Annual Anniversary Analogies #1

It's been a year.
Wow.
After leaving our beloved South Mississippi community, training and living in Vancouver for several months, we finally arrived on January 25, 2012, in this place that captured our hearts many years ago. It's officially been one year that we have been living in this amazing, beautiful and gripping country that has quickly become "home."

All of us in our family have spent a little time the last few days recollecting on the year past to discover what changes in our lifestyle and way of thinking may have occurred in the day-to-day process of settling into this Southeast Asian culture.

Looking back, we look forward... in their own words:

Zoë:
This year has been an amazing adventure filled with loving memorable moments I will never forget. I have made so many friends and met so many people that I now call family. When I first arrived, I was scared and didn't know what was going to happen with my life. Now, I see it as a beautiful gift from God, and I treasure every moment of every day. 
This year has gone by so quickly (quicker than i expected) and as the days come sooner to when we go back to America I realize more and more how much this place means to me. This is my new family and I love it here a lot! 
One year from today I was praying to God asking Him to help me through our first year and He truly has.


Miá:

This year has been so much fun. I’ve made so many new friends and the people here are so friendly. Before I moved here, there was a part of me that was unsure because I didn’t know anything about the place we were moving to, but now I feel really happy being here.

Some of my favorite experiences from this past year include learning this new language, traveling to different cities and countries and getting to tell people about J.C. One of my new friends, I met in a local village and even though we speak different languages, she has become an awesome friend. She is a believer too!

I still miss my friends and family at home and I think of them all the time, but I know it’s because of them that I can do what G wants our family to do. Come visit us!

CJ:

My highlights from the year include - 

• Learning to drive and navigate the crazy traffic here.
• Teaching English to local students while sprinkling in the Good News.
• Living in a city that it rains every day all day for four months. That also means eight months of beautiful sunshine.
• Watching the Superbowl at 5am.
• Traveling to other countries.
• Learning to like rice A LOT.
• Teaching the Good book to students every week.
• Family game nights (Uno, Monopoly Deal, Phase 10, and puzzles).
• Language learning. (A continuous mountain to climb, but I love it)
• Visits from great friends. (Mickey and Beverly Webb) (The Eggum family)
• Sitting in traffic 4 hours a day. (Just thankful to have a car)
• Receiving packages from Home = AWESOME.
• Knowing that my girls are happy, have friends, and love school is a blessing.
• Being able to participate in a youth camp for those students serving in SouthEast Asia.
• Summer vacation in North Thailand.
• Monkey park (You will have to visit here to understand this highlight).
• Falling in love with the people in our country.
• A visit from President Barack Obama. (Like him or not, it was pretty cool that he was here)
• Celebrating Christmas with my girls and lots of presents from home.

Thankful, Grateful, and Blessed are three words that best describe our first year in our country.

Thankful for the outpouring of love and support from so many friends back home.

Thankful for all the great packages sent our way with lots of goodies.

Grateful for so many that give so much through the C.P and L.M.C.O.

Grateful for the opportunity to work for an organization that truly has a “Great Commission” vision.

Blessed to have three beautiful and Godly girls in my home who love me in spite of my many flaws.

Blessed to serve the King of Kings wherever He leads.

Julie:

I was looking back through my journal from a year ago to remember the feelings and emotions I experienced at the time. These were my words from that day, one year ago -

