La Nourriture Chinoise

A French child is raised with a great appreciation for food. The French take their food very seriously. It seems as if there are unending aisles of cheeses and wines in the every day grocery stores. The Boulangerie is constantly cranking out fresh baguettes and it's one of very few shops open on Sundays. Cuisine is an integral part of this culture, and a part that I am coming to love more and more each day.

This child was raised with a great appreciation for Chinese food. I could very easily at this moment type up pages and pages describing Chinese food, what makes it so fantastic, and why it is such an integral part of Chinese culture - perhaps even more so than food in France is to French culture! For now, let's just say that the mere combination of the words "Chinese" and "Food" are enough to make my mouth water.

Now it's not all rosy and glowing. I will openly admit struggles in my relationship with Chinese food at times. Much as I adore certain staple comfort foods such as pork buns, pan fried noodles, bamboo rice, tofu, fried rice, jiaozi, etc., certain dim sum dishes such as tripe and chicken feet just never really appealed to me. However, Chinese food was an undeniably large and important part of the first eighteen years of my existence, henceforth solidifying it to be a large and important part of the remaining years of my existence. 

Needless to say, Chinese food was certainly something that I missed while I was in Haiti. Don't get me wrong - the Haitian food was delicious and I didn't spend my days pining away for a taste of fried rice, but still. Many of the other volunteers in Haiti missed Starbucks, McDonald's, and Olive Garden. I missed Chinese food.

I decided the best perspective to have in regards to availability and quality of Chinese food here in this land of cheese and baguettes was to go into it with very low expectations which would lead either to accurate expectations or expectations exceeded. 

After purchasing a variety of different brands and types, there was only one clear conclusion: the rice is bizarre. Here in France, it's an extremely dry, brittle, long and starchy sort of a substance. Not recommended. 

The Chinese food section itself at the grocery stores are approximately 1/700th the size of the cheese section, and they don't have normal rice, and they don't have kikkoman soy sauce. It mostly consisted of ramen-type noodle packages for 5 € a pop! Ridiculous. These comments are, of course, not at all meant as a slam on the French and their cuisine and their grocery stores. I have truly appreciated the French cuisine greatly this past month! It's just not my roots...

One of the first things I checked in the community kitchen was whether or not they had soy sauce. Well they do, but it's Vitasia Indonesian Style Soy Sauce. Um....quoi? It's also really weird. Really weird. Never tasted soy sauce like that in all my life.

Today was a splendid day - the sun bright, the air balmy. When class ended this morning, I meandered down towards the river, breathing deeply of the fresh air.

Breathing deeply can sometimes be a very good thing, and as I walked down the street, I heaved in another breath, only to stop mid-breath. And to stop mid-step. The tune I was humming froze. The thoughts I was thinking dissipated. 

For lo and behold I had breathed in the undeniable smell of a Chinese food grocery store. I whirled around, retracing my steps, and a few yards back there it was. A real, live, honest to goodness Chinese food grocery store, and the first thing I saw? A 1 Liter bottle of Kikkoman soy sauce. Oh happy day.

I did not have my money with me, but I carefully noted the location of this priceless spot, and returned as soon as class was over for the day. I was the only customer in the tiny little store, and I had a conversation with the owner that went something like this:

Store owner - "Bonjour." (I must say, it was slightly jarring to hear perfect French coming out of the mouth of a old Chinese man)

K - "Bonjour! Je voudrais acheter sauce de soya" (thank goodness I learned how to say soy sauce last year to answer a question on the final exam that told us to describe how to cook our favorite dish) "et je voudrais sauce de soya de Kikkoman... Mais ça" (pointing to the 1 Liter bottle of Kikkoman that was a whopping 10 €) "C'est plus grand pour moi. Est-ce que vous avez sauce de soya de Kikkoman moins grand?"

Him - "Nous avons ça" (gestured towards a nice sized bottle of soy sauce that was decidedly not kikkoman and that had a rather French sounding brand name).

K - "Uhhh...je ne sais pas cette type de sauce de soya....vous n'avez pas le kikkoman moins grand?"

Him - "Désolé, mais non."

K - "D'accord." (Kathryn picks up smaller, suspicious bottle of soy sauce and examines it carefully.) "Et ça? C'est bon sauce de soya?"

Him - "Non. Non, Kikkoman est vraiment le meilleur."

