Still a Missionary

I had in mind that after my Asia trip, I would stop blogging since my mission adventures would be over.  But then someone reminded me... it's never over.  Aren't we missionaries everywhere?  Hmm... so that leaves me compelled to keep my missionary efforts in high gear and... maybe keep this blog updated with my random missionary thoughts, quotes, inspirations and news.  I probably won't update on here too often, for I don't have time to do that (which should be the case, eh?).

  As I experience life and it's trials and blessings, I'll post little snippets of it here.  As I receive encouragement to continue running the race that has been set before me, I'll share that here to encourage you as well.  And as I witness missionary efforts here in America, I'll post them on this blog to keep the fire for missions burning within us.  Don't plan to check this blog everyday for my updates... I doubt I'll even do a once a week thing.  But, I'll try to keep it up (whatever that means).

So enjoy reading and keep up the race, my friends!

P.S. You can comment on my posts.  I believe I set it up that anyone may write their thoughts and comments.  I'd love to hear from you! :)

A Much Needed Update!

Wow.  It’s amazing how busy I’ve been without having a chance to blog!  Or maybe, it’s because I’m enjoying myself so much I find other exciting things to do.  Maybe it’s both.  Probably so.

Mango Sticky Rice!

  Either way, I’ve been enjoying myself immensely and have started having feelings of sadness that I’m leaving so soon (tonight!).  Several people have mentioned that there’s an option that I can stay longer because Korean Air offers the first flight change free of charge.  So I could change my departure until one of two weeks later!  I can’t help but chuckle!  Aunt Lynette, Lisa Sharon and Mrs. Steck have all hinted at the idea (or maybe more than hinted… suggested strongly).

At the Night Safari!

  Yet, I am ready to go home.  I miss my family, especially my dad whose health hasn’t been the best since my leaving.  He caught pneumonia, which is a scary thing with his immune system being shot from his recent surgery.  So I’m anxious to get home and see him and help my mom.  If I stayed here longer, I’d want them to come here too! :)  I’m jealous of my time with them.

Riding a huge tortoise... not.

  What have I been doing since being here in Thailand?  Well, I swam in the pool with the kids almost everyday last week.  I’ve helped cook and clean.  I went to a Sunday night market, which was pretty awesome since I could get mango sticky rice!  That made the whole thing worthwhile!  I hope to go back this Sunday night.  I went with the family and the Mackins (a dear women and her adopted Chinese daughter) to the Night Safari, which was pretty cool!  We got to see all these neat animals in their nocturnal states!  I saw an albino raccoon, which was so cool and a giraffe stuck its head in the tram we were in and begged for food.  I never knew giraffes were so BIG!  That was my favorite part of the whole Safari!  I was only disappointed that I couldn’t take any pictures because it got too dark.

  Let’s see… oh! And we went to a sticky waterfall!  That was incredible!  The water has a lot of calcium in it, so the calcium has deposited and created this awesome cascade of waterfalls!  And you can walk right up the face of the falls, which made things even more interesting and exciting.  We found two freshwater crabs.  That generated a mix of excited shouts and nervous chattering.  Some were poking curiously at the creature while others watched nervously perched atop a safe location away from the action (Can you guess which group I was in?).  After walking around on the waterfalls a bit, we had a fabulous picnic lunch.

At the Sticky Waterfall!

Our picnic lunch

Micah looking for fish

 

Looking at the freshwater crab

 A freshwater crab!

  This last weekend, there was a retreat held here in Chiang Mai for missionaries in the south Asian countries (Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, etc.).  It was at a fancy hotel in downtown Chiang Mai and quite a number of people came.  I was able to see the Sharons, who I haven’t seen for years!  And the Stecks!  What fun it was to see all these missionaries come together!  The main speaker was a huge disappointment, so we didn’t attend any of his meetings, but rather stayed in the hotel room and read our Huguenot story and drew.

