"Eternally Content"

Hello! We're right at the beginning of another quarter, and we're still ironing out plans for what will be coming up. It looks like it will be a slightly quieter time, but there will still be plenty to read through and interact over here each week.


We recently moved to our first house. After 12 years of living in apartments, it's a dream come true! Really, I didn't even know that it would be this nice. I'm still walking around grinning most days, just thinking about how nice it is. It's actually half a house, though. We have very close neighbors living in the other side of the house, and I'm glad of that, too. I was afraid living in a house with a fenced off yard would be lonely for me. (Hah!) But... how do I put this gently? Our neighbor is a little hard to please.

Other neighbors describe her as "вечно недовольна," which is literally "eternally unhappy." When I heard that I started thinking about what they might say about me. Do people think of me as generally happy or unhappy? How can I avoid complaining, and avoid it so much that I could earn the opposite label: I'd love to be known as "happy with everything" or "eternally happy"!

Then, the next thing that hit me was that word "eternal." Obviously, they didn't mean it literally, but it just might be. That's when the compassion started to flow in me. It's hard to be irritated with her when I'm thinking about loving her and remembering the "eternal" part of the equation.

So, I can be happy because my eternity is settled, and I can love someone who seems a little difficult, because I'm remembering her eternal soul. At least, that's what I'm striving for. It's been good for me to actually think this out and repeat it to myself often over the past few weeks.

What about you? Surely I'm not the only missionary who has to be reminded quite often about why we're really here! And how can we pray for your relationships with your neighbors? (Please pray for grace and wisdom for me.)

(Non)Tuesday Topic: What to write about?

This week my internet was out, and I hadn't scheduled a Tuesday Topic before I lost my connection. It didn't come back until now. So, please accept my apologies for my lateness!

This week, as we're planning blog posts for the quarter ahead, my questions are: What would you like to read about here? Do you have favorite “genres” from what you've seen here so far? Or something new to suggest?

(If you have a “Tuesday Topic” question, please email it to me at fylliska@gmail.com. Provide your blog address if you would like to be linked to, or specify if you would like to remain anonymous. Thanks!)

Easing the Transitions

This is another guest post from Alyssa of Momentary Missions. If anyone else is interested in contributing a guest post, please contact me at fylliska@gmail.com. Thanks!

Our family is new to the field, and there was one thing that we did while leaving that made all the difference. We took a 3 day mini vacation just before catching our overseas flight.

I read this suggestion online from Laura Parker, a seasoned missionary mom. Laura was sharing the idea in the context of “things we wish we had done,” and the idea immediately resonated with me. When we left the US to come to Bulgaria, we were leaving the only home my kids had ever known. It was my husband’s first overseas move. It was my first time overseas in more than a decade. It was a LOT to process.

The long weekend away was just what we needed.

Here’s how it worked. Two weeks before our departure, we took a week off and went to visit family. We spent 3 days with each side of the family. Planning this months in advance allowed most of the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins to plan time to come and visit. We were able to see everyone, make lots of fun memories, and say goodbye in person.

One week before our departure, we headed home for a week of wrapping up things at work, our final service at our sending church, and packing. This was our time to process and calm down from the emotion of saying goodbye to family. We ended the week with a much-anticipated cookout with many of our dearest friends.

Three days before our flight, we drove in a rental van to the city of our departure, where we stayed in a hotel, visited museums, swam in the hotel pool, ate at a few favorite restaurants, and cried more than a few tears. We de-stressed (again), and made it through the initial tidal wave of emotions. We gathered ourselves, reconnected with each other, and watched a few favorite TV shows for the last time.

The result of this time away was that we boarded the plane three days later with smiles, instead of tears. We were calm and well prepared, not stressed and anxious. Our children were anticipating the flight, not looking over their shoulders to wave goodbye to loved ones. We arrived ready to jump into the process of getting settled, feeling connected as a family, and with our kids “love tanks” full.

Next time we make a move like this, we will absolutely do the same thing again. It was worth every penny!

