Tuesday, January 08, 2008 

Abraham Feels My Pain


Some people on the team decided to move back to the States and left an apartment full of furniture and a stack of bills behind them. Guess who was given the job to clean it up? That's right, yours truly, the single guy. It's hard doing business in this country. It's ridiculously hard doing business in this country when you're a foreigner.

I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say I've had plenty of arguments and dealt with several people that tried to stiff me in the process of getting the furniture and stuff moved and finalizing everything with the old apartment. Tomorrow I've got to go hunt down the guy that stole the water heater, and I doubt I'll get it back without at least 30 minutes of arguing. I'm pretty frustrated, but I found comfort from a story in the Bible.

I read this morning a story about Abraham that really brought me comfort. In Genesis 23 we read that Sarah died. Since Abraham was living in a foreign country and had no land, he went to the elders of the city and asked to buy a burying place for his wife. (That is, he was a foreigner who had to do business with the locals. Sound familiar?) Abraham wanted to buy a field from this guy named Ephron. Ephron accepted, but charged Abraham 400 shekels of silver. That's completely ridiculous. Jeremiah bought a field for all of 17 shekels (Jer. 32:9). Ephron completely shafted Abraham, and what did Abraham do? He accepted and paid the 400 shekels. He had no other choice. God was watching over Abraham, and God was watching over me. Me and Abraham still got shafted, but God is in control.

10:03 AM | |

Wednesday, January 02, 2008 

Holiday RoundUp

The Christmas trees are down, the New Year's hats are all put up, and all the lamb blood has been washed off the sidewalks. We've had 3 good holidays all in a row here: Christmas (which they didn't celebrate but I did), New Year's (we both did that one), and Sacrifice Holiday (that was theirs).

Sacrifice Holiday (that's a literal translation from their language) came first. It's a big holiday for them, everybody gets off of work and school and visits with family. It's actually a Muslim holiday where they buy a lamb or a cow or a camel and take it to certain places and get it sacrificed (cut up). Then they take the meat from the animal and distribute it to family, friends, and the poor. I asked a lot of people why they did this, but no one ever gave me a straight answer. No one said they did it to atone for their sins, though, like we would expect. They have no concept of atonement.

Here's some pictures I found from the internet that show it pretty realistically:







I got to spend Sacrifice Holiday with different friends, one of whom I hadn't seen in like a year. He went to another city to study but had come back for the holiday. I also got to apply 1 Cor. 8 and 10 and enjoy some idol meat. (Some friends of mine got some meat from one of the sacrifices and we cooked and ate it together.) It was alright, if a little fatty.


Christmas came right after Sacrifice Holiday, not that anybody around these parts cared. As most people went to work and school and whatever else, I spent Christmas this year with the B's, a team family here in the city with me. I spent Christmas Eve night and all Christmas Day over there hanging out with the 4 B. kids, playing with them and their presents. Christmas was good this year, and a lot of fun.


New Year's is a big holiday over here. They celebrate it like we do, they just do it longer. You know our tradition of putting up Christmas trees for Christmas? They do the same thing, except they do it for New Year's. I still don't understand how they took our tradition and then decided to apply it to a completely different holiday. Actually, most people here think Christmas and New Year's are the same holiday in the USA. They're surprised when I tell them we have 2 different holidays. Anyway, I spent New Year's with some team friends and a local friend. We spent the night playing music, telling each other riddles, playing with sparklers, and of course eating some good chips and dip.

11:34 AM | |