Another month (and a half maybe) in pictures

Another day another taxi ride

 I asked for salad, I got me some salad :) 

 Elijah got pretty sick this month. Day 1

And sicker on Day 2 

A sweet friend invited us over for dinner....

She made salmon and mashed potatoes, we could barely believe it. Salmon is so precious here!

 

Even though Muslims can't celebrate Christmas (christian holiday), they LOVE Christmas (and gold!) They deck everything out in out of date / recalled  decorations. It's so silly :)

He took me on a coffee date 

Hottie!

The vacant lot next to our house 

 Our apartment building from afar

There it is :) Now you know. Our apartment is the ground floor right there to the right... God has blessed us! 

Babysittin'. We love those kiddos! 

Morning time with the Word and Mr. WhoWho 

Lunch. Under 2JD = Happy Belly 

Slowly but surely the house is coming along 

Who wouldn't want it!? 

....Or this purple thing! Perfect addition to anybodies home! (And by the way, we're not in an antique store, that couch I'm sitting on is brand spakin' new! We're not in Kansas anymore :))

Street kitty. Elijah bought me a bag of cat food, just so I can carry some around when I go out and feed all the little babies. 

Ezra and Elijah. The big E's :) 

The coveted Mabroom Saudi Arabian dates. My whole family has asked for these ones, specifically, for Christmas. They can't be topped! They're so gooooood!

It's been a good month so far. Our Father has been teaching us quite a bit and opening our eyes to different opportunites we never even considered. I'm so excited about some of the things He's laid on our hearts. 

He's so good to be constantly opening our eyes. 

We can't wait for next month though and our trip home for the holidays :) So excited about Christmas in Germany, being with the family and being able to play with dogs and cats, eating bratwurst and hot apple cider, Christmas dinner.... I'm especially excited being able to takes walks all by myself and being able to speak the language, and being able to kiss Elijah in public *GASPS!* The west is just so forward thinking, haha.  

He's our Refuge

The other day in my quiet time I read this verse "Do not be afraid of sudden terror, nor of trouble from the wicked one when it comes; for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught" found in Proverbs.
I didn't think much of it when I read it, there were other verses that spoke to me more... but then something really funny happened that day. Elijah and I had to go grocery shopping, we got ready like normally and I was hearing something funny from inside the house. Sometimes in these concrete houses you can hear a person sneeze outside just like they were in your own living room, but when you wanna hear something it's hard to make it out. It sounded like a bunch of people at a party.
Elijah and I stepped outside on our porch and instantly were hit by the sound of thousands and thousands of mosques in the entire city blaring their loudspeakers. Every mosque talking all at once, singing, shouting... it was really chaotic and hard to make out what even one mosque was trying to say over the next. The speakers seemed louder than ever before... and the streets were empty. It was definitely an eery feeling.
As we started walking, we kept looking at each other, we were both a bit hesitant.
I'll admit, I tend to be a worrying person. I've got an imagination on me that can instantly go from 0 to 100 in 15 seconds flat... and don't put it pass me to add spaceships and unicorns... I can imagine up anything! I realized that we are in the Middle East and even though we're blessed with living in a stable country, in the Middle East I don't think you should ever put it pass chaos to escalate to anything it wants to, at any given time. I don't think I should write on the blog what some of the loudspeakers were preaching either :) It seemed chaotic (to us at least, we had never experienced anything like it before).
And then as I started to think it really awkward, the Lord reminded me of this verse.

He will be my confidence! In any situation.
It's like the superhero swooping in to save the day. The Lord is my confidence and what do I have to be afraid of on this earth? Niether things I understand nor things I don't understand. Chaotic situations or organized evil. It's the Lord that will keep my foot from being caught! Not my senses, logic, advise from friends with more experience or even warnings from the U.S. embassy that we get sent on our email. Nothing will keep me safe like me safe like my Father! There's nothing I can place my confidence in besides Him.
Walking in His confidence is such a beautiful and stablizing feeling. It's an instant confidence that know's no fear, that can stand strong in the face of anything, it's 100% reliable with absolutely no doubting to be found in it. His confidence is beautiful and overpowering.
And I realized why this is a verse I can apply to my life everyday.. anywhere I am, but especially while I'm in the Middle East with this imagination of mine. He is my confidence... I just imagine Him standing in front of me like a shield, God Himself! What's going to pass Him and get to me? He is my confidence, my shield, my refuge, my strength! He's my everything! What shall I fear?

