Tales at Hotel Towfighi

I had mentioned previously that we had some interesting adventures during the conference. There are times when the guests who stay in our home during the conference are low maintenance, and there are times when they are not. Over a two week period, we had 12 different people stay in our home (and as many of 7 of them were with us at the same time). For most of the Ankara conference, though, one of the teachers, a family of 3 stayed with us. This family, though not low maintenance, was memorable!

The mom, Sita, took the opportunity on several evenings to give me parenting lessons. For example, I learned I am not caring for Nathan as I should because I don't allow him to be diaperless for at least 2 hours a day. He will walk with a waddle for the rest of his life because I don't do this. And sadly, he will not be as healthy as he could have been because I did not blowdry my stomach for at least an hour a day nor expose it to natural sunlight while I was pregnant. And Jenna will have chronic sinusitis because I let her go to bed with wet hair. Fun times...admittedly there were a few evenings I retired to my room a little earlier than I normally do. Oh, and there was the one evening she announced that we were guests in her home and told us we needed to go "home" to our room!

In any case, her 8 year old son Sina is a bit feisty. We entertained him with the other kids in the nursery while his parents attended the sessions. For the most part, things were okay until a woman named Romina stumbled across our conference on the 5th (of 6) day. We discovered she is a seeker who lives in an outer city, and she has a feisty 4 year old of her own named Tina.

Tina, meet Sina.

[The following encounter took place the next day when Romina once again found her way to the church.]

Tina: "I don't love Jesus."

Sina: words weren't necessary. He opted to let his fist speak for itself, and he punched her in the face.

Tina: (an hour or so later when the opportunity arose) "Mom, that kid punched me!!" (this was news to me, too)

Romina: "Sina, Christians are supposed to love other people and not act mean."

Sina: "Well, she should love Jesus. She deserved to be punched!"

Romina: "If you aren't going to apologize for what you did, you no longer exist to Tina or me."

Sina: [staredown time!]

Tina: "I DON'T SEE YOU!!!!"

Sina: (chasing Tina and Romina around to get in their faces) "What, you don't see me?!? See me now? Huh??"

Sita & her husband: ??? Once they got involved, I took it as my cue to scoot!

I thought that since the conference was over, so was our time with Romina and Tina. Think again! They asked Joe if they could stay in our home because they really wanted to attend church the next day (their city has no church). Given the fact that her daughter had been punched in the face, Joe felt he had no choice but to agree. But.

Remember Sina, who no longer exists? The trouble is, he is staying in our house. So...Sina and his family packed up their things and spent the night at Armand and Jean's house.

Romina and Tina spent the night with us.

We thought we'd just bring the two to their service and skip the English service that day. However, Romina found out that there was an English service, and she begged us to bring her. I suggested that Tina could stay with her in the service or go to Jenna or Andrew's class instead. Tina would stay with Romina. Or so we thought.

A few minutes into the service, Tina started to make waves. Thus we headed up to the nursery to keep her entertained there until it was time for her class to start. But Romina was itching to participate in the service, so she insisted we leave Tina in the nursery with the young kids and the 2 nursery workers. Romina asked me to teach the nursery workers to say "Be nice" in Tina's language since Tina knows no English at all (this should have been a big clue that I should NOT have agreed to leave Tina there).

About 3 minutes after we had returned to our seats, we heard a terrible commotion coming from upstairs where the nursery is. It was clear that Tina was screaming and crying, so Romina ran to find out what happened.

It turns out Tina can give punches as well as receive them. First she started bullying the kids in the nursery. And when an adult tried to grab her hand to get her to stop, Tina, with a closed fist and without warning, punched the woman in the ear. The result was a very bright red ear...at the hands of a four year old.

Romina proceeded to try to comfort her child. The nursery worker got upset that Romina didn't understand the gravity of what Tina had done. I escorted Romina and Tina home. Oh, and then we walked back so that Tina could apologize. And then we walked back home again.

We later returned to attend the Farsi service. While Sina does not exist, his mom Sita still did, and so before, during, and after church there were various verbal sparring sessions between the two moms on the proper way to discipline a child.

