We took Lars and Maria and the boys to the airport on Wednesday for their flight to Denmark. We loved having company but are worn out now, and looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. It’s great to have people visit us though. I think with Northern Ireland being such a similar culture and language to our own, you often don’t notice the subtle differences. I think we feel so at home here, that we don’t realize the small ways that we don’t feel at home until we get to spend time with people from home. So it’s been refreshing. Thanks to our guests. We had a great time with you.
Sometimes it’s just nice to hang out with people who call french fries french fries and spell color without a ‘u’, you know?
Walking on the promenade with the Kristiansens.
Bridge over the Shimna
Lars, Maria and the boys at Tollymore Forest Park.
This look captures about how I felt watching the video of my acting...
It’s been a quiet week for us. Campbell and Kristi left for a month-long trip to visit her family in Thailand on Monday, which always leaves a bit of a vacuum socially. The upside is that you know you have good friends when you miss them. We’ve needed a quiet week though, since the ones before were pretty manic.
Tuesday night the local theatre group I was part of had a barbecue and a showing of the DVD of our performance. It was really fun to see everyone again. It’s always really weird to see yourself on video though. At this point, I’m pretty used to hearing myself speak and sing so that’s not awkward anymore, but seeing is a whole ‘nother deal…
Anyway, since there’s not a lot of news, here are some fun photos.
An authentic Irish BBQ - rain and all (this is from a gettogether at Campbell's a few months ago)
The Irish version of a coffee house church...
I wanted to give a short update because we’ve been a bit absent in the blog department. One reason is that we’ve been really busy in the evenings lately and haven’t had a lot of time to sit and write about everything we’re doing. The other reason is that the nature of the work we’re doing makes it awkward to write about. If the whole point is to show love to people who have been burned by religion, it would be really damaging for someone to stumble on our blog, read about themselves and feel like they’re a project or the friendship is fake in some way and we don’t actually care about them. I will just say, for those of you who are praying with us, that things are going really well in that department.
If you want to pray with us about those things, you can join us in asking for “John 4 encounters” (the woman at the well) with people. I am hoping to sit down soon and write a lengthier post about that one, but it’s come to be one of the guiding passages for how we want to do things.
I think we’re also hitting another little wave of culture shock (which, I’m told would be more aptly named “creeping cultural disorientation”). We’ve been here six months next week so that is about right.
Well, we all knew it would happen. Sooner or later, the excitement of moving and meeting people and dreaming wears off and you’re left living in a place that’s still slightly uncomfortable, missing your friends, and gearing up for the reality that dreams take work, risk, and hardship. We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. We’ve been expecting it. We’re not cursing God and packing our bags. But we’ve been sad this last week.
It’s one of the great beauties of the Christian life that we can say “I am in the right place. God is good and on the throne. I really want to be with Pat and Lezlie or Jay and Jess (or whoever). I’m really sad that I’m missing the early years of their kids. It hurts like crazy.” And there’s no incongruity in that statement. It’s just the tension of life and trusting God in that tension is one of the most glorifying things we can do.
Sorry we haven’t had a lot to say recently. We really are doing pretty well and getting adjusted. We love you all and miss you (well…most of you).
Mark and Ange
So I haven’t posted in quite a while. Weeks. Make it months. Today, consider me back in action. I have a few different things to catch up on with you, too. First off…
One of my closest friends, Lezlie, had her first baby last October. And about 8 months before she had him, we decided to make a quilt together so I could share the process of her pregnancy with her. (She lives an hour away, so without good planning, we don’t see each other at all!) Great idea. Trouble is, we still haven’t finished the quilt and I’m leaving the country in 11 short days. So last week, I traveled up to the old stomping ground to finish the quilt. Or so I thought. We only have the binding left to do, and how hard can that be? Pretty hard, or at least time consuming when you DON’T HAVE A SEWING MACHINE! I think Lezlie planned it, though there’s no proof. We ended up borrowing a very old and somewhat persnickety Singer. And we had almost no luck. There is proof of that. And here are the pictures. We’ve got one last chance to finish it, as we only overlap being in the same state and without prior commitments for 1 day! Good luck, girls.
the culprit machine and the crumpled quilt
going to town
old friends
I’ll be back later today with more good stuff. Just you wait…
We’re in Arkansas right now visiting my parents before we leave. It’s always great to see my folks, but this time it’s even more great because they just moved into a new (and by new I mean 100-year-old…) house that is really beautiful. It has this huge, open kitchen that makes me happy to be in and a huge oak tree in the yard. If you’ve ever seen the movie Dan in Real Life, it kind of feels like coming home to that house.
Plus, last night we got to go to a minor league baseball game – the Northwest Arkansas Naturals. Always a good time.
Mark
We just found the cord to plug our camera in to our computer, so here are a bunch of photos from the past few months. Enjoy!
we had a cookout with friends last night (whom we consider our indy family) and i thought i’d show them off to you.
We spent Christmas with my family in Arkansas. It was a really fun time, although family time is always tinged with a “make the most of every moment” kind of sadness these days. We spent a lot of time reading, drinking coffee, playing games like Cranium and Clubs. We saw I Am Legend, which we really enjoyed, even though it caused me to jump and shiver like a wee girl. We opened presents and met old friends. We drove twelve hours…twice…
Now we’re at Ange’s parents house for the next few days for a bit of same-song-second-verse. There will be puzzles, great conversation, and late-night movies I’m sure.
We have really great families. Thank you, Lord.
This is really wild. We’re finally starting to go through our stuff and decide what we’re going to throw out, store, and ship. It’s easy to talk about not being attached to things until you have to put “things” in one of those three categories.
Our once-inviting, warm, friendly home is quickly becoming unfriendly:
