Sorry, it has been some time since we’ve written to you all here. We finished up our time in California! It’s hard to believe that our year in mission can be over. We are truly grateful for the people we met there and the experiences we had. It is hard to believe that we were able to do something like what happened, and we have grown and changed, and discovered more about God and about ourselves.
We traveled back from Palo Alto to Ohio in December, driving mostly on I-40 some 2,600 miles! We listened to a lot of music, a couple audiobooks, and even over four hours of John Denver one day! We got to see more of Arizona and New Mexico than anyone needs
Catoosa’s Blue Whale
to, visit the neon-lighted U Drop Inn that was featured in the movie Cars, have cortados at Brick and Mortar Coffee in Springfield, MO, (which was a favorite), eat food from Cracker Barrel and Bob Evans again (we missed them), the Blue Whale of Catoosa, OK, and swim in a couple of our hotel pools to loosen up our muscles from the hours in the car.
We’ve moved back to Ohio for the coming months, and are in a time of transition.
Paul applied to some PhD programs, and we are living in Ohio until we hear whether any of them accept him for next fall. We hope to move to an apartment near one of the campuses sometime around getting accepted.
Hotel interior!
St. Louis
Home for the next couple months.
We have heard back a “no” from Notre Dame, which was a shock to us, as we strongly believed that the right next step for us.
So, we are reevaluating our plans and hopes, and trusting in God’s guidance for the next year. We are currently waiting to receive acceptance decisions from Indiana University and University of Illinois, and will work from there. We have also considered some other options, and are figuring out what those might look like.
Your prayers for us in this time of transition are greatly appreciated, as we are uncertain exactly what the future holds.
As many of you may know, there are several wildfires raging in Northern California. Paul and I are fine and in no danger. The fires are two hours north of us, and all we deal with here is occasional smoke drifting in. However, there are tens of thousands that have been affected by these horrible fires.
In times like this, we can often find ourselves feeling helpless, wondering how we could possibly help with something so tragic. Well, I’m here to give you a few different options if you want to help in the relief efforts.
The first and most obvious thing is to pray. We really need the wind to calm down so that the firefighters can tame the flames. Right now, the wind is happening in gusts from every direction, so there’s no way the firefighters can predict how the fires will move or where they will spread. We also need rain. We’re deep in a five-year drought. It has only rained here about two or three times since May, and only for a few minutes each time. The combo of wind and dry earth is a bad one.
Past praying, there are many different ways you can donate to the relief efforts. If you are one of our many Nazarene friends, know that we have many Nazarenes in the area who have been evacuated and who have probably lost their homes. The Church of the Nazarene has set up a donation page to go toward the general relief efforts. You can click here to give.
If you’re not Nazarene or if you’re not interested in giving through a religious entity, this news article has a list of places that are doing various forms of relief in the area that you can give to.
I know there have been a lot of natural disaster lately, and you may have already given all you can to one of those. However, if you find that you feel as though you should help out with this particular disaster, I hope that this can help direct you toward a way of doing just that.
Thanks for all your love and support! As always, we appreciate each and every one of you!
I know it’s been a while since we’ve written – sorry about that! We got caught up in the start of the semester. Oops. It’s been about three weeks since I got back from my mission project to Costa Rica. Here’s how the week went!
We arrived at SENDAS (El Seminario Nazareno de las Americas), the Nazarene seminary, on Saturday after taking a red eye flight to get there, so we took it easy the first day. On Sunday, we were blessed with the opportunity to attend church at the Los Angeles Church of the Nazarene in San Jose, Costa Rica. They are a vibrant, growing church, and it was cool to experience that with them. They’re in the process of building a bigger facility to fit their growing congregation. On Sunday, we also got to experience a bit of downtown San Jose, walking around the city and seeing what it’s like on a normal day.
Monday started our work there. We were working on the Orchid building on campus. Since leaving, the building was finished, and it will now be rented out for events. The money from this will be used to help reduce the cost of classes at the seminary for the students while still allowing for the highest quality education. Super cool!
Our team had eight people on it, and though that is a small number for a project like this, we got a ton done. We split off into small teams. Four people put tile on the walls in the bathrooms of the building, two people per bathroom. Here they are at the beginning, middle, and end of the week.