Wow, what a day! We’re here.It’s just after midnight on Thursday, Jan. 26. I’m sitting in the dining room of our new home, wide awake preparing to recollect the past day.This journey began late Monday night in Vancouver when our supervisors picked us up with all 19 pieces of our luggage to take us to the airport. [I'm bypassing all the grueling details about our flights overseas. Let me condense by saying it was long and arduous.] We finally landed in Yangon and we were all smiles and happy to have arrived in our final destination.
As we rounded the corner to go downstairs in the Yangon airport to immigration/customs, etc. we saw our teammates and another co-worker through the glass divider smiling and waving, holding a banner that read, “Welcome Johnson Family!”It still kinda makes me cry remembering that feeling. It felt like we were seeing family for the first time.We were overjoyed to discover all our luggage (and all the contents inside) made it just fine. Our teammates had two vans and the ride to our new apartment was short and sweet.It was a lot to take in and a little overwhelming. Of course, because of jet lag, we fell asleep at 6:30 p.m., way too early and when I woke up in the dark at 11:30 I thought to myself in fear, “Where am I and what have I done?”I was sweating. I had a headache. I felt scared.So I got up and slipped out into the living room to turn on some lights and the a/c.I decided to make a cup of coffee - yes, I know coffee at midnight is not a good idea, but I needed it for more than just the caffeine. I went into the kitchen to try and figure out how to work the coffee pot, very thankful that our teammates had the provided so many things that we would need in advance of our arrival.When I went to the counter and found the coffee pot a lizard poked his head around the corner and I almost screamed. I made CJ get up and scare him away. CJ also helped me get the coffee going. Then he went back to bed.Now that I’m sitting here at my computer with my cup of coffee in hand, things don’t seem quite so scary. Things are different here, for sure. But I know this is where Father wants us to be. I’ve felt it just by looking in the faces of the people we’ve seen here already.We will figure things out and we’ll get settled and things will be good.I KNOW He is in control. He has to be. And I’m just so thankful...As I sit here with my family quietly sleeping in their new beds, I look around and feel at home. Yes, things are in disorder. We need furniture. We need a stove. We need to get unpacked. But I’m not worried. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So step by step, we’ll tackle things as they come, keeping Him at the forefront of all we do. We’re home.

Looking back and recalling those feelings, I still come back to arriving at the airport and seeing our teammates through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. It's a moment that truly touched me. It was later in the year when we got to stand on the other side of those windows when Mickey & Beverly Webb came to visit followed a few weeks later by family from Norway.
I am excited by the thought that in a few months my parents will be arriving at that same airport where we'll watch them through those same glass windows. Truly, windows to my soul.



This has been a great year and none of us would change a single moment.
There have been countless experiences of sharing the Good News, and that makes everything worthwhile.
We are thankful and blessed and joyful to be on this journey.
Let's keep going!

Pure joy!

Miá's Kindle finally arrived!
She couldn't have been more excited.

Not sure who was more excited, Miá or CJ. :)

There it is!

She was jumping up and down.

We'll be lucky if she resurfaces by next Christmas. :)

Christmas is coming!

It was last summer when CJ and I first began discussing what we would give our daughters for Christmas. Because our budget is much more limited than it used to be, we needed to start saving a few months in advance. But also, when you live on the other side of the world from where most of your gifts will come from, it takes longer to buy them and get them here.

Miá is a reader like her mommy. She is always reading something. At Miá's school, she can check out three books in the library each week, and she does. In fact, she’s read almost all the books they have for students her age-level. That’s one of the reasons why CJ and I decided to give Miá a Kindle for Christmas. When we mentioned the idea to her to see if it would be something she’d be interested in, she got so excited.

“Oh yes, Mommy, yes, yes YES! I would LOVE a Kindle,” she gushed.

The next question was, how do we get it here?

There is no postal service in this country and all our mail from America goes to an address in Bangkok where we pick up whenever we go there to renew our visas. Through a little research we discovered it wasn’t possible to buy a Kindle from Amazon and have it shipped internationally, so that wasn’t an option.

We could’ve probably bought one in Thailand or Malaysia and we discussed that. But we were worried that it might not be authentic. (Asian countries are known for their knock-offs.)

Then, when we learned that good friends Mickey and Beverly Webb would make a trip to visit us in November, we realized the great opportunity we would have to buy a Kindle on the internet and have it shipped to their house so they could bring it with them when they came.

How great is that!?!?

And that’s exactly what we did.

We ordered the Kindle and a cute case protector, had it shipped to our friends in America and the Webbs arrived here in our country with Mia’s new Kindle with no problems where I stored it away for safe-keeping until Christmas.

About a week before Christmas I began wrapping the packages to go under the tree. I decided before I wrapped up Mia’s Kindle that I should go ahead and set it up for her and download a few books so she’d be ready to play with it the moment she opened it.

That’s when I realized a problem.

The Kindle wouldn’t turn on.

I thought maybe it just needed to be charged up first, so I plugged it in while she was at school one day, only to discover several hours later that it still wouldn’t turn on.

Hmmm…. That’s not good.

