February Road Trip

Next Monday we are packing up the Jetta and heading on a road trip through California and Arizona.  We are excited to visit friends, family, and In-N-Out Burger (of course) along the way.  

The last time I took a road trip through California my friend and I got a little too excited about In-N-Out Burger and ate there 9 out of 10 days of our trip (we were planning on eating all 10 days but opted for Bob's Big Boy Burger one day). Let's just say that we were feeling a bit lethargic at the end of our trip and to top it off our faces totally broke out!  I'm not planning on making that mistake again.

This will be the last time we are going to be in the California/Arizona area before we move to Indonesia, and because of that we are hoping to see as many of our southern friends as we possible can!  

Schedule:

Feb 4-10: Northern California (Staying in Penryn to be exact)

Feb 11-15:  Southern California (Staying in Riverside)

Feb 16-Mar 1:  Arizona (Staying in Surprise)

We hope to see a lot of this in the backseat!

The dreaded "P" word

It is getting to be the time for us to start sifting through our possessions and decide what is going to Indonesia with us and what isn't.  Sounds easy enough, right?  The kicker is that we need to ship most of our stuff in wooden crates (200 cubic feet allowance) ahead of us to our permanent base which we will not see...wait for it...for an entire year!  Our crates will hang out in a storage facility, board a cargo ship, cross the ocean, and meet us at customs in either Borneo or Papua.  Our family will take a detour to Salatiga, Indonesia for language school where will be living out of our checked luggage for a year.  

This concept has been messing with my sub conscience I believe.  I had a dream the other night that I forgot to pack all of our kitchen stuff so we weren't able to cook anything.  Even worse, I only packed jeans and sweatshirts for myself!  Needless to say I was HOT.  I spent my dream searching for summer clothes at the store but I couldn't find anything that fit my "american" body type.  

What would you pack in your checked luggage?  What item can you not part with for a year?

Church Visit

"It looks like they have already started," says Mike as we walk into the foyer.  "Are you sure it started at five o' clock?"

"Five is what my friend told me," I say as I think to myself, Are we experiencing "rubber time"

"Should we go in?"  Our courage is starting to fade.

"We came all this way, let's sneak in the back." 

Of coarse it will be virtually impossible to "sneak in" without being spotted, seeing that we are visiting an Indonesian church in Portland and we will be the only non-Indonesians in the room.  We work up our nerve, walk through the door, and sit in the 2nd to last row in the sanctuary.  We get a few glances and smiles sent our way by others as we enjoy the last few minutes of the service.  During the service the prayers were said in both English and Bahasa Indonesian and we also (tried) to sing along to an Indonesian song.  It was pretty exciting. 

By the way we were not experiencing "rubber time" ( jam karet is a term used to describe Indonesian's attitude towards the concept of time).  We were just late, an hour late to be exact.  So much for not drawing attention to ourselves.

After the service our family was greeted right away and we were asked why we had decided to visit an Indonesian church.  We told them that we were moving to Indonesia to work with MAF and we wanted to learn more about Indonesia.  We were met with excitement and were asked if we spoke Bahasa Indonesian.  We said, "Not yet."  After assuring us that Bahasa Indonesian is very easy to learn they started to teach us some phrases right away.  Our family was then invited downstairs to eat some Indonesian food with them (which was awesome by the way).

The pastor asked Mike if we could come back and share with everybody our story and what we will be doing in Indonesia.  Mike asked, "How long do you want us to share?  5 minutes?  10 minutes?" 

"The WHOLE service, we want to hear from you."

We were sent home with a plate full of Indonesian leftovers, how often can you say that you visited a chuch and got sent home with food?  Not very often.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Our family is gearing up for our last Thanksgiving in the States (for quite awhile) and we are enjoying our long weekend.  Thanksgiving hasn't been quite the same for our family ever since my mom passed away a couple of years ago, and we are still coming up with a new routine for the holidays.  One constant however, has been the annual "Run to Feed the Hungry 5K" at our church Thanksgiving morning.  The past seven Thanksgivings I have found myself shivering on the starting line in the morning waiting to burn off some calories in hopes of combating some of the damage I will be doing later in the day.  It is also a great way for our church to stock our food cupboard and combat hunger.  This is a tradition that I am going to have a hard time giving up.  Perhaps next year I will have to organize my own 5K on Thanksgiving morning in Indonesia.  I'm sure it won't be that hard to convince my fellow classmates in language school to run 3 miles in the heat with me.  :)

Macie is two and eating bugs for breakfast!?

October was a very busy month for us!  We were home a total of ONE day and spent the others traveling on deputation.  After our first two weeks of the month spent crammed in the Jetta driving all over the Seattle area we came home, packed frantically and grabbed a red-eye flight to Anchorage, AK.  Although all of the locals in Alaska assured us that it wasn't yet winter and it was still fall, we were COLD.  The kids and I went to the zoo one morning and it was 12 degrees, yes 12!  Colton kept telling everybody he came across, "It is cold up here in Alaska!"  Although it was cold, the sky was blue and the sun was shining (which is a rarity in WA).  By the end of the trip we were starting to acclimate to the cold, 30 degrees felt a bit cozy.

It was 7 degrees when we took this picture!  

