Med, eating yummy food and napping in the warm sun on the beach.

After a short nap, I decided to grab my camera and tripod and explore the ruins of the old city. First I hiked up a steep hill to a place labeled the "acropolis", which basically means "city on a hill". This was a lookout where the residents of this ancient city could keep a wary eye out for pirates. Up on top I met a couple of Aussies who were taking some vacation time riding on a tourist boat along the coast. They were due to sail to Antalya later that day and fly home. I continued exploring the ruins down in the valley. The trees and foliage had long ago reclaimed this large city, so everywhere you looked in the forest there were remnants of old walls, aqueducts, above ground tombs, temples, castles, etc. I kept trying to imagine what this city looked like 2200 years ago when it was a bustling metropolis. I spent a couple of hours exploring and taking pictures.

Unsure of what time we were planning on leaving, I made my way back to the beach. Once I got there, I realized that everybody was still relaxing and in no hurry to leave. I sat around and talked to the guys for a while. Then me and "I" decided to hike across the stream to a castle that was poised on the opposite hillside from the acropolis. We made our way to this spectacular spot and climbed out onto a high wall. We sat down on the wall and dangled our feet over a 100 foot drop while gazing into the bay. We were looking down onto some large rocks that rose out of the bay. Several people (not from our group) had swam out to the rocks and were climbing up on them, then jumping into the deep water. We also saw a number of goats walking around - some of them out on the rocks in the bay. I kept wanting to see one of them jump into the water, but I guess goats have no sense of adventure.

"I" and I had a great conversation about life, church, the poor, the world, anthropology and our dreams. We probably talked up on that wall for an hour and a half - it was thoroughly enjoyable. I had known "I" prior to this trip, but only really as an acquaintance. It was through conversations like the one that we had on this day that we began to build a real friendship. After a while we decided to explore around some more in the ruins. At one point we realized that we were walking on an ancient mosaic that was probably the floor of some cool room thousands of years ago.

Finally we hiked back down to the beach. A few people had already hiked back to the village to hang out in an outdoor lounge area to nap, read and relax. The rest of us packed up our stuff and hiked back to the village to join them. We sat around relaxing, reading, telling jokes, eating Magnum Bars (ice cream bars) and fruit. There was a nice breeze blowing and I remember that the temperature was just perfect. It doesn't really get much better than this. Finally around 5:00 we decided to catch a bus back to Antalya. We jumped on one bus and waited to depart. After a while, some conversation took place in Turkish between the bus driver and "I", then he told us to get off of the bus and get on another one that was behind us. This particular bus would take us all the way to Antalya, so we jumped on, sat back and relaxed.

After we arrived in the city, we walked over to the restaurant where we had eaten on Wednesday, Gaziantep. This time I ordered the Döner Iskender and chowed down. We finished off the meal with çay (tea). In Turkey, they drink tea pretty much all day long whether the weather is hot or cold. It is served in these little tulip shaped glasses on a small metal saucer.

We then walked back to Kaleiçi. After a short stop for some ice cream, we went back to our pansion.

At some point on the bus, I remember having this thought: "I want to come back here." Not just Olimpos, but Turkey in general. I think I was really starting to fall in love with the place. The people, the food, the sights, etc. God had really changed my heart and attitude in the course of 7 days. Before we left I wasn't really looking forward to the trip. Now I was really having a great time. I remember saying to Elise the night before we left for Turkey that I was needing some serious rest and relaxation. I didn't expect to get any of that on this trip. Of course, God knew exactly what I needed and he certainly provided a very enjoyable, relaxing day on Friday.

Salt Water and Nargile - Turkey, Day 6

2005-06-20T22:25:00.000-05:00

Thursday, June 2, 2005

I woke up at 5:45 a.m., threw on some clothes, grabbed my camera and headed out of the room to take some early morning pictures. When I got down to the lobby at the pansion, there was a middle-aged French guy with curly hair just standing there with a confused look on his face. Apparently he had been standing there for a few minutes because he wanted to go out and walk around also, but the door was locked and the only way out was with a key. We woke Salim (one of the guys who works there) up and asked him to unlock the door. Poor guy probably didn't go to sleep until 1:00 a.m. He was always at the pansion, morning, noon and night.

I walked the streets of Kaleçi for quite a while, snapping pictures. When I walked to the park to look out over the bay, I saw the mountains on the other side for the first time (it had been pretty cloudy every day since we had arrived). Wow. They were huge.

I walked down to the harbor to take some shots of the fishing boats heading out for the day.

It was great to wander about the old city for a couple of hours. The streets were very quiet. Just about the only person I encountered was the curly-haired Frenchman from the pansion. He was wandering the streets too, so we had several different conversations over the next couple of hours. As far as not seeing many other people, most people in Antalya stay up late and wake up late. I'm not sure if that is a Turkish thing, a Mediterranean thing or just happens because Antalya is a resort city. Anyway, it was nice to be the only person on the streets for a while - very peaceful. It's funny, I hate waking up early. But, when I actually make myself do it and I get out to take pictures or walk or whatever, I really enjoy my time.

I made my way back to the pansion around 8:30 for a leisurely breakfast. Then upstairs for a shower.

We had some team time at 11:00. Singing, prayer, sharing, etc.

At noon, we met "I" downstairs, then all of us walked to a little streetside döner place called "Golf." This place was funny because they had astroturf under in the whole area where the tables where. More döner inside a piece of flatbread. And of course, cola. I think it was around this time that we started to call James "light cola." You see, when all of the rest of us were ordering our 100 calorie cokes at each meal, James was using his willpower to order a diet coke (or "light cola" in Turkey). So for some reason, we started calling him by that name. Or sometimes just "LC".

We then walked about 50 yards to the Tromvay stop. The Tromvay is basically a trolley that runs from one end of the city to the other. It is the fastest and most economical route to the beach - our destination for the day. We had planned to meet P, T, L and several other friends at the Tromvay stop, and by the time we got on board, about 8 more people had joined us. We rode to the end of the line and got off. Then it was a short 10 minute walk down the side of a hill to the beach park.

