Visit to Wisconsin

Over the Christmas weekend, we took a lovely little jaunt up to visit Rosie. Monica, Katherine, James and I made the 13-hour drive in Monica's car, which has like 209,000 miles on it, and it made the trip quite cheerfully, without any threats of a breakdown.

I read aloud The Hobbit to while away the time in the car. It's a good book for traveling, because during most of the story, the hobbit and the dwarves are on a long journey, usually on foot, taking months to get where they're going, and fraught with dangers at every turn, so it puts our happy, safe little trip into perspective. I read chapters 1-6 on the way up and chapters 7-19 on the way back home. Not sure how my voice held out for that, but it did.

It was so fun to see Rosie and Mike, see their new house for the first time, meet their doberman puppy Ava, and do all the things we have longed to do together. I hadn't seen Rosie since she got married a year and a half ago. Ah! It was so good to catch up, to go back and have that instant connection with her that I've always had, to talk, cook together, play games together, and sing together.

James dazzled us with his illustrious pool skills

We played lots of Seafarers scenarios of Settlers of Catan 

We completed a 550-piece puzzle in record time.

And we snacked on yummy Wisconsin cheese. Mmmmm.

Making Chai tea! 

Ava sports her Christmas present, a waterproof overcoat

Different ones of us also went on walks, took Ava to the dog park, went skiing at the little bump, played pinochle, and went shopping.

One of the best parts of the trip was the Christmas party at the Walkers and then Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. The Walker family is incomparable. They are so loving, warm, hospitable, and amazing.

This has got to be the happiest kitchen in America. Or on Planet Earth. Not exaggerating.

How's that for a Christmas Eve dinner place setting?

Such a privilege to spend my Christmas Eve with these people!

If you've been here, you know what a good time we all must have been having.

Almost ready to eat!

The lovely tree

After dinner, we all "went to bed." We lay down in the bedrooms, turned the lights out, and got quiet. Soon, what was our surprise when we heard a jolly "Ho-ho-ho!" and a loud ringing of sleigh bells! We all raced downstairs to the tree and found that Santa had left in such a hurry, he had forgotten his glove on the mantlepiece. The kids were absolutely delighted. They kept putting the glove on and taking it off, feeling the soft black leather and turning it over and over in their hands.

We took turns telling the Christmas story, each person adding a portion and then naming another person who would tell the next part. The kids listened and I enjoyed the personalized retelling of the story in each person's own words.

Then we opened gifts. We took turns, going youngest to oldest, with each person opening one gift at a time. I received an orange mug, some orange dark chocolate, an orange dress, and a beautiful silver bracelet. Score! Best Christmas gifts ever!

White Christmas

I never would have guessed that I would get a white Christmas this year! I was planning to discover what it was like to have Christmas on the beach. But there I was, up in white Wisconsin, and on Christmas day we took a walk to enjoy the snowy scenes. 

Gas and tolls to drive to WI: $100. All four sisters together on Christmas day: Priceless.

Katherine photographing James playing with Ava, Rosie's new doberman. Fun fun!

Gingerbread house party

Christmas would not be complete without my sister Monica's annual gingerbread house decorating party. She works for days, baking the pieces for the frame of the house and painstakingly building the houses by sticking the gingerbread walls together with an egg-white glue. Then she lets her guests have the fun part: decorating the houses!

I love sitting around a table with Christmas music playing, talking and laughing with a bunch of other girls, sticking bits of candy all over my gingerbread house (and popping the occasional piece into my mouth), and watching how each person's creativity comes out in the many styles of decoration. We've been doing this for years, and every year, we still have creative new ideas that no one has ever thought of before.

Some of the finished products...

My house

The side of my house (I couldn't have a house without at least one orange wall, now could I?)

At the end, everyone gets a gingerbread house to take home or to give away as a Christmas gift. When we were kids, we would then begin to eat the gingerbread house, since everything is edible. Little by little, the candy would be picked off and devoured, then the cookie pieces, usually starting with the chimney, the shutters, and the door, until in a few days, there would be nothing left. Now we usually just enjoy having the house to look at, and we forego the candy.

One week ago, lying on my bed in Haiti, sick with malaria, how little I expected to get to do gingerbread houses this year! Thank you, God, for this unexpected and delightful surprise! And thank you, Monica, for all the hard work that allows your friends and sisters to have so much pleasure decorating these houses! Love you!

Green smoothie

There's nothing like pure raw nutrition to make you feel better when you've been sick!

And there's nothing that beats your mom's home-grown cocktail of freshly-picked greens to throw into a green smoothie.

You may ask how in the world she has these things growing in the garden in December. I do not know the answer to that. I was as surprised as I could be to see this beautiful selection of fresh, organic produce come in from the back yard.

