Deep Breaths

Lunches and Lock-In's

Hi everyone. It feels kind of weird writing a new blog entry without having dozens of photos to upload, but maybe a few words will be entertaining enough to tide you over until the next update.

Leia is back at work now, shaping the young minds of tomorrow with her trademark brilliance. Meanwhile, I am starting to feel like I am making real progress on the book I am writing for my job. It's an introduction to the History of Christianity, and I have now completed twelve chapters (out of a projected 29 or 30). It's a huge undertaking, but I'll be really proud of it when I've finished. The first book I wrote (an Intro to the Bible) was just published last month, and Leia and I now have our own copy to admire, which is fairly surreal.

Apart from my writing, I've been doing some house-husband stuff to relieve my wife's stress. I've started cooking lunch for her during the week so there's food ready when she comes home from school. Lunch tends to be the main meal of the day here, so I can't just throw together some sandwiches, but I've had a lot of fun experimenting in the kitchen. I've done fish and vegetables in foil packets, pork cutlets with a mustard-cream sauce, rosemary potatoes, homemade tacos, shrimp fried rice, pasta of various sorts... I think I should apply for a job with the Food Network – maybe I could be Iron Chef Cypriot!

Friday night we had a lock-in with our youth group at the church. For the uninitiated, a lock-in is where you get a bunch of teenagers together in a building and stay overnight and eat pizza and play games and watch movies and generally do a lot of fun things and see who can stay awake the longest. You would think these kids could manage to stay up all night, but most of them slept for several hours, and the only person who made it through the entire night was me, the old man of the group! I guess they just don't build teenagers like they used to. But at any rate, we did have a fun night with the kids. Some of them taught me to play backgammon, and I taught them to play ping-pong, and it was just nice to have a break from the usual madness of our routine.

Leia and I both really appreciate your thoughts and prayers during this challenging time in our lives. Now that our long blissful summer has ended and the reality of the working world has once again asserted itself, we are beginning to feel a bit worn out. There are a lot of things about our life here that tax our physical and emotional energy. In particular, we are both bothered by the fact that our real reason for being here in Cyprus in the first place (youth ministry) often seems to get pushed to the sidelines by our many other responsibilities (most of which are necessary to pay the bills). I know a lot of you understand what a frustrating feeling it is to have to subordinate your passion to your "day job." So please remember us in your prayers. We really need a lot of encouragement at the moment.

I know we have sent some of you our new address and phone number for the apartment, but if there are any of you who don't have it and would like to, just drop us a comment or an email and we'll be glad to send it to you. We love getting calls and cards...and presents (hint hint). We love you all, and we promise that when we finally get an internet connection to call our own (within the next week and a half, supposedly) the frequency of our communication will greatly increase. Thanks for being patient. We are so grateful to have such a wonderful group of friends and family members who care about what's going on in our lives. You are a great blessing to us.

–John

posted by John and Leia @ 5:48 AM