The beach park is actually a series of beaches, all with names. Each beach has it's own lounge chairs, umbrellas, lounge area, sometimes a volleyball court and always a DJ spinning up tunes (which, by the way, are always some version of techno/house music - ask me sometime about the whistling song that we heard everywhere we went). The beach park goes on for what looks to be a couple of miles, though we never walked to the end of it. There are tons of restaurants, coffee/tea houses, bars, shops and resort hotels also. The entire area was very nice.

Our destination for the day was Yiğit (pronounced "Yeeet") Beach. This was about the 4th or 5th beach down the line. We rented a couple of umbrellas and staked our claim to a sweet spot. The Mediterranean is a deep blue color here and the waves are very small by virtue that this is a sea and not an ocean. And there is no sand. Just colorful, smooth pebbles in all shades of white, gray and black. We could see Kaleçi to our left and the mountains to our right. A very sweet spot indeed.

The guys tossed the football around for a while, much to the amusement and curiosity of all the Turks on the beach. I don't think they really see much American football there, so we were an oddity. A couple of times, the ball would land near someone that wasn't in our group and they would attempt to throw it back to us. That usually resulted in an awful pass because unlike most every boy in the U.S. who grows up throwing a football, this was probably the first time any of them had ever touched one. I guarantee that they could spank us in a game of Tavla (Backgammon), though. We also tossed the frisbee and swam. The water was warm and EXTREMELY salty. After swimming for a while, "I" and I threw the football for a long time - probably about 45 minutes. After a while, my feet started to really hurt from running on those rocks, so we gave the football a rest. (Later, I would realize that I had given myself pretty bad blisters from running on those rocks.)

After a while, someone suggested we walk over to a Nargile (pronounced "Nar-ghee-lay") Cafe, so we packed up and headed out. After a 5 minute walk we were there. Now, this was going to be an interesting cultural experience. Nargile is a thing that you smoke. Basically, you have this really elaborate and decorative water pipe that you smoke a mild, flavored tobacco in. This particular Nargile Salon was outdoors, so everywhere you looked there were bean bag chairs that were circled around little tables where people would put their tea or other drinks. Many peoople were playing Tavla as well. Then also in the middle of each little circle was this decorative water pipe and people were puffing away. Apparently Nargile has been around for a long time (possibly even thousands of years) and it is a staple in traditional Turkish life.

We found an area where we could pull a bunch of bean bag chairs together (there were about 16 of us). Then we ordered drinks and a couple of Nargile pipes. Eventually this dude came over with 2 water pipes and began to prepare them for us. Here's how it works. In the top is this canister where they put this mild, flavored tobacco. (We ordered apple for one pipe and banana/mint for another). Then they put these hot coals on top of the tobacco. At the bottom of the pipe is a big, fancy glass thing full of water. Emerging from the side of the pipe is a long, leather tube with a big decorative pipe on the end. Each person gets their own little mouthpiece that they attach to that pipe when it is their turn to puff. When you draw on the pipe, the smoke is drawn through the water, which somehow filters it. Almost all of us took a turn at the pipe. The smoke was very flavorful and smooth. There must not be any nicotine in it either, because even though we smoked those 2 pipes for over an hour, I never did feel anything. It is my understanding that the experience is supposed to be a slow paced opportunity to talk and relax. It was a hilarious thing to watch people take big puffs of smoke from this exotic pipe. Very Turkish indeed. We took lots of pictures because it just seemed like good blackmail material someday.

When in Rome... I mean Turkey...

Actually, this was a tremendous time of hanging out and building relationships. Many conversations were had between people on our team and Turks. I know that the gospel was shared with at least one guy and many other life stories were shared. It was a tremendous opportunity for life on life conversations. Who would have ever thought that we would have shared the gospel while puffing away on a Hookah?

Soon it was time for dinner, so we walked back up the hill to the Tromvay stop. Rally Türkiye was getting ready to start, so the Tromvay wasn't running for the rest of the day. For those of you who don't know much about racing, Rally car races take place over several days and the "track" is on a combination of paved roads, dirt roads, muddy roads, etc. Usually more of the race is off-pavement than on-pavement. Racers drive small, souped up cars with amazing suspension and steering and they are usually all-wheel drive. This all helps them cope with the various terrain that they will be driving on. Rally racing is really big in Europe. Well, Rally Türkiye was a big Rally race that was starting in Antalya on this day.

So, we had to walk all the way back to the heart of the city. It was at least a couple of miles. It was fascinating to walk through the city, though. We finally made it to our destination, "Martı Mantı". Famous for the seagulls painted on their windows. IN DEFENSE....

They served Mantı, which is basically meat-stuffed tortellini covered in a yoghurt sauce with tons of spices in it. It was very tasty. I think it was at this point that I decided that I definitely like Turkish food. I'd probably have to search hard to find any Turkish food in the U.S., though.

After dinner, we walked across the street to Öszüt, which was a restaurant that served amazing desserts. We all ordered different things and shared. Decadent cakes, delicate pastries, rich puddings, sundaes, you name it. We stuffed ourselves silly.

Goodbyes all around to our Turkish friends and then back to the pansion. It was an amazing day of experiences. Shooting pictures around Kaleçi in the early morning light, going to the beach, swimming in the Med, smoking Nargile, walking through the city, eating great food and having amazing conversations with some really cool Turks. It doesn't get much better than that. But it did. More to come...

We interrupt this regularly scheduled program...

2005-06-20T16:14:00.000-05:00

We found out today that our baby is a girl! (At least the ultrasound technician said that she was reasonably certain - it's never FOR SURE.)

So, I guess we're batting 3 for 3.

We will be accepting donations for the Harkey girl wedding fund. We accept cash, Visa, MasterCard and American Express. Heck, we will even accept stocks!

