If I had put a pumpkin on our front porch..

What is it that you like about your American culture? Is it the freedom you have in almost all aspects of life (including going anywhere you want, saying whatever you want, wearing whatever you want, etc.)? Is it the American celebration of specific holidays? Or the style of clothes that we as Americans wear?

In the past year we’ve stepped into a completely different culture (in almost every aspect of life) from the natural one we grew up in. If the darkest African woman you can imagine walked down the street in a small town in Arkansas in her native African dress (which may or may not include a shirt) and spoke loudly in her own native language while trying to relieve herself on the side of the street, how do you think she would be received into that community? I’m thinking she wouldn’t immediately be invited to your daughter’s wedding or over to your house for coffee and chatting. (Disclaimer: but maybe she would, because we, as Americans, have become so accustomed to many immigrants coming into our nation. The same certainly can’t be said for other countries.)

Similarly, we have stepped into a small town in Asia that is NOT used to immigrants with all of our (VERY DIFFERENT) culture with us. If this “strangely” dressed African woman speaking a foreign language decided to start wearing American clothes, begin learning English, and followed social norms by relieving herself in a toilet, my guess is that her acceptance in the community would increase dramatically. Keeping our social expectations in mind and understanding that the world view we have stepped in to is EVEN smaller than any American small town, we have intentionally made adjustments to the ways that we live to become more understandable to the people around us as well as to give us opportunities to step more smoothly into people’s lives without all the neighbors gawking at us out their windows and talking behind our backs.

There have been some easier cultural transitions than others. While sometimes I miss my American clothes, I have generally found my style niche in the cultural clothes here. We both enjoy cooking AND eating SPICY food (both burn-your-tongue kind and full-of-more-spices-than-you’ve-ever-used-in-your-life kind of spicy food). Bumping up all levels of hospitality has been both fun to enjoy as well as fulfilling to serve other people in the same way. But other things are a little bit harder to adjust to.

Seeing so many cute fall decorations on the Internet and hearing of the fun fall festival activities sometimes makes me feel jealous and really miss the things of my home culture (naturally, because this is where I grew up). And I’ll only briefly mention how disappointing it is not to feel the excitement of football season “in the air”, because it’s a little hard to appreciate a good football Saturday afternoon when you have to wake up at 5 AM to watch a live video feed (that may or may not skip) and not have cheese readily available to make all the delicious tailgating food.

And that is just things on the entertainment and holiday side of American life. I also really miss the cultural appropriateness of women going where they want to BY THEMSELVES with THEIR OWN mode of transportation. American ladies: DON’T TAKE THIS FOR GRANTED; you are truly blessed with so much freedom. (Side issue: I should say that I do have the physical freedom to go places by myself, but after several times of being the object of an unashamed stare fest of men, getting taken down “shortcuts” that you’ve never seen before in a semi-sketchy, open rickshaw with a guy you’ve never met before, and walking down seemingly long roads with ONLY men out (who again I’ll say are not ashamed to stare), (I thought I’d never in a million years say this) it is SO much more freeing to be escorted places by my husband on the back of his motorcycle and down the street. Even though I choose to be escorted because it is the far better way to travel, I am still an independent lady who really misses getting to and from places as well as accomplishing simple things like grocery shopping ON MY OWN).

However, after more than a year in this country, there’s more than just laying down some of my natural cultural experiences and picking up new ones, there’s recently been a longing to be understood by the people around us. After so much work to be attentive and  to be quick learners (and doers) of the culture around us (and being from a culturally welcoming nation), we start to feel like people don’t know who we are as Americans and also don’t really care that much about getting to know our culture (while we are in the thick of trying to fit into theirs).

