Today was officially the last Sunday I will spend in Central Wisconsin for a long while, and I'm not precisely sure how I feel about this fact. However, it appears that my feelings don't really factor into the equation at the moment, because plans have been laid, and Lord willing, aforementioned plans shall be executed in due fashion, meaning that Thea and Assorted Junk will be moving out of Beaty House and into Possibly Messy Dorm Room in rather short order...Liberty U, here we come.

This afternoon, however, as part of the home-leaving grieving process otherwise known as "bemoaning this rather soon departure in the company of friends," I found myself sitting at a corner table in Wausau's illustrious King Buffet, eating soggy sushi and lovely white rice in the company of two friendly little Mexican dudes. One of them was moodily informing me that he would be so depressed after I left that he would probably kill himself...to which I replied that that would be a tragic and rather pointless waste of his perfectly good life, and that I could think of better things to die about...although I'm not sure how well that last point translated into Spanish. Oscar looked slightly mystified after I said it, but he didn't say anything in reply.

Instead, he looked down at his plate for a second just to make sure the lamb chops hadn't suddenly come to life, and then he leaned over and whispered,

"Thea, ¿sabes quien es San Pedro?" (Do you know who Saint Peter is?)

I looked at him blankly. "Sabes quien es San Pedro? ¿Qué clase de pregunta es esto? Um, yo sé que él está considerado ser un santo..." (What kind of a question is that? I know he's considered to be a saint...?)

He winked, and nodded towards the other side of the room.

"He's sitting right over there," he hissed to me in rapid Spanish.

I looked where Oscar had indicated with one eyebrow, and saw a veritable old sage of a chap with a long flowing gray beard and vacant light blue eyes, picking absent-mindedly at his sesame chicken and dribbling egg-drop soup down his whiskers as he conversed thoughtfully with his female companion.

"Oh my word, Oscar," I thought to myself, "I do believe you're right...we've found Saint Peter."

The waitress couldn't for the life of her figure out what we found so funny...

I think we all came home feeling full of soggy sushi...and vastly more socially well-rounded.

They say that more is caught than taught.
Having early grasped and understood this important concept, my three younger brothers decided to invest some quality time in the process of teaching Nephew Brock music appreciation and fashion sense today while I was at work...the poor child.

It started out, as always, with the innocent victim sitting unsuspectingly in the armchair with an elfish expression on his cute face...

...at which point, Unc Trevor whisks the little man away to the piano, and shows him the fine art of banging the ivories...the harder the better...

...sometimes it's better to put your WHOLE body into things. At least, as much of it as you can fit up there...

...ooo. Camera. Shiny. Distracting...

Posing...losing interest in the music enlightenment session...

Time for a class in career options and fashion design! Brock was apparently lovin' the idea...

Career options?

...well, there's always the super cool punk/bum/loser/rabid Brewer's fan thing...

...or the cop thing? They arrest punk losers, I think? But Brock seemed uncertain that this was the career path God had chosen for his life...

...there is also the slightly creepy drugged-up-hippy-having-a-gender-identity-crisis look...but Brock was apparently not so much into that one either? Possibly just because he knew he could never pull it off in quite the same way as a certain uncle of his...



Josiah is now ready to become a member of Mall Security here in Wausau. He'll fit right in.

Romania

It has been nearly two weeks since I returned from Europe, and I feel as though I ought to try to put some sense of this experience into words and photographs for you, my esteemed readership, although inevitably, I shall fail to capture the full essence of this journey, the impact of which I am still attempting to process myself.

I begin with Romania. It’s difficult for me to convey a sense of my impression of this beautiful country, but let me try. This is an excerpt from my journal, penned as I rode the bus (shared with many sleepy, unsmiling Romanians and two very loud, very much not-sleepy parakeets) through eight thought-provoking hours of Romanian countryside between Iasi and Bucharest:

“Today, I leave Romania, filled with an odd combination of longing, sorrow, great joy, and mystified curiosity. Words fail me as I attempt to capture the overwhelming sense of richness comingled with abject poverty which permeates every corner of this land. This is a nation of extremes, of strange contradictions which are somehow correlated and even complimentary to each other.

It is a country which is developing, and yet underdeveloped. It is progressive, and yet backwards. There is much here for which to give thanks, and yet I seldom see a smiling face upon the streets of her cities. There is much freedom, and yet also much oppression. There is mirth here, but little true joy. There is godliness, but I think that often, it is crippled by legalism and unsound doctrine within the church.

This is a country where old men ride their bicycles on the highway alongside semi-trailers moving at 110 kilometers per hour...where the dead horse of some unlucky peasant lies in the ditch alongside the road which carries Smart cars to and fro. This is a nation where abject poverty and luxurious lifestyles are juxtaposed on the same street, side by side...



...where traffic is hopelessly disorganized, and parking is an abominable jungle of hapless chaos, but where transportation is never THAT much of a problem, because there’s always something that can get you from point A to point B, even if it’s just somebody’s donkey.



This is a country where it takes 3 hours to eat in a restaurant because the service is so slow...and yet somehow, it’s all good, because it forces you to appreciate and enjoy those you’re sharing your meal with that day.

Romania is full of deeply religious people—who live in darkness and misery. It is full of brilliant, educated people who think that knowledge itself is the end rather than a means to an end. It is filled with backwards theories that have long gone unchallenged...but its people are striving to carve a living for themselves out of a harsh reality, dying to be loved in a post-Communist culture which, until recently, sought to destroy natural human affection.

The scars of Communism run deep in Romania. They have come far, but they have a much greater distance to bridge than that which has been crossed already. May God be merciful as they continue this process."

One of the highlights of this sojourn across the pond was the opportunity to spend two beautiful weeks in fellowshipping with my incredible, talented, sweet, Godly, lovely (and very much loved) younger sister, Michelle.



She not only rescued me every time I got lost in Iasi, she also graciously let me camp out in her room, introduced me to her friends, accompanied me everywhere, shooed away rabid dogs, and fended off creepy Romanian dweebs, as the need arose.


(You didn't believe me about the dweebs part, did you? Heh.)

Some of my most meaningful memories, though, were the incredibly special hours that we spent praying together, studying the Word, and speaking an unintelligible language which I can only refer to as Sister. I adore this woman, and consider myself immeasurably blessed to have her as my sister. Woohoo!



I had a blast traipsing around Iasi, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells (wonderful and otherwise) of this fascinating city.

We spent two days apartment hunting, accompanied by a very exuberant ReMax agent who told us very frankly that his English “was broke!” which is presumably why he chose to converse with us primarily in Romanian. For some odd reason, he would always look at me when he spoke, despite the fact that we’d told him several times that I don’t speak Romanian, and I—not comprehending a word—would simply nod, and say, “Da, da, da!” understandingly...until there was a lull in the conversation long enough for me to lean over to Michelle and hiss, “What on earth did he just say?!”

We had a great deal of fun clowning around for the camera with the cute Kosobucki gals—miss them all!







This last one was simply to prove that Lydia doesn't ALWAYS manage to look angelic, although she manages to do so at least 95% of the time...


Had a blast at the bridal shower for a lovely Romanian bride-to-be! We discovered that our dressmaking skills are in need of slight refining, so it’s fortunate for her (the poor dear on the right) that we’re not the ones responsible for putting together her bridal gown, as both suggested styles were slightly more suggestive of a car accident than a wedding?



...saw lots of beautiful volumes which are peddled like this on the streets here—but was unable to make much out of the Romanian, sadly.



This was the amphitheater, just down the road from our house...it stood above a truly lovely garden, which was just above a quaint little house, which once belonged to a famous Romanian poet. There was a not-quite-so-charming outhouse in the back.



We spent several lazy afternoons in the parks, where children (wearing hats to guard against we’re-not-exactly-sure-what deadly illnesses) come with their parents or grandparents to feed the pigeons...or stomp on the pigeons, depending on the kid.




