worth more than at least a few sparrows

its only been an eternity (if by eternity i mean 4 days), but we started full-time jobs here on sunday at a school in amman. a member of the royal family runs this school, and by our contacts with the american community school, we found out that there was a desperate need for a couple of teachers to teach elementary health science, science, and math. in a whirlwind of 2 days, we received a phone call from the princess (who founded and runs the school) who offered us jobs, and then we went to her palace (?) to meet with her last saturday. it was kind of funny, actually.

we were picked up by two military officers (royal guards) who drove us to the palace to meet with her. we got a crash course on the curriculum and signed contracts, both of us, to be teachers at the school. it was the weirdest thing ever, and we can see allah's hand in all of it. i was deemed the health science teach and science teacher (teaching 2nd grade science and health science, and 4th and 5th grade health science). jessey, being the former secretary of the math club at greenville college, was deemed the 2nd and 4th grade math teacher. and we started the next day...completely and utterly unprepared. the meeting was weird because of a few things:
1. neither of us have our degrees in teaching, although jessey does have 3 years of elementary ed
2. the princess was dressed in a sweatshirt and sweat pants, with a pony tail, and is completely down to earth
3. we were at the palace of a prince and princess
4. they wanted us to start the next day
the pay is beyond reasonable, and we are also getting residency in jordan, which means we can stay in the country without having to worry about crossing borders and we can visit sites like petra for 1JD, instead of 25JD for "foreigners"...its a huge answer to prayer.

our first day was spent just observing classrooms, no pressure. at then end of the day, we were given our teacher manuals and the teacher who was covering my classes basically said good riddance and i was on my own. yikes. so, the life of lesson planning, grading, wondering what the heck we are doing, and trying to get the 2nd grade class from hell to stay in their seats and listen has begun. the good parts about the school can also be difficult...it will take some getting used to, but its a good challenge and these are good jobs. very cool. the best part is, out of 50 lessons per week (each student has 10 periods each school day), we only teach 13 and 14 of those lessons respectively. so, once we get settled in, this could be the graviest teaching job ever...outside of the principal being a real-life cruella deville who speaks very little english.

here's what allah has done, writing a story with our lives.

he saw in us two people who were crazy enough to move overseas without a clue as to what they would do, just knowing that that is what he required of them. he placed us, by his infinite wisdom, in a spot where we could start tutoring two boys early on...in second and fourth grade! he then placed us in substitute teacher roles, giving us classroom time with various ages of students. then, again in his wisdom, he connected us with another family, a rich one, to tutor their children (one who goes to the school we now teach at!). then english teaching began, requiring us to do lesson plans and be prepared for two classes a week. during that time, he allowed us to be tempted with money (see most recent blog entry) with a job that would reverse our marriage roles, with jessey taking on the role of the provider. this, i believe, was a test to see if we would jump at money, or consider what the ramifications would be for our relationship. thankfully, again in his wisdom, i had a lunch with my new mentor who challenged me to have a serious conversation with jessey about this. turns out, neither of us had peace about the job and decided that we should explore other options. it was at this time, that this opportunity came to us...to use all that allah has been preparing us for in jobs that will provide more than double what we need in our monthly budget...with six weeks paid off in the summer! our faithfulness has led us into two teaching positions at an islamic (yet open to everyone) school where we can have influence on the kids who will influence this nation in the future, as they are all from influential/rich families in amman (including a prince and 2 princesses). wow. its humbling to know that we are even worth anything to him, yet he sees us as invaluable to what he is doing in amman.

pray with us that we don't squander this opportunity and make the most of it, however long we are supposed to live/love people here...and that we get a hang of this teaching thing as quickly as humanly possible.

inti ptarfi ingleesi?

we have just finished our first two english classes at the al wihda center here in amman. for those of you who don't know, we are teaching english as a second language as volunteers at a english center near our home. jessey is teaching a level 5 class (which translates to about 1st or 2nd grade level) and i am teaching a level 4 class (which, of course, is slightly lower than her class). our students are mostly in their 20's, just normal people of the struggle, hoping to learn english as a way to get better jobs and provide for their future families. the classes are two nights a week, from 6-8pm, for 8 weeks. we spend about 4 hours a week preparing, and 4 hours actually teaching, 2 hours each night. i have re-discovered my passion for teaching, and am loving the task and the mandatory creativity that teaching requires of me. jessey is having a similar experience... although she was freaking out a bit before the first class. to be honest, we both were.

in my first class (9 men, 3 women) on sunday night, i taught on the grammar involved in "there is & there" are for the whole 2 hours. it turns out, english isn't the easiest language to learn. and it requires that kind of time to communicate some of the things that we take for granted so much. also, it requires us to re-learn our own language, because we can't plan for every question, and we need to know "why" the language works the way it does.

