mmm-BELLY-may Days

Siphoning

My father just asked me to help him get the water out of the humidifier.   That's his foot on the bottom right.

My first thought was, 'Too bad I don't have a piece of hose here, I could siphon the water out.'

You'd think I would learn from my previous siphoning mistakes.

In my defense, siphoning the water out of my waterbed in my house in Africa has worked pretty well....  Too bad I wasn't blogging last time I had to do that.

However, today good sense hit, and since there wasn't much water, I just dumped it into the tub.  Dad said that was ok, if I could lift it.  Which I could, easily.

It's a little weird when your Daddy isn't stronger than you anymore.

Why I'm not going to the movies tonight

My father knows I love the Narnia Chronicles, so he asked me if I was going to go see the Prince Caspian movie.

No way.  They got the first movie all wrong.

I went to see it with a friend, Eva, who'd never read the books.  We have really similar tastes and reactions to things-just read her comments here. I think she's my long lost twin.  Anyway, I was excited for her to meet Aslan.

When I met Aslan I was about 10, reading all curled up in our comfy 70s green easy chair.  When I got to the part where Aslan died, I cried and cried and cried.  Then I was shocked to read "...if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you...".  How did C.S. Lewis know how I felt about Aslan? 

I fell in love with Aslan reading those books.  I think it was the first step in me falling in love with Jesus a few years later.  (Don't worry, I won't break into a Jesus is my boyfriend song...right now.) 

After the movie, I asked Eva what she thought of Aslan.  She said that the movie was really about the kids, that he felt like an afterthought. 

My point exactly.  Take the scene when Father Christmas finally is able to return to Narnia.  In the book:  "I’ve come at last,” said he.  “She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The witch’s power is weakening.”  The children don't know who Aslan is yet, but they feel a strange thrill at the mention of his name. 

In the movie, it was something like: "I have been able to come because of the hope you children have brought to Narnia."  No mention of Aslan at all. 

Honestly, to me that's bordering on blasphemy.

Red

I haven't posted a mystery photo in a while-here you go!  If you live in West Africa and know what it is, hush!  Thanks to Susy for the idea and Rob for the photo. 

Helping

In the words of the Bard:
(Shel Silverstein, of course!)

Helping
Agatha Fry, she made a pie
And Christopher John helped bake it
Christopher John, he mowed the lawn
And Agatha Fry helped rake it

Now, Zachary Zugg took out the rug
And Jennifer Joy helped shake it
Then Jennifer Joy, she made a toy
And Zachary Zugg helped break it

And some kind of help is the kind of help
That helping's all about
And some kind of help is the kind of help
We all can do without

When I think about helping people in mmm-BELLY-may land, this poem (later sung by Tom Smothers) runs through my head.   That's partly because of things I've seen, and partly from hearing and reading about great ideas.  Like a well meaning country donating snow plows to West Africa. (Here is one reference to the snow plows.)

I'm going to be blogging about my extremely small scale efforts to help some of my friends.  You can have this song stuck in your head too if you listen to a piece of it here.

Podcast Party!

My life has changed for the better.  I have learned to download podcasts and listen to them on my iriver.  It even works in Africa-I can listen to my pastor and other great speakers as I bounce along the road in my truck. 

Erwin McManus is who I'm listening to most lately.  He's got a great talk on prayer that I listened to not once, not twice, but three times.  I laughed, I cried, I quoted to anyone who would listen.  Interested?  Click here to listen.  If that doesn't work, go to the mosaic podcast then, click the link on the right side of the page for January 15, 2006 -[Rapid Advance] Prayer:  Spiritual Activism by Erwin McManus.

If you read Dennis Papp's blog and want to hear the talk he just blogged about, it's on the same page as my favorite.  Click on the link that says March 19, 2006 - [Chasing Daylight] Advance:  Go Unless You Get a No by Erwin McManus.

Um, don't ask me how to download the talk to put on your nifty portable gadget, though.  I set it up once and now I don't remember.  I think I followed the very clear directions on the mosaic podcast website.  Oh well,  you can't have everything in one little blog, can you?

Lingamish

Lately I've been reading a lot of blogs.  It can freak me out, all the people that say such deep things, or say the things I want to say but better than I do.

