Thursday, June 21, 2012

Chicago and Beyond


On our only full day off from METE festivities, I went with Jen and Doreen to the Immanuel Covenant Church which has 17 (I think) languages represented in their congregation, and we got to hear Scripture read in Chinese! It was cool. The pastor’s name is Linnea, and she is giving the closing speech at the Annual Meeting this year, which is also cool, but I will not be in attendance, as I will be fighting for my daughter’s rights in Washington DC. I will be there via internet though, as it will be broadcast online. Anyway, back to the story.
So, we went to this great church, followed by a potluck of Filipino food (this week). Daniel and Cassidy came to pick me up, with a passed out Cohen (he’s 2) in tow, and we went to a White Sox game! Why not the Cubs, you ask? Well, they were out of town, and we wanted to go to a game, so the Sox were our only other option. We bought scalped tickets for only $25 each and had seats 8 rows back in center field. Talk about the best place to watch a baseball game! It was so fun to hang out with them and Cohen and see his joy at being at a game. He is used to going to Anaheim Angels games though, so he would periodically call out ‘Go Angels!” and we would have to correct him. It was still very cute though. The Sox were losing badly, but in the 8th inning, they came back with 2 runs and then got another great play in the 9th inning: bases loaded, and the guy hits a home run straight into our section! Fireworks erupted and so did the crowd! Of course, they still lost by 2, but what a great way to go out! While we were waiting for the final out, I noticed that there was a sign for kid’s day where kids get to run the bases on the field. We got Cohen right in line, and man, that kid really ran the bases. I figured he would get tuckered out around second base, but he just kept on trucking and was so proud of himself when he finished. It was a great Sunday!
After METE was finished, I took the train down to Naperville where my friend Ilse from high school is spending the summer with her family while her husband does research on dark matter. Hardcore, huh? Well, Ilse’s sister Ellen, also my friend from high school, came up with her little boy Eli from where she lives another hour south of there, so we had a great afternoon, playing with Ilse’s girls Anisa and Rovena and Eli in the pool. Of course, then I came down with either sunstroke or the flu, still unclear, and ended up passing out around 6pm and sleeping til 8am the next day.
I rallied though, and we took the girls to Lincoln Park Zoo for the afternoon. Hey, even on my death bed, I was not about to miss out on visiting the site of my favorite romantic comedy of all time, Return to Me. David Duchovny walked those paths, people. Priorities. I did nearly pass out and had to sleep on a park bench for about a half hour so I didn’t keel over and freak all the little kids out, but I ended up feeling much better later and was able to appreciate the ape exhibit, featured in my all time favorite romantic comedy, Return to Me, among other things like lions, tigers and bears. Seriously, we saw them all, no pun intended! We attempted to pick up some Albanian food on the way home, since Ilse’s husband, Abaz, is from Albania, but alas! The store did not open for another hour from when we arrived there! We had to settle for pita bread and veggies from the Middle Eastern/Mediterranean grocery store in the same strip mall.
I slept from about 8pm to 10:30am the next day while everyone else went to church, but was feeling a lot better by the time they came home, so we enjoyed a nice afternoon trip to the grocery store, went for a walk in the woods by a lake near their house after dinner, and watched Moneyball that night after the kids were asleep. Today we went swimming for hours and the girls made some new friends in the complex, which will be nice for them as they are here for the whole summer.
Now I am on a train, wending my way east from Chicago to Washington, DC, passing through quintessential middle America, and watching the sun set as I spent the past five hours updating my life online. This is all for you, dear readers! You thought I forgot you, and though I may neglect you, sometimes for months, rest assured that I will always update, just not with as much detail as you may desire. Sorry, some things are better left unsaid. Stay tuned for more updates from the road! 