Looks great, right?
Another couple of people worked on painting the entire outside of the building (I also helped with this particular project for about half the time). Here is one wall, before and after. It’s amazing what a coat of paint can do to a place!
The last person helped to level the floor (I was also part of this for the other half of the time) and then lay tile. This person was helped by several missionaries that pitched in to help over the course of the week. I sifted dirt for about a day and a half to help make the concrete to level the floor. That might sound dull, but I didn’t mind it a bit! Here are a few pictures from that process.
On our last work day, we took the morning and went to a children’s outreach. This outreach is in a rough part of town and helps kids with homework, teaches them cultural dances and practices, feeds them, and provides a safe space to play games and do crafts. We got to help paint the main part of the outreach center. The heart that Miriam (the lady who runs the outreach) and her helpers have is absolutely amazing. They don’t have a ton themselves, but they give what they do have to help invest in the lives of these kids. It was definitely a highlight of the week there.
Backtracking a bit, Tuesday, our third day there, was Mother’s Day, which is a national holiday in Costa Rica. No one was going to be working on campus, so we got to go out and see a bit more of Costa Rica. We started the day eating breakfast up in a little family-owned restaurant in the mountains near Poas volcano. After, we zip-lined through the surrounding forests. For lunch, we ate at the cafe inside of Poas Church of the Nazarene and got to see their recently-built facility. Then we went for a hike to see a couple of waterfalls off the beaten path. This hike is something mostly only locals know about, so it was really cool to experience a piece of Costa Rica that wasn’t filled with tourists. We finished the day by having dinner at another local place. It was a crazy, exhausting, fun day, and our team bonded during that time.
Fast forwarding again, I saved my favorite part of the week for last. One evening after dinner, we got to hear the testimony of someone. He spent over an hour telling us his story, but it felt like mere minutes. To give you an idea of the story, he was involved in an incredibly violent gang in Central America. Through an amazing set of circumstances, God got a hold of his heart. The tricky part was getting out of the gang. He said there are two ways to get out of the gang: you disappear forever, or you leave in a body bag. However, God worked wonders, and he was able to tell his fellow gang members that he was leaving, and they let him walk out the door. Now he and his wife are missionaries, and their whole family is serving in Costa Rica through SENDAS. Wahoo!
I’ll close out this (kinda long) post with a few more pictures from the time there, both on and off SENDAS campus. However, before I do that, I want to leave you with a couple of takeaways I had from the trip.
First, God answers prayer. The man who gave us his testimony mentioned several times the impact that prayer had on his journey. No prayer is worthless or goes unheard. So whatever you might think about praying for, no matter how impossible it might seem, pray it, and pray it from the depths of your being.
Second, God is moving, even in the little things. God is probably moving around you right now. Take a minute to really look around and see it. Read through NCM (Nazarene Compassionate Ministries) stories. Look up exciting releases from other denominational sources (yes, that’s okay to do – it’s not blasphemy). Ask God to show you the ways in which the Spirit is moving. You might be surprised and excited about what you find!
In about 10 days, I (Elizabeth) will be traveling to Costa Rica with a team from California on a short-term missions project. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Costa Rica, it is a small but wonderful country in Central America, located between Nicaragua and Panama
We will be working at a seminary in Costa Rica, doing various construction projects around campus. We will also get to learn more about the local culture and participate in a children’s outreach. We are going to be incredibly busy during our week there, and we could really use your prayers! I would love it if you would pray for several things surrounding the trip:
-Pray for the travel there and back, that it goes smoothly and that we don’t run into any issues. Pray also that we get enough sleep on our flights there, because we will be flying overnight and hitting the ground running.
-Pray that no one gets sick or hurt. Sometimes travel can weaken immune systems, and construction projects have inherent hazards. Of course we’ll all be as careful as can be, but things happen.
-Pray for the members of the team, that God would guide the thoughts and actions of each and every one of us, and that we would be used as instruments of God’s grace and love.
-Pray for the seminary that we’ll be working at. They are doing some wonderful things, both in training pastors and in their community.
