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Friday, December 12, 2014

Ruth: a woman who loved well

This afternoon I learned the heartbreaking news that Ruth Graham passed Ruth and Ethan 2away. Though we didn’t know each other incredibly well, Ruth has forever impacted my life. We met briefly before Chase and I moved to Nicaragua, but we really got to know her via e-mail when she and her 3-year-old son Ethan began to send us e-mails. First, we received this one.

6/22/2010

Dear Julie and Chase,

Hello to you from OK! My son and and I have only met you once briefly just before you left. (I graduated from JBU, if that helps!)  We read your emails together and talk about how you help the children in Nicaragua.

Ethan, 3, has a couple of questions for you!

Monday, December 8, 2014

Observations on some Christmas songs II

This second installment of seasonal music criticism has been a long time coming, but it’s finally here just in time for the holidays! (You can see my first post on the topic here.) I understand that not all Christmas music has to be excellent—or even make sense! —I just expect that the music that achieves a degree of popularity does so because it’s actually good. This expectation is met with disappointment time after time.

This year, I take issue with the following songs:

#1. Last Christmas. In addition to being more repetitive—and less creative—than a country song, this whiny George Michael number proves that the only thing a song needs to do to be called a “Christmas song” is include the word Christmas. Nothing else about the content of the song even hints at other things associated with Christmas (Santa, Jesus, snow, presents, December, etc.). If you changed the word Christmas to summer, for example (“Last summer, I gave you my heart…”), you would lose nothing except an annoying song at the end of the year. Can we do this, please?

Monday, September 1, 2014

Old stories: our first apartment (Spring 2007)

About a year ago, Julie and I decided that it could be really fun for us if we began writing down the stories of fun and/or significant memories in our lives. This is the only one we've done so far, and it was recently.

In the month or two leading up to our wedding, we shopped around town for an apartment that would be our first home together. Google Street View of apt 406I think we visited about six or seven places. Our standards were the following:

  • Should cost around $450-$500 per month

  • Should preferably be on the east side of town to be closer to all of our friends. (At the time it seemed that anything more than three miles away was rarely worth driving to since it took around 20 minutes to go through the 10 poorly-timed stoplights and painfully slow speed limits you would surely encounter along the way.)

  • Should be free of any kind of notorious infestation. This ruled out even looking at Essex Square (bedbugs) and Sooner Crossing (roaches).

Sunday, July 6, 2014

budgeting in two currencies: the perfectionist's nightmare

The fact that Julie and I are both detail-oriented people means that tracking our expenses is a relatively conflict-free part of our marriage–we both agree on the need for accuracy in maintaining a budget. The fact that I love Microsoft Excel makes record-keeping fairly uncomplicated*. But the fact that we both tend towards perfectionism makes budgeting in two different currencies really irritating. The constantly shifting exchange rate** between the Nicaraguan córdoba (C$) and the US dollar means that complete accuracy is virtually unattainable. Discerning the absolute value of money starts to feel like a philosophical question.

Saturday, May 31, 2014

picking our battles with the ants

We live with ants. They're in the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom….actually, I can't think of a room they aren't in except the pantry, which is really quite nice of them.

There are two main classifications: little and big.

The little ants actually come in a wide variety, from "biting" to "non-biting," "see-through butts" to "all black," etc. Some people even classify them by what they eat, but what they all have in common is that they can set up shop anywhere, and they come after the food on your counters and your plates. We've found nests underneath tiles, inside power outlets, inside door frames, inside picture frames, in the small space between the table legs and the table top, inside our car door, and somewhere inside our car A/C system. Basically, if there's a gap of half a millimeter, little ants can build their home there.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

One Year Kidney-versary!

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Well, it’s been a year now since my life drastically changed – for the better, of course. Life is so “normal” now that it’s easy to forget that I ever had kidney problems to begin with. With the exception of continuing to take multiple pills daily and have regular lab work and doctor’s appointments, life looks very much like it did prior to January 2011 when my kidneys mutually decided their time was nearing an end.

Here are some of those drastic changes:

  • I haven’t thrown up at all in the last year. For some, this is no major accomplishment. But I had spent the previous two years being nauseous more days than not. And more days than not, it didn’t stop there. The number of times I threw up was definitely in the hundreds during those two years. This probably goes unspoken, but I definitely don’t miss this.

Monday, February 17, 2014

what my stupid stairs taught me about life

Our house has two stories, which means it has stairs. Every time we're faced with the prospect of moving (which has been six times in nearly seven years of marriage), I declare that I would like to live in place with no stairs. Stairs make the moving in/out process far worse than it would be without stairs. In daily life, the term "all the way upstairs" or "all the way downstairs" translates to "not worth getting."

In the six places we've lived in our marriage, however, none of them have been stair-less. We've had bare concrete stairs, concrete stairs covered in tile, bare wooden stairs, and wooden stairs covered in carpet. Some have been creaky, some have been dangerously steep,  some claustrophobia-inducing, some "awkward," some cracked and falling apart. In other words, I don't tend to think kindly on stairs1. The stairs in our current home are no exception. Let me walk you through a journey up them:

Friday, January 31, 2014

A small community just outside León

At the moment the two of us are on a business trip of our own design. About two years ago, One by One began a series of classes designed to train church leaders (including some of our own) for ministry. I (Chase) got to be a part of this by sharing what I had learned about kids' ministry through experience and through being taught, as well as concepts I had wrestled with for awhile. It was crazy hard, but I also liked it. In any case, two of the leaders involved launched a kids' and youth program just outside León, a big city about two hours away from Managua. DSCN1441Julie and I have wanted for a long time to come out to León to visit with the leaders, encourage them, and learn from them some of the things that they do with their ministry that Camino de Vida and other churches could benefit from. Julie has also wanted to scout for new ways and places for teams to come and serve.

Our "business trip" coincided nicely with Woodcreek Church having a well-digging team in León with Living Water International. Well, I say it "coincided," but really we built our plans around their trip. We were able to stop by the well site to visit with them for a couple hours and see the well nearly completed before we went to the church.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Saturday Mornings

Well, we haven’t kept our promise (two blogs per month), but we are hoping that if we show you cute pictures of kids, you won’t be too mad at us.

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We just thought we’d give you a picture (or a few) of what we do on Saturday mornings. To put it short, we have a lot of fun.