Getting Kicked Out

Life quieted down. We learned how to "order" a sheep and a friend of ours delivered one from their farm. Our neighbor, L, promised to help me with language and also came over and helped us gut our sheep. Yes, you get a whole, live sheep and have to dismantle it yourself. Curt was very good at the killing and skinning part. The woman's role was to take all the insides and clean, organize, prepare and cook them. When Curt first opened the sheep (even though I have seen this done many times and helped out), it looked like a mess to me. Do you start with the lungs or the intestines? Our neighbor came over and walked me through it. Lungs, gallbladder and large intestine go to the dogs. Heart, liver and kidneys get washed off and boiled together to eat plain. The small intestine and stomach get cleaned out (the most fun part) and get wrapped together with the intestinal fat for a tasty treat (see pic on the side). And cut up the rest of the meat. Whew.
Now, with meat in the freezer (really just kept in an outdoor closet where everything will stay frozen until April), an understanding of where the stores are, a house that is finally put together, we could settle down for a long winter's nap. Until...
The owner's, A, dad shows up one afternoon. He is in a panic. He says that he's sure we're nice people but everyone in the village seems to think we're part of a cult and we need to leave. We panic. We just finished settling in after 2 very long and exhausting months of work. Leave? Lord, really?
He's pacing the floor and says that he's sorry but he has to live and work here and he can't be shunned by the community. It would mean the death of him and his family. We understand but we are panicking. We get in our car and take off for the next village, where A lives and works. We find her (a miracle) and explain what's going on (remember, we're still around a one year old in language). She gets in the car with us and we drive back. She confronts her father. They start yelling at each other but he won't budge. Curt finally is inspired by God to ask what he's afraid of. He's afraid we will start handing out books to children and convert them to some weird thing. We then offer to show him all of the things we own. We point out we have no literature and don't plan on working in the school in this village. He is still uncertain and shaky but finally leaves. A tells us to stay but we are unsure if he will return with the same demands.
We pray. We ask others to pray. What will happen? He can easily stir up the village against us and they can demand we leave. We have no friends. We can't speak the language. There is nothing to recommend us.
The next day, he returns. I am scared. We answer the door and he stands there and apologizes. Apologizes! In a culture of shame, one does NOT apologize. It is unheard of. He says that we can stay and he is sure we are nice people. I begin to cry from the relief of not having to leave. He pats me on the shoulder, tells me not to cry and everything will be alright. This is our house now.
Thank you, Lord.

Settling In

Slowly, but surely, the work was completed. We got more glass and finished up the windows. The stove eventually was built and Curt applied the mud/sand mixture over the brick so we could whitewash it. The house was whitewashed, the door frames were painted, the ugly entrance area was repainted a mossy green (hey, we didn't have a lot of options), the furniture moved to where we wanted it. We could start cleaning and unpacking!...until we learned that there was to be a wedding at our house. A's sister was getting married and that meant that this house, where she grew up, was to be used for the wedding. It was custom and there was nowhere else to have it. So, after we unpacked everything, we re-packed everything and stored it in one room. Why? Because a wedding means absolute chaos. All relatives on the bride's side converge on the house about 4 days before. Multiple people move in because they come from other villages and obviously need a place to sleep. The four room house turned into a work station. The summer home, or tepee, that stands in the yard was overflowing with people and food. Families moved in and it was time to work. From morning until evening we slaughtered sheep, washed and cut potatoes, carrots, beets and onions, made salads and cakes and cooked soaps and meat over the open flame. No one brings anything, mind you, so we were continually asked for utensils and pots, pans and serving platters. Because things often get stolen during these days, we loaned out very few things which made work even longer as 15 women are waiting for one of the two knives. It was great language practice but tiring. Many people from the village wander in and out through the day (remember your home isn't a place of refuge but more of a place to get out of the weather) and the drunk men were a little overwhelming.
Finally, the big day arrives. Everything is cooked or warmed back up over the fire and guests start arriving. The bride and groom don't show up until 4 but we had about 50 people waiting around and getting drunk. Finally the bride and groom arrive from his village with his whole family and the festivities begin. We probably had about 150 people total. Although it's a lot of fun to watch the customs, you get tired quickly of the drunk men continually approaching you to talk because their inhibitions are down and everyone else just staring at you because they still have their inhibitions! Now on day 4 or 5 of continual activity, you begin to tire and people are still drinking in your yard at midnight. We told anyone left in the house to go outside and went to bed with the other 2 families that were staying in our home.
The next day...there is stuff everywhere. Empty vodka bottles, plastic plates, cups and silverware, cauldrons, pots, pans and food all left out overnight, the fat now hardened to everything. Remember, we have no running water and water needs to be first pumped and then heated over fire to start cleaning. We looked at all those women who came to cook to start the cleanup process. And one-by-one, over the morning, they all left to return home. Suddenly, the only people left were Curt, A and me. We couldn't believe it! It took us 2 full days to clean up the yard of cigarette butts and vodka bottles and sheep parts, get all that stuff washed, the make shift tables taken apart, things returned to everyone we had borrowed them from, and the house cleaned of all the food, fat and mud that had been brought inside. The three of us collapsed exhausted by the end but impressed with a now clean house, yard and summer home. Perhaps we could finally settle into our home...

The Move to the Village

And so we had moved. We woke up the next morning to SO much work. The wood burning stove, built entirely of bricks and mud, needed to be torn down and rebuilt. The walls, begun with wood logs with overlaid lattice and finished with a mud/sand mixture and whitewash, were crumbling and needed the old mud to be tapped off and new mud applied. Then everything needed whitewashed...3 or 4 times since whitewash over mud doesn't cover the first or second time. The broken windows needed their glass removed and replaced. All the windows needed a sealant on the inside and out, which was a silly putty mix...sort of. And that was just to get the house up to moving in. We then needed to clean it up and start to fix it up so we could live in it. The whole project took 2 months of straight work, usually 9-9 everyday, before we felt like it was a place that we could function in relatively well.
Our first day we woke up and jumped right into it. Even thinking about it now brings an unpleasant feeling. Long hours, little to no food (often just tea) and everything done in a language we didn't know. On top of it, we didn't have transportation. So, when we needed anything, we had to hitchhike into the next town and then figure out how to get it back! We needed stuff like wood planks, paint, whitewash or glass for the windows sold in a 3ft.x4ft pane. How do you hitchhike with 4 of those?
And then the drunks who would show up. First of all, this house had been empty for a year. Everyone knew that it was the place to come and drink. So, we kept having to turn people away, that they couldn't come and drink here anymore. They would be fascinated that there were foreigners and would stay and try to talk with us (in a language we didn't know). Then they would ask for money. Then they would just stare.
The owner's, A, dad was in and out, sometimes drunk, sometimes sober. When he was sober, we were able to get things done. When he was drunk, things were a mess. Like when we finally got back with our panes of glass and he was determined to cut them himself. I think he cracked 3 out of the 4 and we could no longer use them. That was a frustrating day.

Living In Community...Part III

The summer passed and as August came around, it became very clear that we were getting on the family's nerves that we lived with and visa versa. So, we really began praying about a place to live. Miraculously, Curt and our friend went out to some villages about 3 hours away to look for houses to rent. Once in the main village, which was like a center for the surrounding ones, Curt and our friend, S, began looking for a house for rent. This is next to impossible. You need to ask around and find out if people know which houses are for rent. There aren't signs or anything. Then you need to track down the owners. So, after an afternoon of searching, they didn't find anything. I was praying and praying. We needed to get out to the villages for language an culture learning and I felt like time was just slipping away. S decided to visit some relatives of hers and ask around. Her niece, A, said, "Well, I don't know of any houses. I guess you can rent mine." She had a house in a nearby village that was empty. So, they took off to look at it. It needed A LOT of work. Yikes. The walls are plastered with mud and most of it was falling off. Windows broken. Needed a new wood burning stove, which is a major project. And on and on and on. But we needed a place and she offered it for a whopping $40/month. Everyone said we were getting ripped off. We'll take it.
We moved in that week. We showed up and A's dad was drunk and knocking the mud off the walls with a crowbar. We dragged in two, huge hardside suitcases, a laptop bag, two packed full-size hiking bags and some odds and ends. It pretty much filled the room we were given for a bedroom. There was no food in the house so we had cookies and tea for dinner. There were no sheets on the beds so we slept in our sleeping bags. The window was broken and had no covering. And, of course, there are no doors so where we slept was open to the whole house. This, for them, is very normal and not weird at all. We had to adjust to sleeping in the same place with A and her dad. We crawled in our sleeping bags that night and I thought, "What have we done?". I was in the middle of nowhere, 3 hours from the nearest city, we don't speak the language, there was no food in the house and I had no idea where to buy any and I didn't know a single soul. The gravity of being so far away from anything familar weighed on me and I lay there for a long time...until someone knocked on our door and then our window when we didn't get up to get it. The night just got longer....