Almost every time I David Ker's blog I just want to cut and paste it into mine.  He's in the same line of business that I am, living on the same continent, south of mmm-BELLY-may land.  Great blog.  Go read it.

Girly blog, or Ode to an air purifier

It’s so nice to leave Africa in the dry season when there’s hardly anything green, and come back here with all the pretty birdies singing and flowers blooming. 

Flowers blooming, nose running, head throbbing, me wheezing, allergies flaring. Misery.

Enter new air purifier. Aaah.

In completely unrelated news, this is a girly blog according to David Ker because I write about flowers, and my cat.   Since David writes a far better blog than I do, I guess I have to take his word for it.  Maybe it will be less girly if I talk more about my machete? 

Where am I?

Wow, is it nice to blog from the land of high speed internet!  Yes indeed, I am back in the States for a few months.  My sister has her hands full having babies and stuff, so I'm here to keep an eye on our parents until she gets all that giving birth stuff done.  You know, so they don't throw wild parties and stay out until all hours and stuff.

I usually say "our aging parents," but not any more.  Dad is 85, Mom is 81-they're not aging, they've aged! 

So, I'm home, but I have a backlog of things that I want to blog about from my life in Africa, even though I'm living it long distance for a little while.  Thanks to modern technology, I'm also still going to be working on mmm-BELLY-may stories and language learning while I'm here.  So, I won't write too many odes to the wondrous things available at Target or the glory of not being sweaty, but will try to catch up on all the posts I've written in my head in the past few months.  Who knows, maybe I'll be caught up before I go back!

Storyteller

I have a nifty new title:  "Storying Facilitator." Talk to me for more than 3 minutes and you'll probably get me going on why I love storytelling.  Erwin McManus says it better than I do, though:

"The beautiful thing about film, and I think story telling, is that it’s not really trying to give you the answers, but it’s trying to help you reflect and ask the right questions.”  (Here's the rest of the interview.)

Being a guest in a culture that is not my own and having all the answers is not really my thing.  I'm much more comfortable helping people hear God's story in mmm-BELLY-may and listening as they reflect on the answers that God's Spirit brings to them. 

About a month ago, I tested the story of the first time people disobeyed God with an old man who said he had never set foot in a church.  This was the first part of God's story he's ever heard.  Already an amazing honor for me to be part of that!

The story ends with God telling the people all the hard things they'll have to experience because they disobeyed.  It's pretty harsh.  Not a happy happy feel good story at all.  After it was over, I asked the man some questions to see if the story was well crafted and clear. When I asked him why God made clothes for the man and the woman, he said, "Because God loved them so much that he just couldn't leave them the way they were."  Wow. 

Diesel

I tried to siphon diesel yesterday.  No, no, there's no illegal activity going on-I just have a little stock of diesel in case there is a shortage, which happens from time to time.

Usually when I have it poured into my truck, lots of it spills down the side, which is wasteful and filthy, since diesel has lots of oil in it.  The red dust from the road sticks to the spilled diesel, it's nice.

So, when I read this idea about siphoning fuel without swallowing it, I thought it would be great!

The article said I should:

elevate the container
submerge the entire length of the hose in the fuel,
put my thumb over the end of the hose,
put the other end of the hose in my gas tank,
and then the diesel would flow nicely out.

I of course decide that this will be accomplished best by:

pouring 20 liters of diesel into a large basin,
making a wobbly stand for said basin,
getting three friends to hold the basin so it didn't tip,
sticking my arms in the diesel up to my elbows to submerge the hose,
discovering that the hose is too big for me to close it with my thumb,
getting another hose,
spilling diesel on the ground pulling the first hose out,
sticking my arms BACK in the diesel...

and then it didn't work.

So I tried again 3 times.  Up to my elbows every time. 

Never did work.

But the truck did indeed stay clean.

We ended up going back to the big hose, sticking a funnel in one end of it and standing on a ladder to be up high enough to scoop the diesel into the funnel with a bowl.  I did not think this was funny until late that evening, otherwise there would be photo evidence.

Don't try this at home, and don't light a match anywhere near me.