Khodaye Man Khoobeh: Part 1--Livin on a Prayer

When I was little, my mom wrote me a song.  It went like this: 

Jesus loves Amy so much, so much, so much

Jesus loves Amy so much, so, so much.

And I love that song because the lyrics are so accurate. Ripped from the headlines, if you will. Jesus does, in fact, love me so much, and my happiness about that fact is matched only by my awe at its absurdity.  Because let's face it, I'm not that cool. 

His love has been clear to me in a zillion ways this last month (man, has it really been a month? That's my bad, y'all), so the next few posts will be dedicated to trying to articulate how good the Lord has been to me.  Khodaye Man Khoobeh, by the way, is phonetic Farsi for "my God is good."  He is.

When I last posted, we had just finished our picnic and our first volunteer team had come, conquered, and gone home.  After those experiences, my bosses left for a trip to see their children in South Asia and the Middle East. They were gone for three weeks.  And since I was living with them at the time, I got the whole house to myself for three weeks.  So the first few days of their absence looked a lot like this:

WHOOOOAAAAAA WE'RE HALFWAY THEREEE!

WhooooOOOOHHH!! LIVIN ON A PRAYER!!

TAKE MY HAND, AND WE'LL MAKE IT I SWE-HAIR 

 WhoooooOOOOHHH!! LIVIN ON A PRAYER

LIIVIN ON A PRAAAAYYYEERRRRRR!!

And other professional things. 

Actually, I focused a lot of my time on settling into a schedule.  I took notes on my schedule one Tuesday in my little notebook that I carry everywhere.  So, should you ever wish to replicate my Tuesday, I present to you...

How to Replicate Ames's Schedule in Twenty-Eight Easy Steps!

Step One:  Intend to get up at 6:30.

Step Two: Actually get up at 8:30.

Step Three: Ask Jesus for better discipline.

Step Four: Spend time with Jesus.  This looks a little different for everyone, but for me it involves studying and meditating on Scripture.  Studying involves reading, researching, and memorizing Scripture, and meditation means praying about what I've read and asking God to help me know Him better through it. After that, I spend a lot of time journalling. So, I search Scripture to find more clues as to who God is, and then I write all my findings in my handy-dandy notebook.  In that way, spending time with Jesus looks a lot like this:

Step Five: Stretch. Because you don't want back problems when you're older.

Step Six: Water Joan's flowers.  Attempt to make conversation with elderly Sikh neighbor.  Realize, once again, that he knows only "Good morning! No rain!" in English, and you know absolutely nothing in Punjabi.  Smile anyway.

Step Seven: Take the C7 bus to the Skytrain Station, and then the 106 to Middlegate Bakery. Our friend Reza runs this bakery, and generously donates free bread for us to give away at the Centre.

Step Eight: Notice that Reza is selling Zulbia today.  This is Zulbia:

It is a Persian pastry made of fried dough, dipped in a honey/rose water/saffron sauce.  It tastes like sugar and Jesus.

Step Nine: Buy a kilo of zulbia.

Step Ten: Recall that a kilo is more than twice the size of a pound.  Regret this decision.*

*Note: you will make the same mistake a week later.

Step Eleven: Go to the library to browse Easy Readers for this week's reading day. Read through each and make a glossary of words that are hard to explain. (Sidenote:  Can someone please tell me how to explain the word "adventure" to a newcomer? Anyone? Please?)

Step Twelve:  Take the 106 back to the station and the 112 to Life Community Centre (Again, notice the flagrant role-reversal of the "r" and the "e." Canada: pushing boundaries since 1867.)

Step Thirteen: Immediately make tea.

Step Fourteen: Tidy classroom and put lesson materials and newly-checked-out Easy Readers in order. Pray for class.

Step Fifteen: Shahnaz arrives to teach Farsi vocabulary.  Offer her some of your mountain of Zulbia. Try to explain why you don't know what a kilo is.

Step Sixteen: 1 hour of Farsi class with Shahnaz. Make the "I'm sorry, I'm American" face a lot.

Step Seventeen:  ESL class.  In these hour-and-a-half classes, we work mostly on conversation.  During these last three weeks, we worked on how to describe common ailments ("I have a backache, I have a cold, I am dizzy, etc"), how to talk on the telephone (which makes me nervous even in my first language), and how to set up a doctor's appointment by phone.

Step Eighteen: Tea break.

Step Nineteen: Finish class and talk with Mohammad/Ghasem/anyone that has stayed after class.  This is English practice for them and Farsi practice for you.  Ask a lot of questions about Iran.  Make the "I'm sorry, I'm American" some more.

Step Twenty: Return to the house via the 112 and the C7.

Step Twenty-One: Intend to exercise a lot.