-Pray that the weather and nature would cooperate. We’ll be there during the rainy season, which can sometimes cause problems for landing in Costa Rica. There are also a couple active volcanoes around, and they can shut down airports. So pray that they behave for us on travel days.
With all of you praying for these things, I have no doubt that our time in Costa Rica will go on without a hitch. We so appreciate all of your love, prayer, and support. We couldn’t do any of this without you. You’re all wonderful!
Hi! It’s Paul again. I wanted to share about something cool that happened last week. I attend a weekly running group at a running store in the next town over (Menlo Park). It’s really great, with about 10-20 people gathering on Thursday nights to run a different route each week, anywhere from 3-6 miles. On the last one of each month, and on other occasional days as well, the owners line up a shoe company representative to come and wear-test shoes from a brand like New Balance, Asics, Brooks, Altra, etc. On these run days, affectionately known as “pub runs”, the group shares snacks, popcorn, drinks, etc. inside the store after the run. It’s a time for conversation, fellowship, getting to know other runners, talking about the places to run in California, and other things. It seems like every person is from a different place, so that offers something to start a great conversation. I’ve met a woman who used to live near the neighborhood of Cincinnati that we lived in, a couple from Columbus, Ohio, a man from India, a couple from New Zealand, and several others. One week I had a fascinating discussion with a man who was raised Jewish but no longer considers himself to be religious. He still observes all of the traditional holidays, and was open in sharing his reasons with me. In turn, he asked me to open up about my own faith, and why I’ve chosen to be Protestant and to work so much with the Church of the Nazarene. It was incredible, and completely spontaneous.
I’ve found that if I open up (appropriately without forcing it) first, I have a lot of people willing to open up back. This has meant a few good conversations with people at running group about what I do, but also even during time in the bookstore at work and in other places.
Most recently, I did this type of thing with one of the shoe representatives who visited on a pub run day. The manager introduced him as Zach Bitter, the American record holder for running 100 miles. Yes, I said miles, not meters. This is him:
The dude is a high school teacher. Who ran 100 miles in under 12 hours.
He was totally cool with me talking to him after our run was over, when most of the other people were inside the store. I started the conversation off by mentioning I had a friend who was into Ultrarunning (doing more-than-a-marathon-distance races) and asked if he’d be willing to give me a firsthand account of it. I asked about fueling, and he opened up about the intricacies of what to eat and drink on an 11 hour run. Then I mentioned a couple of the public names of ultrarunning (Dean Karnazes and Scott Jurek), and asked what he thought of them being the public face of the sport.
From there, we both were able to open up; him about his running days a bit and myself about what brought me here and the program we’re in through 365m. I said I’m from Ohio, he said he’s also from the Midwest, so we connected over that. It was incredible. All while I helped him take down his merchandise tent and such.
He was really down to earth and humble, not mentioning being popular or anything at all. I respected that. Plus, I nearly pegged his accent, which is sort of becoming a fun hobby of mine (he’s from Wisconsin and I was guessing Canada; close, but not quite).
Here’s an article about him if you’d like to read more.
I hope to continue to have these kinds of conversations into the future, and love when they happen.
As always, we’d love to have a conversation with you. How are things? Do you have any questions for us? We’d love to talk. We’d love to come visit you when we come back east in Dec/Jan.
Today I’m going to write about our studies in 365m.
What is intercultural studies? We’re here in Palo Alto studying through the 365m program at Nazarene Theological Seminary, taking courses in intercultural studies (ICS for short). It’s an interesting field. We each majored in it at Mount Vernon Nazarene University, with our favorite professor teaching many of the courses. We took classes like Gospel and Culture, Foundations of Missions, Cultural Anthropology, Intercultural Communication, and Intercultural Practicum. Students are required to study abroad as part of the curriculum, and we both studied in Costa Rica, taking courses in ICS.
Overall, ICS is pretty tricky to define.
The short answer in the context in which we studied it is that it’s a degree in missions. Many people use it to become missionaries. Indeed, a number of the people we know who studied it use it for just that.
During college, I sometimes heard it depicted as “applied anthropology”, using the study of people to communicate a message to another person of another culture.
