Three blips of life . . .

. . . This country is an interesting place. In every day life, you don’t ever really openly see anything in regards to the government law enforcement except for some traffic cops with whistles (unless you go by a police station or government complex, in which they carry high caliber machine guns and there is usually multiple guards). It’s a little bit eerie because you know there is a lot going on, you just don’t see any of it . . . they're after bigger stuff than traffic violations. Then when you have all but forgotten about them, certain events, like three milit. helicopters dodging diagonally right next each other at incredibly high speed about 40 meters (I'm being generous) above your window in the Old City (the part that still has a wall around it) make you say, “huh…” (I actually found out later they weren’t Syri7an copters, but belonged to some neighbors to the South of us here)


. . . Today a glorious thing happened. First of all, let me just say that my Arabic accent (if the sounds coming out of my mouth have the dignity of being labeled as having an accent) can be atrocious. There are six or maybe seven letters in the Arabic language that that we don’t ever make in English- ever. If you’ve ever done one of the following:
-started choking or gagging in a significantly serious way
-tried to spit something very small out of your mouth while your mouth was still totally numb from the dentist
you have probably pronounced some of these sounds quite well completely unaware of it. Sometimes I actually have gagged trying to say these sounds—especially one sound, labeled with the letter ‘ayn,’ which sounds nothing like A-Y-N. Today however, something clicked. I was able to pronounce it without using any part of my mouth, which is the way it is supposed to be. My throat was doing acrobatics that probably wouldn’t be legal in most US States and/or territories besides Guam.

. . . last night here at the Catholic boarding school type place that I am staying that looks like something out of a history film, the fifteen boys here were sitting in the, uh, sitting room, and their supervisor, Father Mayyas, came in and quieted them down. He proceeded to give them a speech about the need for a goal in life, for the short term and the long term.

What are we doing? Where are we going here in this life? “Whoa!” right? Kind of like the biggest question ever. For me, the answer is that I am here to be loved by, and love, a Being more beautiful than men could dream when looking into the night sky, who also reveals Himself as a Dad who holds me safe--and changes me into a person who wants to help others instead of play Nintendo all day every day (or something along those glorious lines). He makes me want to be person who wants to get understanding of how people can be whole, and loved, and forgiven in Him, and was willing to sacrifice Himself and invade His rebellious creation (myself included) to grant me power to live right. For some of you it might be different.
I looked around as the poor bewildered Jr. High boys tried to somehow search for the answer to how they figured out where they wanted to go, and what the right thing to choose, or aim for in life was (haha- dealing with this in jr high-that is really funny). Anyway, big question that I thought was worth getting a little philosophical for a second about, since it has to do with building our lives on it.


Ok well I am really enjoying listening to two Italian girls talking on skype at the internet café here (the amount of expression and emotion is out of control-and I can understand a little), but I know Faraz is laughing at how much he is going to charge me already. Next time I’ll have some better stories, haha I’ve been studying a lot. Peace,
Steven