And this was the most delicious glass of pure nutrition ever! Ah! Thank God for people who pamper me with their tender caring helpfulness when I'm sick.

(You may also ask how in the world my mom's green smoothie made it to Haiti. Actually I have come home. I'll visit my family for Christmas and go back in January.)

Reverse Culture Shock: Dazzled by a Banana

I got in the car with my dear mother and sister who drove the three hours to pick me up at the airport. It felt so good to be with them again, to be able to relax in the back seat and close my eyes and not wonder if we would have a head-on collision with a bus while trying to pass a tap-tap.

They asked me questions about my trip and I started telling my stories. "Look at all the lights," I was thinking to myself. "Just think of all this electricity! Wow. Everyone has power, and the power doesn't go out."

I decided it would be best to warn them that I would be experiencing reverse culture shock. I had been trained about this in my debrief with WEC after my experience in Betel. But in all my travels, I had never experienced culture shock so powerfully as I did in Haiti, and I expected that reversing the process would be equally drastic.

"Just to warn you," I started in, "I might be in for some heavy-duty reverse culture shock."

"What do you mean?" Mom asked.

"Well, you know, being an emotional basket case, and having to get used to the way things are here, and stuff like that," I said.

"Do you want a banana?" Monica interrupted.

"Sure," I said. I took the banana.

"So don't be surprised," I continued, "if I'm always saying stuff like, 'Whoa, look at all the lights,' or 'Whoa, niiiiice houses,' or--"

I started opening my banana as I was talking.

"Whoa! Look at this BANANA!" I interrupted myself. "Oh my goodness! It's so large! And yellow! And perfect! And there are no ants on it! Whoa! This is the nicest banana I've ever seen!"

The irony was lost on me until Mom and Monica said, "Are you serious, or is that just another example?"

"Oh! No, I'm serious!" I said. "Look at this thing!" I giggled with delight as I bit into its pure lusciousness. Yum, yum, yum, yum. Bliss, all the way down to the bottom.

Stuff you can't buy in Haiti

Some of this may be available in Port-au-Prince and I just don't know it, but we never get a chance to go that far away to do our shopping. If you're a traveler or missionary who is going to be out in the rest of Haiti, shopping in smaller cities (we shop in Saint-Marc), you might want to bring these along with you so you'll have them when you need them.

Barleygreen or similar powdered nutritional drink

When you're eating nothing but carbs and starch, you need something to keep you healthy.

Bug spray

When you're repelling malaria mosquitoes, you want the best protection you can get.

Calendar
Calligraphy pens
Cardamom pods
Can opener

Canning jars

Wide-mouth quart jars are great for storing things away from bugs and for making your own homemade versions of foods you can't buy (like pickle relish)

Chili powder

The rest of the ingredients for chili are available locally

Clipboard
Duct tape

Green tea

If green tea is your thing, you might have to ration what you brought with you to last your entire time.

Instant oatmeal (but regular oatmeal is available)
Knife (good, all-purpose, kitchen use)

Also consider a knife sharpener. 

Latex gloves
Laundry basket/bag
Mosquito nets

After getting Malaria, I can't overemphasize this enough! 

Pencil sharpener
Pepper spray
Scissors (heavy-duty, all-purpose)
Sharpie markers
Straight pins (like for sewing)
Travel coffee mug (with a lid, unbreakable)
Vegetable peeler
Washcloths
Wooden spoons
Yarn
Yeast (for bread baking)

Not eating makes me think about food.

And this is the food I'm thinking about.

Chinese food

Some good sweet'n'sour chicken. Or sesame chicken. I think I'd go for the sesame chicken.

How about some garlicky beef and broccoli. Mmmmmm.

Christmas food

Like eggnog.

And Mincemeat pie.

Junk food

Like Pringles.

And especially, a Culver's Butter Burger.

Comfort Food

Like Granno's apple pie.

Or a cheese ball.

Can't find a proper picture of either one of these, but it's just as well, because Granno's apple pie is unlike any apple pie on google images, and the cheese ball ("Party cheese ball"--YUM!) is so epic, it would be overwhelming to see a good picture of it. Especially with the right crackers. Ah!

Mexican Food

For instance, an incredibly huge, juicy, beefy burrito.

Or a drippy, cheesy, melty, chicken quesadilla.

[Oooooh.... This has nothing to do with Mexican food, but I just got sidetracked at a lovely new place, a blog called Cooking for Seven. Oh such beautiful creations of food. Tantalizing! I'll be visiting there again frequently. Pear, dark chocolate, and muenster panini??? Twist my arm! Dirty Chai pancakes with Spiced Caramel Sauce??? Sign me up!]

Homemade Food

My family's homemade pizza.