Künefe For You, Künefe for Me - Turkey, Day 5

2005-06-19T22:18:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, June 1, 2005

I woke up and jumped in the shower. Mmm... cold shower. And no water pressure. Excellent. Then down to the garden for yummy breakfast.

After breakfast our team gathered for a team time in our room. We had a great time of worship, sharing and prayer. At this point, I remember thinking that our team was really starting to get to know one another and gel. One interesting note about our team times - we always had our window open in our room, so I'm sure the other guests at the White Garden Pansion enjoyed the serenade when we sang worship songs.

Afterwards, we decided to walk to the bazaar. This is basically a bunch of merchants selling everything from vegetables to spices to clothes to jewelry. Apparently, it travels to different parts of the city each day, and this was the day of the week that it would be in our neighborhood. Imagine the Fayetteville Farmer's Market, only about 100 times larger and without all of the hippies. It was fascinating to walk around and take in all of the sights, sounds and smells. Very old world. It was crowded, to say the least and people were haggling left and right. It also seemed like most of the shoppers were Turkish - this is how they do their grocery shopping. Imagine of the Wal Mart Supercenter came to your street every Wednesday... that would be sweet.

After the bazaar, we met "I" and went to a little döner place for lunch that was just off of Işiklar Caddesi (street). In the U.S., we would probably call this a sandwich place. We sat at one long table streetside. Döner is basically lamb that they put on a big rotating spit and it cooks all day long. When you order some, they just shave some off and at this particular establishment they put it inside a split-open piece of flatbread. I think it was about this time that I started to realize the Turkish fascination with mayonnaise. It seems like they put it on everything. Well, I hate mayonnaise, so I made sure that the waiter got the message that I didn't want any. After ensuring that they weren't going to put any on my döner flatbread/sandwich thingy, I went to the bathroom to relieve my full bladder. Well, apparently I didn't quite get the door totally locked because just after I finished, someone opened the door. Thankfully I was done and all she saw was my back. I think she was more embarrased than I was. Back to the table to eat my tasty döner.

After lunch, we met up with T, L and P and rode the Dolmuş over to campus. We had heard that there was an Archeology Symposium going on and several students that we knew were going to be there, so this would be a good opportunity to hang out and build relationships. We got to the building that the Symposium was held in and basically just milled about inside for what seemed like forever. After meeting several people that P, T, I and L knew, a bunch of us went into the auditorium to listen to a presentation about some kind of archeology site in Turkey. The lecture was supposed to be in English, but instead was in German (and subsequently translated into Turkish). Well, it was dark, my belly was full, and I didn't understand a single word being spoken, so I drifted off to sleep for a few minutes. After about 10 minutes, apparently we decided to ditch the German/Turkish lecture and go back outside. I felt refreshed after my little power nap.

At this point we decided to head over to the food court/garden area to have some tea and coffee and play some tavla (backgammon). By this time we had gathered about 5 Turks who joined us. This was sort of the way things happened on our entire trip. We would go somewhere, start meeting up with people we already knew or meeting new people and by the end of the day, we would have a big posse rolling with us. This was excellent for an extrovert like me. The more the merrier. It kind of me feel like a rock star. They just love community so much that they are always inviting more people along.

We arrived at a smoky (you should just assume that any hangout spot in Turkey is smoky) bar/hangout spot filled with students drinking tea, coffee and beer. And almost everyone was playing backgammon. They say that backgammon (tavla) orgininated in Turkey, and EVERYONE plays it from childhood. So, if you ever meet a Turk and he offers to play you in a friendly game of tavla for money, walk away fast because you are going to lose. These people are serious about thier tavla. We found some tables and the Turks started teaching the Americans how to play. Deniz was at our table, so he started showing us the ropes. It's a deceptively simple game with lots of strategy. I played 2 games - 1 loss to Jennifer (yipes, lost to a girl) and 1 win to Dick.

After a while, someone suggested that we all go to another hangout spot just off of campus. This place had a tea/coffee bar, pool tables, ping pong tables, foosball, internet cafe, etc. By this time, we had gathered even more Turks with us, so everybody set out to play some kind of game. Most of the guys played ping pong and most of the girls played foosball. I decided that this would be a great opportunity to check my email and send an email to Elise, so I shifted into antisocial mode for a bit and checked in to the internet cafe. I was able to get to my email this time, so I read a few key messages and sent a long overdue email to Elise and the girls.

In time, we decided to head back to the heart of the city to eat dinner. We ate at an amazing restaurant called Gaziantep that was recommended by Cemil (pronounced Ja-meal). Cemil is a professional basketball player in Turkey, but in the offseason (which apparently is right now) he works as a steward on an airline and is based out of Antalya. I'm not exactly sure how we met him, but he was very cool, nonetheless. He and Jay really hit it off. I ordered this döner thing that was wrapped up in a tortilla sort of thing. Here's Jennifer with hers:

It was good, but after seeing the various things that everyone else ordered, I wished that I had branched out into something a little more adventurous. I took a bite of James' Iskender Döner, which is a traditional dish in Turkey. It is basically pide (flatbread) with tomato sauce on top, then döner on top of that, then plain yoghurt on top of that. It was outstanding, so I vowed to order it if we visited this restaurant again. After our meal, someone suggested that we try a traditional Turkish dessert, Künefe. We ordered several for the entire table and split it. Künefe is basically shredded wheat (think frosted mini-wheats) with some kind of cream cheese kind of stuff on top and chopped pistachios on top of that. Then it is soaked in some sort of really sweet sugary liquid. So, I know what you're thinking, this sounds a little weird, but let me tell you, that was one of the most amazing desserts I have ever had.

