The Squeeze

These are some photos of beach time with a class that was one of my favorite groups to teach in the fall but now only sees us at the beach or when they come to share a meal.  Glad to have good relationships with them!



This blogpost is not a request for money.  However, it's time for those who know and love us to know that there are things happening in our lives that need prayerful attention.

Two factors are putting the "squeeze" on us.  One is that I'm teaching fewer hours this semester.  It's a good thing in so many ways, actually.  University professors generally teach 16-20 classroom hours a week, and in the fall I was teaching 24.  I asked the university if I could cut that back a bit for the spring (I teach outside of those hours in some other capacities as well as volunteering three nights a week at the Cafe, and we have many relationships flourishing that need our time).  Well, they cut those hours back, all right!  When we got back from Tet Holidays, they said "here's your schedule for the spring" and I had only 8 teaching hours in a week.

That's a good thing.  I already have relationship with the classes they took off my teaching load, and those kids are still coming to the house for movies and games and borrowing books and going to the beach with us and all that.  Way better to teach a lot in the fall and have empty time in the spring, when there are people in our lives to invest in.  Tomorrow, for example, is a non-teaching day, and we get to spend it with one friend who is coming to hang out with us in the morning--it's a privilege to have this time to invest with our Vietnamese friends.  But I was only ever paid $12.50 an hour for the teaching at the university, and 8 hours a week just isn't very much money to cover rent here, much less buy the return air-tickets for a family of five.

We weren't really counting on Vietnamese salary to cover big expenses, anyhow.  Our house back in Bend has been rented out and provided a handsome cash-flow to cover expenses here.  Those renters have now found an opportunity to move on by the end of April, and we are happy for them.  But those last two months of rent money were going to a big part of how we were going to get home and get re-situated back stateside.  Compared to the reduction in university salary this semester, and in addition to that diminished income, the loss of the rental income is a huge blow for us.

We are two months away from our departure date, so it's an acceptable time for us to begin selling off some of our belongings here.  For example, today I listed our dryer on the Facebook expat group page, and a number of people are very interested in paying 7,000,000 VND for it.  That's what we paid for it when we arrived, so that's great news.  Oh, I should say that the seven million is just under $350--more than we'd pay for a used dryer in the US, right?  But here things like appliances sometimes cost more.

Can I insert an aside here?  Some things cost more, but lots of things cost WAY less.  A student accidentally poured water on my laptop last fall, and I lost the functionality of my touchpad.  I've been making-do with a radio keyboard and mouse, but then I ordered a laptop part from eBay and had Karen bring it with her when she came recently to visit.  I took my computer and the part in to my laptop shop here, and the next day I was able to pick it up, trackpad fully repaired.  They had to solder a cable to the trackpad inputs board, and they also opened up the display to install a new-used digitizer board, which didn't end up working.  But I'm happy about the work they did, and I refused to pay only what they asked.  They asked for 100,000 VND, which is less than $5.  Can you imagine how much a laptop service would have cost (where micro-soldering of a cable was involved) in the USA?  So I gave him half-again what he was wanting to charge.  He's awesome, and at SEVEN DOLLARS I've had a steal of a deal in terms of laptop repair.  Oh, actually I neglected to mention that he also repaired a kid-laptop trackpad clicker and threw that repair in with the original 100,000.  What a guy.  Sometimes it's awesome to live here!

So, back to our financial crisis.  We recognize that our lives are not our own.  We are living overseas, to be sure, but we're not doing anything here that we didn't do back at home.  Kingdom-work is at the core of what our family does, whether in central Oregon or central Vietnam.  Nobody should feel sorry for us or feel like we're way out on a limb "suffering" for a Cause.  Yet we know there is a pleasure in supporting people who have traveled to a distant land to live as cultural ambassadors, and we are in a position to want some of that financial partnership if you're in a position to send it our way.

If you are a praying person, please do that.  We suspect that our renters got their opportunity to move on as a result of our prayers and the prayers of some people who knew about their unhappiness in our home and the deteriorating landlord/tenant situation we were experiencing with them.  We view their move as a direct answer to prayer, even though it crunches our finances here at the end of our year abroad.

