More on Last Week
The fun that began Thursday evening continued with an earnest Friday night.
We left the coast and headed to Corvallis; met a little while later at Northwest Hills Community Church for an evening of worship and fellowship. This marked the official beginning of the Real Life/Real Impact weekend put on by Christian Veterinary Mission (CVM) and sponsored by Nutramax.
Dr. Steve and Kim Hiatt led the worship. They are currently state-side, but have been missionaries to Cambodia on two different long term occasions. I talked to their young son and daughter (<10 YO, amazingly social) for a time -- found out that they rode elephants about every time they had company. Interesting. Can't say I've ever ridden an elephant.
My parents returned dark and late Friday night, returned from their California job-seeking excursion. Perhaps I will shortly be the only Oregonian from our immediate family.
Saturday we heard from B.J. Newcomer, the fiance of the CVM student services director. He was a missionary in the Central African Republic, among mostly Islamic people. I found out later that he grew up Mennonite and still considers himself a pacifist. He advised me to find a job with a good mentoring situation rather than get an internship. Normal jobs pay more, anyway, so that might be a plan.
We also heard from Val Shean, who has been an missionary in Uganda for 14 years. She shared some heart-wrenching information about the Lord's Resistance Army. They raid villages, tell children they will be killed unless they kill their parents. The parents beg their children to kill them so the children can live, and this begins a cascade of brain-washing for the child. If the parents would only realize that the moral choice is always the best! -- that refusing to kill is always better even if your choice could result in someone else being killed.
Val teaches the Bible way and develops ethnomedicines. The power of forgiveness between tribes is apparently a very strong witness in her area.
She has quite the stories about the foods they eat. For instance, a bull's foot without the hoof on it -- they eat the tendons and the coria that connect the bones to the hoof wall! The one she was served had been held over the fire for two days, waiting for her. She saw something white on it and thought it had been cooked in rice... only to lift the whiteness toward her lips and see black eyes looking at her! Maggots. Yuck. Uganda also has very undelightful flies that lay their eggs in the elastic of certain clothes items while they hang in the breeze to dry. The eggs hatch and the larvae burrow under your skin where they grow larger. The first time Val had one she didn't know what it was and left it alone. One night she woke up/couldn't sleep and felt the larva moving under her skin! She is a brave lady.
Dr. Don Herriott (a vet for the USDA) shared some thoughts from the latter part of James 1 -- including one of my favorite verses: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
Sara-Louise Roberts (director of student services for CVM) shared her thoughts about being single -- it was a good reminder about being content and etc -- and then we broke out for lunch. I (among other students) joined Dr. Mark Amsberry at a Los Arcos, and was able to drill him with questions regarding the Christian way to fire people, etc.
During break times people went out to practice with Val's bow & arrows and spears.
In the afternoon we discussed a few ethical scenarios (it's always good to start thinking about such situations, even if there are not hard and fast rules about them).
And then we played the BaFa BaFa game -- a game designed to teach about how confusing/frustrating it can be for people of different cultures to try to interact. We split into two "cultures" -- my culture was trade-oriented, all about getting certain cards in our set. We spoke the BaFa BaFa language instead of English. The other culture turned out to be very people oriented with absolutely no greediness for certain cards. They were huggy, talked about their grandpas and fathers, etc -- and they spoke English. We could speak English when we went to visit them, and they were supposed to speak BaFa when they came to visit us -- only, they didn't know how. It was an interesting game and became very humorous when they came over to try to trade with us.
We had a neat time of worship that night with a really neat time of thanking God for various things.
The weekend charged me up to go forth and overcome for the kingdom of God.
We left the coast and headed to Corvallis; met a little while later at Northwest Hills Community Church for an evening of worship and fellowship. This marked the official beginning of the Real Life/Real Impact weekend put on by Christian Veterinary Mission (CVM) and sponsored by Nutramax.
Dr. Steve and Kim Hiatt led the worship. They are currently state-side, but have been missionaries to Cambodia on two different long term occasions. I talked to their young son and daughter (<10 YO, amazingly social) for a time -- found out that they rode elephants about every time they had company. Interesting. Can't say I've ever ridden an elephant.
My parents returned dark and late Friday night, returned from their California job-seeking excursion. Perhaps I will shortly be the only Oregonian from our immediate family.
Saturday we heard from B.J. Newcomer, the fiance of the CVM student services director. He was a missionary in the Central African Republic, among mostly Islamic people. I found out later that he grew up Mennonite and still considers himself a pacifist. He advised me to find a job with a good mentoring situation rather than get an internship. Normal jobs pay more, anyway, so that might be a plan.
We also heard from Val Shean, who has been an missionary in Uganda for 14 years. She shared some heart-wrenching information about the Lord's Resistance Army. They raid villages, tell children they will be killed unless they kill their parents. The parents beg their children to kill them so the children can live, and this begins a cascade of brain-washing for the child. If the parents would only realize that the moral choice is always the best! -- that refusing to kill is always better even if your choice could result in someone else being killed.
Val teaches the Bible way and develops ethnomedicines. The power of forgiveness between tribes is apparently a very strong witness in her area.
She has quite the stories about the foods they eat. For instance, a bull's foot without the hoof on it -- they eat the tendons and the coria that connect the bones to the hoof wall! The one she was served had been held over the fire for two days, waiting for her. She saw something white on it and thought it had been cooked in rice... only to lift the whiteness toward her lips and see black eyes looking at her! Maggots. Yuck. Uganda also has very undelightful flies that lay their eggs in the elastic of certain clothes items while they hang in the breeze to dry. The eggs hatch and the larvae burrow under your skin where they grow larger. The first time Val had one she didn't know what it was and left it alone. One night she woke up/couldn't sleep and felt the larva moving under her skin! She is a brave lady.
Dr. Don Herriott (a vet for the USDA) shared some thoughts from the latter part of James 1 -- including one of my favorite verses: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
Sara-Louise Roberts (director of student services for CVM) shared her thoughts about being single -- it was a good reminder about being content and etc -- and then we broke out for lunch. I (among other students) joined Dr. Mark Amsberry at a Los Arcos, and was able to drill him with questions regarding the Christian way to fire people, etc.
During break times people went out to practice with Val's bow & arrows and spears.
In the afternoon we discussed a few ethical scenarios (it's always good to start thinking about such situations, even if there are not hard and fast rules about them).
And then we played the BaFa BaFa game -- a game designed to teach about how confusing/frustrating it can be for people of different cultures to try to interact. We split into two "cultures" -- my culture was trade-oriented, all about getting certain cards in our set. We spoke the BaFa BaFa language instead of English. The other culture turned out to be very people oriented with absolutely no greediness for certain cards. They were huggy, talked about their grandpas and fathers, etc -- and they spoke English. We could speak English when we went to visit them, and they were supposed to speak BaFa when they came to visit us -- only, they didn't know how. It was an interesting game and became very humorous when they came over to try to trade with us.
We had a neat time of worship that night with a really neat time of thanking God for various things.
The weekend charged me up to go forth and overcome for the kingdom of God.
posted by Claire at 17:03
1 Comments:
Hey Claire, It's me again!
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