I‘ve heard studying it described as “having a degree in people”.
I know people who studied it at the Master’s Degree level who use it in working with churches as pastors or leaders.
I know people who use it in their professions as educators, teaching cultural communication and tolerance, as well as contextualization, to students who plan to go into cross-cultural situations.
In job interviews, I’ve argued that it can help me in customer service or in sales, helping adapt to the customer’s needs/wants and contextualize the message to the customer.
I’ve used it in lots of church situations, working with both Spanish/English churches and their leaders. Combined with studying another language, the field’s insights help in effective communication.
I even used it during my time working as an interpreter, working to negotiate the cultural and language differences between people on both sides of the language gap in situations at hospitals, dentist offices, etc. Sarah Lanier’s book, “Foreign to Familiar” outlines a simplified dichotomy of “hot cultures” and “cold cultures”. These distinctions, which I won’t get into in detail her, describe the difference between people oriented, friendly, open cultures and more reserved, private, information oriented cultures. Distinctions like this are the realm of ICS.
One of the most memorable definitions for it came from a professor of ours in undergrad. That professor has a Master’s in ICS, and teaches nearly all of the courses in that field at our school. I asked one day how he dealt with not having a quantifiable “field”, like so many others in nursing, mathematics, physics, etc. since ICS is much more nebulous. His answer has stuck with me:
“In ICS, our field is being able to engage other people in their fields”
is what he told me that day. After taking some time to ponder this, I realized that it was a great definition of ICS. We try not only to communicate across cultures and relate to people in order to communicate better to them, we also often try to understand the frame of reference from which another (the anthropological Other) is operating. We try to have a general knowledge of lots of things that other people find meaningful so we can try to craft and contextualize a message in ways that person can better understand.
In college, I think I often unconsciously found myself doing this. I loved discussing coffee with some friends who were passionate about coffee. I loved watching apartment mates playing video games and memorizing some details of the games to be able to converse with them about said game. I’d sit with them while they played and read or talk, taking in details about the game and its world. I loved engaging my roommate in discussions about movie and media, since those were some of his passions.
Much of my senior year of college was all about being conversant in a number of classes that were tangentially related to my “field”: I took a Speech Pathology course (with only majors in that field in it besides me) and related to them in their terms and still engaged the material from my passion for languages. I took Biblical Greek for 2 semesters, not for preaching from like the others in the class, but for the linguistic and cultural elements I could take away from it, which meant that I had to learn to function in the context of all those ministry majors. I spent many hours crafting my honors thesis (designing a major in linguistics) and crafting it into a presentable form to convey my creation to the university.
This engaging others on their terms is even one of the things that I love about the Church of the Nazarene. I didn’t grow up Nazarene, but have become immersed in it and learned about it experientially. If I know that someone is a part of it, I can converse with them about some of the common terms and figures within the church (especially all those acronyms I had to start understanding in college like NMI, NYI, NYC, PLNU, GMC, NTS, BGS, DAB, etc.)
During our time here in Palo Alto, this process of “engaging others in their fields” has continued. A coworker is from a different country, so I engage them with a general knowledge of that reality’s effect in mind. I speak with church people and adapt the language I can use, throwing in terms that I cannot use in general conversation outside the church. A friend in our context is an athletic trainer, so I asked her about an old Achilles injury I had and kinesiotape and its uses in training.
kinesiotape
Another friend is passionate about business, so when I relate to him I consider the ways that business shapes his outlook and actions.
Going forward, having this type of mindfulness is helpful in all aspects of interpersonal relationships, and it will be invaluable to us wherever we go from here.
If I end up pursuing the field of linguistic anthropology as I hope, the anthropological elements found in ICS will give me a better base for pursuing my goals. In the distant future, if I enter into a professorship role as I hope, then engaging students in the fields that they have chosen will be an invaluable skill to add more meaning to our interactions.
Thanks for your continued support of us during this year in intercultural studies and mission.
Hello, Paul here. I wanted to share about how I’ve begun to get involved in a context here. I started a new job as a bookseller at the Stanford University bookstore about two weeks ago. It’s pretty cool as far as part-time jobs go. I’m currently working about 10-20 hours per week.