Then both families headed off to travel home. And we were left with just the teacher as a guest in our home for one final night.

We really thought we'd likely never see Romina and Tina again. Yet the very next Sunday they were back for the service and the class which is using Bill Bright's book Basics of Christianity. She will soon be able to relocate to America, but we do pray we can share the love of Christ with her while she's here. They, like so many others, need Him.

And we are glad that, at least for now, Hotel Towfighi is closed for a season.

On again, off again

So much for my plan of writing twice a week, huh? There's so much I want to remember about the past month, but I have been so busy living life, I haven't taken the time to write about it. I will try to play a bit of catch up...about Easter, our houseful of guests, etc. Though since I am so behind already, I'll just stick to telling you about our current adventure with water.
Anyone care to take a bath in this?? There are times the water is so orange the drain isn't even visible. Have no fear; we skip bath days when it's this bad. I quickly abandoned the idea of bathing the kids when I saw how discolored the water was that day. The problem has been going on for months, and we've been told that the old hot water pipes are to blame. So last week they started the process of replacing the hot water pipes in the entire building. Oh, the joys of hearing the workers drill through cement. Dust is everywhere. Because they are drilling through the floor, when they work on our upstairs neighbor's apartment, the debri lands in our bathroom, just as our downstairs neighbor gets ours.

For obvious reasons, when workers are replacing pipes, the water must be cut off occasionally. The first few days, it would go off (randomly) and come back on again within a short period of time. Then this week the "real" work began, and without warning, we had no water for two days. Well, I should clarify that the notice of the upcoming water cut was posted half-way through our first day of not having any water! Thankfully friends let us fill up a big jug of water so we could flush the toilet, etc. Wednesday the water was back, but our electricity came and went throughout the day (unrelated to the pipe replacing, and in fact, this slowed down their work. We got a break from the sound of the drills, and they ended up sweeping some of the debri in our bathroom because their work had come to a standstill).

At 7:00 on Wednesday night I bathed the kids as I usually do. With three kids reasonably clean, I was ready to rinse the shampoo out of Jenna's hair when, you guessed it, the workers cut off the hot water! She was aghast at the thought of being rinsed with icy cold water, and I agreed it would be torture. Thankfully there was a little (well used) water still in the bathtub, so I opted to rinse her with it instead. We'll call her clean.

By Thursday morning we had electricity, hot and cold water. But we were scheduled to visit friends that day. We spent the better part of the day with them (in spite of the fact that Nathan was still coughing quite a bit and poor Josh had a fever which had started in the middle of the night. But, hey, we got to eat Philipino spaghetti sauce with bits of hot dog in it...a first for us and a delight to the kids! ) Upon returning home, however, we discovered the cold water had been shut off. This means no dishwasher, washing machine, water for the toilets, etc. We pay a pretty penny for the quantity of water we use from the hot water pipes, so for Joe's sake we are using the water we do have sparingly. We've been told the water will be on again tomorrow night. For how long, I wonder...

I have to say I am frequently being reminded that water is something that should not be taken for granted. Rather than allowing myself to be frustrated that washing my hands isn't as simple as turning on the faucet right now, I am focusing on being grateful that most of the time we have a plentiful supply. It may be orange at times, but it's easily accessible! And I'm praying that the others in this building (my three sweet boys included) will be drawn to the One who offers each of us Living water.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker...

There have been times when an individual has tried to convince us that our culture and our friends' culture are basically the same. We laugh and remind them that while in many ways we are the same, we do have major differences in world views. One such way that is very different is our approach to marriage.

On a number of occasions, we have been asked to assist our friends in finding spouses. Just this week we received this email:

"hello Mr jozef
...in your Church if have girls for marry,i will marry i am 34 years old,graduated En agriculture .i had green house in Tehran(3000m2) i believe Jesus 10 years. if you know say me or give my email to her. God bless you."

Why are we asked to be assist? Family involvement in the matter of marriage is essential. We know of one case where a single man wanted to marry a young lady, and her sister refused the proposal on her behalf.