If I had a penny for every time in the last two weeks I’ve heard G tell a friend, “Well in AMERICA…”, I’d be a rich lady. This phrase has not had much room in our vocabulary in the past, but it seems to be surfacing as our relationships with people are going deeper with friends who have at this point somewhat blanketed us (thankfully) as taking on all Asian culture. But as they get to know us, they are starting to realize that unlike them, we don’t stay up till 2 A.M. or wake up at 9 AM; I don’t make roti (like a tortilla) and a fresh meal breakfast, lunch, and dinner; our music and movies are very different from theirs; I NEED to get out of the house more than once a week; and my home is always slightly messy. And generally when our friends notice new things in our lives that remind them we are not Asian, they respond in a surprising way: with the recommendation that we actually should do one of these things their way and why it’s easier/best. And when we try to share interesting things that we like about our culture like food, music, holidays, traditions, etc, we generally get a somewhat polite way of saying, “Oh that’s nice,” and then a transition of the topic to something they are familiar with.

In NO WAY do we want to force our American culture on the culture around us, but there are times when we do not want to COMPLETELY surprise our friends when we exercise our American ways of living even in small ways. And I would especially like for my American food that I was excited to share to be more than picked at and my music to be listened to rather than quickly changed to their favorite Bollywood song.

I'm thinking that this sounds slightly negative toward the people around us, but what else can I say, it is the truth about the transition we're going through here right now. We just get frustrated and disappointed with people. Don't we all sometimes? Luckily, these feelings come and go, and some Asians are more gracious than others when we want to share about our culture.

And honestly, it's okay if not everyone understands who we are culturally as Americans, we know that the life we lead here comes with hard sacrifices. But also this new life comes with some incredibly fascinating and exciting experiences that we get to have because of our location across the ocean. I may not be able to get in the festive fall spirit by decorating my front porch with a hay bale and pumpkins because our neighbors might think we have a new pet goat and are trying to feed the monkeys pumpkins (that are green I might add). And that’s okay. We just sometimes both really miss being understood by the people around us. There’s no easy solution to resolving our frustrations in culture that we’re facing right now, but we do stand firm in our Lord and our identity in His kingdom. He knows us intimately and cares for us. And we know He is with us as we struggle through this new season of life.

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Some Nuts and Bolts (and a hand saw)

We have been living in our new city for four weeks! The last few weeks have been frustrating and exciting, sometimes feeling both emotions on the same day.

We arrived in our city in the middle of the night and spent a few hours sleeping at our coworkers’ house. When the moving truck driver called around 9 am, we met him at our house to find no windows, no doors, and many other unfinished things around the flat. Many thoughts went through our mind: Why isn’t our flat completed when we agreed upon this date? What is taking them so long to finish the work? Where will we put our stuff? Will our stuff be safe? When will enough work be done so that we can move in?

Some of the guys in our living room sawing and working away on our window frames. (We're so ready for wood chips and dirt to be out of our house; we've lived here long enough to feel weird wearing shoes in our own house! We normally have a leave your shoes at the door policy.)

Luckily, our coworkers were really gracious and allowed us to stay in their spare bedroom for two weeks. Everyday during the past few weeks, Grayson would wake up and go sit at our unfinished flat watching about 7 guys use about 5 handsaws, 1 drill, and other very rustic looking tools hand make all of the wood windows (which are double, one on the outside with glass and one on the inside with mosquito netting). In a place where the key to accomplishing anything with people here is “to sit on their head” until they complete their work well, Grayson oversaw the painters, the electricians, and the other random workers that were in and out, making sure they were doing things well and not taking too many “chai” breaks.

It’s been slow and difficult wanting to move into our place for the last few weeks and continuing to hear from different workers, “We’re coming this afternoon,” and then not see them for several days.

We hit a speed bump when our landlords who live below us noticed a leak, so they dug up our completely finished guest bathroom to fix the leak. (Still waiting on the plumber to fill this back in..)

Grayson has been itching for our home to be finished and frustrated with workers not working very much. So he took up a paintbrush and has been helping them paint, not only to make the work go faster but also to encourage the workers to work more.

For the past two weeks we have gone to sleep in our bedroom (with plywood over the window and a lock on the door to the outside of our room) and woken up and got ready for the day to Hindi music blaring outside our door since the painters show up around 8:30 every morning. They have been painting everything from our walls to every single door and window in our house. They have been the ones in charge of sanding and varnishing all of our wood doors and windows—which from pictures you can tell there are A LOT. We absolutely love how light and airy our home is, but sometimes we wish it wasn’t at the cost of more work being done to cover those openings! Anyone else who has had work done on the inside of their house can certainly feel the annoyance of having your house in disarray and people working in your home everyday.