After dinner, we walked to a Türkü bar. This was a place where traditional Turkish folk music (Türkü) was played and you could get drinks or food. And of course, smoke abounded. Türkü music is pretty cool - at this particular place, there were three musicians. One guy was playing a Saz, which is a traditional stringed instrument that looks kind of like a lute, but sounds very middle eastern. He also sang. Another guy was playing a flute kind of thing that actually reminded me of the recorders that we played in fifth grade music class. Think "hot cross buns" and you won't be too far off. The third guy was playing a little handdrum. It was a very cool cultural experience, to say the least. Unfortunately, about 14 of us were crowded into a booth that would have comfortably sat about 8 people, so I'm not sure I enjoyed as much as I should have.

I jacked this photo from Miller's Blog

Later several of us walked to the shop where you could pay to make international calls. I called Elise and the girls. It was great to hear their voices - I think they were excited to hear from me. The only bad thing is that it's hard to summarize 5 amazing days in a 10 minute phone conversation. "So, how is it?" "Amazing - we've seen this and done that. The people are cool... I'll just have to tell you more about it when I get home."

After hanging up, I walked to an ATM on our way back to the Pansion. Because I was leading the trip, I was in charge of the spending money for all of the food and any activities that we did during the entire trip. That meant that every few days I would make my way to an ATM and withdraw several hundred Turkish Lira. Whenever we would eat in a restaurant, I was the guy who would bring a big bankroll out of my pocket to pay for everybody.

Big bankroll from my pocket to pay for anything the posse wanted... it's like I was some kind of Turkish rap star.

Back to the pansion for some shut eye.

Storms, Prayers and Musical Feasts - Turkey, Day 4

2005-06-17T22:13:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

At about 4:00 on Tuesday morning, I woke up to a huge thunderstorm. Big lightning, thunder and rain. My first thought was "I need to shut that open window or we're going to get drenched." Upon further inspection, I realized that there was a roof over the garden that kept rain from coming into our window. Sweet. So I plopped back down into bed to sleep.... wide awake... can't sleep. I tossed and turned for about 30 minutes trying to go back to sleep. This never happens to me - I LOVE SLEEP. Now, it may have been the time change (it was 8:00 p.m. back home), but for some reason this thought didn't occur to me. At 4:30 a.m., the first call to prayer rang out from the minaret of the nearest mosque. There was something really eerie about the call to prayer mixed with the thunder and lightning. I was reminded of Ephesians 6:12, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood...but against the spiritual forces of evin in the heavenly places." I was reminded that there was a battle going on in this place - not just a battle over ideas and religious dogma - a spiritual battle. It was at that moment that I realized that God was keeping me awake so that I would pray. Imagine that... I was reminded to pray by the Imam at the local mosque! Now, maybe I wasn't praying the same prayer or to the same god, but God did remind me to pray through that arabic chant. So, I proceeded to pray. I even took out my palm pilot and journaled some prayers in the dark. Finally, around 6:30, I drifted off to sleep.

I re-awoke at about 7:30 and took a shower. After reading my Bible for a bit, I went downstairs to breakfast. We ate inside the lobby today because of all of the water out in the garden from the storm. The breakfast spread was the same - just as tasty as the day before. After breakfast, James and I got together for a bit to choose some songs for the "Musical Feast" (aka - concert where we really play mostly worship songs in English). At 10:00, we had our first "team time" in James' and Jay's room. James led us in a sweet time of worship and then we shared for a bit - how we'd seen God at work, how we were adapting to the culture, etc. We prayed for each other to close. As we were talking, we realized that 6 of us had trouble sleeping early that morning and had felt the call to pray for this place. God was certainly going to teach us something about prayer in our time there.

Then we walked to the church and met with P, T, I and L for some more worship time. It was nice for me to not lead the songs for a change. It allowed me the space to really think about the words we were singing. In fact, I really enjoyed having the freedom to thumb through my Bible to find verses that related to what we were singing. After a couple of songs, I felt compelled to read a Psalm out loud. I don't even remember which one it was, but I do remember God really speaking to me through His word. Then we sang another song and someone else read a passage of scripture. This continued for quite a while. We finally closed in prayer. T commented that it was really nice to worship in English again after singing in Turkish for the past 9 months.

We then split up into groups and went to Akdeniz Üniversitesi. Akdeniz means "light sea" in Turkish and is what they call the Mediterranean. Light Sea University. Each group traveled to the campus in a bit of a different fashion. The theory here was that we didn't all want to arrive on campus in one big horde so we wouldn't draw too much attention to ourselves. P, me and Jennifer walked to a bus stop and rode the Dolmuş (pronounced "dole-myoosh"), which is basically a short, cramped bus. We rode to the stop by the University, then walked across this long, blue bridge over a busy street. Then we were on campus.

I'm not sure about other University campuses in Turkey, but Akdeniz doesn't really look anything like most University campuses here in the U.S. First of all, it is VERY spread out. The buildings aren't close to one another at all. Maybe they are preparing for future growth or something. There were palm trees and scrubby bushes all around. And rocks. These really gnarly looking rocks everywhere. We concentrated our time in the area where the University hospital and medical school were. We walked for quite a while just praying for God to move on the campus. As we were making our way to lunch, we stumbled upon a man laying in the road rolling around and mumbling. At first glance, it looked like he was high on something and was experiencing some kind of overdose or something. We quickly realized that he was having a seizure. Thankfully a couple of doctors from the medical school noticed him right away and came to his aid.

We walked to a food court kind of thing for lunch. Basically, it was a bunch of restaurants arranged in a circle. The entrance to each restaurant opened up to this large courtyard that had lots of tables and chairs. Above the sidewalk that went around the circle, there was a trellace that was covered in flowers and vines. Very Mediterranean and cool.

We stopped at a place called Han Pizza. We each got our own Turkish personal pizza. This was fairly close to pizza here in the U.S. The sauce was less spicy and they put different vegetables on it like corn and artichokes. I had the Pollo Pizza which was pizza with tavuk (chicken) and mantar (mushrooms). And a cola. Now when they serve cola (coke) in Turkey, it almost always comes in a can with a straw. Now that makes for some fizzy coke, let me tell you. Also, did I mention that practically all Turks smoke? Smoking is their national habit. Everywhere you go, there is a thick cloud of cigarette smoke. I got sort of used to it after a while.

