Favorite Fall Soup

What is October like in your part of the globe? Is it fall or spring where you live? In our Aegean city, it’s pure joy to be able to spend time outdoors without dripping sweat now that summer is finally over. We're enjoying cool sunny weather and occasional rain.  Another thing I enjoy about fall is making soup again. 

Real Life Hospitality

This week I had yet another cooking-for-company fiasco.  I put two whole chickens into a hot oven at 5:00 p.m., and then for some reason turned the oven OFF without noticing. At 6:00, just a half hour before my guests arrived, I opened the oven door to take a look and found two stone-cold, raw chickens!  Panic! My husband saved the day by wrestling and cutting them up for quicker cooking. Waiting for the meal to cook made for plenty of time to chat with our guests.

Even though I’m a cross-cultural worker in the Middle East, I spend most of my time going grocery shopping, cooking, taking kids to appointments, cooking, cleaning house, home schooling, and cooking. Sometimes I ask myself, where does ministry come in here? I don’t have much time for preparing Bible studies or planning outreach events...

What Was Your Name? Mine is Mud!

Overseas living gives us plenty of opportunities to laugh at ourselves. After all, it is humbling to move overseas and suddenly find that in your new country you're less competent than most children. Sometimes even grasping people’s names when you meet them is difficult, let alone trying to have a conversation afterwards. So for me, it’s therapeutic to be able to enjoy a good laugh, even at my own expense.

(I'm having a busy week, so this is a re-post about something that still makes me laugh.)

Do I Have Time to Home School and Be a Cross-Cultural Worker?

Do you ever wonder where all your time goes?  I ask myself that question almost every night before bed.  Last week I enjoyed reading Sidetracked and Scatterbrained, where a friend in Mexico wrote about her typical day, so now I thought I’d share with you what my day as Olive-on-the-Aegean is 

like.

Mind in the Gutter or Fixed on God?

I’m embarrassed to say this, but one danger of being a cross-cultural worker is that I can become so focused on the spiritual growth of others that I neglect growing myself.  I’ve spent hours preparing Bible studies, listening to peoples’ struggles and encouraging them to trust God and be more like Jesus in their daily lives.  Then when my own life gets bumpy, I see that I also worry, fret, and get grouchy! I constantly remind myself to take my own medicine, to practice myself what I counsel others to do.

A Taste of Turkey: Moussaka

Turks are masters at one hundred and one ways to cook eggplant, and if you think you don’t like eggplant, most likely you never had it well prepared. Moussaka is my easiest Turkish company dish. In fact any friends or family who read this now are probably rolling their eyes because they've eaten this so many times at our house. I can cook this in my sleep, so it gets me out of many binds. Just last week after a day of souvenir shopping I rushed home with out of town guests at 6:00 p.m. to whip up this taste of Turkey: