Jalopa

                                 

This is a jalopa, the national dress here. This is my souvenir for the trip.

My God Splits Moons

Did you know that Einstein went to the moon and discovered that at some point it had been split in half? Afterwards he exclaimed, "I must find the religion in which the moon was split in half!" He discovered it was Islam, converted instantly, and lived happily ever after!

At least, so one of my friends told me in a very sincere tone. Granted, her English isn't perfect and we already had her fairly confused. I hope she realizes that Einstein didn't really go to the moon.

We didn't try to argue with her. What she really wanted to know is: "Mohammed got God to split the moon. Did your Jesus do anything that left evidence?" A sort of 'my dad's taller than your dad' view of theology. At first we found her question discouraging. After all, Jesus never split the moon. (As if creating it in the first place wasn't enough.) But the more the other girls and I thought about it, the more we realized that our God doesn't need to split moons. Our God is a personal God. He's never flashy unless He needs to be. Splitting the moon serves no purpose. When Jesus was on earth He proved His deity and His mission by helping people, by healing and comforting, not by flexing His godly muscles. Now that He's gone He proves Himself the same way. Jesus proves Himself by taking drug-dealers and race car drivers and molding them into preachers and servants. He takes recluses and makes them missionaries. He turns wretches into His children.

If Islam did that than I wouldn't have shut my ears to the catcalls and comments of the men here. I wouldn't have to count my change every time I bought something. I wouldn't be afraid to walk by myself through the city at night. I wouldn't have to the cringe a little every September the 11th. Everyone here is a Muslim so if Islam changes lives like Christianity changes lives, there would be no War and everyone would want to live in the Middle East.

Her prophet Mohammed might have gotten God to split the moon. But my Jesus is the God that changes hearts.

Go with God
--Mira

Closed

Friday's are frustrating here. Yesterday a few of the girls tried to go down to the shopping area of the city. It's really a good place to meet women without seeming like you're trying to talk to random people even though you are. But everything was closed! It was the middle of the afternoon and the streets were empty. Typically a few a places close in the afternoon, but not the entire city. But yesterday was Friday, the holy day here, and those that don't pray even once a day become suddenly religious when they can take an afternoon and legitimately goof off. Almost like Sunday in the U.S. of A.

Go with God
-Mira

The Mission

If I told you where we were yesterday, I'd have to kill you.

                     

This country has its jewels.

                    

This is a rock with monkeys on it.

                    

This is me high over the place I refuse to name. 

Teamwork

Islam is a religion that needs a team to work against it. Because the women and the men are so segregated its difficult for a man to effectively witness to a woman and vis versa. Here a missionary almost requires a wife, not only to provide the support he needs, but to witness to the half of the population he could never reach. I'm not saying it would be impossible for a man to work in a Muslim society, but it would be inefficient. This place needs a husband-wife team.

Mirinda

         

Ice cream here is cryptic. It all comes in shades of brown. You can have reddish brown--that's caramel or orange-brown (peach) or cream (vanilla) or yellow brown (...anana? *shrug*) or green-brown (pistachio) and so on. But it makes up for its crypticness (no, that's not a word) by being very tasty.

                   

They spelled it wrong.

A Mix

Yesterday three of us girls crawled all over the Medina with three contacts, two girls and a guy. We drank mint tea on a terrace overlooking the Mediterranian. The mint tea here is three-quarters suger and one quarter mint leaf. I'm not sure where they fit the water in.

The guy was highly intelligent and spoke English very well, but all he knew about Americans he had learned from television. He seemed very willing to listen to us, though. Although he brushed off Christianity by saying his religion was the 'best'. How can you counter an arguement like that?

The girls were more interested in teaching us Arabic than discussing spiritual matters.

Never believe Nigerians if they say they only know one song and can't sing.

The guys are cooking lunch right now. Should we be scared?

Question of the day: What is this bird? Inquiring minds want to know.

Spider-man Rugs

Obviously these rugs were meant for Spider-man.

In other news, I guess the girl I met a couple days ago must not think I'm too strange. We've been emailing back and forth. I'm glad, emailing is my kind of relationship building communication.

Tortuga

This turtle lives on the roof of an eight story. The poor thing is subject to many lets-see-if-turtles-really-can-turn-themselves-back-over experiments.

Girls mostly come in pairs around here. One talky one and quiet one. We made friends with a pair yesterday. I stood to the side and talked with the quiet one. Or tried to. She spoke 'okay' English. Hopefully we're meeting the loud one on Saturday...

Pumpkin Moon

The moon rises great and orange over the city.

The English Teacher

We call her our 'English Teacher' because we can't pronounce her name. We met her the first time we went out with fliers for our English class. She's a Morrocan English teacher and she speaks better English than I do and with only a little accent. And fast! She speaks at a race car pace! She seems to be very interested in us and stopped by the school last night to look around and say hello.

People here are generally very friendly. Especially if you tell them you're trying to learn about their culture and they delight in talking, talking, talking even if you can't understand a word they're saying. It's all the same to them.

Go with God
-Mira

Klingon

Arabic sounds like Klingon only angrier and looks like lace only squigglier. Neither of these is comphrensible to the gentle straight-edged Western mind. Today we learned numbers, days, and months. That is to say, I learned numbers, days, and months, but my feeble mind failed to grasp and hold onto them. I know more then I did... I know the word for 'read'. As in, stupid English speaker, read the stupid book!

