Viola!

I have found it!

The Perfect meal. Spaghetti noodles, marinara sauce, garlic and oil, red onion, oregano, salt, pepper, chicken or roast beef. Stir fry in skillet and eat. Goes well with chocolate milk and chocolate cheesecake.

I have been very busy working hard and trying to keep from melting at the same time. It’s over 110 degrees, and summer is a month away. I have to use gloves to touch anything metal in the day time. I don’t know how people could live here without a/c. I got an ice chest for long trips, and fill it with water and soda. It’s great to have. The work is hard, but my buddies and I have a good time whenever we can.

Every few days I go to visit a small village north of a large city. I see the same few people every time I go there. They are very fun, but none of us know each other’s language. There is one person there that gives me and my friend a meal every time we se him. My buddy does not like the food, but is polite. I eat my food, plus his share of the bread. They give us each a plate or rice and sauce, a piece of chicken and two pieces of flatbread. The bread is very good, the rest is a nice change and taste of the local culture. I really enjoy the trips because I get to experience the country I’m in. It’s an amazing mix of the modern and third world. Major highway with donkey carts along the side, and smll country roads with Mercedes on them.

Hey everyone, this is Ariele writing on behalf of John. His AKO email has not been working the last week and he has not received any emails since April 30th. If you sent him one, please resend it and if you know his other email address send it there too. He doesn't know to check that one yet, but as soon as he calls I will tell him to be checking both if he doesn't find any emails at AKO. AKO is his us.army.mil address. If you don't have his hotmail address let me know and I'll share it with you. Thanks.

I'm here...for now.

I finally moved. I live in a large dorm room and have a bunk bed with a mattress, a wall locker and AC power and air conditioning. Everything one could want. I also got a large stack of mail that was waiting for me. It included a letter from my aunt, several each from my mom, Kate and Erin, Carol and Ariele. If anyone else wrote me, it’s not here yet. It seems to be taking things about a week to get to me. The food is similar to what I’ve been eating throughout. It is the rainy season here, so there are large puddles of standing water everywhere. The area outside seems rather dull and dreary. Everything is brown, and muddy, and there are few trees. My roommates are all nice and easy to work with.

Most of my luggage was separated from me on the flight up here. I have everything I need with me, but my nice Bible was in the lost luggage. But I will get it back shortly. Fortunately I received another one in the mail today, but it is KJV, and I prefer NIV. I will also get some of the luggage that I shipped earlier.

I have the option of buying a cell phone or my own internet, but I am unsure if I will, because I don’t want to spend a lot of money.

If anyone would like to send me some thing, there are a few things that I would like

- magnetic hooks, clips, racks or organizers, to hang stuff on.

- magnets to put on my space, and hold other things up.

I have a metal wall locker that is 2’ deep by 1.5’ wide by 6’ tall. I need to make the most of the space.

Due to really slow computers, I’m going to ask for now that anyone sending me email send it in Word, Notepad, or wordpad document as an attachment. This will make it much easier for me to save and read them. If you can’t do with, I’ll still be able to read and reply to emails. If you’re willing, but unsure how, just call my wife. She’s very smart and nerdy and good at explaining things like that. Thanks.

Please pray for the following things when you think of me.

- That I would not forget God in my business, and would grow here.

- That I would be patient and loving with those I work with

- That God would heal Ariele

- Safety for Ariele and the kids.

One Year

Today is the one year mark of the say that I gave in to peer pressure and created a blog. Even my wife was doing it. I wouldn’t have remembered it until I saw that the posts went back to April 2006. It was originally started as a place to write about my adventure hiking, climbing and camping. It stayed that way until I moved out of the country temporarily and put an end to my outdoor adventures. When I return I will write about my trip to the summit of Mt. Rainier. I looked back to my first post and saw that I was lamenting the fact that I had not been to the mountains recently had no prospects of going in the near future. Not much has changed in that regard. I still long for the mountains as a place where I feel free and alive.

What are you looking at?

Doing very little...for now...

There are a quite a few familiar sights where I am right now. There is a Charley’s, Pizza Hut, Subway, Hardee’s, and who could live without Starbucks in the desert? The cafeteria even serves Baskin Robbins ice cream. I think I’m going to get fat by the time I leave this place. All the cheesecake, cookies and ice cream one could eat. Nearby there are a post office, a barber shop, a day spa, and many souvenir shops selling local merchandise. I made up my mind not to spend any money at the fast food places, but made an exception for the Hardee’s one morning. They don’t even have them in WA. They sell the same food as Carl’s Jr, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had a Western Bacon Cheeseburger. I’ll be moving to the north by the end of the month, so many of these amenities might not available anymore.

Living in a desert means a dire lack of water. Water is one of the essential elements of life, even more so than chocolate, red wine vinegar and baklava. Here, almost all of it is imported from somewhere else, who must have quite an overabundance of it, because they can spare entire truckloads of bottled water for my portion of the desert. It gets so hot that all the bottled water companies put salt in the water because they already know you’re at risk for heat stroke. It’s so bright that by 7am someone from another country might think it is noon. One of the most obvious symptoms of the lack of water in the desert is that nothing grows here. Not even people. Even they are all imported. And the ones that lived here before people started emigrating were nomads. They moved around from place to place because there was no water. This country’s main export is sand rock and oil and main import is everything else. Obviously, the people who founded this country were distant relatives to the geniuses who decided to put the largest city in America in another wasteland that is stuck in a perpetual drought. I suppose it is a good thing that so many people live in wastelands. Otherwise my volcanic rainforest paradise where I can take showers that last longer than 3 minutes might become even more overcrowded than it already is.

I was off today and did very little. The highlight of my day ( apart from my email) was trying all three flavors of San Bendetto tea. The peach is still my favorite, but the lemon and verde were surprisingly good. I’m also off tomorrow. I plan on doing very little.

I like putting pictures in my posts, and this was the only one I had that had anything to do with what I wrote.

Hard Work

I’ve been working very hard for the last three days. I’ve worked both all day and all night at different times, and driven every kind of vehicle that I’m qualified on. I enjoyed the work, especially yesterday. I had to be there, so I might as well work, and tried to find as much to do as possible. It feels good to home after a hard day’s work. I also got several chances to pass on some of my knowledge to others, by teaching them how to use the trucks that I drive. I enjoyed that. I went home satisfied and happy, only to go online and find that the job requirements had changed drastically and it may be some time before I can get promoted. Add that to the news that I’ll be here a few months longer than I planned to.

I was reminded to today of Hebrew 12:1-12, especially the middle part. So, while disappointed, I will not give up hope.

Italy

Ariele was right, the tea came from Italy. I found it amusing, because several of my other favorite things from Italy, including my favorite in all this world.

I wanted to see if anyone would guess where it came from, and what they would guess. I suppose it would have been easier to say “guess where my new favorite tea came from?”, but this was more fun to write. I do apologize to any out there who suffered from the suspense.

Justine, I did get the comment that replied to my last post. I enjoyerd reading it.

Hard work today, but I'm off tomorrow, so i think I'll write something.

More ramblings

I have the screen saver on my laptop set to randomly play from a folder of my favorite pictures of the outdoors and my family. In the past several days three people have noticed the pictures and told me they were very good. Two of the three said that they were worth trying to sell. I can’t take all the credit because some of the pictures were taken by Ariele too. Maybe when I get settled in somewhere I’ll ask Ariele to send me some paper copies that I can hang up in my space. I am eagerly awaiting my return home and a chance to go out and get new pictures.

I have continued to sample as much of the local culture and area as possible in my situation. Last night I was able to visit the port and enjoyed the scenery along the way. Everything here seems to have been well planned. The road system is similar to that of the US, on the population is only a fraction of what would use similar highways at home. The result is very low traffic. There are huge arrays of power lines, that sometimes seem to go nowhere. The land, is flat, and very slightly rolling, but greener than I had expected, especially because it is spring. There are many merchants that I have had the opportunity to interact with. They mostly sell jewelry, clothing, and souvenirs particular to the area. I picked up a few very nice mink blankets for a bargain price that I plan to mail home. One thing I have noticed about all of the merchants is that they are all very polite, but they are all very eager to make a sale, and at times pushy. It must be something with the culture. They are also willing to haggle over the price, but I’m not much of a haggler.

I have not been too successful in sampling much of the local food. All that I have been able to get is what I could buy at the store. I’m not even sure if it’s local or not, I just know it’s not American. I really like Galaxy chocolate. My favorites are the flutes. They are crunchy on the inside, and chocolate covered on the outside. Like those tube things that they sell at Starbucks to dip in the coffee, only thicker and with more chocolate.
A few days ago I was at the store and saw a brand of iced tea that I had never seen before. It was called San Bendetto, and came in Green, Lemon and Peach flavors. I bought the Peach. It turned out to be the best iced tea I have ever bought. Had I a fridge I would have bought a case. It is even very reasonable priced, I think. As I was drinking it, I was intrigued to notice that there was no writing in the local language on it. On closer inspection, I was amused to find out that such a good drink came from….

To be continued….

A good book

When I was on the plane flying over here, I saw a friend reading what appeared to be a book by the Mountaineers press, so I asked to look at it. It was not by the Mountaineers, but was The Heavenly Man, by Brother Yun. Oddly, this conversation didn’t go anywhere and it wasn’t until several days later that we discovered a mutual faith in God. After he finished it, this friend lent me the book and said it was very good. I took it, but just left it in my backpack until yesterday. I picked the book up because I was waiting for a bus and had already paced all my other books. The book is about the Life of Brother Yun, who was called by God at the age of 16 to be missionary and leader of Chinese house churches. He saw and brought countless people to Christ, and witnessed countless miracles, including walking out the front gate of a maximum security prison in China. From the moment I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. The book reads like a 20th century book of Acts. I brought it with me to read on the bus, and then we ended up waiting for an hour before we left. Then about a mile down the road we had to wait about another two hours. All together, I read almost non stop from 2:30pm to sunset at 6:30pm. In those 4 hours I read about 250 pages, which was most of the book.

Both tonight and last night I have been treated to a front row seat at a marvelous electrical storm. I have seen any lightning in almost 4 years, so I was a joy see it and wonder at the world around me. If there is any time to go to the desert, it is in the spring time. The temperatures are not too bad, and the rain makes is fun to watch and makes the desert spring to life for a short time. Everywhere there are small patches of green.

More on the continuing search for good food. Today I went to a cafeteria that had a salad bar. The one I had been going to for the last week didn’t. I tried to make my own Italian salad dressing, but it didn’t work. The Olive oil and vinegar were the wrong kind, and I had no other seasoning but parmesan.

To those that have commented in the past week, thank you. I enjoy reading the comments and I like to know that other people read this besides my wife. If she were the only one, then I would just send everything to her.

Since I am talking about my wife, she is an amazing woman and has blessed my life in more ways than I could even say.

Justine – I didn’t know you had a blog. I recognized some posts from myspace and will read if I have time.

As you all can see by my prolific writing, I am not altogether busy where I am right now. That may change soon. When it does, postings will be less frequent.