Step Twenty-Two: Exercise a little.

Step Twenty-Three: Select Songs for church this week, and practice them on the guitar.

Step Twenty-Four: Visit with Fernanda, who is your neighbor.  Drink coffee, get to know each other. Thank the Lord for your new friends.

Step Twenty-Five: Dinner! Sometimes with Fernanda and Nasser, sometimes making pizza and eating the whole thing yourself BECAUSE YOU ARE A GROWN WOMAN, DANGIT.

Step Twenty-Six: Read. Lately,  I've been on a huge Mother Teresa kick.  I'm just saying, if you haven't read No Greater Love, maybe you should.

Step Twenty-Seven: Try to be brave and go to bed without the light off.

Step Twenty-Eight: Turn the light on, just in case.

So this is my schedule, and I'm in love with it.  It is getting steadily busier as I meet new people, add more classes to the Centre and plan more activities, but this is its foundation.  And at every turn, on every bus ride, during every class, I cannot escape the reality of how good God is to me.  I feel like I don't deserve to be this blessed.  And yes, I'm probably still in the honeymoon stage. But shoot, honeymoons are fun.

Details about my new house and schedule will be coming very soon (way sooner than this post did; sorry it took me so long).

Again, if you can find it in your heart or pocketbook to donate, I appreciate it now more than ever (The rent! It's hideous!) Just click here!

Blessings to you all! God made you special, and He loves you very much.

Ain't No Party Like a Persian Tea Party

Well, this last week marked was my third official week in what I like to call The Canada (because I could never figure out why The Gambia and The Sudan were the only countries that got an article in front of their names), and my life has already begun to change.  A lot has happened since I last posted, so let me give you all a highlight real.

Things That Happened to Amy in the Last Three Weeks

1) Farsi Happened

Farsi is the language of Iran (and parts of Afghanistan), and it is very beautiful and very hard. Twice a week, Joan and I have Farsi class, where our dear friend Shahnaz is very patient with us as we struggle through vocabulary and verb tenses.  As soon as I figure out how to make Farsi notation, I'll do it for y'all. Until then, consider yourself transliterated.

Here are some things I have learned in Farsi:

"Yes, I like tea" -- Bale, man chai dustdaram

"I don't speak Farsi" -- man nimitonam Farsi harf bezanam.

"The spoon is on the chair" -- qashoq rooyeh sandalee ast.

When you speak to the Father, ask Him to help me with my language learning.  Ask Him to make a way for me with Farsi-speakers that I meet, so that I can be welcoming to them instead of rude (which is easy to do when you don't speak the language).

2) The Picnic Happened

My language learning is supplemented by a lot of asking "how do you say __ in Farsi," which is currently my favourite thing to talk about (note the use of the superfluous "u." These Canadians rub off on you).  Recently, I asked Miriam how you'd say "I want chai" versus "I don't want chai."

"You could say 'man chai mekham,'" she said, "but you would never say that."  Which I thought was strange, but I began to understand it after a couple of days. You would never have to say "I would like chai," because CHAI IS ALWAYS PRESENT.

Y'all. I've found my people.

And the best example of this would have to be the picnic we had last Monday.  There were about forty of us there (from both Kanoone Zendegi and Zendeh Church) and there were five very large camping teapots.  Did we use all of them, you may wonder? Yes. Yes we did.

And did we, you may also wonder, eat all 50 hamburgers and all 50 hot dogs? Yes. Yes we did.  And did we supplement with an entire cake, four watermelon, and like five bags of corn?  Aw yessss. Yes we did.

Jesus loves the little calories. All the little calories of the world.

We stayed at the lake for all 11 hours of that day, and it was just a fabulous time of fellowship.  "Fellowship," by the way, is a Christian-ese word for "eating a lot and enjoying each other's company."  When you pray, please ask the Father to bring more people into this wonderful group.  Ask Him to use this community to love Persian immigrants and refugees who are often so lonely here in Canada.  Pray that our events will be productive, instead of just fun.

3) My First Volunteer Team Happened

At the picnic, we also welcomed six brave souls from Boise State University, who gave up their time for a week to help us out and to share the news that God is crazy about people. We are planning on hosting several of these volunteer mission teams throughout the year, and I was honored to have these guys as my first team.  We were pretty demanding of them. We began the week by challenging the most common worldview of Western Christianity, and ended it by literally dropping them in the middle of the city and telling them to find their way out. I was proud of the way they were always willing to do anything we asked of them.

I love that, because I think that's the kind of thing God wants from us--not a perfect moral track record, not a certain type of theological education, but willingness to do what He asks of us. The words Christians often use for it are things like "availability" and "teachability," and what they really mean is an attitude that says, "Look, I don't know everything.  But God does.  So whenever I get the chance to do something that pleases Him, I'm going to take it."