Go with God
-Mira

Cats

This city is full of cats. You can't turn around without stepping on a cat. You can't eat without a skin-and-bones feline eyeing you and your food hungrily. There can't be any rodents in this city, there's far too many cats for that! At the Medina, lean cats that claim kin with ancient cat ancestors stalk amongst the shiny junk. At the market cats sit as close to the stalls as possible, sniffing the aroma of bloody, still scaley, whole, indentifiably generic fish. They crawl under our feet in the streets, they flit about the apartments like only a cat can. No matter how disadvantaged and starved the cats are, they not the people, own this city.

Sorry!

My internet access was sketchy for a few days, but I should be able to get on pretty regularly now. Here's what's happened since I got here.

I slept...
And slept...

And slept...

And slept...

And yes... slept...

On Friday we walked to the Medina. That's the old part of every Morrocan city. It's full of marvelous doors and shopkeepers that can really claim to have wares.

We went to some Roman graves, which are really just holes in the ground. They're graves with a great view of the Mediterranian though if that's what your looking for in a permament retirement home!

Saturday we rode the buses around and then walked... a lot! But we saw the Catholic church (grandfathered in) and the Mosque. And we walked through the market. Very awesome. So many fruits!

Sunday was more walking and handing out fliers.

Today so far... Arabic lessons... HARD....

Go with God

-Mira

Over There

Heya gentlereaders! I'm over there now. We were stuck in the airport forever. We missed our flight in NY and had to wait a day. Then our next flight was delayed nearly six hours and then when we got here our luggage wasn't! We still don't have it, but hopefully we will soon.
I'm in a net cafe so no pictures right, but later there will be many. Main thing is-I'm alive!

Go with God
-Mira

NYC

So we missed our flight. I'm just going to say: It wasn't our fault. We did everything mortally possible to get to that plane. Oh well! Atleast we didn't stay in the airport. A pastor here in NYC let us stay at his church for the night. We slept on the floor, but who cares? We had hot showers!

It's a really awesome old church. It has a real pipe organ and it's tucked in-between apartments, with its own little slice of green. Probably the only piece of grass for blocks.

...and there are pigeons in this airport.

Wagons Hoh!

We're headed out tomorrow! Pray for all of us that we have safe travel...

Lessons

Today was a lot of learning. We learned a lot about what we're going to be doing in North Africa, about the culture and such. We got to talk to the missionary's wife. It was very interesting to hear how different the culture is between men and women. Obviously, that's something of interest to the media and they like to harp it, but I don't think they really understand how much the men and women have developed such dissimilar ways of life.

Oppression

Being a wife and mother isn't oppression. Submission to your husband isn't oppression. Wearing a skirt isn't oppression.

Having to stand behind a screen so the men can't see you. Having to cover every part of your body lest you cause the men to sin. Never leaving the home, never getting an education because you're considered inferior. That's oppression.

Being in a religion with no hope of salvation, stuck in a repetitive cycle of prayers and rituals based on folklore, word of mouth, and a religion corrupted by centuries of selfishness and politics.

That's oppression.

A Morrocan Meal

No pictures today and a rather short post. (I have a cold. Please pray for it to disappear before I have to fly out!)

We ate Morrocan food for lunch, Morrocan style, which means we ate useing pieces of bread and our hands... our right hands. (I'm left-handed)

Try this: Sit down at a table and eat a meal without utensils with your weak hand.

It was good food, but hard to eat!

Temples

Why would you build a work of art dedicated to a religion based on uncertainty? We visited two temples today. One was a Buddist temple, which was just in a normal building, but the second was a Hindu temple. It was beautiful, stainless white with intricately carved pieces set together like a puzzle, solid without any metal reinforcing. But it was a white seplchure for a dead religion. In this case a sect of Hinduism that bases its worship around a Hindu reformer called Swaminarayan, a recent addition to the Hindu gods. Or rather the incarnation of the one god as the Hindu guide explained to us. One of the few things he could explain. It seems to be a small very liberal sect of Hinduism. Like more liberal Christians they embrace all religions. After all, we all worship the same god, we just called it by differant names!

...don't we?

I Cor. 10:20

"But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils."

Deut 4:35

"Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him."

The Braves Won...

Went door-to-door today in a neighborhood that had a sampling of probably every third-world country. I actually got to have some good conversations with several. There was one older boy that seemed very interested in the gospel. We were using a pamphlet for Muslims that uses the first three chapters of Genesis and the life of Adam to present that plan of salvation. A great example of how the good news is written in almost every word of that wonderful Book.

And we went to a baseball game and the Braves won.

Vision Baptist

You find churches in the most unusual places. This one is in an office park, which turns out to be the perfect place for a church! Once you're inside you forget that you're in a neighborhood full of offices.

Clapping

The oddest sound I have ever heard in an airport is clapping. What do you clap for in an airport? I was wandering around the Atlanta airport trying to decide which of the two million luggage pick up points my luggage was going to be coming to when I heard the beginning of a wave, a wave of a clapping and whistles and cheers. I paused my search and turned to see... a parade? Not a parade, but a line of soldiers led by a USO with a banner and as they passed people clapped.
And I clapped too.
We tend to forget our troops. They're not part of our daily lives. They're not something we think of. The war 'over there' has been pushed out of the news by celebrities and the elections. 9/11 is a blurry piece of history. It's all to far away from us and I include me in that us. That parade of soldiers reminded me that those soldiers are still out there. It isn't a time of peace and we shouldn't treat it like it is.

In other news, I'm safe and sound in Atlanta. I'm staying with a very nice family and attending a camp at Vision Baptist Church. They're great people, very enthusiastic and I feel right at home!

-- In Christ