'Nuff said.

Oh boy. This is getting dangerous. And that's without mentioning...

• melt-in-your-mouth frozen custard 
• Mrs. Sadler's chicken pot pie
• reuben sandwiches
• biscuits and gravy
• liver and onions
• moroccan tajine
• chili and cornbread
• split pea soup
• bacon
• hummus and pita
• cranberry sauce
• hot apple cider
• milk and cookies

I think it's time to stop. I can tell I've been in Haiti for quite a while now. When you're in Haiti, you don't get to eat like this. So it's not just that I haven't been eating for a week, it's that I haven't had any of the above for 3 months, and there's no chance in the near future to have them, either.

(Note to my friends and family: When I come home, if you serve me spaghetti, rice, beans, and/or cornmeal, I will eat it with a cheerful attitude, but it will not be a long-desired special treat! Take the foods mentioned in this post under consideration instead.)

(Another note to my friends and family: If I come home early due to this hepatitis, and I can't eat all this heavy, rich, decadent food because of a special diet, and you serve any of the items pictured here, it will be worse torture than looking at the pictures. Just sayin'.)

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Now I'm going to switch gears entirely and take this otherwise-pointless point in a redemptive direction. Let me point to Jesus.

I'm fairly sure that the pictures and food suggestions above resonated with my readers and caused you, too, to feel hungry and appetized for one or more of the choices I listed. But here's the question: would you or I be that interested if we replaced all the foods with Scriptures?

Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."(Matthew 4:4).

I ask myself honestly, "How seriously do I take that?"

Jesus said, " I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." (John 6:35)

I have to evaluate my own heart: How far is that true for me?

I hunted all these yummy food pictures gloatingly, with a sweet glee bubbling up from within me, relishing just the look of food, without even smelling, touching, or tasting it. Do I delight that tangibly in feasting on the Word? 

God's word is supposed to be "sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb." (Psalm 19:10)

Do we just pay lip service to that, or is it a defining reality of our lives?

The Psalmist could say, "How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (Psalm 119:103)

What will it take for us to truly treasure the Word of God in this way? 

What if we were so hungry for Scripture after a week-long fast from it that we just couldn't resist doing a blog post with all our favorite verses that we hadn't read for a long time? 

What if it didn't matter to us what we ate or when or how often, just so long as we got to have our dose of Scripture for the day? 

What if searching the Word was more delightful to us than the most delightful eating experience we've ever had? I can think of some really good tiramisu I had once. I still remember how great a pleasure it gave me to eat every.single.bite. I think of Kopp's Midnight Chocolate Cake ice cream, of savory cheeses, of garlicky doner kebab meat, of a bowl full of cherries, and of many other things that are so absolutely delicious that the pleasure just never goes away.

Doner Kebab, straight from a website in Turkey. The real deal.
(Did they intentionally make it to look sort of like a smiley face?)

Am I not blind and deaf and utterly confused if I do not treasure the Word of God more than these temporal pleasures of food? The eyes of faith look beyond the power of the senses to discern the clear and true and living realities. It is TRUE, deafeningly true, resoundingly true, that the Word of God is objectively far greater and sweeter and more nourishing and life-giving and pleasure-giving than all the best food the world has ever known. 

We are fools not to bring our lives into conformity with this reality. We are missing out on exquisite beauty, pure satisfaction, and endless pleasure by staying outside of the place where we feast on the Word. 

I pity the poor Haitian people who have never tasted even one of the foods I've listed here. Most of the people in Haiti probably have literally never tasted or conceived of even one of the foods in this post (with the exception of bread. They've probably tasted that). Aside from the fact that they're not even guaranteed to eat at all on any given day, they have a vocabulary of like 4 food options. Spaghetti. Rice. Cornmeal. Wheat mush. Ah! They don't know what they're missing out on! But NEITHER DO WE who leave the Bible to gather dust on the shelf, or take it out for our obligatory five minute devotion time, and never discover the true riches and joy-filled LIFE that God offers us. 

The Haitian who has never eaten a nutritious, balanced diet is to be pitied, but only insofar as the natural world goes. Pity the person far more who has never eaten the nutritious, balanced diet of the Word of God, which brings life to the spirit and awakens the soul to union and fellowship with God. The one is malnourished for this life only, but the other is malnourished for this life and the next. 

Why is the Word of God so precious? Why is it so good? What is so great about it, after all? Isn't it just a bunch of spiritual-sounding hype to place God's word so far above our greatest earthly pleasures?

No.

Because the Word of God---IS JESUS. 

John 1. 

And if you don't know that Jesus is precious and good, far above the greatest earthly pleasure, then I doubt you have ever encountered Him at all. But that's a conversation for another day.