10 Things I Learned in NA

1. It's okay to litter if you make the nationals do it.

2. Check the trees for pigeons before you sit down.

3. Where there's one beggar kid, there's three, especially next to the ice cream stand.

4. Einstein went to the moon.

5. Vampires can have souls.

6. Try avocado + orange + strawberry juice.

7. Crossing the street can make death seem commonplace

8. There may be cereal, but you can't buy it because it doesn't exist. (Store Manager: "I wonder why we have so much of this cereal...?")

9. I can live in a foreign country.

10. God's everywhere.

Just Jump Already

This is the third largest mosque in the world. It also functions as a lighthouse just in case a ship really wanted to run into it.

It's threatening to fall into the ocean but, like California, it doesn't have the decency to actually go through with it.

In Other News

In other news, I'm safe and sound in my own home basement. I got here yesterday morning after being stuck in JFK airport for the second in time in two months. We missed our flight (yes, again) and rebooked. I rebooked straight home (yay!) but my luggage ended up going to Atlanta (not yay) but it some how got to Columbus before me anyway (confused yay!) and was waiting at the luggage counter. It was a little worse for wear (let's say, I now need a new suitcase) but all my stuff was intact so I can't say anything.

I have a couple things left from the trip that I'd like to write about, but after that I'm not sure what I'll do with this blog. I'd like to continue it, but I'm afraid I don't have the most exciting of a life when I'm not in Morocco. We'll see.

Go with God
--Mira

I'm Still Alive

I hate crowds. At night, the Medina here is the ultimate crowd: noisy, confusing, and colorful. It's what the movies imagine as a desert city with snake charmers and belly dancers (some of whom are actually men, veils are such convenient things) and all sorts of stallkeepers that would be very happy to rip you off. It's a great place to go once and then remember later.

Go with God
--Mira

On the Road Again

Tomorrow early (very early, far too early, ie: before 8:00 in the morning) we're headed off across country by train. I don't know if I'll have net access in any form whatsoever. So if I'm quiet for the next week, I'm not dead!

          

This was my one and only English student, the cute one. Please pray for her soul!

Fashion

(This was written to fulfill a requirement for my internship, but it might be interesting to normal people.)

I feel underdressed in here. In this country, a woman’s clothes define her. Does she wear a head covering? Does she wear three-quarter sleeves and no head covering, but a skirt? Does she wear a shirt that comes to her knees or shorter or too short? What does a good Muslim wear?

The answer is: a good Muslim here wears almost anything she wants as long it follows her own convictions or helps her get a good job. A university student here told me that in order to get a good job in business you cannot wear a head covering and that no woman working in the military is allowed to wear a head covering.

The good thing is that women are allowed to work here. They are allowed to get a good education, although they are mostly limited (or limit themselves) to business degrees. Every college-age girl I have met here has been taking a degree in business. On the other hand, getting a higher education seems to be one of the only directions toward work here. Almost every shop owner is a man, even in woman’s clothing stores. I have met only three or four women shopkeepers here. Although on the train ride in I did see women working in the field alongside the men. The rich women work because they can get an education, the poor work in the fields outside the city work because they have to.

Head coverings seem to be the all important part of Islam for a girl here. They all say that the Koran says they must wear one. (Although it does not actually) But some don't wear them anyway. My university student friend told me that yes, she was supposed to wear a head covering, but her parents had never made her and she still believed in God so she was 'okay'.

Despite the king’s reforms for women (including mandatory seats in the parliament, citizenship transferable from mother to children, and the near outlaw of polygamy), despite better educations, and better jobs, the women here still long for a husband. Instilled in them is the idea that only being a wife will fulfill their lives. I met a lady in her early thirties. She was sitting on a low wall waiting for the man she had met on holiday only a week ago. Already he had asked her to marry him. Even though she had a good job as an English teacher and even though she had been successful in life without a husband she was seriously considering marrying a man she had only just met. She did not love him, but she would marry him simply for the stability that a husband still provides in this society.

Women’s rights in government and society may be progressing, but the women themselves still cling to their traditions. Generations of Islam have made them feel safer with a home and family. Even though their clothing and their head covering may be their choice many women here still dress according to their religious values. This country might want its women to be progressive, but the women here will continue to be bound in tradition so long as they are still Muslims.

My Worship Center is Bigger Than Yours

                         

Coincidentally, the largest mosque in the city is right across the street from the largest Catholic church in the city.