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Home Stay April-May


Well, I’ve already posted a bit about this trip, but let me continue the story. I left off with my arrival in Washington State. It was a great time, a time to connect with family and reconnect with old friends. I was so busy, every day was full with reading for the missionary conference I was attending in June in Chicago, speaking engagements at churches, Bible studies or schools, and hours spent on the internet trying to find some information about how to get Sophie US citizenship, since she has been denied Thai citizenship.
I spent time with my entire family on my moms’ side, other than my cousin Meghaann in Mozambique, saw a lot of past high school teachers, saw kids I used to babysit, reconnected with lots of people who helped raise me my first eight years of life in Ephrata, and visited with some dear friends in Seattle who I hadn’t seen in several years.
I went back to LA after the whirlwind tour of the Northwest, ready to jump into a big fundraising event that had been in the works for months: Traffick Jam, an evening of music, dance and art paired with a silent auction. It was so amazing to get to hear some of my friends from Bible study play their original stuff, when I had only ever heard them play in church before. I got to catch up with so many people I hadn’t seen in a long time, and connect with new people to share what I’ve been doing in Thailand. It was an amazing night, and couldn’t have been such a success without the tireless efforts of Angelina Lee, my LA pastor’s wife, behind the scenes putting it all together, and adding an original dance of her own to the performances of the night. It was powerful!
I sold most of my stuff from storage the following morning and made a few bucks to pay for food and travel as I continued across the country.
Here’s a tangent storyline: When I first got to LA, I got my fingerprints done so that by the time I got back to LA, I would have my background check done and could get it certified by the Secretary of State’s office. Well, someone, somewhere screwed up, so when I got back, they had sent me the wrong paper! Hours on the phone being redirected to multiple answering machines, and I finally decided to go downtown to the Secretary of State’s office and just try to get them to call the DOJ in Sacramento to fix their screwup.
I got right in to the SOS office, but there was nothing they could do for me, so they directed me to the Dept of Justice on the first floor of the same building. I explained the whole saga of a situation to them and the lady disappeared for about 10 minutes in the back. She came out with a direct email, direct phone number and name and said she had left my number with the Sacramento office to call back before noon that day. Thank you Lord! I went off to await the call and call them if they did not call me by noon. But, about 10am, they did call. I was able to get special dispensation from the office to expedite the report to be sent out that day with all the correct signatures. Thank the Lord, again!
Meanwhile, I was driving my stuff from my storage unit up to Helen’s house to sell on Saturday, when I got another call from the office in Sacramento saying that I also needed to get a CACI background check for overseas adoptions, so she processed that for me overnight as well, and just took it on faith that I would send the check for the amount it cost. Now, armed with all the paperwork I thought I needed, I went to the Secretary of State’s office for the signatures. Here begins Saga Part II.
I get to the office, I’m the only one there, so they do the authentication for the first set of overnighted papers, but say the CACI ones are faxed, not originals, so I have to go to get them notarized, then come back. I try to find a notary, and discover the only one in the area opens in an hour. I decided to kill some time with my book at McDonalds. After an hour, I get into the notary’s office, he stamps my stuff, and off I go, only to discover that now there are 20 people in the waiting room. I patiently wait my turn and get up to the counter to be told “Nope. It’s notarized wrong. Take him this paper and come back with it done right.” You have GOT to be kidding me. I try to contain my frustration and the waste of time this has all been from the beginning, and go BACK to the notary, two blocks away to get the correct thing done, which is just me signing the back of the paper. Real hard to remember, right? Isn’t that this guy’s JOB? What the heck? I go back for the third time to the SOS office, only to discover the place is PACKED with people. At this point, I’ve been there for 3 hours. THREE HOURS for what should have been a simple authentication, in and out in 5 minutes tops. So, I throw American rules of courtesy out the window, and access the Middle Eastern side of my, jumping the queue and saying, as politely as possible, “I’m so sorry, I really don’t want to jump the line, but I’ve been here for 3 hours and I just want to get this signed.” Thankfully, the lady is super nice, takes it and stamps it and hands it back to me in under 90 seconds, asking just for the check to pay for the authentication. Such a sweet lady, she should get a commendation from the mayor!
At this point, I am supposed to take the papers to the Thai Consulate for some additional stamp. I am excited to speak Thai again! Which I do, immediately, and then discover that the security guard is Middle Eastern, not Thai. Whoops. Upstairs, I fare better and talk to two Thai people, doing my best wai and “ka” to ingratiate myself into their good graces. Not that it does much good, they say I have to now mail the papers to the authentication place in DC, which makes NO SENSE because it’s a State background check, not Federal, and then take them to the Thai Embassy in DC. So, the saga continues. Stay tuned for next week’s installment.
The week after the fundraiser included Disneyland with Tricia and Amber, a flight to Tucson, a zoo and bowling with a two year old, tantrums (from the two-year-old, not from me), barbecues, shooting guns for the first time ever with my brother-in-law, and getting to share my story with about 30 ladies at my sister’s Mary Kay meeting. FYI, largest gathering to date where I knew no one and was able to speak for more than 60 seconds. And I didn’t talk too fast, I promise! I also sold almost all the rest of the handicrafts I had brought from Thailand. People love that stuff! I’m so excited to share with the families in Thailand about how well things sold. 




