September 2019

Quick post, photos to follow:

My birthday was fun.  I was intending at first to go low key which is easy when school starts in September and people don't think about birthdays because so much else is going on.  Then I realized I was feeling a bit isolated, so I decided to just bite the bullet and let the cat out of the bag.  One box of cupcake mix, 2 cartons of ice cream, and lots of napkins later, I felt much better.  The kids and Frank got me a potted plant (day 4 still alive) and I got 2 bday cards from my mom on the same day.  It was a DIY poem, with every other line of the poem blank.  So it says, "You're birthday's here, I just can't wait...." and I have to finish with a rhyme.  Then my parents called and we took turns reading our version of the missing lines.   I did the obligatory 46 pushups plus 1 to grow on (cheater style, in 2 sets).

I went out to lunch with some other moms-Zuni's sweet potato ravioli were the best!

 Our branch--the Jerusalem branch-- now has a young women's presidency and primary presidency.  I am the district R.S. secretary. Frank is in the district presidency as a counselor.   Still waiting on Seminary callings.  They do a hybrid seminary program here, some online with 2 weekly meetings.

I visited the Tel Aviv branch today in the 4th floor of an office building, and I met so many pioneers who joined the church in their home country and then found their way to Israel for work.  One lady from Cameroon said, "I was baptized 11 years ago today.  Today is my other birthday, when I was born to Jesus!"   Across the hallway from the Tel Aviv branch is the worship space for a Baptist congregation, so two groups of believers were filing into the building, and you know how you try to figure out who is new in the ward and who is visiting without revealing that you are kind of hoping for the former?  This was just as tricky.  We shared an elevator with a Chinese man and made small talk, and I asked him which congregation he was looking for.  He said, "The Church of Jesus Christ!"  #revealednameofthechurch.  

Arrival

Thinking of loved ones back home and our fun and busy summer!

Thursday 8/15/19  We left for Jerusalem in the afternoon and arrived Friday around dinner time.  Our flight were fine; I didn't sleep much, but that's to be expected.  The tradition is that when the plane touches down in Tel Aviv, everyone applauds, but just then I felt a wave of homesickness for my three sweet daughters in Utah, so I was clapping and crying at the same time!  



The director of the Jerusalem Center, Eran Hayet met us at the airport with his daugher Hadas, who is Lisa's age.  This was a very kind gesture that made us feel very special.  (Especially later on when we were the welcoming committee for others and realized how tiring it can be to wait in the airport for up to an hour on your feet!)  We and all our luggage made it back to the Jerusalem Center, which instantly felt like we never left!  I keep feeling like I am in a dream here,  and then the next instant it feels like the intervening 2 years in Utah were just a dream.  



We spoke for about 15 minutes with the Skinners, whom we are replacing.  Then we stayed in a different apartment for a few days while our real apartment was being prepared.  The temporary apartment was very nice and updated.  It had a mini-fridge and microwave, so we ate pita and veggies and yogurt for a few days.  We arrived in plum season, yay!

The next day was Saturday, Sabbath.  It was amazing as always.  Taking the sacrament and singing hymns about Jesus Christ really make the Holy Land feel holy to me.  Our friends John and Heather Howell are here with 4 of their 5 sons, and they all bike to church every week as well as lead and teach in the branch.  We were delighted to see Sahar Qumsiyeh visiting our branch from Idaho.  She was the Relief Society president when we first came to Jerusalem 9 years ago and a dear friend and now author. 
 
I ate lunch with Sahar and our friend Raghad, then enjoyed a nice potluck hosted by the four service couples from the center: the Lifferths, Hiltons, Earnshaws, and Morrisons.  These couples do so much to make us and the students feel comfortable here as well as coordinate outreach and tours of the building.  




8/20/19 We settled in to our real apartment on Monday night, and we welcomed the rest of the team on Tuesday.  The Belnaps, Pierces, and Properzis arrived from Utah, Ashkelon, and Italy, and we are all sorting out apartments and measuring cups and new phones this week.

 Amanda got to practice on the amazing organ today.  She is very motivated to play the beautiful organ here, and maybe she will have the chance to play in church in a few months.  We had a google hangout with the kids back home on the weekend, and that helped a lot to see that they are doing okay.  



8/23/19  We went to Palmahim beach for the afternoon with the Belnaps, and we enjoyed bobbing with the warm waves.  We stopped at McDonalds on the way back, where the choices were mini-burgers or huge burgers.  And you could choose either chicken nuggets or corn schnitzel, with traditional chopped cucumber salad on the side.