After lunch, we headed back to the old city. James and I went to the garden at the Pansion and practiced some songs for the concert... oops, I meant musical feast. Salim, one of the workers at the Pansion came out and listened to us sing and play. I think he really enjoyed it. Of course I don't think he realized that most of the songs were worship songs (and he is an Alevi Muslim).

For dinner, we met everyone back at Zeynep's kitchen. We had the exact same meal, except this time, instead of chicken, we had Köfte. That's basically a flat meatball with oregano in it. Well, well... I still like the food. Then back to the church.

We were going to have the concert in the garden at the church, but because of the impending rain, we decided to have it inside at the coffeehouse, Paul's Place. This actually was a much better atmosphere, in my opinion. We set up the sound system and prayed that some Turks would show up. And slowly they did. About 12 in all. James started the night by playing some of his original tunes.

Then I joined him - he sang and played rhythm while I played lead. Since there was only 1 microphone, we couldn't both sing at the same time. All the while our team was hanging out and getting to know the Turks that showed up. The idea was to build some relationships with people and then invite them to join us later in the week when we did fun stuff. After James' set, I played some worship songs and James played lead guitar with me. We played for a total of about 2 hours. At one point, we sang Happy Birthday to a Turkish girl. Then she stood up and sang a traditional Turkish song for the crowd. I think everybody really enjoyed the music. Afterwards, we learned that Jay had the opportunity to share the gospel with one of the guys there. Dick was able to share quite a bit with another guy as well. It was a good night all around.

We headed back to our pansion and I went on the roof of the building to take a couple of pictures. After a bit of quiet reflection, I went back downstairs and went to bed.

Welcome to Turkey - Day 3

2005-06-17T09:33:00.000-05:00

Monday, May 30, 2005

I woke up on Monday morning at about 9:30 to the sound of birds and the soft murmur of people talking outside. No strange smells, no cacophony of horns honking. Many other countries I had been to have all of that and more, but here in Kaleiçi (the name for the old city of Antalya), it was peaceful. This is going to be an interesting place, indeed. After I acclimated to my surroundings, I got out of bed and jumped in the shower. Or, I should say the bathroom with a shower head on the side of the wall. No shower curtain or door. So, you had to be careful where you left the toilet paper so that it didn't get drenched.

Dick and I were on the third floor and when I took a look out of our open window, I gazed down on a lovely patio with tables and chairs. There was an amazing spread of food on one table and several members of our team was already downstairs eating. I went down the stairs to join them. The patio, or garden as they called it, was a nice tiled in area with a wall around it. There was a huge tree that gave shade to almost the entire area. The air was cool, with a touch of humidity. It was very pleasant. I proceeded to fill my plate with food. There was simit (a ring of bread covered with sesame seeds that looks kind of like a pretzel), bread rolls, strawberry jam, butter, honey, fresh strawberries, fresh melon, 2 kinds of cheese, kiwi, oranges, plain yoghurt, some kind of molasses-type stuff (that was made from grapes), olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers. This was to be our breakfast for our entire stay at the White Garden Pansion - and I was going to love it each and every day.

After breakfast, I** met us in the lobby and we walked a couple of blocks to the church. On the way we passed by a ruins site that dates back to 200 B.C. It was at one time a pagan temple, then a church, then a mosque (camii in Turkish - pronounced "jah-mee"). Somehow a couple of centuries ago, part of the minaret got knocked off and so now it is called the Truncated Mosque. The whole area was behind a large iron fence so that people wouldn't take artifacts (of course over our time there, I observed several people inside). Apparently they were planning on doing some restoration work someday. It was fascinating because you could see the building style of each era and civilization. For instance, the Romans built with perfectly hewn blocks of stone, the Byzantines added decorative touches like fancy tops to the columns, the Ottomans used all kinds of stones just shoved into every crack they could find. You could literally tell when each level of the structure was built based on the levels of construction.

Kaleiçi (the old city) has a very old world feel. Narrow, cobblestone streets. Lots of shops. Intricate stone work, stucco and doors. It is against the law to demolish a building in Kaleçi - if a building is in disrepair, they have to restore it. Because of that, sometimes buildings will sit in a dilapidated fashion for quite some time before they are restored. It was a fascinating walk to the church.

The church - St. Paul's Cultural Center, was a beautiful building. Newly restored, it housed a public cafe/coffeeshop called Paul's Place. This was a lovely cafe with all kinds of coffee, çay (pronounced like "chai" and is the Turkish word for tea), and wonderful cakes and pastries. They also served lunch, which we had out in the garden. This was a beautiful courtyard with flowering vines growing all over the walls and large trees in the center.

Our lunch was tunafish sandwiches. This was probably our most american meal of the entire trip, and it was my least favorite. We also had warm chocolate chip cookies and coke. We were introduced to P**, T****** and L****, who are I**'s teammates. Over lunch, we spent some time getting to know everybody and sharing stories of long trip there.

After lunch, we proceeded upstairs to the main meeting room. This is where 2 churches meet on Sundays. Sunday mornings, the International Church of Antalya meets there. This is a church that is made up of 50 expatriateates (people who aren't from Turkey and aren't Turkish, but have moved to Antalya to work or retire - mostly Europeans). Then on Sunday afternoons, Antalya Bible Church (the Turkish church) meets there. We wouldn't really have any connection to the Int'l Church during our time in Antalya, our relationships were more with the Turkish Church.