May 30, caught a jet plane (well, not really a jet, I guess, just a Southwest plane) to Chicago, my first trip to the Windy City. I was ready for two solid weeks of having my head crammed full of useful info about what it means to be a “Covenant missionary.” Also to have my myriad questions answered. I was not disappointed. We were in class 10 hours a day, sometimes ending with several more hours of dinner with various important people in our denomination, like the president. (Churches have presidents, who knew? Maybe you did. I did not.)
It was a great experience, and I met a bunch of new cool people, with whom I quickly bonded for life and then realized, too late, that I would in all likelihood never see again. Well, I guess I’ll see some of them again. Stephen and Soo are in Japan, Caryn is in Taiwan and Chris and Diane are going back to China at some point in the future, so it’s more likely I’ll see them. I probably will never see Jen, Doreen, Amanda, Daniel and Cassidy or John and Letha again though, cause they are in Europe and Latin America. Well, it was a great, intense, bonding, learning experience nonetheless, and I loved nearly every minute of it. The only downside was that because of our intense schedule, I had no time to take care of the jillion things I needed to do to continue fundraising so I can go home in July, which meant I would be up til midnight every night and then up at 6 am to get ready to go back to class. By the final day, I was falling asleep during lecture with exhaustion, despite drinking lots of chocolate and Coke to stay awake, and really interesting speakers. 

It was so terrible, I was literally falling asleep as the president of the Ecuadorian Covenant Church was speaking. He was speaking Spanish, and we had a translator, but my brain would not stop translating anyway. I was like “Brain! Stop translating! You are using up the last reserves of energy we have. I am fall…ing….as…leep…zzz” and then when my head dropped, and I startled awake, I had to get up and go to the bathroom to splash some water on my face and smack myself around a bit. Oy, barely made it through that hour.  
The other great part about Chicago was staying with the DeNeui family, who had lived for 18 years in Thailand. I was SO excited to talk to them about their experiences and share mine with them and get their advice on things. It was so healing and helpful and I was overjoyed to learn more about Thailand and have Thai spoken to me.
Highlights of our METE missionary training conference:
SOUL FOOD, not the movie, just the food. We went to an awesome African-American church on our first Sunday and then two of the ladies took us to this spectacularly awesome soul food place and I could barely contain myself, I was so excited. You can ask anyone. I was literally jumping up and down outside the restaurant as we waited for some people to finish eating so we could all sit. Oh, so much food. Oh, so much goodness and oh, so much great conversation. LOVE IT. Love those people and that whole experience!
Enneagram. You may not have heard it referred to that way, but it’s basically a personality typing format that tells you what resourceful and non-resourceful qualities you are using, what personality type you revert to under stress and when you feel safe and what your partner type is. Shockingly, I know, I’m an enigma and am almost equally split between “Goodness,” “Love,” and “Loyalty.” I was actually really surprised to discover that I was not scoring very high on the Wisdom chart, since the descriptors of that are “always seeking knowledge, questioning, wanting to know the hows and whys of things, introspective, a voracious reader.” What in that list does not describe me? Yet, it was a distant fourth in the personality list. Oh, well. Good news is that in every personality type, I used vastly more resourceful qualities than non-resourceful qualities, so at least I’m well balanced. Ha! Clearly, I cheated. (Just kidding, I don’t think it’s possible to cheat).
Thai dinner and string tying ceremony. I so super duper miss sticky rice and chicken, so it was awesome to have that for dinner, and then Paul did this Thai blessing ceremony that is pre-Buddhist, but usually attributed to Buddhism, where you say a blessing over the person’s life as you tie a string of cotton thread around their wrist to bind them to God. He says bless in the name of Jesus, rather than Buddha and reclaim this practice. He did one for me first as an example and did it all in Thai, which nearly made me burst into tears, despite the fact that I only understood 75% of it. Then we were all supposed to pair up and bless each other. I tell you, God was present in that room that night. It was powerful, and was really hard to keep from crying, especially when Chris and Jen did theirs for me. In fact, I’m crying typing this right now as I remember it. God was definitely using them to speak truth, power and strength to me, that I desperately needed as I’m so far from Sophie and home. Paul challenged us to pass on the blessing to those who weren’t able to stay that night as they had little kids to tend to, so I made a concerted effort to do that before we left, even though I ended up doing most of them our last night at dinner before we all left one another for our respective homes.
Hanging out with people one-on-one. I love big group talks, but you only really get to know people when it’s just the two of you, so I liked that I had time to spend with just me and every other person for at least a few minutes during the course of the two weeks.
Missiology. Who knew that the study of God’s mission in the world would be so fascinating and deep? Well, I knew it would be deep, but fascinating? That was a surprise. Paul teaches it so well that it’s simply captivating and I want to know more and more. I hope I get to go to his Missiology conference in January. It’s in my town, so I should be able to go for a few days at least!
The Missionary Prayer Calendar. Did not know that a) such a thing as an MPC existed,  b) I would be the very first entry in the new book. Awkward. And Awesome. (to borrow my friend Rosa’s phrase. Sorry, dude, it seemed appropriate.) So, my official prayer days, according to this calendar, are the first of July, September, November, January, March and May. Let the miracles commence! I prefer miracles of cash. J Just kidding, people! Calm down! Of course I prefer much more amazing miracles of lives changed. Although, if someone wanted to give us cash to buy our much needed new Taw Saeng building, I would put that in both the cash AND life transforming categories.