Thursday we had a new student Orientation at the Anglican School, then we went to the Mehane Yehuda Shuk, a busy, covered street market.  Sunday, which is like a Saturday, we visited the Citadel of David for some amazing views and an overview of thousands of years of history.
It must be more humid here because we are all looking a little extra glamorous!

Emily's teacher from three years ago just happened to spot us as we were walking by and ran over to say hello!  What are the chances?



8/28/19 Everything is fine here, the girls started school 2 days ago, and they each have a few classmates they knew from before.  They ride a shuttle to school with the other 9 students from the center, for a total of 11!  Amanda has been helpful in monitoring behavior on the bus and keeping track of booster seats for little ones.   Both Amanda and Emily have been zooming through the books in the kids library here.  They are waiting anxiously for the school library to open, but that may not happen for weeks.  

 

We celebrated the birthday of one of our Jerusalem cousins!  Passiflora flavored ice cream is actually really amazing!

Our world is a little upside-down at the moment, but all is well!  No comfort in the growth zone, no growth in the comfort zone, right?

Mini-post Quotes and Musings

Quote from Blood Brothers: the Dramatic Story of a Palestinian Christian working for Peace in Israel
by Elias Chacour

[Telling family stories] "was Father's most effective way of teaching us two things.  First, we should love and respect our Galilean soil, for our people had long struggled to survive here.  We were rooted like the poppies and wild, blue irises that thrust up among the rocks.  Our family had tilled this land, had worshiped here longer than anyone could remember.  And second, our lives were bound together with the other people who inhabited Palestine--the Jews.  We had suffered together under the Romans, Persians, Crusaders and Turks, and had learned to share the simple elements of human existence--faith, reverence for life, hospitality.  These, Father said, were the things that caused people to live happily together."  p. 38



Quote from The Full Cup podcast by Craig Berthold (you can find it on Apple play or Spotify)

"The God who loves in freedom is not afraid, and therefore can risk vulnerability
absorb the full horror of another's pain without self-destruction.  God has the power to be compassionate without fear; human beings now as in the time of Jesus tend to think of power as refusal to risk compassion.  But God's power looks not like imperious Caesar, but like Jesus on the cross."
Quote by William C. Placher  Narratives of a Vulnerable God

Letter of the Day

We have been working on reviewing the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets to get ready for our next trip to Jerusalem in ...gulp... one month from today! (this was written a while before I posted it - now there are 2 weeks left!)

If you ever wanted to learn a little bit about Hebrew or Arabic, check out my  Letter of the Day pdf file.  I put this together to help me refresh what I used to know about Hebrew and Arabic.  Each day introduces a new letter and shows how to use it in a few relevant words.

To learn with this file, print out one page and explore it as a family in a casual setting, like over lunch.  You can practice writing the letters with your pretzel sticks or spaghetti noodles, and make it fun.  After looking at it together, maybe tape the pages to a wall so your kids can review when they are curious again.

Hebrew has only 22 letters!  Okay, it's actually 26 if you count letters that make a different sound when you put a dot inside. And some letters have a different final form, so that's technically 31 letter forms to learn, plus there are about 9 vowel-related markings... but nothing to be scared about!  Where there's a will, there's a way!

Here's a catchy song to help you with the Hebrew Alphabet!

Arabic is now on Duolingo! Arabic has 28 letters and a half-dozen vowel-related markings.   Here's an Arabic Alphabet song with a nice tune, and here is another alphabet song that uses the alphabet tune you're used to.  Here is a video that shows how the Arabic letters look and sound at the beginning of common words.  One thing that worries people about Arabic is that the letters connect like cursive, so many letters look different when they are in the middle or end of a word.

Here's that pdf Letter of the Day file again:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EKGbQSJ2i2f6qTHiKzDrmNgKtT6oZd9Z/view?usp=sharing

Good luck, and even if you start and don't get all the way through the end, at least you'll be forming a few new dendrites for your troubles! 

Week 9 - Renovation Essentially complete!

On our return from England, we found everything ready for progress on the outside of the house.

The roof had been stripped back to the "truss tails" and a huge 40 foot I-beam had been brought in and fastened to supports.

Then rafters were connected to the truss tails and covered with plywood.

The switch for fan and lights is ready.

Shingles were delivered.

While the roofers were working outside, I was planning how to finish the windowsills inside.  This required several trips to Grandpa's workshop and several tries.

Finally it all fit together--a layer of PVC over the old sills, with vinyl molding below.  

