We made it!

Sorry for the update delay. We have had a pretty busy 5 days here in Northern Iraq/Kurdistan (I may use these terms interchangeably here on out). We are doing great! We have finally recovered from jet lag and even though we arrived with head colds, we are feeling much better today. We have made a lot of progress with our house. We got the whole thing cleaned this week, we bought our bedroom furniture, living room furniture, all of our carpet, and designed our kitchen cabinets and counter tops. We are having everything delivered on Monday and will get all of the painting done this weekend. So, by Monday night we should be staying in our house! We got 4 amps from of electricity from the community generator, so we should only be without electricity for around 6 hours a day. Here are some 'before' pictures of the house. I'll post the after ones next week!


Here is Jeff in front of our house. It is a 2 story house with a bright purple gate!


These are our front doors. Traditionally there are separate entrances for men and women, the women's enters into the kitchen and the men's into the main part of the house. It doesn't appear so far that these rules are very strictly followed, but all of the older houses have 2 entrances.


This is the view from the top of our roof. Notice the mountains in the background? It is really very beautiful here, if only there were a beach...

We got to go yesterday and meet one of the children who's heart surgery we helped fund a couple months ago. She was visiting a dentist to get a filling and have a check-up. Lack of dental care is one of the causes for many of the heart conditions that effect children here. It was really great to get to meet her family and tomorrow I am going to see the family of the child we sent for heart surgery last week.

The people here have been so wonderful to us and we are really enjoying ourselves. We are learning more and more Kurdish words everyday, but we still have a LONG road ahead of us!

We will keep you posted! In the meantime check out our website for the latest updates at www.preemptivelove.org

Istanbul

Here are some pictures of our too brief time in my favorite city... or one of the top 5 at least!



Here I am at Sultan Ahmet, or the Blue Mosque. You can see the sea in the background. I love this area, and it was a beautiful day today.



Here is Jeff in front of the Hagai Sofia. It used to be a church but was converted into a Mosque a long time ago. It is an interesting mix of Christianity and Islam. Jeff isn't saluting here, he just forgot his sunglasses.



Here we are sitting on a park bench in front of a beautiful fountain.




This is the city at sunset as we crossed continents. Istanbul is pretty cool in that half of it is in Europe and the other half is in Asia.

We had a really fun day here today! Minus the part where we got ripped off by a taxi driver with counterfeit money. Apparently Turkey did away with all of the old lira - it used to be in the millions, and they dropped all the zeros and made these fancy new bills that look more like Euros. They are also apparently pretty easy to counterfeit. Lesson learned, check your money for the words 'Jokersiz'. We will be heading to the airport in a couple hours and will try to post in the next day or so to let you know we arrived safely.

almost there

We are in Turkey for the day and will fly out to Iraq late tonight. The first leg of the journey was pretty uneventful - thankfully. We finally got some good sleep last night at our hotel in Istanbul. Jeff & I don't sleep well on planes, so we only got about 3 hours of sleep while in transit. We woke up at 5 am, well before the call to prayer, but we did go to bed about 9 last night. So, hopefully we can work out this jet lag in the next couple days! It is great to be back In Turkey, I always forget how much I love it here. It feels a little like home to me since I lived here for 6 months .... geeze, was that 4 years ago already? I was telling our taxi driver that last night because he was asking me about where I learned Turkish and he laughed at me and told me that I sure forgot a lot of words in 4 years... he was right.

I was reading on the plane yesterday and came across this poem 'If' by Rudyard Kipling that pretty much sums up all of the hope, fear, the new beginnings, the sense of self and determination that Jeff & I are so full of right now.

If you can keep your head when all about you
are loosing theirs and blaming it on you;
if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
or being hated, don't give way to hating,
and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you an meet triumph or disaster
and treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
and stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools;

If you can make a heap of all of your winnings
and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,,
and loose, and start again at your beginnings
and never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
to serve your turn long after they are gone.
and so hold on when there is nothing in you
except the Will which says to them : "Hold on",

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
or walk with kings - nor loose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
with sixty second's worth of distance run -
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a man, my son!

Clearly, we still have a long ways to go here, and will certainly never fully attain all of this but it feels good to be right where you are supposed to be. I'll try and post some pictures when I have a better connection - it might be a while.

Love and miss you guys already!

The Good Bye Post

In getting ready to leave we have felt a little like this


But we are really excited and about as ready as we can stand to move!

