without complaining

The sermon at church this morning was taken from Phillipians 2: 14&15. "Do everything without complaining...". OUCH. I've certainly done my share of complaining this week. Presciption plan hassles, kids not listening, airline seat frustrations, 100 degree heat, ... . There's lots of things that I can choose to complain about. But when I think about how truly insignificant they are and how MUCH MORE there is to be thankful for, my attitude makes a turn in the right direction.

So let me focus on the positive. Here are some highlights of the past few days.

- The Call - on Thursday afternoon, our whole family participated in a travel simulation event complete with grumpy visa officials who didn't speak English, wild taxi rides, and weapons/drugs planted in bags when going through customs. It wasn't a particularly fun thing to do with our family, but it made me realize how much we need to stick together. Our kids did a great job.

- Our "class" time on Friday consisted mainly of all of us being able to share and debrief and then pray together. It's been amazing to have come to know the people in our orientation class the last few weeks. Whether short termers or career, families or singles, headed for Ecuador; Indonesia, Lesotho, Nampa, ID or elsewhere; there has been an incredible sense of community. It's truly been a God thing! The relationships we've made have definitlely been the highlight of our time in Idaho.

- Luke had a follow-up appointment with his allergist before we left Lancaster and had a blood test to check again on the status of his egg allergy. We found out this week that the test revealed that LUKE NO LONGER HAS ANY EGG ALLERGIES! We gave him some eggs to verify the result and he didn't have any rashes!! This is such good news as monitoring ingredients would be much more difficult in Shell.

- Paper airplanes have invaded our house. I guess it's only fitting since we're a part of Mission AVIATION Fellowship, but the kids, Micah especially, have been on a paper airplane kick this week. The pile right next to the monitor here probably has more than 20 paper airplanes of various shapes and sizes. The kids are having lots of fun here and are preparing for Ecuador and were able to correspond with one of the families in Shell this week.

Only 6 days left to go!

Tap & Roll

We had Spanish class today. One of the main points our tutor- Roy- gave, was that pronunciation is more important than speed. I know Jack D. and others have told us this also, as well. So we worked mostly on pronouncing the alphabet. It was very helpful to work on just pronouncing the sounds.
I also realized how incompetent I am with the R sounds. I had trouble as a kid w/ my englsish R sounds- they came out like w's. I used to pronounce my favorite baseball player's name (Rod Carew) as Wod Kuh Woo. But the spanish R sounds(there are 2- the tap and the roll) are different. And I can't seem to get either of them. So our homework before Thursday is to practice trying to tap and roll the R sounds. I wish we had more than 2 language "classes", but hopefully we can get a little tutoring in Shell.

Luke and the Potty - When Jodie came home at lunch today, Bonni (our sitter) said "You didn't tell me that Luke was potty trained." Seems that he was in the bathroom tugging at his shorts and pointing at the toilet. So she sat Luke on the seat and he went. He did it again later today with me helping him. (He actually went in the potty once last week, but not at his own prompting to attempt). I guess he's been watching and learning from his brothers and sister. We'll see how many months/years until our family's done w/ diapers. We've been using them now everyday for the last 7 years, 7 months and 7 days (I didn't realize the numbers until I was just now figuring out the dates since Shea was born).

Cooking Class

This afternoon at Orientation we had cooking class. Since I'll be cooking much more down in Shell than I did in Lancaster (actually my cooking repertoire was little more than waffles, soup and mac&cheese), this was good practice. We made chicken pie, oatmeal rolls, and fruit salad. We started out with a whole chicken that we cut up- actually I cut up while Jodie "supervised". Needless to say, I'm not yet a candidate for my own cooking show. The fruit salad was good- pineapple, mango, and a fruit called shu shu (I'm pretty sure I butchered that spelling) among others. It was fun to work with Jod and hang out with the other people in our class, but if it that's much work to make dinner every night, I've got a steep learning curve!

other random thoughts about Nampa, ID:
- it's dry and flat- it hasn't rained a drop since we got here on Sunday, and I haven't seen any elevation changes that would even be considered a hill. Not good prep for Shell where it rains over 20 feet a year. It probably rains on less than 20 days a year in Nampa.
- they have 4 way stops with multiple lanes. I'm used to just having to figure out which of the other 3 (at most) cars got there first. Here, there's a couple 4 way stops we drive through with 8-10 lanes.
- beer and wine sold at regular retail outlets. Having lived in Pennsylvania so long, it always seems odd to me when I see beer at a convenient store or Wal-Mart.

Welcome to Shell Shocked

This is the inaugural posting of Shell Shocked, a blog site chronicling our family's time in Shell, Ecuador. The web address is shell--shocked.blogspot.com. We'd love to hear any comments or tips from experienced bloggers out there!


ORIENTATION UPDATE

We had a good trip out on Sunday. The kids did great on the plane trips-they made good use of their toys, books, and gameboys. We were all pretty exhausted by Sunday evening. Orientation has been good. There's a big group for MAF's orientation. Some are short-termers leaving for their assignment directly from here, some are career (long-termers) who are just beginning their deputation/support raising intineration. And there are some people from MAF programs in other countries (Canada & Netherlands) who are "on loan" to work with MAF-US programs. We've had a lot of "macro" orientation so far- organizational and theological foundations.

The kids are doing well out here. There are lots of other MAF families in the apartments around ours and lots of boys and girls to play with. There's even been a family of boys that live behind the fence out back that have been playing over here with all of the MAF kids. Our childcare worker, Bonni, has been great. Jod and I are pretty thankful for that.

Thanks again to everyone who are supporting us with your prayers, gifts and time/help!! We appreciate you!!