Thanks for praying!  Thanks for being our friends!

Easter Workshop

Saturday of Easter weekend we held a workshop at the Cafe to help students get a handle on the holiday.  Among the guests (mostly college students) was one older man who claimed that he was there to improve his English.  He watched the proceedings very carefully, but didn't participate in anything (until finally Janet convinced him to dye an Easter egg).  When the workshop was over, he abruptly left.  I suppose there are other ways to interpret his actions, but I'm living in a Communist country and we had advertised an Easter workshop online--I am pretty sure he was sent there to watch and make sure we were flying straight.

And we were.  I used Google search to show what comes up if you search "Easter Holiday" and another if you search "The First Easter."

     


We talked for a time about the cultural practices of Easter: pastel colors, bunnies, and eggs--that sort of thing.  We dyed eggs and painted with coffee (Karen is here to visit: http://coffee-art.com/about).

Then we talked about Roman occupation of Israel and the practice of crucifixion as a method of dealing with subjugated peoples.  The most famous crucified person is Jesus, of course, and so as we narrowed in on him we showed video clips to help explain the historical context of Easter.  One nice thing is that people here are no strangers to resurrections.  It's not that they're exactly commonplace, but there are enough resurrections going on, even in modern times, that the notion of rising from the dead isn't the game-stopper that it is for westerners.

And then we gave away some more prizes and wrapped it up and were done.  No public prayers or invitations--nothing that would be improper.  Some students were very, very interested in the movie clips, so after the workshop we asked those ones if they'd want to watch the whole movie sometime.  Yes!  That would be fantastic!  So we've arranged a time this week when we can get together with them and explore more.  That's exciting!

This week is Michael's birthday, so the topic on Tuesday night at Vision Cafe is "Teenagers."  We're planning to eat hamburgers at Burger Bros beforehand, and if the weather cooperates we'll hit the beach in the afternoon.  A good week to turn 13 in Vietnam.

Dear Mom: Preparing for Easter

[Tim]

Dear Mom,
The temperatures are rising here; the days are warmer now than when you were here this winter, and the nights are warm now, too.  On Saturday I took Janet to a resort and we bought a milkshake and a tea to share--and for the cost of those two drinks we got to sit on the classy beach on a sofa under a canopy with the moon rising and the ocean singing.  Beautiful.

I think you'll be especially moved to hear that one of your friends from the Cafe came over last night when our family was watching the movie Son of God.  She watched it with us, and by the end there were tears streaming down her face.  After the movie we turned our hearts to God and prayed together.  I have to confess that I had forgotten the powerful way that God stirs the hearts of those who are new to loving him.

Today Karen arrived.  Janet is looking forward to having her sister here, and for two weeks!  This first week that she's here, many of our attentions will be turned toward celebrating the Easter weekend with our Viet friends.  For many of them, they know only a bit of the secular side, the bunnies and the eggs, and none of the historical side.  We'll paint eggs and talk about the culture of egg hunts and cute dresses on little girls, and we'll show movies like the one I mentioned above about the history of the life/crucifixion/resurrection of the Easter Story.  It's a powerful message!

On Sunday a close friend of ours, Wally, took us to the Pagoda where some monks and nuns take in and care for unwanted babies.

Mom, I'm both sorry and not sorry that we didn't go with Wally to the Pagoda when you were here.  I know how strongly you value the touch and caress of babies, and you would have done what we did, only you wouldn't have been able to leave them without the fabric of your heart ripping.  What we did is we stood for nearly an hour at the side of two of the playpens and touched and rubbed and patted any 1-year-old who toddled over for strokes.  Sometimes the others played on or under the grass mats that are the floor of the playpen, and one of the little guys plopped down and passed out in sleep while the others played around him and sometimes walked on top of him as they went zigzagging around in the playpen.  We gave an hour of life to the toddlers, praying for and touch-love-languaging them.  I'll definitely go back, because it feels like an important thing to do.

Thanks for the stuff you sent with Karen!!  We haven't fully unpacked it yet, but I already know some of the goodies she brought.  She'll be here for Easter, then Michael's birthday, then her own birthday.  So it's a celebratory couple of weeks!