Macie turned two on our trip and we were able to have a little party for her at our friend's house.  I started to make the cake for the party, but when I got ready to decorate it Mike took over.  I think he was afraid that I would just serve it on a dinner plate and slap some frosting on it without bothering to smooth it out (which I would have).  Our friends have 4 boys and including brother that made the guest list for Macie's party 5 boys.  Macie had a blast and from a parent's perspective there wasn't as much high-pitched squealing as there would have been if the guest list included 5 girls!

We attended a church in Wasilla one Sunday and had the opportunity to share about our ministry with the Sunday School class.  I don't know if this is a normal thing to do, but even though it was 12 degrees outside that morning all of the windows were open in the sanctuary and the fans were on!  I didn't want to look like an "out of towner" so I didn't put on my jacket and I toughed it out.  At the end of the service the pastor was excited to introduce us to a person who...wait for it.  Grew up in Indonesia as an MK and flew on MAF as a child!  Out of all the places to meet a person from Indonesia, Wasilla wasn't what I was expecting.

The next day we spent lunch at his house with his family and he told us LOTS of stories about growing up in Papua, Indonesia.  He served us some coffee that was grown outside of Wamena and it was wonderful, I am looking forward to drinking more of it in my future.  They also taught us how to make sticky rice for dessert. He taught Colton a few tips on how to be a good MK, one of those tips was how to properly roast a Cicada.  In the mornings he said it was fun to run to the screen door, grab a Cicada by the wings, flick it on the head, set it on top of mom's stove, roast it, and then pop it into his mouth for breakfast!  Colton replied by yelling, "I don't want to eat BUGS!"  He was assured that they taste like Snickers without the chocolate.  When in Rome...  Or in this case when in Papau...  

Cicada it's what's for breakfast.

October Seattle Trip

October has been a busy month for the Johnson family so far.  We packed up the Jetta and traveled around in the Seattle area for two weeks.  I think we put over 1,000 miles on the car this trip, it is safe to say that I am pretty sick of the I-5 and the 405 by now!  You don't know stress until you are stuck in Seattle rush hour traffic in the middle lane and you hear the request for a pit stop from your 4 year old.

For those of you who don't know Mike grew up in the Philippines as an M.K. (missionary kid) and the big fast food chain there is Jollibee.  To have a taste of home we decided to grab Mike's cousin, who also grew up in the Philippines, and go to the South Center Mall where they have a Jollibee.  It feels a lot like the Philippines when you step inside, you can actually order your food in Tagalog (well I can't)!  They also serve the dreaded "Halo-Halo" here.  If you ever want to eat ice cream mixed with red beans, corn, the weird fruit that comes in fruit cakes, and who-knows-what else, this is the place to have that happen.  We opted for the Mango Peach Pies instead.

Jollibee!

After eating lunch we went next door to the Asian market to find some snacks that Mike grew up eating.  We also wanted to see if we could find some Indonesian goodies.  While cruising the ice cream isle we found some weird flavors such as:  Corn and cheese, avocado, and once again the dreaded Halo-halo.  It only takes a little while in the Asian market to figure out that the American palette is different, to say the least!

Gross

Grosser

Grossest

The second week we stayed with Great Grandma on Whidbey Island.  Grandma's house is great!  The coffee is always on and there are retro toys to play with (for the kids of coarse).  There is no internet at her house and only 3 t.v. stations, so we felt "off the grid".   I actually read 3 books!  Kind of sad to see what I could be accomplishing without all of the distractions we have at home.  Grandma has shelves of books and many are about the pioneering missionaries that went into Papua back in the 60's when the tribes people where still head-hunting (yikes).  It is amazing to see the transformations the tribes had after the missionaries shared the gospel with them.  Before the missionaries shared with them they were living in fear of the spirits and each other.  Imagine living in a world where you thought God didn't love you and you had to appease him at all times in order to survive.  After reading the trials the first missionaries went through in Papua it makes all of my fears and worries about moving overseas seen trivial.     

Hanging out at Great Grandma's beach

Another great thing about Grandma's house is that she lives by the beach!  The kids loved throwing rocks into the Sound and climbing on the driftwood.  Colton cracked me up too because every time before he threw a rock he yelled, "Fire in the hole!"  I have no idea where he learned that.

After staying at Grandma's for a week we drove home and dug out our winter clothes.  Next stop:  Alaska.

End of Summer

Colton and his nameless new best friend for a day

It is getting to be that time of year again in the Pacific Northwest where one gets a sneaky suspicion that this very day might be the last time you get to see the sun again for a very long time.  Not to sound like the kind of person that is a "half empty glass" type, but the sun does disappear on us for MONTHS at a time behind grey, rainy, endless clouds up here.  Us native Washingtonians don't take the sun for granted is all I am saying, and when that ball of burning gas is out in the sky we make the most of it!

The other day I packed a lunch, Colton grabbed his big Styrofoam airplane and we headed to the park with Macie to play.  It took Colton about 5 seconds to make a new friend and they ran around the softball field flying his airplane for quite a while.  When they were done playing I asked him what his friend's name was and Colton responded by saying, "I don't know but he has a helicopter on his shirt and he likes airplanes."  If only it was so easy to make friends as adults!

It has occurred to me that this will be the last rainy winter I am going to live in for a long time since our family will be moving to Indonesia next November (not this one, the next one).  I am very excited to be moving to a place where the sun will shine year round!  I do wonder however, how long will take me to get over the feeling that the sun is going to up and disappear on me like it always has in October?  (Watch in a couple of years I will be blogging about missing the rain and cold weather).

   

Nothing tastes better than a PB&J enjoyed at the park