Giving to the World This Christmas Season

This Christmas season, we want to to celebrate the arrival of the newborn King more fully. Jesus’ arrival in a dirty stable in the midst of poverty means that Jesus got enmeshed in our brokenness. He got involved in a major way. He was weeping and falling down and has nails in his hands, but he had joy. It is a joy that will give us freedom to get involved in the lives of people.

All that to say, instead of spending a bunch of money on stuff, we want to invest in people this Christmas. Last year, we raised $4,000 to help 5 families in our own backyard keep the heat on last winter. This year, we’re going to the world. Through Kiva.org, we want to give to would-be entrepreneurs in every corner of the developing world assistance to make their career dreams a reality. At the very least, this is a “hand up.” More than that, our collective giving as followers of Christ is a signpost for others to see that a new King has come, and He is fixing everything that sin has ruined.

So here’s the deal, we want to do this thing together. Eventually, we would love to invite the whole campus to join us in selfless giving. The first step is for us to take the initiative and see what happens. We have created a Kiva lending group called Appalachian Giving To The World. Once you join this group, which is about as easy as downloading a new Facebook App, every loan that you make can be credited to the whole group. The point is not to show how much we are giving, but rather that we are doing it together. Follow the instructions below and you’ll be on your way!

Wait, what the heck is microlending? Is this Biblical? (a word from one of Kiva’s Christian micro lending partners)

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Start giving as a part of Appalachian State Giving To The World

Out of thousands of people we could lend to on Kiva.org, we chose 6 people to pool our resources around. Let’s see what happens when a bunch of college students start showing their faith in tangible ways!

Start Lending in the next 5 minutes

1. go to www.kiva.org

2. click the ‘Community’ tab

3.in the ’search for a lending team’ box, enter ‘Appalachian State giving’ and you’ll see Yosef and our team show up below.

4. click ‘Join the team.’

5. You will now be prompted to signup for Kiva. It’s simple and will take you less than a minute.

6. Now you’re ready to make some dreams a reality! Below are 6 people we are spotlighting with our Appalachian State Giving to the World team.

**note: when you decide to give to a person, you should notice a “Count towards Team” column that will appear before you make your credit card or PayPal transaction. The default is for Kiva to assume you want your giving to go towards the Appalachian State giving to the world team. If you don’t see this option by the time you are actually entering credit card info, something is wrong. Check to make sure that you have already joined the Appalachian State Giving to the World Team under the ‘Community’ tab.

Here are the current folks we would like to partner with:

Rizalito Dagahuya, Philippines

Luisa Arambulo, Philippines

Benito Valdera Santos, Peru

Caminando con Jesus, Dominican Rep.

Maria Julgencia Romero De Cordova, Peru

Mary Nansamba (Fully raised, 12/03)

We all love going home and spending time

with family but… (no offense mom and dad) going home after being at college with all your friends can be a let down.

Imagine going to Greensboro, North Carolina to learn how to grow closer to Jesus, listen to 5 great speakers, pray in 2010, enjoy an

amazing dance party with 1000 of your closest friends, and so much more!!

Dates are December 28-January 1!! Check out the website for more information and to sign up!!

www.midsouthcru.com

The Journey Home. And now we begin 26 hours of taxis, buses, and airplanes home.

Students who attended our presentation

What a unbelievable day!  Our visit to the Language Academy was absolutely amazing, and we had a lot of fun with the students and the administrators of the university.  We had no idea what to expect upon arriving today, but we found ourselves in a small classroom packed with Kazakh students.  We were able to connect to a projector and we gave a small slide show complete with hammock photos.  We shared about our university and life at Appalachian; we then had the opportunity to divide the group up and talk with them individually.  They were full of questions about us and about America, and they were more than willing to share about their culture and their country.

Lunch with the head of the language studies department and the dean of the university

Following our small presentation, we joined the university president and the head teacher for lunch – talk about a unique experience!

All of the students were incredibly eager for us to come to Kazakhstan and work with their university.  I was filled with an overwhelming desire and sense of urgency to be here living life with these students.  The students and the staff are willing and waiting for us to come; I cannot believe how open they have been to us and to our partnership.  They welcomed us into their university like family and they poured out their hospitality in ways you would never find at an American university.