It ended up just being a normal thing I guess they do from time to time. The Middle East is full of surprises! They love to catch ya off-guard ;)

We ended up going grocery shopping and Eli started to get really sick, so with all our grocery bags in tow we headed out to find a taxi. I started praying for a good taxi, that wouldn't rip us off, cause sometimes if your trip is kind of far they like to do that... and the first taxi we got was a good one. I love how the God I can have full confidence in with the big things, is also the God I can be confident cares about the little things.
He is just soooooo good. I can't even say it enough.

Are there areas in your life that you're realizing He's your complete confidence in?

Random Things and New Apartment

Lots of you sweeties have been asking about our new apartment the Lord blessed us with, so here are just a couple pictures of the living room... we're still in the process of painting and it's exhausting... but we're almost finished and will move the rest of the few items we have in soon... and I'll take more pictures of the rest of the house too.

 We've been blessed with a big apartment, we don't even have furniture for two and half rooms in the house. But as soon as we get a guest bed we'll have two extra bedrooms so that you all can come and stay with us in Jordan whenever you'd like! ;) (This was definitley something we were hoping for, a big enough house to host people who'd like to come and see Jordan)

This was the living room before we painted... we painted the whole room off white, except the wall with the window, we wanted to paint that dark orange... it turned out a bit more orange than dark orange, but it's kind of growing on us!

This is the entrance to the living room and the front door, isn't the molding pretty :)

We've since painted the coffee table off white and added a few things to the wall... we'll take an updated picture soon.

The rest of our week looked like this:

Apparently the word "Fragile" doesn't translate

Amman 

 Amman LOVES their malls! It's kind of ridiculous. They'll have HUGE story upon story malls built within blocks of each other. An 8 story mall was just built a block away from two other huge malls... there's definitley an plethora of clothes you can't wear here to be had here!

Night time walk through our neighborhood

In our "part" of the city

 These are some old ones, back when my brother was visiting, but I love them. This was a barber Elijah visited once. People are really friendly here and a lot of them want their picture taken. 

My little brother with one of the little boys. I miss my brothers so much!

Lastly, if you come visit us in Jordan we promise to take you to this Yemeni restaurant. This entire meal for two people with drinks cost less than 5JD and it will change your life. Promise.

A lot of you have asked about our garden/street in front of our house. I'll be sure and take some photos of our apartment building and street in front of our house.
Have a great day everyone! We love you!

Furniture and Things

Elijah and I were really blessed to find an apartment in Amman in our price range, that's clean and nice and even newer! God is good isn't He :)
One of the pro's to the apartment we found is that it's near one of the water treatment (should I call it that? I'm not sure what they do there) facilities in Amman. This means that our water tank gets filled three times a week. SCORE!
Every house or apartment building has a water tank on the roof that gets filled up anywhere from once every two weeks to three times a week. If you run out of water, well that's rough, you get to wait around for the day when they finally fill you up again. And fill up days mean doing laundry! Or taking a longer shower than usual! Or doing any kind of chore that would normally take too much water, cause they fill up until the tank is full, so if you're using it they just keep filling it up :) Fill up days are goooood days!
You know something I've learned since living in Amman, flushing the toilet takes A LOT of water, like a water cooler amount of water. Don't worry, we still flush, but you get the point... conserving water is a good thing.
You can't drink the water here either, the firstly cause there's way to much calcium, you'll get a pretty bad tummy aches if you do. The second reason is because apparently now Jordan receives it's water from an underground lake on the border of Saudi Arabia, they just recently found it... but because the lake is so old and has been untouched for so long, there's traces of radium. I'm just tellin' ya what I've been hearin'... but I wouldn't put it pass them. Welcome to the Jordan :)

But now that we've gotten an apartment we're finally able to start buying things for the house. We came with nothing and houses come with nothing too. Furniture in Jordan is expensive... try a doormat for 35JD, or plastic trash cans for 16JD... we're talking the little itty bitty ones, and we can't find an oven for cheaper than 600JD (yet!)
 We're trying to be really wise with our money, we've been praying about everything we buy and visiting every garage sale and the Lord has blessed us with some of the most amazing deals! He's even blessed us with a couple of new pieces, instead of second hand, but for the same price a second hand piece would go for. The other challenge, besides the actual prices of things, is style...
 For only a whopping $490.00 this beauty could be ours....

 again... phone pictures... we'll start bringing our camera, I promise!

