Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for the ‘Life in North Carolina’ Category

As an American, one of the things I have grown to deeply enjoy is a vintage Sunday routine. Usually, that’s comprised of a good morning at church followed by a good lunch and a relaxing afternoon in front of a football game. No live games were on this afternoon (still preseason) but they were airing the Panthers game from Thursday. A change out of the church clothes and going horizontal on the couch proved lethal for my consciousness. I napped well. Today was a vintage Sunday. Great to be Stateside.

Sitting here now watching a LIVE football game from the stinkin west coast. We’ve got it good.

Although churches are numerous in Mbeya, Tanzania, the sizes of the congregations usually don’t surpass double digits in count… on Sunday morning. Tonight, we went to our first Sunday evening service since about 2006. The church tonight was Northside Baptist in Charlotte, the same place whom has so graciously put us up in their missions house for the duration of our furlough. Northside has a large sanctuary that can seat over 1000 people. Tonight, there were about 150 people. In that space, the crowd looked small and in that regard, I became slightly somber.

Then, I remembered the land, the culture from where I just came. A gathering of believers this size was an extremely infrequent thing. As a matter of fact, there was not a single time over the 2 year span we spent in Tanzania at which we sat among a group this size who all spoke English as their native language.

So, was this really a somber event in that there was a small group in church tonight? No. There was a big group there tonight… and it was really, really nice.

In Mbeya when we left, the sun was fully set by 7pm. I mean dark all the way. We landed in NC within a day or two of the longest of the year, not dark until well after 9pm. Couple that with the same sun effect in London (was still light when we reached our hotel at 10:30pm) and you’ve got whackey people!
Eyes say to body, “Why are you so tired?”

In celebration of Asher’s first birthday, I want to glance back on his first year of life…

One day, Asher, if you’re reading this, I want you to know you’ve brought an overwhelming amount of joy to your mother and me.  We love you.  Always.

Got Asher zonked out in my left arm so I’m pecking the keys w/ my right.

Just wanted to give a HUGE thank you to the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Conover.  We had agreat time with you this morning.

I’ll fill the rest of you in on our day once I’ve got 2 hands free tomorrow.

We left the house @ 7:15am in order to make the 1+ hour trip to our home church. At the beginning of the first worship service, Asher was dedicated.

Immediately after that, we headed out to the lobby to see a bunch of our friends for the last time before we head back to TZ.

Then, we visited the Kemper class; full of loving supporters.

Then, to the Leopard class to visit before Dana had to use an empty room to feed Asher.

From there, it was off to visit our home class. It was nice to be at home with all of them before we leave.

Can you believe there was more?!

We met my folks and my brother with his family at Ryan’s Steakhouse (way too expensive IMHO). With full bellies we made the drive back to Hickory.

Not done yet.

Mark and Traci, dear friends of ours, stopped by this evening for a few hours to visit on their way up to Asheville. It was nice to just sit and chat with them.

Now, I’m ill cause I just found out Jimmie Johnson won the Cup race last night. Yuck. On top of that, there’s no race next weekend, our last stateside. Oh well. I think it will end up helping us transition out. Wow… only 12 days left here.  I just exhaled.

This is some video I caught of Dana, some snow, and our drive to the doctor for her 34th-week visit.  This was back in mid-January of this year.

This past week we had a good winter storm come through North Carolina that left everything outside covered in beautiful white snow. Dana and I both had doctor’s appointments that day so we were pretty tuned in to the television in search of local closings. Alphabetical and slow. So, we hopped online and checked out the Big Four broadcasting stations in Charlotte and discovered the vast difference in how each website had it’s list.

4. The worst… Fox Charlotte. It listed nothing that I could find. Maybe I overlooked it on their main page… you tell me…

3. The only reason WBTV didn’t rank last was because it had something… if you can even call it that.

2. WCNC had a decent user-friendly list.

1. The best source (by far) out of the four was WSOC TV 9. They not only had a name list with alphabet links but also told the county, time of closing, and time the info was submitted.

Hope this helps you if you live in the Charlotte region.