We are just finishing our last dinner here in Kazakhstan and will fly out in the morning.  I am filled with a lot of mixed emotions as I think about leaving; I am excited to be back home, but I have no desire to leave these people and this place.  There is incredible opportunity here; all that is needed is American students to commit and to come to Kazakhstan.  I guarantee you will fall in love with this place and with these people!

Touring a Kazakh university

Today we have an unexpected yet incredible opportunity at one of the local universities.  We met with an official/teacher there yesterday to discuss a possible partnership in the future.  Before we knew it, we were not only talking with her but also with the head teacher of the university and then later with the president of the entire school.  To say the least our expectations were blown out of the water; we were expecting a short meeting with a representative of the school and ended up sitting in the office of the university president.  Their openness to our ideas about a partnership was more than positive; they offered few objections and lots of agreement.  We were discussing something that might take place in the future, and they were ready to sign a contract then and there.

They invited us back today to present our ideas to the students; so, last night found us putting together a presentation and slide show for Kazak students.  This is above and beyond anything we could have expected.  I am so excited to get the chance to interact with students we could be working with next year.  Please pray for us today and that the students and staff of the university will be receptive and that the possibility of a partnership will become even more concrete. We will write later to let you know how it goes!

Rachel, connecting with the world

Rachel and I have gotten into a new habit for the last two mornings: strong coffee and high speed internet. Two blocks from our hotel is a Turkish cafe called, Address. It has a great restaurant where we have personally sampled the Turkish style pizza and beef kabobs. It also has a side cafe which serves real espressos and lattes from an Italian coffee machine. In the land of endless cups of tea, good coffee is a rarity.

another freebie

We’ve written about Kazakh hospitality before. Here’s another example: For the last two mornings, the waitresses have served us complimentary cake with our coffee. I thought at first that my bad Russian had ordered the wrong thing when they first brought the cakes to our table. But the waitress instisted that they were “gifts without price” for us. Yet another example of living in a land of “Southern Hospitality.”

Yesterday we boarded a train for a 14 hour overnight ride south.  The experience was unique to say the least.  For one, our car was about half the size of a Coltrane dorm room and 2, I was sharing it with 3 men.  In Kazakhstan, you are never in want of heat when inside, and the train was no exception to this rule.  The bathroom was its own interesting phenomenon; the climax being that upon flushing, one can view the train tracks rushing by underneath.

Sharing life on the train: Murat, Rachel, Madina, Mark

We enjoyed a simple meal of peanut butter sandwiches and hot tea; while we were eating, we were joined in our car by a young college student who heard us speaking English. She was eager to practice her own English and to learn about America and our culture.  She was full of questions and over the next 4 hours we shared about our lives and learned about her and her family. Madina was traveling home to celebrate her brother’s birthday and to spend time with her family.

While we were visiting, she returned to her car for a few minutes and returned with a pair of ear rings that she gave to me as a gift.  To be honest, I was completely blown away!  She cared nothing about taking something that belonged to her and giving it to a stranger on the train.  The people of Kazakhstan share their homes, their food, and their lives so willingly and so unselfishly.  There are many lessons to be learned from them and the way that they live life.  I have been overwhelmed with the kindness and hospitality that has been shown to us.  Kazakhs are certainly some of the friendliest people I have met.

Our Kazak friends insisted on striking this pose

Even the pigeons are friendly here

It has been one really great memory after another the last few days.   We have had tons of things to laugh about ever since we started this trip.  The people we have met over here have been amazing in so mamy ways. Yesterday we had the opportunity to sightsee around Almaty with two of the staff team.  They took us to a huge park where they have a memorial to Kazaks who fought and died in WWII.  For a fairly new country (they gained independence in 1991) that has had a long, long history of being occupied by foreign empires they are a very proud people.  Even though it was freezing cold the park was busy with couples getting wedding pictures made, tourists, and locals.  From there we went to a huge bazaar, visited a beautiful Russian Orthodox church, got pecked and pooped on by a bunch of aggressive pigeons and had my new favorite meal sashlink or something like that. I can’t spell it or say it but it is real tasty.  These people know how to eat meat. No need for fancy side dishes or vegetables that could get in your way.  Anyway, I have single handedly destroyed many a  skewer of these things and only expect that to continue.