for instance, do you know what an uncount noun is? can you explain the difference between count and uncount nouns, or the reasons why you can't just add "s" and make every noun plural? why you can't say, "There are 3 breads"? that was jessey's first lesson in her class (which consists of 14 men, no women).
don't worry, i am keeping her safe.

i have some very bright students and some who are not so bright, but they are all at the center for the same reason: to learn. so, classes are fun and everyone wants to be there. plus, it only costs 18JD for the entire 8 week course, which is a steal if you have a good teacher (insha' allah we are good ones), given that rich families pay 20+JDs per hour for a tutor. its quite a ministry, and we are loving the heck out of it.

may Allah richly bless this opportunity, and give us more opportunities with our students outside of class
to connect and show them our love.

opportunity knocks (loudly)

we aren't accustomed to having good financial opportunities fall into our laps. we aren't those people who have cool things happen to them all of the time. we just plug along and trust that Allah will take care of us. that's how we made the decision to come here. we don't have much, but we have enough, and faith that we are worth at least a few sparrows to Him. here is the story of how Allah has provided for our every need in the last month or so:

1. Substitute Teaching @ The American Community School - we have become basically part-time employees at this school that uses an american curriculum and requires its teachers to have a north-american teaching certificate, as is accredited in the states. its like wandering into america when you pass the security office at the entrance. we have friends who teach there who informed us that substitute teachers don't need a certificate or a degree, which means both jessey and i can substitute there. jessey administered MAP tests for 2 straight weeks, full-time, and we both have subbed for teachers at least 2-3 days every week since we got signed up to sub.

2. Tutoring - through ACS, we have been placed on a tutoring list for families that want native-english speaking tutors for their children, usually in english. we have started tutoring 2 children of a wealthy family on the other side of town, to the tune of 20JD per hour (app. $30 per hour). the opportunity is great for us, not only because of the obvious, but because this family has needs that we can meet, both mental and otherwise (get the hint). the boy i am tutoring is the oldest son, and his father went to the university of texas and is an engineer. there is a lot of pressure on him to succeed. the mother also wants jessey to teach her some english, and the doors just keep opening wider with them to have a significant impact on their lives.

3. HZE - i'll try to make this long story as short as possible. through a friend, jessey was made aware of a company that was looking for someone like her to fill an assistant position. we met with the owner of the company over a 160JD meal ($240, which is more than our rent!) at a hotel bar, and he laid things out. its a company that makes environmentally safe landfills and pipelines and other things throughout the middle east. although the deal hasn't been finalized, yet, he did tell jessey that she could name how much she wanted to make. and its part-time. if all goes well (insha 'allah), this job will provide for all of our financial needs along with giving jessey residency in jordan, meaning she won't be required to leave the country to renew a visa, and, more importantly, will be able to visit petra for 1JD (there's a deal for residents).

some things to pray about. and to thank Allah for.

a day in the life

we took our camera with us to the balad (downtown) today
here's what we saw:

hippies?

business man

sign for the hotel you can stay in if you visit

same hotel: nice right?
plus, these guys tried to sell us a camera while we took a picture

cute old lady in our sarvis up the hill

husband and wife shopping

shopping for designer hijab

juice stand

lamb heads (?)

shwarma

this is where we get what we call the "sarvis"

men praying at 12:30

meat

lady shopping

must be some good shoeshere's where you apparently get black shoesand here's the man shoes storeTAXI!guy walking straight into a moving buslady and son shoppingour restaurant...our neighborhood.
dream.

everyday things...hayk

Have we ever told you that we can't flush the toilet paper down the toilet here? We have to put it in the trashcan. That was a fun habit to change...and we have a smelly can of toilet paper in our bathroom now.
OR
Have we told you our stove/oven and our heaters run on gas tanks, and we currently have one full and three empties? The only way to get new tanks is to listen for the ice cream truck song (which is really the gas tank truck song) and run out and catch the truck...that hasn't happened for us yet because we live on the second floor and can't get out there in time. So, soon we need to take an entire afternoon and go sit on the sidewalk and just wait. We can't figure out how everyone else gets this accomplished...
OR
Have we told you that we have to go down to the "water store" to get a big Hinkley type water jug that has drinkable water in it? It costs 85 piestres which is approx. $1.25 US and it lasts us about a week. The only glitch with that is that if it stays in the big jug too long, it will smell and taste bad! So, we've figured out a system. We bring the jug home and immediately put it on it's tiny base, then we fill up about 14 - 1.5 liter bottles and make a liter of Tang and fill our fridge. Exciting right?
OR
Have we told you about the water tank on our roof? We get water once a week. Therefore we have to be careful to ration out our water correctly...or we are stuck without water until it comes the next Tuesday! Obviously that means we can only do laundry once a week, and sometimes we have to leave things out of the wash that aren't as important. We ran out of water once, but thankfully it was a Monday night...the night before water day. The nice thing is that if we plan correctly we can do our laundry while the water tank is filling up, and than we aren't losing any water for the rest of the week...because the tank fills until it is full.
(On the note of laundry, it takes our washing machine about an hour and a half to do one load of laundry...then we take all of the clothes up to the roof, and hang dry them all. They usually dry within about 30 minutes and are really too crisp!)
OR
Have we told you that we have 1 mini water heater and it is solely for the shower. We have to turn it on at least 20-30 minutes before we desire to take a shower. If I decide I want to take a long shower, well, sorry Jeff. You just can't take one today. We need to save water anyway.
AND
This may sound gross to you, but I haven't tackled mopping yet. I've swept the floors in our apartment many times, but haven't mopped. Only because I haven't been brave enough to try it out. It involves a squeegee on a long handle....and you're supposed to pour your cleaning water on the floor, wrap a towel around the squeegee and mop the water into the drain on the floor. Sounds messy and complicated to me...