I get to greet customers and ask whether there is anything they are looking for. If they are looking for a section or a specific book, then I get to take them to the section or try to locate their book. It’s rewarding getting the challenge of finding the book they are looking for. One time, a young girl came to the store looking for some zombie survival book, and said that she could not find it anywhere she looked. She asked if I could find it, not expecting us to have it. When we were able to find it for her, it was really cool to see how thrilled she was that we found what she had been looking for. She said it made her day, and in a small way making her day made mine.
The amount of diversity in the bookstore blows my mind. It seems like a huge majority of customers are not from the area, and many are even not from the country. Visitors come to the school on official visits, but the school is also a tourist destination so many come just to see the school as well. A huge number of visitors seem to be international. The customer base reflects the high Asian population of our area, with the most common people being Mandarin speakers. But I have also met visitors from Germany, Barcelona, an Irish dad buying his kids a math book, and a couple of British couples looking for business books.
Intercultural studies may be hard to define and not “a career track”, but I get to interact with and bridge across cultures every time I work there. I was asked what I hoped to do by studying intercultural studies, and honestly answered that the variety is very unspecific. But I was able to share a story from my first day.
On that first day, my very first customer brought me a picture of a book he only knew the title of in Catalán. He explained that he was from Barcelona, and asked if I could search by author. When I found out he was from Spain, I slowly switched to using Spanish for the rest of our interaction. It took a few exchanges for him to catch on that I was speaking Spanish, but when he did his excitement that I was speaking Spanish was fun to see.
My favorite thing about the job is that I can commute on my bike.This was a goal that I had in trying to find a job here, since we only have one car. Another goal I had was to get involved on Stanford’s campus and begin to build relationships there.
I have begun to do so with coworkers and customers, and hope to begin to talk with students and professors from that starting point. For my term project by the time we leave, I hope to interview some professors about what Stanford means to them, and the effect of their experiences on them. My goal in this is to learn more about Stanford, but also to learn more about Anthropology as a discipline, specifically Linguistic Anthropology.
This is the type of field I hope to enter in future, and is a hope I have been developing during our time here. Long story short, recently Elizabeth and I are very intrigued by the potential to move to Illinois, specifically Urbana-Champaign. University of Illinois has a program in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology there that intrigues us. The program funds accepted students for five and a half years through a 20-hour-a-week teaching/research assistantship. The town is a little smaller than many graduate school cities, and there are three Churches of the Nazarene within a ten minute drive of the city.
There is even a coffee shop that serves roasts from my favorite coffee roaster, Quills!
We are excited about the possibility of moving somewhere for more than nine months, and having a potential option for where to go and what to do when we leave Palo Alto after our term here.
If you would like something to pray for us for, we would love if you prayed for us to engage with our time here and make the most of it. It is hard to believe that we have been here for over two months, and have about eight months left. We want to be faithful to the call we have received to be here, and to engage the people and groups here.
Beyond here, the next step in the process of pursuing a PhD program is to study for and take the GRE exam for entrance. I can deal with the words-based problems, but have a bigger struggle with the math problems. So, motivation to study and guidance for how to move forward in the application process, and discernment whether that is the best next step for us after here would be great things to pray for.
Thanks for walking with us in this journey. We so appreciate it, and love getting emails or mail from you. We try to send out postcards and occasional letters, so if you’d like to get one of those as well, please tell us.
This past week, I was made aware of a need in our area here. The district we are on, the Northern California district, is sending a team to India this summer. One of their goals is to teach our brothers and sisters there about Bible Quizzing, both children and teen versions. They would also like to provide them with the supplies needed to do quizzing in their area. The team has most of the paper resources they need, like guides, books, and the like. However, they are in great need of number boxes for children’s quizzing and jump seat sets for teen quizzing.
If your church has any number boxes or jump seats that are no longer in use, would you consider donating them to this cause? If you do not have any extra sets sitting around, but would still like to help, you could also sponsor a set of boxes or jump seats. A set of five number boxes costs $17 before shipping, and a set of jump seats with indicator box (like the one seen above) can cost anywhere from $300-400.