Now the paintings are back on the walls!  The inside is pretty much done!

So fun to wash dishes in the new sink and sweep the new floor!

Here is the outside with soffit partly done.

Meanwhile, Emily was in the 5th grade patriotic production, "Hope of America."

Emily is in the front row of yellow shirts, about 1/3 of the way over from the left.

More "Where's Waldo"-- Lisa played in a Band and Orchestra concert at Mountain View.  See if you can find her in a red blazer not looking at the camera.

The Best is Yet to Come: Renovation Month #2

This post starts a month ago, when we were a month into the renovation.  By April 13, we had cabinets, paint, lights, and flooring.  I was anticipating a trip to England on April 28th and hoping my family would have a kitchen while I was gone.

Week 6: Things started happening quickly.  On April 16, the laminate desktop was installed in our office area.  We chose a color which would be similar to the granite but darker.  We love the color--stray sharpie and pencil sharpener dust will blend right in.

A few days later, the microwave was in and working.  It has a fan which vents to the porch. It took a while to get used to the microwave being in the kitchen again.  We kept walking out to the pantry where our old microwave has been for a month.

Our heating guru says we really need this return air vent in the middle of the great room floor.  I eventually painted the grate a darker color so it is more camoflaged.  Now we ignore it except when we say,  "The old wall used to go right through here!"

My niece Annmarie came to stay with us while she did her CNA, and she didn't let lack of an oven keep her from making cookies!

The next day the oven arrived.  But it didn't get installed immediately, so Annmarie's cookies ended up being baked at our next-door neighbor's house.

That same day I started setting the tile border over the laminate desktop.  I was really slow at first!

I put off renting the tile saw until the granite arrived, so this corner was a little rough.  The handheld tool for scoring and snapping tiles kept chipping corners or going askew, so a lot of superglue and sanding went into this corner.

Week 7:  The walls were still in the same ragged condition as the day I pried off the old tile backsplash.

I worried about making the new tile look flat and even with that crazy surface, so I spread on some spackling putty, slapped on some paint to prime it, then sanded the paint just a bit.  Now I just needed those granite countertops to come in, and I could do the backsplash before going to England!

The counters were supposed to come Monday, but instead arrived Tuesday.   The timing wasn't great, but the counters themselves were very beautiful and were a huge step toward a finished look.

Now it was time for the backsplash, but this happened to be the same day I had a final for a BYU class.  Flashback to the midterm which fell on the same day as my first mammogram....  Which proves education does not get more convenient as you get older!  That perfect opportunity to invest in education will never come again, so might as well plunge in and tackle it a little at a time!

So on the way home from my final, I rented a tile wet saw from Home Depot.  It was about 4 hours from closing time, so they said I could return it at 9 am for the same 4 hour price.  I thought I'd be fine with 4 hours, but at 8:00 pm I was still prepping and dithering between a diagonal or square orientation.


Then my amazing friend Emily happened by and offered to help, so I decided to go for diagonal.  Emily cut dozens of tiles into triangles and got the momentum going by slapping the mortar on tiles ("backbuttering") while I made the wall mortar all groovy.  Here's how it looked by 10:30pm.

I was having so much fun that I just couldn't stop,


Then the saw started getting flaky (probably because of all the water splashing everywhere.)  So here's how it looked when I went to work at 7:45 the next morning.

So after work I marshalled the troops for a final push:  Emily came back and cut out intricate shapes for the outlets, Amy started grouting the tile by the desk, and my tall nephew Connor squeezed behind the stove and backbuttered like a pro.

The saw was getting tricky again, and we nursed it through the final few cuts with prayers and a hair dryer.  

With no time for second chances, we threw on the last few edge pieces, Emily washed off the saw, and I raced the saw back just before the deadline.

The windowsill would need some serious TLC, but that would have to wait.

The next day, I slapped grout in the gaps, and it looked pretty good!  Especially from a distance.  

Happy 25th Anniversary!  My sweet and patient husband gave me a new kitchen, plus time to learn a  messy and time-consuming new skill, plus a trip to England with my two oldest daughters to see Grandma and Grandpa.  Said daughters were frantically helping me caulk the seams of aforementioned kitchen just minutes before we revved up the car to drive to the airport.  Good times.

This house is completely red in the fall.  The Ramsey Ward seminary teacher lives here.

Thatched roof somewhere in Cambridgeshire.

St. George's Chapel in Windsor, where the prince's wedding would be held the following month.

London Temple

Globe Theater replica--the only building in London city allowed to have a thatched roof.