The trouble here is that many of our friends do not have family members present to carry out their vital role in this process. Thus we are aware of many who have chosen to propose directly to a lady who is part of our fellowship. When they do so, they end up bringing great shame on the woman. Various young men, who were proposing to practically any single woman they encountered, were creating such a stir in our fellowship that we even considered creating a written policy against proposing without using proper cultural methods!

Since young men should not approach young women on their own, they often approach us to fulfill the role that their families cannot. Sometimes a man asks us to approach a certain single woman on his behalf to see if she will consider marrying him. And, as in the email above, others will simply ask us to find an available female for them.

When I thought about the kinds of things that would be part of our "job description" here, matchmaker was not one of them. And while there is normally great interest on the part of some to get married, I can't think of anyone who has actually found a spouse with our help. Among other things, most of the men here are not in a place in their lives where they are able to provide for a wife. In any case, we find "matrimony assistance" pleas to be among many unique requests we receive that do color our days. Gotta love it!

Sweet sounds of voices

The other day I caught Andrew singing a song, and much to my surprise, he was doing a great job with singing the right tune along with it! This discovery led to pulling out the camera to record his accomplishment. One thing led to another, and the next thing I knew I was treated to a concert by three children. I caught a certain fourth munchkin a few days before doing something that brought me equal delight: giggling!

If pictures are worth a thousand words, these videos (posted a few days ago on facebook -- I am still learning how to get this kind of stuff to work!) could probably speak for themselves. However, a little explanation might help. Jenna is singing a song I made up (to the tune of Lullaby). The song as changed through the years as new family members have come along! She is "playing the piano" while she sings. Andrew is playing a guitar while he sings "There is a name I love to hear" (or should that be "two ears...") . And finally, Joshua, while playing the piano, sings his version of the ABC song. You should be able to hear him say "CD." And if any of you can tell me what "moomoonooo" means, I'm all ears! Though he's not verbal yet, he certainly is cute! Finally, our friend Akram is the one who is delighting Nathan and causing his terrific baby laughter. They are all such sweet sounds, indeed. I'm blessed!

Under the weather

Okay, this might not be a photo you would want to remember, but I have wiped Andrew's nose so many times, it is a memory I will have of him for a long time (if such things don't gross you out, you can see a close up of what I'm talking about if you click on the photo). I am very grateful he chooses to come to me to use a tissue rather than taking matters into his own hands and wiping his nose with something else (or as Joshua does, tries to rub his drippy nose on my shoulder!!)

The story of the week has been just this: the kids and I have been sick. Joshua came down with it first, and he was generous to share it with me. One by one, all the kids have succumbed to runny noses and coughs, but it hit me the worst. We missed the Sizdah bedar picnic due to illness.

This, too, shall pass, and in one sense, a slower week to rest and recover has not been a bad thing!

Just another day at the office

I thought it might be fun to give you a glimpse of what Joe's day was like on Tuesday. To say that every day is like this one would not be correct, but at the same time, he's had many days similar to this one!

Joe is a night owl, so this means that on the flip side, he's not generally an early riser. While the rest of the family was up around 7:00, Joe snoozed a bit longer. After his completing his normal morning routines, he began to get ready to head to the office. In doing so, he realized he'd misplaced a paper he'd written in preparation for discipling one of his friends. So....he spent a while searching for the elusive paper and still came up empty handed. Thus it was back to his BibleWorks computer program to record the information he wanted to be able to share with his friend.

In the meantime, Armand called from the office (Armand has language lessons in Joe's office now) to say that the folks scheduled to arrive at 11:00 AM for their appointment were already there and waiting for him (at 9:45 AM). Joe scrambled to finish getting ready, took the bus to Kizilay, and then sped the rest of the way to his office on foot. (I can't say he walked there as anyone who has seen Joe in action will attest to the fact that he often tries to squeeze too many things into one day and is forced to almost run from point A to point B as he's already running late!)

The three fellows met with Joe concerning their cases with the UNHCR and also shared with him that due to their lack of jobs and money, they were just kicked out of the place they were staying and were now on the streets. This necessitated in some phone calls to verify their story (which was true), and then he explored some ways to try to help them.