K - "Oui. Je suis d'accord."

After great deliberation, I determined that at least today, I was not going to spend 10 € on a bottle of soy sauce. But I made some most phenomenal other purchases, including the one and only Lee Kum Kee Oyster Flavor Sauce. At least they had this in smaller bottles, for which I was very thankful. They also had rice. Kathryn will no longer purchase her rice at places like Carrefour or Géant. Ever. They also had a small but nice selection of hot dishes to chose from. It was, undeniably, a little bit odd to say, "Je voudrais le pâté cantonais, s'il vous plaît" and the springroll I bought and subsequently consumed had a bit of an odd flavoring to it, but still. 

It was a happy day.

Upon arriving back at home, I discovered that the Vitasia Indonesian Style Strange Sauce was almost gone. Probably my fault. It may be strange, but at least I can pretend it's kikkoman, and I used it frequently. Tomorrow, I plan on returning and purchasing the 10 €, 1 Liter bottle of never fail Kikkoman.

There it is. The best. The solution to otherwise unpalatable vegetables. The one and only.

A satisfying dîner for only 1.20!

Fake rice and real rice.

I've noticed that people like to edit photos and make them black and white and blurry on the edges when they're feeling sentimental about the moment captured. I am no exception.

Mercredi

Loads of fun with Elise and Micah in the morning - playing The Jumping Game, creating all sorts of beautiful things with watercolor pencils, making playdough grapes and cars, reading books, going on adventures with evil Lego dinosaurs, making bracelets...

Time in the gloriously sunny and warm outdoors with a great many little persons full of all sorts of imaginative exploits and grand plans.

A carefully colored Thomas the Tank Engine coloring page and a beautifully decorated heart cookie from Maggie.

Lots of laughter and some learning too during a piano lesson with Anna.

An apple with nutella. Don't know why we don't eat that stuff more in the States. It's truly scrumptious. Granted, I also fail to understand why the French don't eat peanut butter. Also scrumptious stuff, but it's nowhere to be found in this foreign land!

Struggles to achieve further comprehension and mastery of le discours indirect.

Walking in the late afternoon light to the train station and back again with a friend.

Conversing in French with a French speaking friend about Luke chapter five.

Time at the nursing home... conversations with very dear residents whilst participating in their Wednesday activity of crafting turtles and flowers and balls from red clay. One lady that I talked to for a particularly long time gravely informed me that she was not one of the residents; she most decidedly did not live there at the nursing home. When I asked where she lived, she took me to the window and pointed to what she said was the very last mountain. That was where her house was. Unsure as to whether or not I understood her correctly since we were, after all, speaking in French, I asked how she got to the nursing home that day. "J'ai marché, bien sûr. Je n'ai pas une voiture." Apparently, she walked to the nursing home that morning from the last mountain where she lives. I still wasn't sure I understood correctly, but after she repeated this story to me a good four times, I think I understood. Another very tiny but very chipper and chatty lady happily dubbed herself my French professor, and unhesitatingly corrected all my mistakes and explained why they were mistakes.

A dinner of corn chicken soup, more or less made up out of my head, for after beginning with one recipe, I realized I lacked the large majority of ingredients, so found another recipe and was going to combine them somehow until I realized I lacked most of the ingredients for recipe number two as well, and it was thus a very odd hybrid of the recipes and Kathryn's capabilities of culinary improvisation. Miraculously, it did not turn out to be a horrific puddle of grossness, and was actually quite edible.

A lovely and very large addition to my music library of French worship music. Fantastique.

Béni soit le nom du Seigneur, béni soit ton nom, béni soit le nom du Seigneur, béni soit ton nom glorieux!

Le Deuxième Fois! A Skiing...Success? Je Pense...

Even after a near death experience, and even with plenty of mundane tasks begging to be completed on the home front, and even though my muscles - particularly those of the left arm - had just finished recovering the previous day, and despite the fact that I remain a novice skier relatively devoid of anything beyond the most basic of skiing abilities henceforth guaranteeing large amounts of pain and suffering and fear, these were not sufficient excuses to prevent me from joining some friends (Sarah, Alyssa, Jason, Nathaniel, and Carlan to be exact) from the unadulterated glory of the Alps this past Saturday.

And glorious they were. 

The day was saturated in sunlight. The canopy of blue above blazed brilliantly. And the all-surrounding, panoramic view of mountains and mountains and mountains every which way you turned and as far as the eye could stretch was truly a sight to behold!

Plus I had a good deal of encouragement going in from some very dear friends (friends who also happen to be more or less Olympic level skiers) who chanced upon this most fascinating ski run known as the "Kath Run" (for those who are unaware of this fact of life, my very close friends and family all call me "Kath"). I spent a good deal of time relishing in the fact that the Kath Run was a more difficult level, until I realized the actual meaning of a more difficult ski slope in relation to myself, that is...

Yet fortified with these images in my mind, and carrying the very same small, bubble-gum pink skis, onto the bus went I on that splendid Saturday morning avec mes amis! 

This bus can be taken for free up to the slopes on Saturdays. It was a combination of us Americans who lack any other method of transportation, and the youth of France who are similarly lacking (you can't get your license here until you're eighteen). 

Up and up and up we went. Away from the city, away from the valley, away from the civilized sectors of human thriving, and into the grandeur of the wild! Well, not quite I suppose, because there is a town and it does have amenities such as restaurants and shops and houses and churches and bakeries and patisseries and such, but when you're up there in the middle of the mountains, it's not too hard to pretend that you're also in the middle of a vast and uncivilized wilderness, and that does make it a good deal more thrillingly fantastic.

Now as we went up the first lift, my heart was full of fear and trepidation, for I failed to realize an essential fact of life, that being that one ski lift does not lead to only one ski slope. No, it can lead to a plethora of different ski slopes and of varying difficulty. It was natural and right that I should be so misinformed, for last time, the ski lifts that I went up did indeed only lead to one ski slope simply because that "slope" didn't even really qualify as a slope due to its minuscule size. Therefore, as we continued up and up and up and up and UP in the ski lift, I was shocked by the size and the unheard of steep drop offs and absurd speed of the skiers below, for the ski lift took us over a slope of MASSIVE difficult and of GREAT enormity and of HUGE steepness and I simply assumed that there was no other way down besides this fearsome path. 

So I enjoyed the ride up as best as I possibly could, assuming that it would be my last as I would indubitably meet my death upon attempting to tackle such a formidable foe as that particular slope presented. 

I rejoiced to discover that I was wrong, very wrong indeed on this account. And instead of going down death mountain, we went down green mountain, entirely manageable, very lovely, with just the right amount of thrilling scares to keep oneself going at a decent pace, but not too many to actually lead to one's imminent death.

After recovering from the initial horror of the death mountain under the ski lift, I loved it. It was splendid, glorious, beautiful. Uplifting to the soul and reassuring to the body. I did not even fall. Not even once. (Unless you count the time when I skied straight into Sarah whilst joyfully proclaiming that I had yet to fall. Skiing and trying to communicate something to a fellow skier just doesn't work too well. Multitasking never was my strong point.)

Alyssa took some pictures of happy, on-her-skis-and-in-a-standing-position Kathryn while it lasted. The vêtements were, perhaps, slightly large on me (particularly the ski pants...I promise I do not condone sagging, but there was truly naught to be done in my case.) I enjoying looking at these pictures, and seeing myself in a standing position on the snow with my skis on my feet with the mountains in the background and the blue sky overhead. It is very reassuring indeed.

After the green slope, we went down the "baby" slope (baby being relative to your ability to ski. Donc, NOT baby in my eyes). Not just any baby slope - THE baby slope that very nearly caused severe injury and damage of a great many organs and bones etc. I had not been able to get down this slope even once last time without major wipeouts. Henceforth it was with great trembling of the limbs and shaking of the nerves that I positioned myself at the top and went down this [not] baby mountain.

And wonders of wonders, miracles of miracles, I skied all the way from the top of it to the bottom of it while remaining in a vertical position. Massive feelings of accomplishment leading towards confidence swelled up within. Then I realized that was probably a really bad plan and banished such feelings that could lead only to a lethally false sense of security. 

Up to the green slope we went a second time. Fall did I not.

Beauty, glory, snow-dusted coniferous trees, Mount Blanc (the tallest peak in Europe) as a backdrop for our ventures, oh it was just the best as the best can be.

So then we turned around to go down again.

But not down a green slope this time. Down a blue slope. I did not know precisely what this blue slope would entail, but I did know this - it was different than green, and it was harder than green.

Well it started out just grand until it got so horrifyingly steep that I cannot comprehend with this novice skier brain of mine how it is humanly possibly to maneuver your skis in such a way as to get from point A (as in the top of the mountain) to point B (as the bottom of the mountain) without inflicting substantial amounts of damage to your body due to severe wipeouts. 

It didn't take long into the blue slope for Kathryn to capsize, go flying over somewhere somehow, some muscle in my right leg felt rather twisted and bent out of shape, and voila! One ski was on, one ski was off, and one girl was no longer in a vertical position. This set of photos displays the most benevolent Sarah valiantly helping her fallen comrade (I PROMISE that I didn't fall after skiing down something that looks as flat as this picture does... There was DEFINITELY a steep part right behind us that caused my fall that you can't see!)

J'ai tombé, j'ai tombé, j'ai tombé. And screamed, and screamed, and screamed, and screamed when I was falling and when I wasn't falling and when I was everywhere in between falling and not falling. There was one utterly inconceivable moment when I was at the top of a slope that I am most utterly convinced must have been nearly a ninety degree angle sort of a slope. As in it wasn't a slope. It was a wall of snow coming straight up from the ground that I was somehow supposed to ski down. Désolé, mais ce n'est pas possible. 

So instead of attempting to achieve the impossible, I half lay, half sat, half squatted in an awkwardly cumbersome position and slid/bumped/fell down the snow wall until I felt like it was possible to actually get up and continue on in an upright position.

I arrived at last at the endearingly flat bottom of the mountain shaken but not dead. Fantastique!!!! And, with much cheerleading and encouraging and you-can-do-it-ing from Alyssa and Sarah, it was time to tackle the blue monster once more.

But only once more, not twice more or thrice more. It was fascinating to see the tracks that I left from not-skiing down the mountain from the perspective of the ski lift. It was like...like the tracks of the abominable snowman gone wrong...

I improved my technique significantly when I arrived at the snow wall. I knew it was coming, and rather than bumble down it awkwardly, I lay on my back and slid down quite smoothly and effortlessly, hoping all the time that no one would accidentally ski over my sliding body. They didn't. I made it down again. Then I capitalized on the civilized assets of this ski town, and gratefully consumed hot chocolate and nutella crepes. 

Before the bus came to pick us up and bring us back down again into the valley, I went once more down not the blue, nor the green, nor the baby hill, but the super duper oober baby hill, that has even become a baby hill to me. I appreciate this hill greatly, for it is entirely possible for me to whiz down it with speed whilst keeping relative control. A gratifying feeling to be sure.

As we said goodbye to the slopes, the sun was beginning to set, casting a mellow glow over the grandeur. Down the winding mountain roads went the bus (amazingly...it is rather incomprehensible to me how it drove with such finesse and ease on those perilous roads). I relished the glimpses of steep mountainsides coated in ice - a waterfall frozen in place. A river with rapids rushing over rocks, cutting through the rugged mountains. And then we were back in the city. And then it was time to go to youth group. And then after youth group, a plumb tuckered out Kathryn turned to the safety of her tiny, un-epic but vastly comfortable little room and went promptly to sleep, only to wake up with large amounts of pain ailing her muscles, every single one of them. The End.

Joyeux Anniversaire & Paul Wylie

Hier, ma mére a célebré son anniversaire! C'était le premier fois que je n'étais pas au Michigan pour son anniversaire, mais ici, j'ai commémoré l'occasion aussi.

On her birthday (actually it was her birthday in France, but not quite her birthday in the States) while she was valiantly working out for the GLA River Run (if you want more info about that, please do ask me!) she got the desire to watch her all time favorite Olympic figure skating performance, done by American figure skater Paul Wylie, and skated to two of her favorite songs: the theme from Henry V, and Saint-Saën's Organ Symphony No. 3. 

Like mother, like daughter. Those two songs also strangely enough happen to be two of my favorite songs (if they truly can be called mere "songs", so glorious and majestic they are!) and when one day long ago (long ago being relative to the life of an eighteen year-old) she introduced to me this figure skating performance, it too became my all time favorite Olympic figure skating performance. To make it even better, he far surpassed everyone's low expectations for his performance, and after skating this routine, Paul Wylie won the silver medal at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in no place other than here in Albertville, France!!!!! I've walked past this very rink, and at some point, I certainly plan on skating in it myself. Watch his stunning performance below.