  I’ve taught Elyssa and Micah a little bit about shading techniques in drawing.  Elyssa’s really gotten the hang of it!  She’s into horses so we’ve practiced drawing horses and making them as realistic as possible.  She’s done really well, although she claims it’s mostly me.  But I disagree… I help her, but she’s learning.

A foal.

Elyssa's second drawing.  Incredible!

Destiny, Lisa's Karen baby

  Right now, the “Rawling hotel” has no vacancy!  There are a total of 26 people here!  That includes all their babies and us, but still, that’s a lot of people in one house!  The Stecks (4), Lisa Sharon and her baby (2), Myers (4), Adams (or, at least some of them) (8), Sunny (1), Mackins (2), Rawlings (4), and me!  Pretty full.  Babies crying, fingers typing on computers, boys swimming in the pond behind the house, girls making lunch, mothers chatting… it could easily be called chaos.  I’ve done my share of babysitting.  All the Karen babies are so cute!  Several of the missionaries have “adopted” them.  There are a total of 6 adopted Karen babies here.  My favorite is Lisa’s, who is such a happy little girl!  It doesn’t take much to make her smile!  I just love her!

  Well, I leave tonight.  I have mixed feelings, but mostly, I’m excited to get back to my family!  I miss them so much!  And my friends… I miss them too.  I look forward to catching up with some of you as soon as I can get back! :)

A Day in the Life of Jolene – Mungpoo, India

5:15 – My alarm startles me awake.  I set it to snooze, but finally get up at 5:25.  It’s cold this morning (like most mornings… what’s new?).

6:00 – My time with God.  I’m reading through the parables of Jesus alongside Christ’s Object Lessons. 

6:30 – I head up to Krystle’s morning worship at the church.  She’s covering the Lord’s Prayer.  Very intriguing.  We ended the worship with everyone repeating the Lord’s Prayer… most of them in Nepali, with a few of us saying it in English!  Pretty neat!

7:30 – Breakfast!  Mmm… I had fried rice, sweet rice, millet waffle and chicu (a most delicious local fruit.). 

8:30 – Brushed my teeth, combed my hair and headed out the door to help Krystle with the last few girls who have the massage practical to complete.  I’m the “dummy,” which means they do the practical on me.  It was pretty cold as it was, but what made it worse was the girls had freezing cold hands!  Talk about non-relaxing!  No sleeping through this massage!

10:30 – Phew.  Done with the practical!  I’m ready to start cleaning teeth.  Who should I pick first?  I chose Jamuna.

11:00 – Cleaning Jamuna’s teeth

12:00 – Still cleaning Jamuna’s teeth.

1:15 – Finally done!  Man, did she have dental problems!  It took me over an hour just to work on her bottom teeth!  And, to top it off, she kept salivating, causing to her to have to spit every 5 minutes.  She’s one of the ones that really needed a cleaning.  Glad to have helped her (although, she complained her jaw hurt after… I’m not surprised!).

1:30 – Lunch!  Rice, stir-fry, cucumber salad and dahl.  We have dahl and rice everyday.  I don’t think I’ll miss rice too much when I leave Asia.  Or dahl, for that matter (especially when you almost always break a tooth on small rocks that aren’t cleaned out of the lentils).

2:30 – I start working on Hannah’s teeth.  She had her teeth cleaned the month before by a novice so she wanted another novice to check her teeth.  It was boring…nothing to clean, really.  I’m guessing most teeth in America will look about as good as hers did.  How unexciting.

3:00 – Preparing for my Women’s Ministries class.  I have the topic “leading small groups.”  I felt I could easily find stuff to talk about on that one since I kind of led a very small group of young people in Idaho.  I think I might talk a little too long though… we’ll see.

5:00 – Started Women’s Ministries class… late.  The girls were given a test that proved to be much more complicated then they’d expected.  They all moaned at how long it was too (1 page, front and back).  I couldn’t help but chuckle when I thought of my exams in college – 5 or 6 pages with 2 hours to complete.  And I usually spent a good hour and a half doing them.