Just recently our screen windows have been put in about half of our windows and the frames for the glass windows have been put in with hinges. It’s a little bit different here; there is not just one contractor who oversees the work. There are guys who do the carpentry, another group of guys who do the painting and varnishing, other ones who make the safety grills for our windows, and still others who come and put the glass in the windows. Can you say LOTS of working parts?

So excited that our mosquito net windows have been going in along with doors! Without these, we have been fighting swarms to cook our dinner every night.

 Besides watching the work slowly happen in our home, we’ve been stocking our pantry while learning what food items we can buy from different stores around town. Different stores have different things that we want here. We have a few places that are about the size of a small gas station grocery store that make our life easier to buy groceries from. We will no longer take for granted a grocery shopping experience where we can take a cart (semi)leisurely down the aisles and buy fixed price items that we don’t have to worry about haggling for at the end.

We’ve also been slowly acquiring much-needed items for our home. (When you rent a place in this country, it generally comes bare bones with windows and doors.) We’ve had to purchase everything from a refrigerator to our hot water heater in our bathroom. So after price checking different places, purchasing, and installing things like hot water heaters, a week has rushed by!

We are finally settling more into our kitchen as we slowly unload boxes, wash our previously-packed dishes, and find new homes for our kitchen things.

We are currently in the market for some furniture since we are upgrading from a one-bedroom/one living room/outdoor kitchen apartment to a two room/two bedroom/indoor kitchen place (but downgrading in price!). Our flat is SO empty right now and not in a place to host our new friends. I really can’t wait for the day when our house is finished enough for me to have my lady friends over for chai and good talks! My love for hospitality is really “chompin at the bit” to host people in our home!

One thing we LOVE about our new city is the friendliness of all the people around us. We no longer get lost (and ignored) in a crowd full of tourists like we were in the capital city; here so many people stop us, talk to us, and invite us to their homes.

On a more shallow note, we love our new neighborhood because it is so QUIET (minus your occasional cow loudly mooing outside our gate) and more open with trees and beautiful animals. Grayson reminds me that he was so worried when we moved to this country because he is a man who experiences the Lord in nature and open spaces, and he thought he was going to be sentenced to busy alleyways with no trees and open spaces. However, we can see how the Lord is watching out for him because our first home had a great park just five minutes away; our second home’s porch looked out over our cul-de-sac’s personal park; and now our home has palm trees outside it with several empty lots outside it to add to the openness. We are so glad to have back our access to a roof. I don’t know many things at this point in our life that can beat watching the sunset almost nightly from your roof (I’ll have to give my dad the credit for teaching me to appreciate sunsets.)

About a week ago when we were longing for our house to be sealed!

We didn't take this, but we see these guys around our neighborhood weekly! So cool.

Four weeks. Wow. We’ve been settling in well here, only every now and then missing our life in the capital. But we are excited about what is in store for us in this city. We know the opportunity to experience and struggle through all these new things is only from the Lord. It really can be a blessing to live a little more uncomfortably for a short while. Somehow there is a “sweet spot” that exists there. And we are thankful for every blessing God bestows on us.

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"There's a first time for everything" ... The many new ones we've experienced

When you move to a new country (especially one literally half way around the world), countless new experiences hit you in the face rather abruptly. Some events are exhilarating and others are downright terrifying.  One day a new experience will make you want to stand in a corner and cry, and then the very next day, something new will happen that will make you take a step back and say, “Wow, I live in such a magical, neat place.”

Coming up on a year tomorrow, we look back on our time and say, “That was the first time I’ve ever done ‘that’ … or ‘that’ … or ‘that’.” Needless to say, we have experienced and been stretched so much more in the past year than we have from many years of our lives combined. I say this with the intention of understanding the importance of every year in our life but also recognizing that the amount of new things that have fallen into our unexpected laps is something hardly forgettable.

Cheers to the pictures that remind us of the many “firsts” we’ve experienced in our first year here!

 

The first time to enjoy nightly sunsets from the roof (unfortunately setting into the smog..).

My first time to ride on a bicycle rickshaw. As you can tell by my arm tightly gripped around G's, I was terrified the entire time that I was going to fall off the side.

First time to celebrate a major festival feast with our friends.

First time to share my traveling space with so many creatures!

First time to visit a South Asian carnival. Very scary standard of rules might I add, AKA there are generally no rules or regulations to riding the rides--Imagine people standing on the ends of the swinging pirate ship...

First time to ride a passenger train to visit a friend outside the city for a baby shower. This is the kind of train where you stuff into an uncomfortable train with tons of other people, meet/sit next to men who drop of empty milk cans and pick up full ones at every train stop along the way, and have about a minute and a half to exit the train with the many others pushing on and off too!

First time to celebrate Holi! By throwing water balloons off our balcony and trying to dodge the ones coming at us that are filled with color! (As you can see, G was too busy aiming at our neighbors to worry about getting "colored".

First time not only learning to speak and to understand a language but also to read it! Granted we can only read (and comprehend) at Kindergarten level. Shout out to all the kindergarten kiddos who are working so hard to sound out words and comprehend a story at the same time! How did we ever do that as children?

First time to depend on trains as our main way of traveling to other cities. We have become quite good friends with these sometimes smelly vehicles where you get to know your fellow passengers REALLY well (i.e. wake up on your sleeper bunk to find a man bouncing his baby by your head in "your" bunk..).

First time for G to drive a motorcycle on some of the world's craziest roads. And just recently, my first time to fall off the bike.. in the middle of a busy intersection.. Luckily just fell on my bum when we were going approximately 0.5 mph. No harm done, just another hit with the oh-so-familiar humility hammer.

FIRST TIME TO SEE ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS!

First time to enjoy getting Henna done in a friends home!

First time for me to have my clothes tailor-made. Most of the clothes I own now come from cloth and ribbon I pick out and based on the fitting I tell the tailor. For weddings and other occasions, we both are excited to wear even more cultural clothes.

First time for the both of us to celebrate the 4th of July outside of the U.S.

First time to be inundated by torrential downpours. And learning how to function with so much rain and flooding.

First time to have a friendly neighborhood cow! :) This fellow walked through the park outside our house (with the human in the background alongside him) everyday.

This is a crazy one. First time to have a human dishwasher instead of a machine one. After some time I'm starting to get used to people being used more than machines here, and I kinda like it. It's fun to have a familiar face everyday in your home and get to make a new friend. Luckily our counters were more her height than mine! :)

First time to see the Himalayas. (Look closely at the white capped beauties in the background.)

We are thankful for all the new things we are learning and adjusting to, even when sometimes those very things really challenge us and the people we thought we were. There is still so much for us to learn about our true selves when put in situations so different then what we're accustomed to. Thankfulness to the Lord abounds when we see the ways we've grown when faced with new challenges as well as when we look at the wonderful new experiences in our lives.

-Rachel

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Sheep Among Wolves - Shrewd And Innocent

“I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. Therefore, you must be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.” – Jesus

These instructions from Jesus didn’t really hit home with me until last week.  We read them that day, after being here in South Asia for almost a year now, and they had so much more meaning than they had before. 

I feel like I have learned a lot about being a sheep among wolves over the past year. 

As for wolves, they are on the prowl, looking for a meal, and looking for a weaker animal to take advantage of.  Many people around us see us as a golden ticket and as people with money growing out of our ears. In a land where resources (food, money, space, etc.) are scarce, we often look like a lone lamb that has wandered from its flock.

Some of the words I have heard as characteristics of sheep are timid, gullible, fearful, needy, and defenseless. They often don’t know where to go or how to take care of themselves. Most, if not all, of those words have described us at some point over the past year. 

We have been those sheep here wandering not knowing where to go, how to do things, how to find the things we need, how to decide which people are our friends and which are our enemies. Often times clinging to the few people that we are only pretty sure are for us and not against us. 

And although I have acknowledged myself as a sheep spiritually and mentally many times, it has driven the point home all the more as we walk as sheep in the physical as well. Praise the Lord though, we have a good Shepherd who has been watching over us guiding, protecting, and providing for us. And what’s more our Shepherd wants all of these wolves (who are really just sheep without a shepherd) to be a part of His flock as well.