Living In Community...Part II

So, we learned to share our food. It was a frustrating five weeks of sitting around. We were expected to help out in the family but we didn't realize those expectations. Our expectations were to live there and study language. So, when our plans day after day were changed on us because we were asked to do something, I began to get frustrated. We eventually set up a schedule for ourselves to hit the library for 2-3 hours every morning so that we could study the language. That worked out a lot better since we could then help out in the afternoon. I won't say there wasn't frustrations between ourselves and this family we lived with!
Eventually, we got to attend their family vacation with them. Wow. After five weeks of living together, we all piled in a small (small) car with all our things and then some and headed out into the villages. We stopped all along the way, visiting their family and friends and looking for a place for us to live also. We got a good taste of the different areas and what we did and didn't want. We enjoyed being much more immersed in the language and feeling like we were making some progress toward moving into a village.
We spent about a month in a far, far out village with the wife's parents. Wow. We went to do a lot of work and work we did! Curt dug an outhouse almost by himself. Two days of digging 10 ft. into rocky soil by hand. I helped paint all the ceilings and walls in the large, 4 room house. The hardest part? No food. That's right. These people learn to live on what there is. When there is food, you eat. When there isn't, you drink lots of tea. We worked everyday from 9-9 and would have tea and maybe bread for breakfast. Bread was made by hand and cooked in a wood stove (no electricity). So, baking was a hard and long task. There were 10-15 of us together eating and working together everyday. So, when the bread was baked, it was eaten quickly. Sometimes breakfast was just tea. Lunch was the big meal, which was usually a pasta soup with a bit of meat in it. And some bread, if there was any. And tea. Always tea, which is pretty weak to stretch the tea leaves.. Dinner was on your own, since it isn't the main meal. Bread and tea usually. When there wasn't bread, just tea. Some days the men went fishing and we got to eat fish. But that was the extent. Curt and I sometimes were found wandering in the room that stored the food, picking up anything we could find to get more calories in ourselves.
Siberians, as a whole, were created for the area. They tend to be stocky people who can live on low calories but maintain a higher body weight. Created exactly for those conditions. Curt and I? Not created for those conditions.
The day came for us to have the wedding anniversary celebration that we really came there for. The food was abundant! Sheep were killed, cakes were made, vegetables cut up. What's ironic is by the time the celebration came around, our stomachs had shrunk so much that we couldn't eat much!

Living in Community

Where to begin. May 1, 2007. We had just returned from America to get our new visa. And we got a great, one-year, multiple entry visa. Perfect. We moved in with a Ragu (not the real name) family. This is the people group we worked among. They had one room upstairs of their house that they had built. The husband, a pastor of a local church, worked well with his hands. He had designed a wonderful 2 bedroom, living area and kitchen home with a room upstairs. It did require that you go outside to get to it. The stairs were outside the heated area of the house and lead to the second story open landing. That's a cold place to stay in the winter but we were there for the summer, which worked out great.
I needed that time. I was still very much stuck in my worldview. I assumed, wrongly, that we were two families living together. We weren't. We were seen as two families, now related in a way, living together and therefore taking care of one another. I should've alloted time in the day to take care of the kids, work in the garden and cook meals. Instead, i had my own food in the fridge and cooked our own meals, etc. I had never learned what it is to live in community. I remember the one day learning that some of our food had been eaten in the fridge, which was definitely a common area. I was furious. I had just gone down the hill (a 15 minute walk) to the store and bought some food to last for a few days. And now, my perfectly planned meals, were messed up.
I started to keep food in our room because they lived day-to-day. So, often, there was no food to eat in the house. So, i kept snack foods in our room for when we got hungry. It wasn't long before the kids figured it out and would come to the room for food. And I didn't want to share it! It took me awhile to learn what true generosity was. To be continued...

Where will be we?

The Hanovers coming to a place near you...

October 4-5: GA
October 6-10: KY
October 11-14: AL
October 15-17: AR
October 18-27: TX
October 28-30: LA
October 31-November 18: VA

Contact us if we'll be near you. We want to see you!

We're back...can you believe it?

Yes, it's true. We landed in the States on September 8th and have since then...

• bought a car
• arranged our next 2 months of constant travel
• have slept in 4 states
• held 3 support desserts (whohoo!)
• visited with 6 families, some of which we haven't seen in years!
• gotten our adoption paperwork squared away
• eaten lots of things like that awesome burrito last night
• had good coffee

ok, I'm digressing...

This blog was created so that you can keep up with us at your time and convenience and because people have asked us over and over and over about creating a blog where they can go and see our faces, pictures and read about our lives. So, as time allows, i will be adding our adventures to this. We hope that you enjoy...