...there is so much more that I could say, but it would be unfair to keep you here forever, and thus, I conclude. I would hope that this has been a glimpse—enough perhaps to give you a sense, and new respect for, and a deeper appreciation for the beauty and the struggle of the country that we call Romania...

Sea of Faces...

I was at WalMart tonight--just because I could be. And as I was meandering around through all those nifty, exciting little mazes erected by bored WalMart employees for the confusion of the average American customer, I confess that I was deeply fascinated by my fellow human beings...

Thea, I thought to myself, You have to admit that super markets and shopping malls are a brilliant concept--where else would one have the opportunity to see such a diverse group of humanity thrown together in one giant, hurried mass of intriguingly chaotic activity?

A big, burly black woman had parked her heavily-laden grocery cart in front of the banana stand, where she was deeply engrossed in searching for a perfect specimen of the banana variety. I wondered briefly if perhaps she were one of those open-minded individuals who kept a pet monkey at home--but then I took a good look at the gorgeous, curly-haired little person in the front of her cart as he determinedly kicked the side of the lobster tank with one foot just to perturb the amphibious occupants, and I had to admit the monkey theory was improbable.

Just to the left of this commanding dame and her young charge was a puffy little man with a round, white face. His stomach sagged in a way that was highly suggestive of too many jelly donuts, and his empty expression was nicely set off by strands of greasy gray hair which straggled across his forehead in unkempt wisps.

Over in the produce section, a group of Egyptian foreign exchange students were carrying on a lively debate in Arabic as they passed a green pepper curiously from one person to the next, cocking their heads thoughtfully as they attempted to discern exactly what type of tropical fruit this might be.

Everywhere I looked, there were people: big ones, little ones, happy ones, sad ones, skinny ones, fat ones. All of them had faces (what a relief, eh?); all of us were members of the same species, and yet, as I watched, I was struck by how very different each person was from the next. Every face tells a story that is constantly developing, made up of the fascinating minutiae of everyday lives, and every story is different.

The green-pepper-wielding Egyptians smiled and waved, and I waved back, marveling to myself at how much power is held in something as simple as a smile.

I started thinking about faces then...because some people have lovely faces, and some people...just have faces. And I think, deep down, that God probably did that to help us understand that it's not the face that's important...it's everything that's behind the face that really matters.

I left with a new appreciation for the toothless grin of the shriveled little greeter at the door...

Sometimes the lyrics of a song capture the cry of your heart better than you possibly could articulate it yourself...and Downhere has done a fantastic job of expressing both the hope, confusion, redemptive power, and overwhelming sense of inadequacy and insufficiency that are a part of the incredible privilege of walking with Jesus Christ. This song, "Here I Am," has blessed me so much during the past year:

Sometimes Your calling comes in dreams,
Sometimes it comes in the Spirit's breeze.
You reach for the deepest hope in me,
And call out for the things of eternity.

But I'm a man of dust and stains,
You move in me, so I can say:

Here I am. Lord, send me.
All of my life, I make an offering.
Here I am. Lord, send me.
Somehow my story is a part of Your plan,
Here I am.

When setbacks and failures, and upset plans
Test my faith and leave me with empty hands,
Are You not the closest when it's hardest to stand?
I know that You will finish what You began.

And these broken parts You will redeem
Become the song that I can sing:

Here I am. Lord, send me.
All of my life, I make an offering.
Here I am. Lord, send me.
Somehow my story is a part of Your plan,
Here I am.

Overwhelmed by the thought of my weakness
And the fear that I'll fail You in the end...
In this mess, I'm just one of the pieces,
I can't put this together—but You can.

So here I am. Lord, send me!
All of my life, I make an offering.
Here I am. Lord, send me.
Somehow my story is a part of Your plan...
Here I am.

Here I Am, all my life an offering to You, to You...
Somehow my story is a part of Your plan—
Here I am.