4) A Lot of Spiritual Growth Happened

And, as it turns out, I'm pretty bad at looking at the world that way.  I kind of like feeling like I know everything, and I definitely opt out of doing things that please Him a lot of the time.  Things that please God are often things that I find thankless, messy, and inconveniently timed. But really, if I'm going to follow Jesus like I say I want to, it's time to acknowledge that it's not about me anymore.  I'll write more about this in later posts, but for now please ask the Father to help me be disciplined. Pray for my attitude, that He will make it a teachable one. Pray for my perspective, that my world would stop being so small.

But above all, thank Him for putting me here. It's my dream, y'all.  He gave me my dream.

Please feel free to email at any time, and don't forget that I always need donations (information about my new apartment is coming soon!!) I love you all like crazy. Alright, most of you.

Packing

I tend to think there are two types of people in the world: those who attach emotional meanings to objects and those who don't.  But I think I’m most accurately placed in an obscure subset of that first category.  I attach meaning to stuff that doesn't matter, and I get emotional at really weird times.

This makes packing difficult. When I graduated from college, I mentally prepared myself for the moving/packing part, realizing that this process is often symbolic of the end of a great era of life, and that people like me often find it emotionally draining.

Except that it wasn’t.  I was totally fine taking stuff off the walls, putting away memories, saying goodbye to the house. Gift from my (deceased) grandmother? Check.  First picture The Boyfriend ever drew me? Got it, done.  Countless pictures of college memories? Throw dat crap in.

Pair of mismatched Puma ankle socks?

Tears.  Sobs. That kind of body-shaking crying that leaves pools of snot on your upper lip and generates (reasonable) concern in your housemates.

"Ames,” my housemates might have said, “are those...socks?"

“Yes.”

“Why are you crying?”

“These socks made me emotional.”

“The socks made you emotional?”

“YES THEY DID AND IT’S NOT WEIRD.”

My housemates are good people.

So, as you might be able to imagine, condensing my worldly possessions into three suitcases was a bit of a challenge.  Not an impossible challenge, but one that requires lots of planning.  I started pre-packing (it’s a thing) several weeks before I started packing, because it takes me so long to figure out what is actually important and what only seems important to me during a moment of emotion.  I have to revise the list many times.

And even after several revisions, I still discover some blaring oversights.  For example, a few days before my trip you might have asked me, "Ames, did you pack any coats?”

And I would reply that no, I didn’t, because there wouldn't have been room next to my collection of bookmarks from elementary school WHICH IS OBVIOUSLY MORE IMPORTANT.

There is probably a metaphor here about how I have a hard time prioritizing my life, but I’m not going to go too much into it.  This is mostly because going on about the Great Metaphorical Suitcase of Life sounds a) trite and b) like something I would make fun of. (Except actually, it was good for me to ponder my Great Metaphorical Suitcase of Life for a while, because I have the weirdest stuff in there.  I have this fear that I’ll be unpacking it at the end of my life and be all,  “Why is there so much Netflix?” and I just feel like that’s a pretty good source of motivation.)

Suffice it to say that I checked in my (overweight) luggage with two coats, an exercise ball, plenty of socks, and no bookmarks.  There were also some other things, but they feel less important right now.

I'm off to the train now, which you'll probably hear all about in an upcoming post.  Don't forget about donations, which are still a thing, and know that I think you're all pretty swell.

Welcome!

Greetings and Salutations! Welcome to the Canada Chronicles, my attempt to communicate to you, my community in absentia, what God is, has been, and will be doing in my life in the next twelve months.  If it turns out that this blog is successful, it could be even longer than that! Gasp!

Mostly, this post is just to welcome you all here and to undo the embarrassment that inevitably comes from having a naked little blog with no posts on it. Poor, naked blog.

A few things about me:

1) Recently graduated from Whitworth University ('sco bucs) with a B.A. in English and minors in ESL and Music.  I enjoy telling people this because it takes a long time to say and makes me sound smarter than "I have no idea how to handle adulthood."

2) Recently accepted a position with the North American Mission Board to help out at two very cool places in Vancouver, B.C.  They are called Zendeh Living Church and the Kanoone Zendegi, and do a fabulous job bringing the Love of God to new residents of British Columbia.

3) is "tres" in Spanish.

4) Today is Canada day!  Hooray!!

5 a.) I often communicate best in stick figures.

5 b.)  I currently look like this:

6) I'm always raising financial support, and I always appreciate your generosity.  Donate here!

I'm sure, as time wears on, that I'll be able to think of more things to tell you all about myself, but for right now these seem like the most important things. Hope to hear from all of you soon! You're all fantastic people.