I sent an email to Amazon asking what I need to do.

I was delighted to get such a fast response, until I read what it said. “You need to call our support center and speak with a customer service representative.”

Uh…. No can do. We have no international phone service here and even if we did, I’d hate to think of the cost of such a call.

After much research I discovered that I could have an online chat with a customer service rep; I just needed to get up in the middle of the night to do it so it would be during their hours of operation in America.

To make an already long story shorter, I’ll summarize what they told me: The Kindle we bought had a factory-defect, but if we would send it back to them, they would send us another brand new one at no charge.

Did I mention it was just a few days before Christmas? When I said (typed) as much to the customer service rep, she said, “Oh no problem. We’ll have a new one overnighted to you and you’ll have it tomorrow!” I could just imagine the chipper in her voice.

Did I mention I live in Myanmar?

Silence.

“Hello?” I typed.

“Oh.” That was literally her response.

I visualized Miá waking up on Christmas morning to find no presents under the tree and how devastated she would be. It broke my heart.

Amazon did what they said. They overnighted a new one to my parents’ house at no charge. They even gave us the label for free shipping to send the old one back to them… from America.

I would be responsible for getting the defective one back to America, but once in the country, it would be free return shipping to their factory.

Sheesh!

We have some friends living in this country who, thankfully, have relatives visiting this month, so we had my parents ship the new Kindle to them and they will bring it on the airplane with them here. Hopefully they will arrive this week and hopefully Miá will finally get her Christmas present.

The bad Kindle – they’ll take it back home with them when they go and will ship it from their house to the factory when they return.

Poor Miá, she cried when she realized on Christmas morning that “Santa” was unable to bring her Kindle. But when we told her that it would come in January, she began a countdown on the whiteboard in her bedroom – each day changing the number to how many days until her Christmas present would finally arrive.

This morning when she woke up, she ran to my bedroom and shouted, “Christmas is coming tomorrow!” She can hardly contain her excitement.

Please pray that everything goes well with this new device and that it arrives here safe and sound and working as it’s supposed to.

By the time all this is done, it will be time to start thinking about our daughters’ presents for next Christmas!

I could get used to this kind of work!

Recently, our language-learning coordinator told us it was time to put our language skills to the test by traveling outside of our city for a short trip.

From time to time we come across people who can speak a little English, especially among the foreigner population living here in what used to be the capital city. So it’s encouraged for us to travel outside the city to some place where it is absolutely essential to communicate using only the local language as a way of sharpening and increasing our speaking skills.

There’s another husband and wife who are learning language with us where we live. Both of the husbands teach English at the same school and we enjoy their company and spending time together. The other couple also has two daughters, so in the interest of keeping the children at home, we decided to split up our out-of-the-city trips with the wives going on one trip followed by the husbands thereafter. We didn’t want our girls to miss any school during this crucial time right before end of the semester exams, and separate trips also allowed one parent to be able to stay home with them.

When my friend and I started looking at places to visit we decided that we wanted to find somewhere that wasn’t too far away. A shorter bus ride, as opposed to a longer one, is obviously more preferable. We also wanted to visit a place where the weather would be pleasant and there would be outdoor activities for us. I asked a few local friends for their suggestions of where to go and the answer was unanimous: Chaung Tha.

Unbeknownst to me prior to our trip, this country is apparently known for its beautiful beaches and there were several to choose from.

We were told that Chaung Tha is were the locals go to see the Indian Ocean and that the other places were more touristy.

Chaung Tha was also only a six-hour bus ride away. Every other place would be fourteen hours or more.

Chaung Tha it was!

We departed our city on a Monday night arriving in Chaung Tha at 4:00 a.m. the next morning. It was dark outside and we were barely awake when we were dropped off at our hotel where we were thankfully able to go ahead and check in. We went straight to bed for a few hours.

When we awoke a little later, my friend and I were astonished and pleasantly surprised at the view before us.

“I must be dreaming,” I thought as I went off in search for a cup of coffee.

We were staying at a little cabana right on the beach surrounded by palm trees and lush greenery. The water was a beautiful turquoise blue and crystal clear. The sand felt like crushed velvet beneath my feet.