What strategies have you used for coping with goodbyes? Please share your wisdom or ask questions in the comments below. I’m always interested in advice from other moms who have been through the same experiences.

Fonkey English

One of the best parts of living overseas has to be all of the "fonkey" English that we're privileged to see. Here are a few of the funny (and a bit inappropriate... sorry!) things that we've encountered here in Russia.

 Not quite sure how child-friendly this brand name is, but yes, we do own this car-seat.

 Dare I even translate this into English?? Um, it says... "Megafart!" 

This is a casino and apparently "fart" means luck.

And this is one restaurant that my husband and I have never considered for a date night. We did however do some research and found out that, thankfully, Puberty is a town in the Czech Republic.

Ok, so what are some of the funny signs/stores/brands that you've seen where you live? If you have a link to a similar post on your blog, feel free to leave it in the comments!

Ideas for Making the Most of Skype

Alyssa originally posted this on her own blog, and she kindly offered to let us repost here. Please take a moment to go visit her, too: Momentary Missions.

Picture this: Two children, best friends for years, now separated by an ocean. They were so eager to chat online that they could barely eat breakfast, and now they sit in front of the computer.  Finally! 

Eagerly they exchange greetings, and for the first 3 minutes, conversation flows excitedly across continents.  Then… silence.  The awkward moment where they want desperately to keep talking, but they have no idea what to say. 

What’s a Momma to do?  This is the moment where a mother’s heart begins to question.  How can I help them through this transition?  Why on earth did I bring them here in the first place?

We recently moved overseas, and this moment has played out in our home several times over the past weeks.  Inspired to work hard at keeping in touch, I brainstormed a list of ideas to help encourage better Skype chats that feel like real playtimes for my kids.  Today, I’d like to share a few of our tested favorites.

1. Ask Questions.  Remind your kids that their friends have things going on in their lives too, and those thing are still part of their friendship equation.  I often have to prompt my kids with questions to ask.  Sometimes I know things about their friend’s lives that help with this.  If I know from Facebook that their friend was sick, or visited their Grandma, this is a piece of information I can feed to my kids to help keep conversation going.

2. Play Games.  Connect 4, Hangman, and many other games can be played via Skype. Kids talk more while they are playing together.

3. Draw and Color.  My daughter loves to color and draw, and so do most of her friends.  They like to do a 10-minute draw, where for 1 minute they both draw with red, then another minute with red, and so on.  After 10 minutes, they show each other their photos.  They talk while drawing, free of self-conscious silence.

4. Plan listening dates.  We often listen to an online radio station here, and it’s available anywhere.  So the kids will set a time with their friends, and they both listen.  Then they Skype and talk about the programs or songs they heard.

5. Let the kids give tours.  This can be a little dicey with an expensive laptop and a small child, so often my husband and I will carry the laptop around the apartment or playroom, and let the kids show the person on the other end anything they want to share.  Then we encourage their friends to do the same.

What other ideas have you implemented for helping your kids stay in touch with their friends while your family is deployed or serving overseas?  Leave me a comment, I’d love to give them a try.

Tuesday Topic: Expat community

I don't have any more questions waiting now (send some!), so I'll ask another one of my own: How involved are you with other missionaries and the expat community? Any specific tips for navigating that area? What ways could I be a blessing to the missionary community here? 

After almost 12 years, "alone" (i.e. not really alone, of course, but without any English speakers nearby), we've moved to an area with other missionaries, and we're really enjoying the fellowship. I feel a little lost in it sometimes, though.

(If you have a “Tuesday Topic” question, please email it to me at fylliska@gmail.com. Provide your blog address if you would like to be linked to, or specify if you would like to remain anonymous. Thanks!)

Homeland Security

Is it weird to say that I felt safer with my family

• living in W Africa with all the possibilities for disease, injury or illness
• knowing (as we watched military planes fly up river and then return) that there was a full-fledged war going on just a couple hundred miles up river
• recognizing that terrorist activity was all around us... and probably infiltrating our "neighborhood" as well
• driving in developing country traffic every single day...

than I do living in the developed west?

photo from one of the local Niamey newspapers

It may be weird, but it is true ~ and this is the first furlough I've EVER felt this way.

