Well, after spending the past two weeks in the Middle East in Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities we have had many different experiences. We drank tea with polite Muslim men in carpet shops all over Istanbul. We spent a week with Jewish guides. We spent time in Palestinian areas moving among with both Muslims and Arab Christians. We had some amazing conversations that I am still pondering upon.

Two kinds of memories come to mind to characterize my experience. In the first one, I was trying to eat a peach walking through a market and I had one arm in a sling. The peach juice was dripping off my chin and a waiter in a nearby restaurant grabbed some napkins and ran to the place in the road where I was headed to put them in my hands. How thoughtful! Amazingly tuned in to my needs. What an example of grace and hospitality!

On the other hand, I had young men in Istanbul talk dirty to my wife repeatedly whenever I was not standing at her side. Gangs of young boys would come and mock us and hit us with their palms laughing. Twice we had the experience of little boys with toy machine guns sitting on balconies pretending to shoot us. Their young minds are being programmed to hate and to kill. It concerned me because I saw so much of it. The older generation has a deep sincere politeness and respect for others. These young boys, however, seem to have a much different mindset. What they will be capable of in the future is troubling to consider.

Well, only a day from our departure from sunny Jamaica Sherry tripped going down a small set of stairs (really small…like two steps).  Splatted face first on the tile floor and had a “blunt force trauma” to her nose and broke her big toe.  Crutches for a month and a cast.

We are to leave for South Africa in about four days so this will make travel to there…interesting.

  I want to talk a bit about a concept I got from Dr. Donald Joy while working on my doctorate at Asbury. He says that we are all a trampoline and we need lots of relationships as springs to hold us up. When we move to a new place we lose all our springs and if we take our family with us, the family unit feels a real strain because the relationship work of support done formerly by dozens of people is now borne only by the family members who went with you.

In general the first order of business when you move to a new place is to rebuild the trampoline of relationships. You will need four kinds of relationships: (1) Casual relationships (nothing too deep, just people you know and say hi to on a daily basis) (2) Nuclear Family: the closest bonds in your life (3) Extended family (even if they are not blood kin you need old people like grandmas and mothers and also aunts and uncle types). You need a brother or a sister, a really satisfying same-sex friendship (4) Work relationships: people you gear up with to accomplish important things. We have moved four times as a family to an entirely new country/place.

This one insight has helped us get established in each location so we had a healthy relational web to support us in our ministry there. HOpe this is helpful to you.

Ok, so this is not the most hospitable way to treat a tourist, but the bus from Athens LITERALLY dropped us and our luggage off in the middle of a three way intersection and drove off (entire operation took about 60 seconds).  Thank you Samsonite for the wonderful four wheeled luggage we just purchased.  Without it, I really don’t know how we would have handled the bags.  Those are amazing suitcases.  You leave them standing upright and can even put another 50 lb bag on top of the roller one (i know cause we did it) and it will still roll smoothly.  The girls are seasoned travelers and handled things so well.