Our afternoon was to be made up of training and orientation. We learned what you can say, what you can't say. What you can do, what you can't do. What cultural taboos to avoid, etc. How to share the gospel with a Turk. How to relate to members of the opposite sex. Mostly, be yourself, but be sensitive to the culture. We then met Ramazan, the pastor of the Turkish Church, who shared a bit of his story and the history of the church. He told us that there were probably 100 or so people who come, but only about 60 who are regular. I have to admit that I was surprised that there were that many Christians in this city of 1.2 million. You see, the total population of Turkey is 70 Million and of that, there are only about 3,000 Christians. Almost all of the rest are Muslim. After Ramazan was finished, Alper shared his testimony with us. Alper is a student and leads the youth group at the church.

After our orientation, we split up into 3 groups to hand out fliers in various key parts of the city. James and I were going to perform a concert on Tuesday night at Paul's Place, and we were handing out fliers to advertise for it. The flier said something like "2 American guitarists are here to provide a musical feast for you." I was with I** and our assignment was to hand out fliers in Kaleiçi. We walked all over the old city dropping off fliers at some key coffeehouses and restaurants. We walked through Adrian's gate, which the Apostle Paul would have walked through 2,000 years ago. You could see the ruts in the stones from thousands of years of chariots and wagons passing through the gate.

We walked down to the old harbor, which was full of amazing old sailboats and Turkish men offering "boat trip" (say this is your best Turkish accent, if you have any idea what a Turkish accent sounds like). They kept hassling us to take a boat trip. When we would walk away, they would say things like "why do you not want to take boat trip? Do you not want to talk to me? Why do you walk away?" While walking around the old harbor, I felt transported to another time. I could imagine ships coming in off of the Mediterranean thousands of years ago. In fact, we saw the steps that the Apostle Paul would have walked up to get into Kaleiçi in the Book of Acts. Amazing.

The city was founded by Attalus II, King of Pergamum around 200 B.C., but there are archeological finds near the city that date back thousands of years earlier. We also walked past an ancient castle that would have served as a great lookout to see possible marauders coming in to attack the city. From there, we could see most of Antalya bay. There are huge (9,000 ft tall) mountains on the far side that practically rise right out of the Mediterranean. Between them and us are miles of beaches with tons of resort hotels dotting the coastline. I heard that last year, almost 8 million non-Turks flew into the Antalya airport to vacation there. We could also see miles and miles of apartment buildings just outside Kaleiçi. I never saw a single family dwelling the entire time I was there - everybody lives in flats.

After handing out fliers, we met everybody at Zeynep's Kitchen - a nice little restaurant just off of Attaturk Cadessi. We ate streetside. At one big long table (actually several tables pulled together). In Turkey, everything is extremely community oriented. It is very important for the group to be together. So when you walk into a restaurant, instead of asking you to split up your group like here in the U.S., they will quickly pull as many tables together as necessary to keep your group together. The service in the restaurants is amazing as well - always refilling your drink, bringing more bread, etc. At Zeynep's we had soup, chicken with rice, tomato and cucumber salad (very traditional Turkish), fried potatoes and bread. They usually have crushed red pepper available at the table to season with. Water, tea and Cola (coke) were also available. Very tasty.

At dinner, our team really started to bond and we were starting to get along well with I, T, P & L as well. Laughter abounded. Somebody mentioned that we should go get some ice cream because they had been craving it for a few days. It was then that I had to confess to my sidetrip to Haagen-Daaz in the Amsterdam airport. Needless to say, the entire team gave me a hard time because I had ice cream and they didn't. The entire rest of the trip, if I was gone for a few minutes, they would ask me if I went to get more ice cream.

After dinner, we went back to the church to go over the schedule for our time there. Even though we had a schedule, there was a lot of emphasis on remaining flexible. One night we were scheduled to eat dinner at a restaurant called Marti Mantı (pronounced "martee mantuh"). I** mentioned that we had passed it earlier that day and that there were seagulls on the windows. I then said "oh, do they serve fish?" Someone sarcastically said "no, seagulls are birds, Brett." To that I said "IN DEFENSE - seagulls live by the sea and they eat birds!" And everybody busted out with laughter. Of course, I meant to say that they eat fish. For the rest of the trip, all anyone had to say to elicit a chuckle was "in defense" or "look, seagulls." Much fun.

After our meeting, we walked to exchange some money. Then we went to an internet cafe to email. For some reason, I couldn't get to my email, so I was unable to send a message home that we had arrived just fine. They also had a phone bank where you could make international calls for a nominal fee, so I tried to call home. I got Elise's voice mail, which was a bummer. At least she would know that I had arrived safely.

Then we walked to get some Turkish ice cream (dondurama). The guys that sell Turkish ice cream from these little streetside carts like to play this game with people. You see, Turkish ice cream is pretty chewy and stretchy. So after they dip it up and put it on the cone, they attach it to this big metal paddle and hand it to you. But when you go to reach for it, they quickly flip it upside down. Then when you go to grab the upside down cone, they flip it back the other way. This usually goes on for 30-45 seconds. Thankfully they didn't do it to each person in our group, just the first.

Then we walked through a very nice park to the sea. We spent 30 minutes or so chilling and talking. I walked around and took some pictures of the city from across the harbor.

Then it was back to our Pansion. I journaled about the past few days and then drifted off to sleep with the sea air wafting in my window listening to Coldplay on my iPod.

Leaving on a Jetplane - Turkey, Days 1 & 2

2005-06-15T00:02:00.000-05:00

Saturday & Sunday, May 28-29, 2005

I'm going to attempt to recount our trip to Antalya & Istanbul, Turkey here on these blog pages. I'll apologize in advance for any rambling. I also realize that sometimes things I write about may be tremendously funny or moving to me (or others on our team), but not to the average reader. Sorry about that, but this is my blog, so I guess I get to do what I want!

So here goes...

We met at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport (you know, that big runway in the cow pasture) at 9:30 on Saturday, May 28th. After checking in, we spent a few final moments with loved ones. Elise and the girls were there, so I spent lots of time giving and receiving hugs and kisses. After dragging out our goodbyes as long as possible, we went up the escalator, through the metal detector and to our gate.