If you have any sets you would like to donate, or if you would like to sponsor one, either send me a private message on Facebook or an email at elizmarieh@outlook.com for more information.
As always, we are thankful for your thoughts and prayers, and we always love hearing from you!
It took me over a month “on the field” to realize that I need to redefine my mental categories for what a “good missionary” does, is, and is expected to do. I’ve been thinking of things all the wrong way. In my mind, I’ve been doing normal life things around here despite being on the mission field. We eat meals in community with our housemates and the other interns in the program here, we have weekly personal development sessions. We have helped with landscaping around the church for several weeks. We babysit for local leaders. We have met with district officials. We have contributed book resources and personal insights about passions to the projects that the other interns are working on. We have talked about potential involvement in district events, working with district assembly, etc. We have begun to enter into niche communities within our area, in attending a knitting group and a running club. I’ve been reading a ton, mostly reading books that have contributed in small (perhaps unconscious) ways to me redefining my call. I’ve gotten healthier physically, eating better and running more regularly (which gives me the space to think). We’ve gone to coffee shops, libraries, natural areas, and local restaurants. We attended a local free book giveaway, a music session of old time music, and other events. We’ve shared several Sunday meals with other church members, and have attended services with discussions with elderly church members before and after services. We even have ministry conversations over coffee, over meals, etc. All of these things just felt like normal “doing life” stuff.
At the same time, I felt like I’ve been failing as a missionary. I wasn’t starting a new ministry, I wasn’t reaching out to non-Christians in a meaningful way. I haven’t even begun to do the dream of ministry that I had for this year. I spend a lot of time around the house, talking with people that are in our program or who are already Christians. I barely have a job, working a tentative hour-and-a-half per week teaching Spanish to a school vice principal.
But I realized that a lot of the things that we are doing, if I heard about “real missionaries” overseas doing those things, I would accept them as real mission activity. People go to other countries on Work and Witness trips and do physical labor such as moving dirt in a landscaping project, and I accept it as a legitimate outlet to missions. People integrate into local cultural groups, and I accept it. People meet with local leaders, empowering them to become the best self that they can be, and I accept it. People take part-time jobs just to connect to community members and use them as outreach opportunities. Missionaries help others start programs that go on to have an impact. They spend time developing themselves and refining their calls to get a clearer sense of what action to take. They cook for other people in their host culture. They attend local events and visit sites in order to understand the culture better. They work with leaders to contribute to district events. I accept that “real missionaries” need months, sometimes even years to get plugged into what they really have an impact doing. Sometimes it can be harder to be a missional presence in a “simple” place, like Europe, since the culture has moved past Christianity instead of never hearing about it. Sometimes missionaries work for years to get few “converts”.
What makes me have this distinction about my own actions? What makes me feel that missionaries have to be doing these things with or for foreigners in order to be real missionaries? Didn’t intercultural studies classes and my internship experience with a U.S.-based missionary shape me better than that? Why have I been feeling like a “discount missionary”; like that triple A baseball player who had to stop at that level because he couldn’t cut it in the real arena?
I haven’t been giving myself that same grace I give to overseas workers. I’ve minimized the self-discovery, the learning, the pushing myself through a culture-shock-of-sorts, the contributions I’m able to make. I’ve overlooked essentially what amounts to a multi-week work and witness trip of shoveling dirt every Saturday. I let self-doubt diminish my actions. I listen to the lie that what I’m doing is selfish, isolated, and unimportant. I fear that I’m not living up to the title of missionary.
Yes, I barely have a “real world job”, but I also am a missionary, a husband, an intern, a seminary student, and several other things. As the saying goes, sometimes we have to say no to good things to be able to say yes to great things. I am able to take more random engagements, such as meetings, meals, conversations that contribute to a ministry, landscaping, attending groups, and babysitting that people with “real jobs” often cannot. We’ve interviewed our housemates about themselves. Might some of our personal project be to help equip others in pursuing and achieving their personal projects? This actually connects with the larger call that I, and Elizabeth, feel on our lives: facilitating self-discovery and equipping of others to follow their calls. Maybe discovering our own call in that process is part of that as well.