5:30 – Finished my talk.  I had to speak quickly so as to keep within the time limit.  The topic was good, but the girls seemed a little tired by the time we finished.  I think that exam wiped them out.  Now for staff worship.

6:45 – Staff worship ends and we all have some warm homemade soymilk with rice puffs.  I started feeling really sick during the worship.  I could tell that I had a low-grade fever.

7:30 – Auntie Lori checks my temp and, sure enough, I have a low-grade fever (99.4°F).  I really didn’t feel well.  We sat up and talked for a while and then Senteal came over to sing some songs with us.  He’s learning to sing in English pretty well.  He knows like over 6 languages!  These crazy people who learn languages so fast.  I hardly can get past mastering one language.

8:30 – I’m miserable.  My fever has gone up and I feel chilled.  I drag myself around trying to get ready for bed.

9:00 – I have my nighttime prayer and thank God for Auntie Lori.  She’s taken the job of watching over me seriously.  She gives me my dose of icky oregano oil to make me well, tucks me in bed, and hands me my hot water bottle.  What a Godsend! 

Random Thoughts

Note: This was written Monday, the 23rd.  Due to internet being down, I had to write all this on my computer and save it.  Enjoy!

They say that mind power is incredibly powerful (maybe that’s why they call it mind power?).  I’ve seen it work.  It’s pretty incredible.  I just wish I could use some of it now!  It doesn’t seem to be working!

  I’ve told myself several times that I’m not going to get sick while I’m here.  I’ve taken all the precautionary measures to assure that I not get sick, but alas!  They did scarcely a thing!  I had a sore throat a couple mornings ago that lasted all day.  The next day it was gone, but in its place was this dry cough that is threatening to get worse.  Yesterday I had a runny nose, and today, I have a stuffed-up nose.  I have no intentions on getting sick… but some things you just can’t help. 

  We had a nice Sabbath, besides the fact that I was fighting a sore throat.  They have quite the extensive Sabbath service here in Mungpoo.  First, we spend an hour in the pre-Sabbath school (which has it’s own song service, nature nugget, special music, testimony and offering), and then we split into groups for the actual Sabbath school time.  Krystle and I usually go to the English one, but there was no one there, so we did our own… watched David Ashrick!  After an hour of that, we get back together for the church service, which often lasts 1 ½ to 2 hours long.  We don’t get out of church until around 2 usually.  That’s 4 ½ hours of being “in church!”  It seemed to go faster this time then last week, though.  Sandra Miss translated everything for us, since it was all in Nepali.

I joined a group going for a Sabbath hike.  That was enjoyable!  A heavy fog had rolled in; it was so thick I could almost feel it.  It gave the whole landscape an enchanted look.  Reminded me of the Enchanted Forest in Pilgrims Progress!  We hiked for 2 hours and boy, do my calves feel it!  I haven’t worked them hard since I’ve been here!  Haven’t had time to do much exercising.

Dahn Kumari, Jemima, Me, Sarah, and Seth

My Enchanted Forest

Our group again, but this time Seth's taking the picture and Sandra Miss took his place

   

I loved the hike! 

  Krystle and I spent probably 2 hours doing laundry this morning.  Everything here takes longer than you think.  At home, when I say I’m doing laundry, that means I opened a washer, placed the clothes in with some soap, and pushed a button.  And when they’re done, I put them in the dryer and an hour later pull out nice clean and dry clothes.  Here, you spend 2 hours just washing the clothes… by hand.  Sure, that’s not too big a deal, yet you really have to pay attention to how you use your clothes!  It takes several days for some things to dry because of the cold.  Like my wool socks.  It took them 3 days to fully dry… and I only brought three pairs (one of which I’ve designated as my “bedtime” socks.).  And your hands get so cold washing in frigid water.  Thankfully, we warmed our water! :)