We are one week from departure! It is kind of hard to believe and it is a pretty big relief at the same time. It feels like this has been coming for a really long time, even Jeff feels that way and I think I have 3 years on him. It has been so amazing to see how God has so faithfully provided for us as we have prepared to go. Just in the last week we have exceeded 100% of our monthly budget! We have been so touched by the outpouring of love, support, and prayers from our friends and families in these last weeks. You all have no idea how much you mean to us and the innumerable ways you have enriched our lives. If you guys weren’t so amazing it wouldn’t be so hard to leave! We have really experienced the grace of God in these last days as we said good bye to many of our closest friends. We have really felt the Lord’s peace and assurance in the midst of sadness about leaving; we really feel so much joy about what awaits us. We are eager and excited to join our team in Northern Iraq and to work with PLC and learn Kurdish and set up our house! We ask that you would be praying for us in the coming weeks that we would be filled with the power, courage, love, and grace of the Spirit for what awaits us. Pray that we would be diligent and patient in learning language and culture. Pray for our marriage, that we would be able to see one another with God’s heart and be quick to extend grace and mercy as we both will be learning a lot! Pray for our neighbors and friends that God has prepared for us, pray that we would find favor and for heart friends. We are so excited and full of hope for what God has in store for us. We will be sure and post pictures of our house as soon as we get a chance. We love you all!

Here are some pictures of us from our going away party in Waco.





I'll try to post a video of Jeff playing wii before we leave, that should keep you entertained for a while.

Creative Christmas Gifts

Now that the gifts have been given I can post pictures of the sets of paintings I made for family.

The first is actually a set of drawings by Picasso that I saw several years ago and I always wanted to paint.



I just think these are so cute! Kind of weird... but it is Picasso?

The others are for Stephen & Elyse. They have a brown & blue bedroom and their bedspread is kind of ivory, so I thought these would match.


I tried to rotate this twice... my computer thinks its smarter than the rotation information I give it- maybe it is.

Old Cake

I forgot to post these pics in the previous anniversary pics. Since we were out of town on our actual anniversary, we decided to eat the top of our wedding cake on Christmas. I wasn't convinced that it would actually be good.


Here's the year old cake.... and the verdict...


Surprisingly, it was actually REALLY good. If I had this cake at someone elses wedding, I would think it was really good. I'm not sure where this tradition came from, the idea of eating year old cake is kind of gross? But fortunately, the cake itself was pretty good!

Back in Action!

Well, that is kind of misleading because we've never really been missing in action, just not anywhere with a good enough internet connection to post on the blog... until now. I have all kinds of posts bottled up inside, so I'll try to not go too overboard. and I'll start with the most exciting.... our 1 year anniversary!!

On December 28th one year ago we were married! We got to go to New York City this year because we were already up in PA visiting Elyse and Stephen. It was such a fun and memorable way to spend our first anniversary and our last vacation for a while! Here are some pics of the occasion.


That morning we went to worship at the Brooklyn Tabernacle. I have always wanted to go there and I'm so glad that we did! It was such a sweet experience - and the choir is just incredible, even beyond my pretty lofty expectations. This pic is in front of the Brooklyn Bridge... we're kind of in front of it though.

After church we went to Joe's Shanghai Kitchen in Chinatown for the most amazing Chinese food ever... I mean really, people from China come to New York to eat here. I did take a video with our new, awesome video camera that Elyse & Stephen gave us... but I haven't taken the time yet to figure out how to upload stuff yet.

Then after some shopping we went to Rockefeller Center to see all of the lights and the big tree! it was beautiful!


That night we went to the Wax Museum, which was so fun!

Oh Hugh...

All in all, it was a fabulous day and a wonderful anniversary. Below is the gift that I gave Jeff for our anniversary. It is a poem that I wrote for him.... it is kind of sappy, so reader beware.

To Jeff on our first anniversary, this is how I have treasured our marriage thus far:

It is in those first moments before I am fully awake
When the dreams of us still linger and the sleep I can’t quite shake.
I can hear your steady breathing and you find me in the sheets

When you are kissing me goodbye and you nuzzle your head into my neck.
Listening to you pray for me as I slowly drift to sleep.
This year has been full of challenges and full of smiles too.
I wasn’t sure what to expect but I knew I was right about you.

Like when you know exactly what I want or need…
And when you don’t and I’m upset, but you listen patiently.
When your eyes tell me everything before you’ve even said a word,
And the way you say my name is the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.

How you want to be mad at me and then I smile and you forget,
It’s those fleeting glances and the things that we keep secret.
This year has been full of love and full of heavy hearts.

All the things I’ve learned about you no one else can know about.
And the woman that you’re certain that you just can’t live without.
It’s how you hold my hand and lead me up the stairs,
Or the way our love blossoms out of deep sorrow and through tears.

Tickling till you fall of the bed and rushing to you after you hit your head.
It’s yelling till you slam the door and crying till you’re back for more.
Or the way you call me ‘beautiful’ even when I don’t believe you.
This year has been full of fear and full of memories we’ll always hold dear.

No matter what the future holds there’s one thing that sustains me –
Knowing that the God who promised is the God who will
Work out His grace in us and His life through us fulfill.
Glory be to Him who holds us both together
This year has been full of blessings that I know we’ll keep forever.


I love you Jeff, looking forward to many years to come.