we have a word that we use around here: hayk. it means, "that's just the way it is."

and so...hayk

AQABA a.k.a. phoenix with a sea

jessey and i went to Aqaba this past weekend, on our own, on a bus. we purchased our tickets at the JETT bus station on friday and left saturday morning on an adventure we won't soon forget. there are some things that jessey doesn't want me to dwell on (namely the not so good experiences: with taxi(s) and the bus driver, and that it was 95 plus degrees outside) that i won't mention here. so, now that that is behind us, here's the trip highights:
1. THE WEIRD
- shower with no tub/no curtain/2 square feet of raised tile = flooded bathroom
- taxi's with no meters who tell you to decide how much you want to pay and then tell you to give them more when your price is too low
- fully-clothed women/teenage girls swimming in the red sea

2. THE RESTAURANTS
- Ali Baba's: standard restaurant with american and arabic food options...most with meat. we ate hummus and batatas (french fries). favorite mis-spelled words: minereal woter, graps fruit, & red pull
- Dantilla: featuring ice cream! we were the only people at the restaurant at 7:00, for some reason, but the food was good and we spoke in arabic the whole time with the waiters. beautiful view of the red sea and nice people. we had potato wedges, tea, water, popcorn, and a strawberry shake. the shake was amazing.

3. THE SCHEME
we wanted to snorkel, because there are amazing coral reefs in the red sea, so we walked around sunday morning trying to find a dive company. we walked into the alcazar hotel where they have a dive group, and they told us where to go and said if we told them we were "staying at the alcazar hotel" (which we weren't) we would get a good price. so, we did. actually, jessey said "we just came from the alcazar hotel" which was the truth. we snorkeled in the red sea for 7JD a piece! it lasted for about 20 minutes, when i got tired of smelling and tasting salt water, combined with a fear of dying in the red sea, combined with losing my snorkel tube. it was worth it, and it was beautiful. we just laid around at this club we didn't belong in the whole day until we left. good times.

Quaker Oats (sowing and reaping principles)

"...the Quakers, for example, have succeeded in instilling feelings of love, compassion and forgiveness among their followers not because theirs is fundamentally different from other faiths but rather because of the way religious teachings have been inculcated in its followers. If the Quakers have succeeded in humanising behaviour, why can't other faiths do the same?"
~ The Jordan Times, September 28th 2008

i was reading the newspaper online (The Jordan Times) and stumbled across this article about how religion does exactly opposite of what it proposes to do, that is, to create unity amongst its followers. the writer, an arab jordanian, pointed out first that historically christians resorted to violence against one another when their fundamental views were different. he then pointed out that the same thing is happening and has been happening amongst muslims...killing each other in the name of God. he wrote about how the beliefs of these religions are so similar, and the result could be a better world, with people acting more humanly towards one another (like, "love your neighbor as you love yourself" maybe?).

but religion fails. miserably. all the time, everywhere. instead of instilling love it instills hatred, bigotry, violence, and evil. it truly does. whenever you say, "at least i'm not like _____ (fill in whatever denomination or religion you like: the baptists, the nazarenes, the pentecostals, the sunnis, the shias, the church of christ, the krishnas, the sabeans, the jews, the athiests, the agnostics, etc.)", you are the one for whom these words were said:

"But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire."

but, amazingly, the truth still gets through. and in print. because the truth of the matter is that the quakers have lived out the kingdom message in such a way that it has a global impact, so much so that they make the opinion column of an arab national newspaper...in a positive light. oh, that we could all learn something from the peaceful, loving, brotherly/sisterly, hungry feeding, thirsty quenching, lonely visiting, religion that the quakers (and dare i say j-s-s) live out daily.