This would be a good time to mention that in the days and weeks leading up to the trip, I had a growing sense of dread about the trip. It's not like I was afraid or anything, I just wasn't really excited to spend 15 days on a trip to a strange country. I think partly it was because I had a few really busy and hard weeks leading up to the trip. Mostly what I was desiring was rest and relaxation - things that are usually hard to come by on a trip like this. It was also party due to a bad attitude on my part. Well, I hope you will see as I recount the trip in these blog posts that God really did a number on me and changed my heart.

Our flight to Minneapolis was pretty uneventful. I love regional jets. I remember the days when you had to fly a turboprop from Fayetteville. Boy were those things loud and uncomfortable.

Upon landing in Minneapolis, we were hungry and it was about lunch time, so we decided to grab a bite to eat at Chili's - our last American restaurant for 2 weeks. I think that because of that, I put unnecessary pressure on myself to get the "perfect" entree. Translation: I couldn't decide what to eat. It was the Turkey Sandwich vs. the Chicken Ceasar Salad. Add to the decision process the fact that I knew I was about to board a 9 hour flight to Amsterdam and didn't relish the thought of intestinal distress on a crowded international flight. Well, I decided to order the Turkey Sandwich... sans Mayo. I hate Mayo. We were at 2 different tables and while I was waiting for my sandwich, several people at the other table got salads. I remarked that they looked really good and wished that I had ordered the same thing. Well, when my sandwich came out, wouldn't you know it... it had Mayo on it. So I sent it back. Then I got the bright idea that I could possibly change my order to the salad. I grabbed the waiter who gladly complied with my wishes. Excellent. It was very tasty.

When we got to our gate in the International Terminal, we took a seat and soon learned that our flight was going to be delayed a bit due to a "mechanical issue." "No problem", I thought. "We have a several hour layover in Amsterdam, so we should make our flights to Istanbul and Antalya just fine." Well after 30 minutes or so, they announced that the delay was going to be longer than expected. Then 30 minutes later they came over the intercom and said "we apologize folks, but the fuel pump in the wing of the aircraft is malfunctioning, so we're going to perform the DC-10 shuffle." Ha. I was imagining the Super Bowl shuffle with arms outstretched to the side like airplane wings. In fact, I did a short impression for our team of this new dance. My next thought was "better to do the shuffle than have a fuel pump malfunction over the Atlantic." this meant that our delay was going to be more significant.

In the meantime, I called home and Elise told me that a huge chest of drawers had fallen on our girls. She wasn't exactly sure how it happened, but while she was in the other room she heard a loud crash and then screaming. She ran into their room to find them pinned underneath the chest. Now, this is no ordinary chest. It's huge. The thing probably weighs 250 lbs. and is about 5 feet tall. Somehow my pregnant wife managed to lift the chest off of our kids (isn't adrenaline amazing?) to find that they were completely unharmed. Wow. When I was talking to Elise on the phone, the reality of the situation hit her and she became quite emotional. Of course, only God could have protected our girls from major injury or death. It seems that there were forces already at work trying to keep me and our team from arriving in Turkey.

In the end it was about a 3 hour delay. That meant that we were going to miss our next 2 flights. Northwest/KLM promised that they would re-book our flight from Amsterdam to Istanbul. That meant all we had to work out was our flight from Istanbul to Antalya. I tried to call Turkish Airlines to figure that out only to find out that they aren't open on the weekends. Excellent. "Stay flexible", I told myself.

We boarded the KLM flight to Amsterdam. Big plane (3 seats by 5 seats by 3 seats). Totally full. 9 hours. There is no way a flight like this can be comfortable unless you are up in first class with the footrests, hot chocolate chip cookies and warm washcloths to wash your face with... oh sorry, do I sound bitter? I can take solace in the fact that a Ukranian man didn't throw up on me mid-flight. That did happen to Jennifer. She was definitely leading in the hardship points column so far.

I did sit by a nice guy from Bergen, Norway. Of course, you would never have guessed that he was Norwegian - perfect American English accent, American clothes, etc. He had spoken English since the 2nd grade and was attending college somewhere in small-town Iowa and was traveling home for the summer to work as a cleaner/maintenance guy at highway rest stops in Norway. Surely those guys get paid more in Norway than in the U.S., right?

We finally landed at Amsterdam Schiphol airport at about 8:00 a.m. local time (midnight back home, which means we had been traveling for about 12.5 hours so far). I proceeded to the transfer desk to work out our ticket fiasco. After printing me a huge stack of indecipherable documents, they told me that I would have to go to another transfer desk later in the day when it opened at 3:00. So we were stuck in the Amsterdam airport still unsure if we could catch a later flight from Istanbul to Antalya. We contemplated our options and decided to leave the international terminal, pass through customs and go to the Turkish Airlines desk out in the arrivals section of the airport. When we got there, they were on a lunch break so we hung out at a nifty little place called the "Color Cafe", where Jennifer snacked on her contraband Beef Jerky (she was supposed to declare any meat products in customs, but choose to be a scoff-law instead).

After the Turkish Air desk opened up, we worked out our flights so that we would indeed arrive in Antalya, just 6 hours later than planned.

Then we proceeded out into the mall / shopping center at the front of the airport and used the vouchers provided by KLM to eat a very average lunch at a place called the Juggle Bar. Then over to our gate to wait on our flight to Istanbul. I decided to try to call I** (full name withheld for security reasons) in Antalya to let him know that we would be arriving later than expected. So first I had to exchange some dollars for Euros. While waiting in the line to do this I was behind 2 guys who were in this really crazy religious garb. Black robes, crazy hats, major gold chains with icons of Jesus or the Virgin Mary or something hanging off of them. Bling bling. I wasn't sure what religion these guys were a part of, but I sure knew that I didn't want to look them in the eye for fear of some crazy consequences. After they left, I exchanged my money and then went to buy a phone card to call I**. Right next to the phone card place was a Haagen-Daaz ice cream shop. Mmm. Ice Cream. I had a few extra Euros burning a hole in my pocket, so I couldn't resist a fresh berry ice cream cone. So tasty. More on this later.