Usually, it has been a huge sigh of relief to land back in this land and re-realize that

• the hospital and emergency room are literally down the road and around the corner - like 3 minutes away
• reading about wars and rumors of wars that now seem distant and far away although still heartbreaking
• not even hardly thinking about terrorist activity unless we get a warning from the US embassy that used to be just down the road and then worrying and praying and worrying and praying... for our friends
• driving on freeways where 60 mph is taken for granted - almost every single day and there are real road signs to give me a clue where I am...

but this time, I'm struggling to feel that same peace and relief!

This is the first time I've ever seriously worried about the affects of living in the United States for more than a vacation on my family... on my children... on me.

It hit home, not suddenly and right away, but has crept up a bit stealthily.

We landed at the Detroit airport and were met there by a grandfather, an aunt and dear friends - a family we dearly love and count among some of our favorite people. Of course, our big kids were all excited to see and greet a few favorite peers. The two littlest girls, however, really didn't remember anyone from our previous home assignment, and were initially quite hesitant. It didn't take them long to connect with our dear friend, however... and now every time they see their "auntie-by-choice" they go running for a hug.

One thing that has both amused and embarrassed me, however, has been my girls' fascination with our friend's fingernails. She goes fairly regularly to a salon and has her nails manicured. A new thing for these girls (their mama tends to bite her fingernails and has never even painted them, much less gone for a manicure), their fascination - at least at first - bordered on, if it didn't fall right over the line, downright obsessive. So much so that at times, I think our friend has not quite been sure what to do.

At first, I just found this funny. I mean, they've grown up with women and girls regularly getting intricate henna designs inked onto their hands and feet or spending hours having tiny, detailed patterns and braids woven into their hair. It isn't like this is the first time they've had a friend go to a salon to have something fancy and beautiful done to look dressed up and feel pretty. I really didn't understand why they were so caught up in someone who had their fingernails done. Of course now they beg to get fancy nails themselves. Thankfully, my friend remains sweetly patient - and just laughs when our often goofy Elsie Mae grabs her hands to stare mesmerized at her fingernails... even if its the 83rd time and she did the exact same thing the day before.

So what's so scary?

I'm watching a similar pattern repeat itself in a myriad of ways - where that fascination with something different and new and lovely becomes a consuming compulsion and never fail recipe for discontentment.

Back in Niger, we could never forget that we were among those in this world who did have what we needed, and in abundance: shelter, clothing, food, water, friends who loved us, a calling for which we felt passionately, a God in whom we hoped and trusted... We also recognized quite often that we couldn't have everything we wanted or even thought we might need and that that really was better than okay. Our kids were quite familiar with regularly choosing contentment over entitlement. In other words, we loved (and devoured with our reconstituted milk) Oreos when someone sent or brought them from the States; we thrilled when we occasionally actually found them in one of the local grocery boutiques; but for the most part, those cookies never actually crossed our mind and were quite easy to live without, without a second thought.

Here, it is a totally different world. 

Within weeks, the abundance and overwhelming selection in the cereal aisle at the grocery store becomes a taken-for-granted sort of thing. Readily available abundance allows hearts to callous.. and then assume... and then insist. A single option in the house at breakfast time becomes not enough -  3 or 4 or more choices are necessary just for things to feel right, for children (and their parents - if I'm brutally honest) to be just barely satisfied, much less bask in overwhelmed gratitude for such an amazing and rich profusion of every imaginable opportunity. 

It becomes so easy, so commonplace... so expected... to focus on what this person or that person has that I don't... be it something simple like food, stylish jeans, a smart phone, or regular manicures. Maybe even worse? When God does, perchance, bless with said sorts of things, they become our source of security. They become our illusion of safety and control, replacing an ever present awareness of an absolute dependence on God.

And right now, I'm finding this reality scares me more than all those scary things back in Niger ever did.

"What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.   And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body..." (Matthew 10:27-28)