From a different angle

A few bonus posts for those who want to read more.

Candis blogged after we left Malaysia here:

http://thirtytravelers.blogspot.com/2009/07/john-and-will-came-to-visit.html

And, Kristen and Jennifer did the same after we left Rwanda here:

http://thirtytravelers.blogspot.com/2009/07/this-is-so-americanized.html

Happy reading,

John

Scotland...

was great! And now we're in Northern Ireland, a little behind on our blogging.

In Scotland we met up with our friend Dwight from the States and John's brother James and his girlfriend Jocelyn and friend Brian, and they showed us a good time. James took us around on Thursday to Stirling castle and the William Wallace monument, where we got our fix of patriotic Scottish lore/history. One of our favorite facts: William Wallace's sword is 66 inches long, including the handle. This puts him at 6'6" at least, very tall for a 13th-century Scot. After the castle and monument we drove to a beautiful lake called Loch Lomond, the biggest lake in Britain, and skipped rocks for a while, until we got bored with that and started trying (unsuccessfully) to hit seagulls. They weather was beautiful, the sun was shining, and it was a beautiful day to drive through the countryside. One the way back home we stopped for a late dinner at a really great Indian restaurant in Glasgow, which was a perfect way to introduce Dwight to Delhi dining. We loved it.

The next day we visited the national botanical gardens, a perfectly romantic outing for us five dudes, before climbing Arthur's Seat, a hill that overlooks the city and provides a beautiful view of the water beyond it. We left on Saturday and made to Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland has a bit of a homecoming feeling for John and Dwight who spent a year here as missionaries. Just now, we're sitting in a friend's house with a great group of people, full from a huge lunch and nodding off to afternoon naps. A celebration's always fitting when these two show up. It's also been great to follow up with the friends they made while over here.

Well, we're here till Thursday when we fly back for home, a quick visit to end our little trip. More to come as we wrap up. It's time for some photos soon.

Peace,

Will and John

Hello from Kigali, Rwanda!

Hi everyone, sorry its been so long since we posted! (By the way,
Will deserves almost all the credit for that last post.) Things are
going well; we leave tomorrow night for Scotland, sadly bringing our
time in Africa to a close. So much has happened, and it's frustrating
not to be able and blog about it all. Here's an overview ( I only
have 3 minutes!)

We went to around the Ugandan/Kenyan border and handed out mosquito
nets one day, it was really cool.

We came to Rwanda and spent several days with the sister church of
Will's church, Church of the Advent. We spent a lot of time with the
amazing Pastor Deo, and went to a 4 hour church service at his
Anglican Church.

We came to Kigali and went to two genocide memorials where over 5000
people were murdered inside 2 catholic churches.

Tomorrow we will go to the memorial museum, and then fly out.

Thats all I have time for, expect for in a few days.

Love,
Will and John

Perspective

Well, we made it to Uganda!  

And it feels like heaven. 

The power is on, the toilets are nice, Jen lives in a mansion, the buildings are colorful, the weather is perfect, the sky is blue...and we've only been here 9 hours.

Of course, if we would have come here before Ethiopia things would have appeared much differently, and we would be complaining about the crowds, the dust, the food etc... but now it just seems really nice. 

We spent the last few days where Kristen lives in a small town called Finote Selam, about 8 hours northwest of Addis Ababa. Finote Selam is located in what Kristen calls the "Bible belt" of Ethiopia; think Rogers, Arkansas (except that the Finote has taxis). The Finote was great. After our romps through Lalibela and Gondar and our visit to see the hippos in the Nile (yes, large teeth, loud grunting, scared Ethiopians who can't swim. It was awesome), Finote Selam was a perfect place to unwind and also learn more about what Kristen's been up to with the Peace Corps in this country that seems more different from ours than similar. 

Kristen's (who hasn't endorsed anything I'm saying exactly) position in the Finote has removed her from close Christian community, from electricity, from clean water, from comfort, from Western bathroom practices, and from almost all other luxuries you and I take for granted every moment. This isn't to set her or other similar volunteers up on a pedestal of heroism; surely most of them have come to learn more than teach, to be changed more than to change. But what if Kristen's giving of her life for these two years in as complete a way as can be conceived actually does affect change in Finote Selam? What if the mill she's helping to start makes access to grinding grain easier and more affordable for the poorest in the city? What if the laundry business she helped set up that provides jobs for women with HIV turns their lives around and sets them on a different course? 

Even if she revolutionizes life here, that's just one small dot on a map of a very big country in a very very big continent in a very very very big world. So someone gives her whole life, gives everything she has to hope to God that something comes of it. And when it does, it barely scratches the surface of the surface of the problems that she sees around her, the problems that pervade the globe.

Sometimes I wish it could be equal, that an entire life devoted to help or service would yield an equal reaction of benefit. But it's not that way; sometimes we work without seeing change. We try to sacrifice and don't enjoy seeing any fruit at all. And the problem is that our sacrifice itself can't work the kinds of change we hope to see. We're too small. There is, though, a sacrifice that is yielding its equal reaction in the world, and that sacrifice is Christ, who gave up immensely more than we have to do immensely more than we can see. Our little lives here, to affect lasting change, to see real renewal on earth, must flow out of this one ultimate sacrifice whose giving of himself is enough to waken us all from our slumber and plant our little seeds of service into soil fertile enough to see them grow.