The train ride last night was crazy.  Eric in an attempt to improve US-Kazak relations mistakenly gave some 3 year old ruffian a Pez.  After an epic wrestling match to try and keep him from taking the whole Pez dispenser instead of just the one Pez candy it was game on the rest of the night.  This little boy who I named Pedro wasn’t giving up easy. He kept coming in to our private car demanding candy, grabbing things and trying to run off with any of our things he could grab.  Word to the wise don’t give a three year old Kazak boy candy and then expect him to leave you alone or behave.  Since my Russian is so horrible I talked with him in Spanish and had fun with that watching him try and understand me. I don’t know why I went with Spanish seeing how I can’t speak that either and he would have been equally confused hearing English.  We finally were able to get his Dad involved and he left and we drifted off to sleep serenaded by the cries of babies, barking dogs,  snores coming from either Eric or Rachel, and the usual noises of a 50 year old train that has been used hard over the years.

Looking forward to our next adventure. My hope is that it includes more little fellas and some sashlink.

We spend most of the morning touring the city’s biggest university. It’s cold and not many students are hanging around outside. We hit the campus café and quickly find ourselves in easy conversation with 5 university guys who want to know everything about us. They buy us tea and bread and we spend the next hour sharing our lives together. One of the first questions they want to know is if we have seen Borat, the recent movie that makes Kazkahs look like bumbling, backward idiots. Fortunately, none of us have seen it so we don’t discuss it. One of the guys lets me know that if he ever met Sasha Baren Cohen (the actor playing Borat), that he would kill him. I don’t doubt it. This scenario of getting into easy conversations is becoming a usual pattern for us. We, the strange looking Americans, make eye contact with Kazakhs and soon thereafter, we are sharing a meal together.

After we leave campus, our Kazakh friend Almas who is driving us around in his van, suddenly veers off the busy road and we lurch to a stop. I am perplexed and wonder if we might have forgotten something back at the university. Almas turns around and announces, “We have forgotten to pray for the students we just met!” There, on the edge of the busy intersection in our ad hoc parking spot, we follow the Kazahs lead and pray for everyone we just met. What a great lesson on our need to depend on God for every conversation, even when it’s not convenient.

 

Emerging from the clouds, on our way to the ski area

14,000ft mountains just 30 minutes from the city of Almaty

Murat knows we are from the mountains of North Carolina so he thinks we might be inspired by the local mountains outside of Almaty. That is the understatement of the day. Just 15 minutes outside of town, Murat punches his borrowed SUV into low gear and we crawl upward, zigzagging our way up the serpentine road leading into thick, grey blanket of clouds. It doesn’t look promising. Evergreens dot the surrounding hillsides. They increasingly bend under the weight of fresh snow the higher we climb. We pass the largest ice skating rink we have ever seen. Apparently, Almaty is preparing for the Asian Olympics which are coming here in just a few years. And now we are in blazing sunlight and the skies are absolutely bluebird. The bed of clouds hangs over and hides the bustling city, thousands of feet below. Above us, jagged rock spires and hanging snowfields tower above us.  The mountains would give anything in the Alps a run for their money in scale and beauty.

checking out the slopes of Chumbulak

We are giddy, well….I should say, I am giddy at the sight of a ski area thatlooks like it received a foot of fresh powder the night before. It’s only November, but the ski lift is humming and a few skiers and snowboarders are out enjoying the perfect snow under perfect blue skies. I am jealous, and already making a note to bring my ski boots next time.

We ease into the afternoon by sitting at the ski lodge sundeck and drinking copious amounts of hot tea. Mark discovers his new favorite food: Shashleek, a staple found in much of Eastern Europe all the way to Central Asia. Shashleek

Mark's new love: Shashleek.

consists of beef, chicken, or lamb, grilled to perfection on skewers over a hot spit. Given Mark’s new love for all things shashleek, I don’t think this will be the last time we see it on our plates.