SO, I am trying to learn how to be as wise and cunning and shrewd as a snake, yet as gentle and harmless and innocent as a dove. How to be watchful and mindful of the wolves around me. How to make decisions that keep us close to the Shepherd, instead of wandering alone. How, as Matthew Henry says, “to avoid all things which give advantage to our enemies, all meddling with worldly or political concerns, all appearance of evil or selfishness, and all underhand measures.” 

And at the same time, how to steer clear of the arguments and fights that wolves often try to create. How to walk in righteousness instead of retaliation. How to leave my defense and protection in the more than able hands of my Good Shepherd.

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When You Finally Feel the Shirt Tugs

   A few days ago, I saw a man riding a bike by our house with two monkeys sitting on the back. If you paid him money he would stop and make one monkey in a dress dance around and the other do a back flip. As interesting as it was to see, it was more heart wrenching because other people and I didn’t want to stop him to see his show, but we would watch from a distance as someone else asked him to stop, and then rob him of possibly the only income he earns to support his family by not going over to pay him pennies. Yet again, the poverty and desperation here (and sometimes my attitude toward it) overwhelms me.

  When you are in a new place and see people everywhere on the streets putting their hands all up in your space and pulling on you begging you for things and then see people just stare forward and ignore them, your heart breaks. But when this begins to happen to you daily for an extended period of time and when you hear about beggar’s circles and pimps and other REALLY BAD JUNK, you begin to harden your heart not only for protection from heartbreak but also because you begin to believe that your nickel will actually harm them more than help.
 And we know that we can't be the only people who feel like this. In a book I'm reading, Seth Barnes experiences the same thing when he explains, "We can't just do nothing. I'm an American. We are the richest people in the world. We know 'to whom much is given, much is expected.' We labor under the guilt of our abundance. In that moment, paralyzed by ambiguity, uncomfortable that people are grabbing for my wallet, I do nothing. Called to a lifestyle of giving, of activism, I risk becoming a parody of myself, maybe even like Peter, who when he saw Christ, denied him."

  After months of forward-glances and denials, the Lord has begun to break our heart for the poor around us. He has convicted us both separately and then encouraged us to move forward together. My heart broke as I saw the monkey man drive past us and realized that no one just does that for fun (aka train monkeys, and dress them, and ride around giving performances). Kids don’t look grimy and pull at your clothes because there’s nothing else better to do. Mom’s don’t carry their small babies around sitting at Metro entrances because that is the best place to raise them.

  No. There is some seriously hard stuff going on in these people’s lives. The man with the monkey probably doesn’t have ANOTHER job. By no means am I an expert at the inner workings of the poor in this country or know/understand their motives. And people may argue and say that giving money may just encourage the process of begging or that they should get jobs, but I can no longer deny that there is something up when people go to these lengths and when our Savior hung out with the poor and needy and didn’t turn people away when they came to Him, even the really sick like the lepers (Matthew 8:1-4). When people followed Him, He asked them what they really wanted.

  And this is exactly how the Lord spoke to Grayson. He told him that from here on out that he is no longer to ignore the people that come up to us. Whether we give them food, money, prayer, or water, we will ask there name and what they really want. Do the lame men on the ground really want to be healed? Do the kids really want money, or do their bellies ache for food?

  As we recently have been acting on the Lord’s leading, He provided an opportunity immediately to obey (which He usually does). A boy came up to Grayson and his friend at a coffee shop the other day asking for food. After convincing several waiters (trying to shoo the boys away) that they really wanted to talk to the boys, Grayson and his friend were able to talk and pray with the boys, then give them some water (which they quickly gulped down).

  We have learned that we’re on this earth to spread His blessing to everyone we meet, despite our fear, preconceived notions, better judgment, or the influence of the culture around us that so blatantly pushes these people down (quite literally shooing people like dogs). We’ve learned that if we don’t prayerfully live in this new culture, there are going to be other (unrighteous) attitudes that creep into our hearts.

  What blessings are you withholding from people because of culture, self-protection, etc? What do you need to ask Him for forgiveness for and grace to move forward for?

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