Greetings from Ethiopia!

Well, we made it! The airport in Mumbai was interesting, but the flights weren't bad, so we arrived without too much trouble a few days ago. Will and I have recovered nicely from Kinabalu, although the elevation here is still rather high, and are adjusting without too much trouble to Ethiopian food and lifestyle. We spent a day in Addis, touring the university, which used to be the palace of his Emperor Haile Selassie, the "lion of Judah" (a humble man) and hanging out with Kristen's friend Mami. The next day we flew to Lalibela, where 800 or so years ago king Lalibela decided to carve churches out of rocks, very impressive. the first church we saw there was a free standing structure carved from basalt, not an easy thing to do! So we spent a few days there, then a day in Gondar, where they have a medieval type castle built during Ethiopia's feudal period, and now we are in Bahir Dar, a much nicer city by a very pretty lake.

Ethiopia is a very interesting place. It is definitely a "developing country"; they only turn the power on every other day here, and we thought we were going to die several times on the bus ride here because of the cows, sheep, goats, donkeys, rocks, and people that were on the highway. most of the people outside of the cities act as though nothing has changed in the last 500 years, which is really cool to see, but that makes it interesting when they get their hands on modern equipment, like cars, rickshaws, and high powered weapons.

Now we're in Bahir Dar staying with one of Kristen's PC friends Anna. This is a rocking city bigger than the other two we've seen, and we're enjoying the luxuries (read: internet, french toast, and the bajaj!). We'll be here for two more days to see the source of the blue nile, hang out with kristen's friends, and meet some hippos (not that her friends are hippos). Then we'll head to Finote Selam where Kristen calls 'home' to meet her neighbors and friends there and see what she's been up to for the last year or so. The Finote is famous for monkeys, sugar cane, waterfalls, and the white girl. I guess we'll draw some more of the Ethio papparazzi while we're there.

Bye for now, thanks for stopping by!

Will and John

Shadow of the Mountain, part deux

I was fairly alert when I woke up to John and Candis discussing what to do about our wet clothes. After 7 hours of hiking through the rain the day before, all of our stuff was soaked, and the higher we climbed, the colder it got. I was feeling a little bit better than the day before, when I could only get down a few bites of food without feeling nauseous and faint--not a good condition for hiking. But after a trip to the bathroom (which included a lot of pacing in the hall waiting for a spot), I came back curiously wanting to go up the mountain. When I went to bed that night, I had just about given up on the summit and was looking forward to sleeping in and meeting John and Candis at the warm breakfast after their climb. Taken by this strange new urge, I put on my wet t-shirt, shorts, socks, and shoes, shoved a granola bar down and walked out the door at 1:30 am. I left an hour earlier than everyone else to compensate for my tortoise-wins-the-race (or at least finishes) speed.



The moon shone bright above the clouds as I stumbled to the trail, alone in the night with my headlamp and a bag of peanuts. I have no idea what I was thinking. I felt better than the day before, but I was lacking the one thing, food, that finally did make me feel better. So I worked my way up through the last bits of forest, stopping whenever I got dizzy to eat exactly four peanuts and take a sip of water.

Two hours later, having been passed up a few times, Candis and John caught me at the first set of ropes that cover the last stage of this mountain. See, when it gets to steep to just hike up the granite, you have to pull yourself up with the ropes. They gave me some crucial cashews and kept bouncing up the mountain like they do (note to self: attempting to climb mountain with the most fit people you know may result in not keeping up).

So fast forward three hours. It's now 6:30 in the morning and our very very patient guide Rosalia has caught up to me and is creeping behind me slowly up the steep slope just before the last 100m vertical climb to the peak. As we were about to pass the 8km mark (out of 9), I see the fuzzball on John's skimask coming down the mountain towards me. Completely surprised that I'm still going, they give me the rest of the water and wish me luck with the rest of the way. And what stands before me?

The Agrocrag. The peak of Kinabalu sits atop a tall, skinny pile of boulders. Cheered on by other climbers--fast friends in the struggle uphill--I finally, after 13 hours of uphill misery, made it! Freezing and faint, I hugged the sign at the top and sounded my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world. It was awesome!



Thanks for reading, that was too long.

Peace and thank God!

videos!

hello!



Here are some pictures, mainly from Candis' Connexion House, with Beau Bristow playing guitar at the end of the barbeque friday night. It was amazing how many different countries were represented there; Iranians/Persians, Malaysian Chinese, Malay, Malaysian Indians, Indians, Chinese, Saudis, Sudanese, Nigerians, Danes, Britons, and of course, Americans. Not too shabby for her line of work.

the very strong tasting fruit called durian that the locals love. it really is kindof nasty.

candis and some of her friends
beau playing, ali g singing in the background
lots of different people
countries and index cards of names of people from those countries



here is the one video of the mountain that didn't make it on the last post pat.





hastily done,
john