Regardless, I need to realize that, whether I see myself subjectively as a “real missionary”, I ought to see myself objectively as such. Indeed, I would label many of these actions when done in another context overseas as such.
It’s been a couple weeks since we wrote to tell you what’s going on in our lives here. So, here goes an attempt to catch you up on the past days.
The underlying theme is relationship-building as missionaries, which is actually also the theme of a paper Paul is writing.
Paul has begun going to a weekly running get-together at a Fleet Feet store, getting to know the employees, owner, and other runners in the area.
Elizabeth has begun doing something similar with a local knitting group that gathers at the public library nearby, getting to know some other women from the community, including a few other married twentysomethings!
Crossroads Palo Alto, our local church (next door), had a talent show/church banquet/get together, and we had a great time getting to know some of the church people and their talents better. The highlight of the night was probably a skit by the pastor and his wife, who told a great story while doing a sort of puppet show.
We got to go to the South Bay Old-Time Jam, a weekly gathering nearby, where community people get together to play fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, and dulcimer tunes from our country’s past.
Think the music from the American frontier, Irish fiddle tunes, and sort of a country-acoustic feel. Simple, repeating tunes that are catchy and footstomping. We went to hear some great music and to see what brought the people together as a group. It was fascinating. Most of them didn’t have to even talk much. There were brief conversations, between songs, but these old-timers let the instruments do most of the talking.
As a house, we have begun to have a weekly dinner with the other three people that live in our house here. These have been great to help us get used to having new housemates that didn’t go to our university, although all of us are products of Nazarene Universities (Point Loma/Trevecca/MidAmerica/Mt. Vernon).
We also have twice-weekly gatherings as a group of interns from the Possibility Project (about 15 or so) to share a meal and/or conversation about readings/etc. The Possibility Project is the program that was started as an alternative expression of the Church, bringing young people together to meet as a house church, but also to develop their own outlets of ministry according to their passions.
These events connect us to one another, but help us to grow as individuals through reflection and learning at the same time.
We are beginning to get connected to our ministry outlets!
Elizabeth has been asked to help lead a Work and Witness (read: short term service trip)
Elizabeth, Costa Rica 2015
to Costa Rica during the second week of August. She is excited to get to work preparing people for this great opportunity to learn and serve. Prep work like this is a lot like what she hopes to work in long-term, sharing the incredible short-term mission experience she knows is possible. But she’s also excited to go back to Costa Rica, where we both studied abroad in 2015!
Paul has just accepted a position as an independent language teacher with ABC Languages, based out of San Francisco. He is excited to get to share his passion for Spanish with students individually, while developing a relationship with the student and adapting the learning process to the student’s own intentions. There is also the possibility of a Stanford University student connection that is still being explored.
We so appreciate your support, to this point, now, and in the future. We could not be here without the support, prayers, and past guidance we have gotten from people like you.
If you’d like specifics on how you can pray for us, here goes:
-Pray that we find our place in the communities here. We have begun to find some ideas and connection points, but we are still looking for definite actions we can take to pursue our callings.
-Pray for our jobs. Elizabeth is exploring some options, including Edible Arrangements, and Paul is going to begin with his first day next week. Both bring adjustment processes.
-Pray for our relationships, especially with one another during stressful situations, but also with those in our house, in our program, and in our community.
-Our coursework. Sometimes it can be tricky to balance being a student with other responsibilities, so we are learning how to balance.
-For us to find what this experience means for us. We have committed to about a year here as of now, but are working out what the steps are after that. We have several options for where our time here can take us, so discernment is something we’re looking for in that area.
Thanks for reading, and as always please email us back. Or send us mail. Or call us. Or comment here. We love hearing from people, especially getting postcards. We might send you something back!
‘ve heard studying it described as “having a degree in people”.
with them about said game. I’d sit with them while they played and read or talk, taking in details about the game and its world. I loved engaging my roommate in discussions about movie and media, since those were some of his passions.
This was a goal that I had in trying to find a job here, since we only have one car. Another goal I had was to get involved on Stanford’s campus and begin to build relationships there.
cities, and there are three Churches of the Nazarene within a ten minute drive of the city.
learning in mission 