Lemme tell ya, it's a constant search for those western looking pieces and they're very usually stuffed behind something big and gold, you really gotta dig... but the Lord has been blessing me with furniture I'm actually excited about.
We don't have much and we're certainly expecting it to take years for us to accumulate even pretty basic household things... our new place is no where near being filled, we still need to get an oven, a fridge and a washer.. but isn't it just so great that we serve a God that even the little things matter to Him! Like a little plastic bathroom trashcan that doesn't cost 16JD... it matters, cause He blessed us with really cute metal ones for only 2JD!!!
I'm so blessed that we serve such a gracious God who actually cares about every detail of our lives.

Three Weeks In

It's been quite a while since I've been able to blog, we've been traveling non-stop for the last three months and it's finally starting to feel like we're settling down, even though we're not really... kind of... slowly. These last three weeks in Amman have gone by really fast, we're mostly busy everyday working but at night we meet people and that's always fun. I feel like it was more of a culture shock to move to the Middle East than it was the last two times I was here, but slowly I think we're finding a rhythm. It's always hard when you move away from friends and family and languages and routines... even if the last place you moved from was your third country/home, but slowly things are starting to fall in place.
God is always so gracious, even when things are really hard... I think that's what I need to always remind myself of... He's just good.

Here's a little taste of  the last three weeks in Amman and this first one is a crash course into the culture here:

Welcome to the Jordan. Note the cup holders.

We found 100% pomergrante juice while out grocery shopping. I wasn't too crazy about it, but I wish I could send some to my brothers, they'd love it.

Elijah and I bought these new sofas (except in chocolate brown)! Ignore the bedazzed pillows, they weren't included. The Lord really blessed us with a great deal and a guarentee of no second hand bed bugs :)

Also, I got on really well with the lady selling us the sofa and we're going to meet up soon. It feels so funny sometimes just asking random strangers to be your friend, but it works here and I like it. Right after we bought the sofa and left the store we got invited to a complete strangers wedding celebration. Welcome to the Jordan.

I tried to convince Elijah to buy me a dog... since I had already named them (Barbar and Beamo) I was pretty sure it was a done deal... but he wasn't as convinced.

I miss having a dog :(

We laughed.

These folk know whats what when it come to dates. No sugar added, straight from Saudi Arabia... BEST.THING.EVER.

We got to watch this little cutie one day

God blessed us with finding an apartment in Amman! It has quite a few nice perks too that we take for granted in the West. We're pretty excited... if you can't tell.

Because they can I guess....

Again because they can....

After not eating almost all day, we made a quick stop at one of my favorite fast food places here in Amman, you can eat your fill of goodness and it always stays under 10 dinar

And they have fresh strawberry juice, a new fave of mine!

I find on really poopy days having breakfast for dinner makes life pretty nice again. These were originally suppose to be sugar free waffles but we couldn't get them to stop sticking so I gave up and made pancakes. They still helped though :)

Sorry they're all mobile pictures. I know we're always walking around with our huge bulky cameras and taking pictures of everything... and in my heart of hearts thats what I want to do every day here! But having blonde hair in the Middle East already gets you enough attention as it is, not too many people are walking around with dslr's around their neck on top of that. I'm working on my boldness though, it's actually a great way to meet people and I'm dying to get some amazing shots.

But for now you get timid little Ash's mobiles. 

Tonight Elijah is off visiting his Iraqi students with Johnny. The Lord has really been blessing us with a wonderful apartment, meeting people, and affordable furniture (it's actually really hard to find inexpensive furniture here, the prices are outrageous and everything is 70's brown, brown, brown and gold). It's been a hard first few weeks, but God is faithful and He's been blessing our marriage a lot through it all. The reality is, it's a blessing for us to be! We're the lucky ones! Even though some things are hard... my dad was telling me that we should view the hardships as a privilege from God and not something disheartening. Too often I make it disheartening, when hardships He allows me to endure and thinks me capable of enduring should actually encourage me all the more!