I’ve been to a lot of beaches in my life. Everywhere from Florida to California and other hot spots around the world, but this place topped them all.

Maybe it was because this place was not marred with commercialism or sprawling hotels. Instead, there is a small fishing village of locals living right on the water. When I asked, I found out the population of this place was less than 5,000 – almost unheard of for anyplace in Southeast Asia where dense populations are the norm.

To me, Chaung Tha could only be compared to a valuable jewel hidden away in a secret place. I almost was hesitant to write a blog about it because I want to keep this charming place a secret.  Once word gets out about the beauty and ambience of this quiet hide-away, it too will soon be crawling with tourists.

We were able to practice our language all week. We learned some new vocabulary and we made lots of new friends. They couldn’t believe it when two white women were in their midst speaking their language. Crowds of people would inevitably hover around us, anxious to meet the Americans and ask us questions about life in the Western world.

There’s no internet in this place. In fact they only have electricity from 6:00 p.m. at night to 6:00 a.m. the next morning and a couple hours in the afternoon. The people living here are largely isolated from the rest of the world.

We held babies and sang songs with the children while we talked with the moms about their lives. When the men returned from their fishing, they taught us, well they tried to teach us, how to kick around a chin-lone ball.

We also explored and discovered vastly secluded beaches dotted with small bamboo homes and farms along the coast.

It was time of language learning, but it was also a chance to slow down and spend quality time connecting with the people in this area.

We shared Father’s love with all we met, many of whom had never even heard the name of J.C.

It was hard to leave knowing there is no one in this place to continue teaching and leading lost sheep back to their Shepherd.

It’s one of those remote places that is yet to be reached. And while we were there mainly to practice language, it was a great reminder of task that is given to all of us who call ourselves followers. We are called to share – everywhere.

After you see my pictures, I bet you’ll be anxious to go share in this place too!

The view out our front window when we woke up that first morning.

Motorcycle, boat or trishaw are the only modes of travel in this place.

Some young kids having fun in the water after a game of soccer on the beach.

This girl made these hats by hand to sell. I bought one for about 25 cents.

They built a pagoda on this small island about 300 yards off the coast.

My feet are in the water. Trying to show how clear the water is...

Just me and the mermaid statue :)

This is part of the local village.

Did I mention how good the food was?

We visited the market to talk with the workers there.

Do I look relaxed and refreshed?

These are some of the kids we played with everyday.

This little boy especially won our hearts. He was a feisty little thing, but so sweet.

My friend on the motorcycle.

We experienced some of the most beautiful sunsets everyday.

So happy to be here!

Finally, the bus ride home.

A reason to be thankful

We knew when we accepted this opportunity to move overseas that there would be some real challenges.
Selling houses and cars and possessions were among those challenges, but honestly, the material things were the easiest to let go.
The hardest part was, and continues to be, the separation from family and friends.
Especially on days like today.
Thanksgiving, more than any other holiday on the American calendar, is all about being with those you love and being thankful for those relationships.

From our part of the world, Thanksgiving has now come and gone, even though our families in America are just now sitting down to enjoy their holiday meal.
I am grateful to know that my mom and dad, my grandfather and my aunts, uncles and cousins are all together. I am thankful that CJ's mom and brother and family have made the effort to be together. It does provide some consolation to know that even if we can't be with them, they will all still be together - eating, telling the same old jokes, laughing over the same old stories, planning the rest of their holiday season and so many other things that have become tradition at this time of year.
I know that in some small way, we will be there with them because family is found in the heart.

We do have so much to be thankful for.
Despite hardships and challenges, we have families that love us. We have a roof over our head and full stomachs at the end of the day.
Most importantly we have the saving knowledge of J.C. and the promise of eternal joy.
This year I am most thankful that I had the opportunity to share that saving knowledge with someone who had never heard.
The opportunity came at the end of the day and in a surprising way.
After a day of self-pity and missing my family in the States, I think Father was reminding me that there are people just waiting to be a part of HIS family. And at this moment in time, this is right where He wants me to be.
And that is something to be thankful for.

We enjoyed the afternoon with friends and a traditional Thanksgiving meal.

I am most thankful for yummy deviled eggs!

and desserts...

and more desserts...

We finished the day at Zoe's school's Winter Band Concert

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us!