He had several other meetings that day, such as a visit with Pooya, along his mother and father-in-law who had come for a visit from their own country. They spent several hours with Joe, and he was able to share the whole Message with them and answer many of their questions. He also met briefly with Arash, who came just to say goodbye. (Arash is bound for Los Angeles, and while we will miss him here, we're praying God will use him mightily there and perhaps some day bring him back short term to serve here as he says he'd like to do.)

Throughout this whole time, there were also lots of phone calls. One worth mentioning was from his friend Siavash, who leads a group in an outer city, to say that he had some great news for Joe and wanted to talk later that night. Another was from our friend Safi who called to inform Joe that our friend Mohammad was just robbed at knife-point by four people he knew. Safi was hoping to use the relationship we have with the UNHCR as leverage to get them to return the money. Basically, he asked Joe to tell the 4 men that he'd personally report them to the UNHCR if they didn't cooperate. (Mohammad couldn't go to the police for help as he's not supposed to be here.) However, Joe was wary of using this method to try to get the money back. Joe had already been in touch with these men at his office as they discussed their UNHCR cases with him. He was concerned that making such a "threat" to them might anger them in such a way that they'd try to come after his family. So while we began to discuss how we might proceed, Safi called back to say he learned there was "bad blood" between Mohammad and the 4 men, and perhaps the story of the robbery was not completely true.

By this time Joe was ready to head home for the evening, but upon looking at the condition of his office, he realized some tidying was in order. Once that was completed, he dashed out the door to catch a bus home.

Once at home, he went to work to help cook some yummy fish and potatoes for dinner. (I do most of the cooking, but there are a few meals that require a little extra assistance!) Throughout this time, his phone was not silent. Several calls involved our friend Mohammad. In the end, Joe became 99% convinced the accusation of theft was honest, and the 4 men also reported they'd return all the money except the 300 lira they'd already spent. Joe relayed this information to Safi, who was satisfied to wait and see how it would turn out.

Then Joe got to spend a little time with the family. Due to our recent adventures in potty training, the kids got to bed much later than normal, and so before they were in bed, Joe was back at the computer to talk to his friend Siavash via a yahoo instant messenger phone call. Siavash did share great news concerning restored relationships in the fellowship and of the decision of several to cross the line. Joe also had to arrange some of the logistics for his friend Dick's upcoming trip to that city. The call lasted until after 10:30 at night, at which point Joe switched to working on preparing his lesson for the prayer meeting the next day.

Some time later, Joe was ready to relax - eat a midnight snack, surf the TV for something to watch, and read his book. You'd have to ask him about the particulars, though, for at this point, I was already fast asleep!!

New Beginnings

Last week was a big week for our family. Our sweet Joshua turned 2...another year of his life has begun. We invited two couples to celebrate this special occasion with us, and Joshua loved his birthday dessert and gifts. This little guy truly is a gift from God who brightens our lives in so many ways. He also does great job of keeping us on our toes!

In fact, I'd have written about his special day sooner, only now that he's two, I've been pretty busy helping him adjust to the idea of using a potty. Fun times, I have to say!! For as brave as he is in many ways, he does remind us at times that he is a little boy. For example, he'll fearlessly attempt to climb the ladder of our bunk bed (and usually fall in the process), but for some reason, he's spooked at the idea of sleeping in a regular bed. Before Nathan's arrival we had to buy a second crib so that Joshua did not have to be kicked out of his crib. And now we discovered that the potty is a scary thing, too. We all need patience and wisdom as we navigate this journey toward greater independence of boyhood!

But I digress. On Friday we also celebrated the beginning of the new year with our friends. Their calendar begins with the first day of spring, so at 1:43 (or so!) we found ourselves saying "Happy New Year" to about 120 folks who had gathered that day. Six individuals were given the opportunity to demonstrate their new walk with the Lord as they were dunked during this New Year's service. Since four of these people were from the outer cities, Joe was given the privilege of dunking them. Two of these folks are on the far right in this photo. It was a great time and a great opportunity for several relatives of our friends to hear the Truth for the first time. We're praying that the new year will be full of many blessings and spiritual growth for these friends who have become dear to us!