Not only is Paul Wylie a phenomenal skater who skates to fantastic music, but he is also a really neat chap who came to faith at age twenty and when he skated this routine, he skated it for the glory of the Lord. Read this article where he shares his story of faith, his story of skating, and the story of his experience at the Winter Olympics of 1992.

"Whether it's stepping onto the ice for the short program in the Olympics, being at my desk at Harvard Business School or working for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, each experience is part of an adventure that God is taking me on...It's all for His glory." - Paul Wylie

A Nice Mundane Post

A few nice, normal, not scary highlights from the week:

Getting settled into the routine and rhythm of daily life in Albertville.

Waking up each morning to the mountains outside my window.

The animation and enthusiasm of my French teacher.

Sizable comprehension of last week's sermon.

A package with a Paternoster Christmas letter, lots of fascinating drawings from a variety of wonderful people, a few letters, and a magazine with an article about Fierce Compassion. (go here to view the online copy. The article about Fierce Compassion is pages 16-17)

Perpetually entertaining classroom dynamics.

Dinner at the little hole in the wall restaurant famed to be Albertville's best kabab eatery with two new friends. Excellent meal and excellent fellowship.

A few piano lessons with Anna.

A morning with Ben and Maggie.

A full week in the classroom learning French and only French.

No more Power School, no more grades, no more GPA's, just learning French.

When people are late to class, they don't need tardy passes. It's just assumed that as responsible human beings, they had a good reason. What a novel idea.

Vocabulaire Biblique Lessons on Fridays - a day to learn Bible vocabulary and hear Bible stories in French! Hearing familiar stories being recounting in an unfamiliar tongue is really quite wonderful as you begin to comprehend the previously unfamiliar tongue.

A big group of high school students from Ohio are here visiting. They're painting one of the classrooms. It's nice, if not slightly odd, to have people to converse with in English who are also not here to learn French.

Lunch with the Wills - a missionary couple with World Harvest (the same agencies the McCropders are with) who spent fourteen years as missionaries in Spain, and who are now heading to Africa. They were at Urbana too, working at the World Harvest table in the Exhibit Hall!

Reading through the Chronicles of Narnia again (finished The Silver Chair last night, onto The Horse and His Boy after this blog post).

Listening to Urbana seminars online while cleaning the room, doing the laundry, ironing the clothes, and so forth.

A game night with the French youth group on Friday. Games are a great vehicle for reaching across cultures and for learning more French.

Grocery shopping at Géant (a massive grocery store). Actually the shopping itself was not the highlight, but rather the walking there through the slush and snow with the Alps surrounding on every side with a new friend was the highlight.

A walk to the river with an assortment of McCropders and friends.

Just got back from the Post Office, about to go eat lunch with the American's from Ohio, and then an afternoon of French.

A Scary Story

Email me if you wanna hear the story!

Pastor Bob Came, and This is What He Said

Pastor Bob and Mrs. Lynn visited Albertville last week, and I was extremely thrilled and very honored to be able to listen in on a McCropder team meeting and hear all he had to say about contextualization of the gospel in Africa. I shall now divulge the information I absorbed at said meeting, so you better pay attention because it's good stuff and who wouldn't want to be privy to the contents of a McCropder team meeting led by Pastor Bob? If you're not a Knox person, you might not get it, but trust me, that is no small thing!

The topic of the meeting was, as previously stated, contextualization of the gospel in Africa, but it also covered the overarching concept of how different cultures and the gospel relate to each other. All too often, missionaries go to the field unprepared to bring the gospel effectively into the culture they enter into, and they spread the good news through detrimental cultural lenses. And all too often, the gospel that you bring to Africa (or any other place) is just an answer to the Western World's questions. In Africa, this is evidently the case because the gospel has in many ways and in many places failed to dislodge deeply embedded and essential African worldviews that are contrary to the gospel (i.e. a person who goes to church on Sundays may very well turn to a shaman for healing and expect alternate spiritual forces at work behind his ailment).

As people coming with a whole lot of cultural baggage, it is important that we try to take a step back from these Westernized perspectives of the gospel, and strive to view the gospel not in a reductionist way, but as a diamond. A multifaceted gospel. Each facet of the diamond represents a the gospel from the vantage point of a different culture. Each facet when it catches the light has equal brilliance and beauty.

Once we understand this concept, the goal then is to figure out what exactly our biases might be as Westerners, and what cultural lense we are stepping into. Although this is in many ways generalizing, the world can basically be broken up into three basic types of cultures:

1. Guilt-Forgiveness cultures
2. Shame-Honor cultures
3. Fear-Power cultures

You can think of these three basic types of cultures as being the three primary colors. No culture is purely yellow, purely red, or purely blue. They are all a combination of the primary colors, because all these tendencies of guilt/forgiveness, shame/honor, fear/power are felt by humans all across history and all across geographic space, but each culture will have a tendency towards one primary color, and that color will be prevalent in many ways. America is very much a Guilt/Forgiveness culture. When we preach the gospel, over and over we preach a guilt and forgiveness gospel. It is almost the only one we know! All the gospel tracks you may come across, all the ways that speakers present the gospel, all the most powerful and life-changing messages, virtually all of them are based on our own personal guilt, our own personal sins, and God's deliverance of us by sending his Son to die in our place and remove out sins. The more I thought about it, the more I was struck by the reality of this truth. How many times have you heard the prodigal son preached as a call for the wayward son to come home? How many times have you been at retreats or mission trips that have opportunities for you to pin up your sins on a cross as a representation of being forgiven by Christ? We focus so much on our own personal sins, on our own guilt, on how our righteousness is as rags, and on how we have been washed white as snow by the blood of Christ, that often we miss other aspects of the gospel that speak just as loudly and just as powerfully and that would, indeed, speak more loudly and more powerfully from a different cultural perspective. Scripture has a huge amount of richness to speak into all three types of cultures, but we are entirely focused on guilt-forgiveness.

Take, for instance, Mark 5:24-34. This is the story about the woman who has been afflicted by bleeding for years upon years and when she touches Christ's garment, she is healed. This story takes place in a shame-honor culture. This woman, according to Leviticus, is not just unclean - she is publicly unclean. Only the pure could enter the temple. She bore her affliction not privately, but in relation to the rest of the community; her position in this community was a position of shame. And what does Jesus do? He publicly heals her. He publicly restores her honor, her position in this shame-honor community is radically changed. When we see something like this, we might think of her bleeding as a sign of her sins that have been forgiven, but it speaks so powerfully to her honor being restored. In the West, we have a gospel for the sinners, but not really for the sinned against. Those who desperately need to be lifted up from the ash heap and restored to dignity and honor. The profound shame that Jesus bore on the cross is not as fully understood by us in a guilt-forgiveness setting.

This is all, of course, not at all to say that the guilt-forgiveness aspect of the gospel is not important - it is! And vitally so! But in other cultures, sometimes the idea of your own personal sin and your own personal guilt isn't even a concept one would be able to wrap his or her mind around! Their primary mode of thinking is not about their sin and their guilt at all. Eventually, the gospel will work its power and transform them to help them realize their guilt, just as eventually we as Westerners will slowly come to step out of our comfort zones and realize what it means that the gospel speaks to Fear-Power as well as Guilt-Forgiveness.

In Africa, they don't really doubt the existence of the spiritual powers in this world. The Apostle's Creed that we profess in America says naught about the three years of Jesus' works and deeds. In fact, it skips right from being born of the virgin Mary to suffering under Pontius Pilate! Some of you Knox people will remember the African Creed that we as a church professed when the McCropders were all in Michigan worshipping with us - in this creed, it takes about how Jesus went on Safari for three years, healing and working miracles. Christ the Healer, Christ the wonderworker, He is largely absent from Western theology. We see his demon excursions and miraculous healings only as proof of his divinity, but it has no day to day relevance for us. In a place with accessible, top-notch medical care, the power of God the healer is greatly minimized. And a God who controls demons not just in the Bible but in every day life here on earth in the year 2013, well for most that's just strange, uncomfortable, and just a little scary. And henceforth our religion becomes a personal experience about our interior stuff, and about us getting a ticket to Heaven for after we die. But for the African where there is great need for healing, where there is great need for the power of a higher divinity to come and dispel the darkness, personal forgiveness of sins may just not be as radically life-changing as it would for someone raised American. For the African, a God with the power to control demons, with the power to give sight to the blind, this is truly a magnificent God who is worthy of our praise! And it's 100% worth it to get on board with the Kingdom of God in all its unfathomable greatness and majesty and power. And of course this is not just a cultural gospel, this is the gospel! It talks a lot about the fantastic power of the Lord all over the Bible actually. A lot! Pastor Bob gave us these scriptures to do as an exercise. Look these up, and match them with one of the three main cultural types:

1 Peter 3:18a (Romans 6:23)

John 12:30-32 (1 John 4:4)

Ezekiel 16:8 (Ephesians 2:11-13, 19)

Matthew 12:22-29 (Luke 10:17, 18)

Isaiah 53:4-6

Psalm 34:4-5 (1 Peter 2:6)

Ephesians 1:7

1 Samuel 2:8 (Leviticus 26:13)

Colossians 2:15 (Ephesians 4:7,8)

Now interestingly, all the scriptures that speak to guilt and forgiveness were scriptures I was very very familiar with, scriptures that are the "go to" scriptures of the West. While few of the other references were ones that have impacted me significantly, or ones that I turn to frequently for encouragement. But if I were living a shame-honor culture or a fear-power culture, that would likely be a different story. Of course we are all believe in God's power, of course we all believe that He will restore us to honor, but that guilt-forgiveness aura is undeniably present in the way we present the gospel.

And so when we go into a place that has yet to hear the good news, what exactly is our starting point? It feels more natural, more comfortable, more powerful and profound to share what speaks to us and what has been central to our understanding of the gospel for our entire lives. But more likely than not, missions overseas will entail spreading the Power of Jesus as Lord, preaching the Kingdom of God as a Kingdom that will ultimately prevail over all others, a God who reigns and who makes all things news. The good news of the poor, the least of these being lifted out of their ruin and misery and into restoration and dignity and honor.

Well that's about it for now. Time to go back to class! Hopefully the information disclosed in this blog post is not confidential, for-McCropder-ears-only, because it really ought to be for all ears to hear and understand!

When Pictures and Diagrams Speak Louder Than Words: A quick recap from my first time downhill skiing

I have now downhill skied. Please view the following photos with captions and diagrams for further information regarding this endeavor.

The day was spent in a charmingly quintessential ski town in the Alps. The snow was just magnificent! And as for the mountains - I am not, generally speaking, at a loss for words, and yet I can find none to satisfactorily articulate the stunning grandeur and awesome majesty of the Alps.

We took a break halfway through to stop by that little bakery there, pictured below in the corner, and we sat outside eating croissants and drinking most delicious hot cocoa!

That is me. I enjoy this photo because it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was not on the ground the entire time. I do not enjoy this photo because it utterly fails to adequately depict the shocking steepness of the mountain I was skiing down.

That is also me. I enjoy this photo because that is me, successfully skiing down a mountain. Please closely observe me successfully skiing down the mountain and applaud this massive accomplishment.

Before you read further, just indulge me by viewing these next two photos of me skiing successfully down a mountain. I think that it is a very good first impression for you to have. And I enjoy these pictures a lot. Because they are of me successfully skiing down the mountain. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I am pleased to report that I did not fall, not even once, on my first time going down the mountain. However, on my second time skiing down, I did fall. It was a fall I am not likely to forget. It was also a fall that I have found difficult to explain in words, other than to say that if it had been caught on film (which it mercifully was not) there is no doubt in my mind that it would instantly be on America's Funniest Videos or whatever that show is called where they show people falling and hurting themselves and call it funny.

And so without further ado, a simple succession of diagrams attempting to explain my first fall:

(note in this picture that the skis are entirely perpendicular to the ground)

(yes, I realize that skier does not have two "i's". My apologies. I am not accustomed to writing down ski terminology!)

So that was that. If you did not follow those diagrams, feel free to make further inquiries. In addition to being sore, I am covered in a great many bruises of all sorts - bruises of the bones and of the muscles and of the everything else - presumably from flying off of the cliff and landing face first in the snow bank.

But it was all completely worth it, believe it or not, especially because despite all the formidable forecasts, the Lord graciously granted us with spectacular weather and the view at every instant of the day, every which way you turned, was magnificent...

(going up a mountain in those with only a thin metal bar between you and an uncertain death is utterly terrifying. And wonderful).

(Ski lift in the corner of the sky!)

All in all, it was a perfectly splendid day, and worth every miserable minute of acute muscular suffering that has ensued ever since!