Sunset

Maybe someday I'll make these pictures look decent.

              

              

I like the roof.

What They Expect

 

 

Right now I can hear the call to prayer. Five times a day, no matter where I am, I hear the call to prayer. It's the overwhelming symbol of the difference between this country and the U.S.A. Everyday I'm reminded that this country isn't free. This country is Muslim and to be a citizen of this country is to be Muslim. The people here are born Muslims, live Muslims, and die Muslims. They have no choice.

In this country, I would be born to Muslims and born a Muslim. The government would expect me to be a Muslim. My neighbors would expect me to be a Muslim. My parents would expect me to be a Muslim. No matter how much of a rebel I was, I would never not be a Muslim. Goth, emo, gay, no matter what I was, I would be a Muslim. The call to prayer is just a reminder that the world expects every citizen to pray five times a day, in effect, to be a Muslim. Everyone expects everyone to be a Muslim.

In America, we have a choice. I was born to Christians, but I wasn't born a Christian. The government didn't expect me to be a Christian. My neighbors didn't expect me to be a Christian. My parents encouraged me to be a Christian, they hoped I would be a Christian, but they didn't expect me to be a Christian. No one expects me to be Christian.

But what if everyone expected you to be a Christian? The Puritans were the foundation on which our country was built. They were good, pious people and they based the government of their cities on biblical principles. But their government had a fatal flaw. Only a Christian member of the church could be a full citizen. At first that doesn't sound like a bad thing and at first it wasn't, but as more and more diverse peoples came to America and as generations of Puritans were born the cracks in mandatory religion began to show.

If someone wanted full rights, they had to join the church, so many outsiders claimed to be Christians in order to make a living in the new world. Not only that, but as the Puritans had children not all of them truly became Christians. In the end the Puritan's instituted a half-way law. If you were born to Christian parents, you could be a member of the church with partial privileges, after all, if you had Christian parents than you must be at least half a Christian. You lived here, you must be a be a Christian.

In other words, people were expected to be Christians.

But the beauty of Christianity is that it involves a choice. A Christian comes to God of his own free will, because Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship. When that relationship is mandatory then it's no longer truly a relationship. Being a Christian is about what we accept, not what we expect.

Thankfully our founding fathers understood the mistake the Puritans made and wove freedom of religion deep into the Constitution. But imagine if they hadn't. Or imagine if our founding fathers had been Muslim.

Imagine if there were nowhere in America we couldn't hear the call to prayer.

Go with God
--Mira

Eye See You

 

Sometimes you see the food and sometimes the food sees you.

Petition

Please pray for the brother of one of my teammates. He was in a motorcycle accident back in the States. He's fine, but his foot is pretty mangled. Also pray for my teammate that she won't worry herself to death!

You Are Here

                 

                 

If this were the other way around and actually Africa, I'd be very close to where that pigeon is.

Between the Dead and the Living Dead

Today we stood between the dead and the living dead. Behind us centuries of decaying bones, before us millions of decaying lives. From a graveyard we overlooked a city full of people dead in sin, dead in idolatry, dead in a lie.

Eph 2:1 "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins."

The only difference between the living of this city and the dead is that the people here have a chance. They only lack messangers.

Rom. 10: 14b, c "And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?"

This city of more than of a million is lost and next to no one stands between them and a graveyard of eternal damnation. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Christians are spending their lives on legitimate ministries, but ignoring a needier field.

Ezek. 22:30 "And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none."

Is there a man who will stand between this one city, or any city like it, and the grave?

Go with God
--Mira

Independence Day

Today is the Fourth of July, an important day for all Americans wherever their feet may rest, for today is our Independence Day. Today we left Mother England and began to govern ourselves. Usually I'd be eating brats and waiting for the neighbors to shoot off illegal fireworks, but there's no Independence Day here, at least, not for the country itself. But every Christian has an Independence Day of his own.

Some of us declared the day when we were very small, some of us waited a very long time, but that doesn't make the day any less special. Every one us been given liberty through Christ. The entire book of Galatians was written to remind us of that liberty. Gal. 5:1 says, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not again entangled again with the yoke of bondage."

We've been released from the bondage of season. Made free by the blood of lamb. But by becoming free we became bondslaves of Christ. (Rom. 6:18 "Being made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.") Some might wonder how you can call trading one slavery for another slavery, liberty. But in Jewish law a man might give himself as an eternal bondservant to his master. His ear was bored through with an awl and through his own choice become a slave. He became a trusted servant. Like Joseph in Potpher's house, the Christian may be a slave, but he has all the liberty and the power of his master behind him. (Rom. 6:22 "But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting.") Without our Master we are nothing. With our Master we are everything. Our slavery becomes our liberty.