I proceeded to a Multifoon (phone/email thing) to try to call or email I** to alert him to our delay. After wrestling with the darned thing for about 20 minutes to no avail, I gave up and decided to try to call I** from Istanbul when we landed.

We finally boarded our Turkish Air flight. As I was walking towards my seat, I noticed that lo and behold, I was sitting right next to the dude in the crazy religious garb. Excellent. "Let's see where this leads", I thought to myself. I sat down, popped in my headphones and cranked up some great tunes on my iPod. For some reason, I thought that if I ignored the guy then it would make for an easier flight. Later, when our meal came by, I turned off the iPod. After I finished eating, I decided to talk to religious garb dude. Come to find out, he was an Archbishop in the Syrian Orthodox Church and his name was Julius. He was originally from Turkey, but had lived in Amsterdam for quite a few years and was responsible for all of the Syrian Orthodox churches in Northern Europe. He was heading to Damascus, Syria for a meeting with other Archbishops and the Patriarch (kind of like the Pope) for the Syrian Orthodox Church. I had a thouroughly enjoyable conversation with him. By the end, I told him I would pray that God would use him (and I did pray several times later).

When we landed in Istanbul, Jennifer introduced me to a guy who she sat next to and he offered to loan me his cell phone to call I**. He was a Dutch jeans designer sent by the Dutch government to speak with Turkish textile producers. Apparently a fascinating guy. The next 45 minutes were a blur of calling I**, paying our Turkish entrance visa, going through passport control at customs, rushing over to the domestic terminal and flying out to Antalya.

1 short hour later we landed in Antalya, Turkey. We went into the terminal to claim our bags only to find out that they weren't there. Excellent. After speaking with a guy in the terminal, we discovered that because our bags had been checked through from Amsterdam to Antalya, they were in the International terminal. They put us on a bus and drove us about 30 yards to the Int'l terminal. There we happily found our bags. It was now about 1:30 a.m.

We met I** outside the airport and jumped into taxis for the ride into the city to our pansion. The cab driver in our taxi apparently spoke extremely fast, so I** had a bit of a hard time talking with him (this was the only time I really saw him struggle with Turkish the entire time we were there). We sped through the city, through the walls of Kaleci (the old city - over 2000 years old), through very crooked and narrow streets to the White Garden Pansion.

Now, I have to say that I didn't really expect our pansion to be much. I was actually expecting 1 large bunk room with bathrooms down the hall. Sort of like a hostel. I think my expectations were low because we were only paying $11 per night per person and that included breakfast. Well, I was very surprised to find a very nice, but humble 3 story building with about 15 rooms. Each room had its own bathroom and was nicely furnished. We all stumbled to our rooms and fell into bed at about 2:30 a.m. About 30 hours of travel!

God's Presence

2005-06-11T16:20:00.000-05:00

Since Brett has been gone (for the past two weeks) I have really sensed God's presence in a unique way. I was really dreading his being away, and I didn't know if I could make it for two weeks without his help--especially with 2 kids and one on the way. Besides that, I knew that I would miss him terribly.

Well, of course I missed him, but God really took care of the Harkey girls while Brett was away. First of all, He protected Maitlyn and Elspeth from injury when a big chest of drawers fell on top of them. Then He provided a friend to come over and help me to lift the chest back into place and bolt it to the wall for me. God also provided the fellowship and support we needed throughout the two weeks. We had fun with friends from community group, dinner guests and playdates. Some gracious friends even watched the kids for me so that I could run errands, get my haircut and go to the dentist. And I know that many friends were praying for me and the girls during this time. All of this was the Body of Christ at work serving and ministering to me and my family. I am tremendously grateful. Like I said, I did miss Brett, but I feel that I was cared for by people who were motivated by the love of Christ. We are truly blessed!

Comıng to you lıve from Antalya, Turkey

2005-06-01T10:17:00.000-05:00

Merhaba! (That's Turkısh for hello) We are ın the beautıful seasıde cıty of Antalya, Turkey. There ıs the beautıful Antalya bay (Medıterranean) and huge mountaıns.

God ıs usıng our team ın many ways here already. More on thıs later...

I wısh I could post pıctures. Maybe later on that too...

I've got to go. More posts later.

New Babies

2005-05-30T19:43:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday, May 26, 2 new babies entered the world. One is Sutherlin Alec Tillery, son of my best friend from college. He was 10 lbs and 9 oz at birth, and she was actually able to deliver him! Amazing.

Also, I have a new niece. Ryley Paige Watkins was born later that afternoon, no where near 10 lbs, more like 6 lbs. something. We'll get to meet her next week.

It's fun to have these sweet babies coming into the world. I will enjoy getting to know them. I can't wait for all the babies in our church to be born as well. It's going to be a fun year.

Can you pass the Turkey please?

2005-05-28T06:17:00.000-05:00

Well, this morning I depart for the airport on a 23 hour oddessy as I travel to Antalya, Turkey. I'm leading a team that is going to work for 2 weeks in this Mediterranean city (who said missions was hard?).

I'm hoping to be able to post to the blog while I'm there keeping you up to date our our experiences.

Just a few more things to put in the backpack and I'll be ready...

The Type of English I speak. . .

2005-05-18T23:02:00.000-05:00

Here it is. I was hoping for a bit less Dixie (sorry Arkansas friends), but that's okay. . .

Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

15% Dixie

10% Yankee

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

So close!

2005-05-11T21:28:00.000-05:00

We only need one more person to sign up and complete their offer for the free iPod and then we get ours! You know you want to... click on the iPod link on the right side of this page or just click here.