When America became a country we left a government behind, but we replaced it with a better government. We went from one master to a better master. When I became a Christian I left sin behind and was given a better Master. The day that happened is my Independence Day.

Do you have an Independence Day?

Go with God
-Mira

Undercover Agent

by Jamie

Ever wonder what it would be like to be an undercover secret agent? Let me tell you!

My digital camera that I bought just before the trip has really been getting a workout. Taking pictures of our group is never a problem, but I have learned that the people here don't like being photographed, so it makes it really hard to take pictures of the city and streets without making people nervous and upset. Our team "Master"mind gave me a great idea. The next time I went out to one of the open-air vegetable/fruit markets I put on my sun glasses, turned off the flash on my camera, and muted all the sound effects. No clicking, no flashing. I held it at my side and casually sauntered down the street snapping pictures right in front of my unsuspecting subjects! It took me a few practice shots to get my angle right, but some of the pictures turned out great!

I'm not the only one with a knack for the sneaky. One other member of our team has shown great talent as well. To start the story off from the beginning . . . I and one of the other girls on the team made a cultural observation very early on in the trip. We observed that all the young, trying-to-be-hot guys that you pass on the street all seem to waft by on a wave of very strong, very good smelling cologne.  We both wanted to buy some for family back home, but didn't have clue what to buy. What were we to do--stop some guy on the street and ask him what cologne he was wearing? NO! Rather, we enlisted(conscripted might be a better word) the aid of one of the guys on the team, a most resourceful fellow who desires to be referred to as "Agent X." One day, my friend noticed that one of Agent X's English students was wearing the coveted cologne and ordered him to find out what it was. So, Agent X cleverly made "cologne" one of the day's vocabulary words and then casually asked,

"Soooo, what cologne do you wear?"

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

I am now the happy possessor of a bottle of Madidni cologne!

This trip is definitely work, but the moments of hilarity come often!

Summery

I have a new student in my hallway class. She's eleven and she's very cute. She seemed to pick things up fairly well considering she knows no English at all, only her alphabet and that because she's been taking French.

In other news I went to the beach yesterday, fought with waves, and turned a very nice shade of red. As my Spanish-speaking friends says, "Chica roja!"

But in All...

The city we're staying in has taken the language of its country and mutated it in strange and random ways. Our personal language expert loves to point out all of the ways the city's version of the language is different from the language in the rest of the country. It's difficult to explain, but the following is how I imagine this situation in America. All apologies to anyone who actually lives in Snailville.

[A native of Snailville, U.S.A is having a conversation with a foreigner, while a Language Expert from a near by city listens in]

Native Speaker: So I was gonna go plant me some haryus, but you kn--

Innocent Bystander: [Interrupting] Pardon me, my good fellow, but what is an 'haryu'? I really don't believe I 'ave ever 'eard that word before.

Language Expert: [Hears the question and strolls over] Perhaps I can help. Here in Snailville they say 'haryu,' but in all America they say carrot.

IB: [Nods his head slowly] I see, please do continue.

NS: The cold kinda stuck 'round late like. It's May an' I still can't open me powers.

IB: [Looks shocked] Your... powers? I say, old chap, perhaps you forgot your 'lectric bill?

NS: [Seems insulted] Of course not!

LE: Here in Snailville they say 'power' which means 'might' or 'strength,' but in all America they say 'window".

IB: Quite good, thank you.

NS: So I'm wonderin' 'bout meh succhini

LE: [Is stumped himself. Lifts his eyebrows] You mean your zucchini.

NS: No, meh succhini.

LE: But in all America they say zucchini...

NS: Well, hereabouts we say succhini!

IB: [Confused] Succhini?

LE: No, succhini means 'bald.' Succhini seems to mean 'zucchini,' but only in Snailville, not in all America.

IB: [Still confused] Succhini...

LE: No, no! Succhini means 'bottle'.

IB: Succhini means 'bald', succhini means 'bottle', and succhini means 'zucchini'?

LE: Yes, in Snailville, but in all America--

[In the middle of the Language Expert's sentence the Innocent Bystander wanders off in a daze, muttering incoherently that it is time for tea.]

Go with God
-Mira