Brewer Game & Craft Day

On a Sunday afternoon in August, our Life Group gathered for separate guys and girls events. The guys went to Minute Maid Park to see the Brewers lose to the Astros and the women got together and created some awesome pillows. On the right, you can see the guys at the game and down below, you can see Diana's creation and Jean demonstrating her amazing sewing abilities to Whitney.

River Dayz

Last Tuesday, Diana and I had a chance to "float the river" with the SIX10 youth at our church. After a 2.5 hour drive and a stop at Bucee's, we arrived at Corner Tubes and the Prince Solms Park in New Braunfels, TX. From here we had access to the Tube Chute and were able to float the Comal River. Once we lathered on the sunscreen, got our wristbands and found the perfect tube, we hit the tube chute. A quick walk through the park brings you to some steps to help you enter the water. The Comal River is spring-fed and thus quite cold, even though it was in the 90s outside, so it is best to just jump in before getting on your tube.

After an hour on the chute, we gathered together for lunch consisting of turkey and ham on bread (no condiments), chips, cookies and water. About 1:30, we hit the river again, ready for the 1.5 to 2 hour float down the river. Overall the river flows pretty slowly, with a couple of mini-chutes and rapids, so you get plenty of time to discuss life and other important matters. Of course, you are floating with dozens of other people (it was packed, on a Tuesday) all around you with their coolers and their dogs (why they would do that I don't know). The hot sun and the cold water were the perfect mix for just sitting there, although the tubes themselves (they were black) would get really hot, so it was good to periodically get out and get the tube wet. Funny Story: On one such occasion, I jumped back on to my tube and got a serious cramp in the calf. I am writhing in pain on my tube, trying to massage it out, while my ever-so-helpful fellow floaters just laugh at me. I eventually got off the tube and was able to "walk" it out, feeling much better, but did get a few concerned looks for some nearby tubers.

After our float, some of the kids went again, but Diana, Elisabeth and I decided to do the chute a few times. Elisabeth had not had much chance to relax on the float because she had been surrounded by teenagers, who can't seem to sit still. Imagine that! So, we did the mini-float (15 minutes w/o paddling) to the chute a few times. I did try going through the chute without a tube, which was quite fun, but certainly rougher and a bit dangerous, particularly with so many people around.

Once we got everyone rounded up, we headed to Rudy's BarBQ for dinner. I guess that they have one in Houston, but we had never been. It was some great BBQ and we had the best check-out dude who gave us samples and explained the whole process. They have sandwiches and sides, but you can just buy cooked meat by weight, as much as you want. It was pretty cool and really good. Going to have to check it out again. As well as floating the river, which was a blast, particularly with a bigger group.

PS. See more pictures from the trip on Facebook.

Orientation: What I Learned

Diana has been bugging me to write about what I learned at the orientation. This is a question that have tried to answer several numerous times since we got back and I have struggled to come up with one. Now that I have had time to reflect on it, I think there are two reasons for that. First, the conference was long and intense, leaving little time to digest any of it at the time. Second, I was not really struck by any one thing as earth-shattering or life-changing, but instead a lot of little nuggets of truth and wisdom, making them harder to pinpoint. So, with all that being said, I think that I have come up with a few things that I learned at orientation.

1. Culture shock is real. I, of course, knew this already, but I did not have a firm grasp on how culture shock worked. Teri McCarthy (she has a new book coming out in dec) gave a great lecture on dealing with culture shock and laid it out very succinctly. I will not go into all of the details here (see below), but we decided that every time you move or enter a new place, you have to deal with the same symptoms. Whether you are new to Houston, TX or Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, you can have a hard time communicating, you will get lost and get frustrated easily, and you miss the place you used to live. It is easy to slip into depression and never go outside again. And this will happen unless you can adjust, realize that things are what they are and repeat to yourself, "It's not good, it's not bad, it's just different" and you are on the road to recovery. Sounds so simple doesn't it?

2. The New Atheism. One of the speakers at the conference portion of the orientation was Elaine Storkey, a philosopher from the University of Oxford in England. She was clearly brilliant and very engaging, with some amazing stories. (Sidenote: she has her own Wikipedia page and a Facebook page, a nice mix of web-presence.) Her second lecture on Friday morning was about the New Atheism, a look at present-day atheism and how they are attacking Christianity and religion as a whole. It was a very interesting discourse on how atheism has turned away from science as its basis and become political. They still use science as a foundation, but it is no longer approaches religion scientifically, instead looking to convince everyone that religion is harmful (look at all the wars) and irrational (evolved beings don't need faith). Using these arguments and things like the Atheist Bus Campaign in England, atheists are trying to use the powers of persuasion instead of reason to convince people God does not exist. I found the talk extremely interesting and I feel better equipped to discuss books like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. If you want to know more, a good resource is: Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology edited by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose.

Now check out these pictures!

Orientation: Barnga

Day three (Tuesday) started later than it should have. For some reason, the alarm did not go off (or that is the excuse that Diana is using), which was fine because we needed the rest. We had been up until 1:30 am working on our presentation. Morning devotions started at 8:30 am and we awoke at 8:15. Not much time. I was elected to represent the Peterson family, so that Diana could properly get ready. After a quick shower and a Nutri-grain bar for breakfast, I ran downstairs.

Day three was focused on ministry, both inside and outside the classroom. There were some great suggestions for ministry opportunities outside the classroom, like inviting students over for movie nights or for English lessons or for baking chocolate chip cookies. The great thing about IICS is the flexibility they have in how their professors do ministry. The number one goal is to be an excellent teacher and to live a Christ-centered life and the ministry opportunities will flow out of that, which leads to some amazing examples and stories from existing IICS professors.

In the afternoon, we got our miscellaneous accounting / travel info / technology lecture, which I can basically boil down to one website: http://www.magellans.com/. Check it out, some very cool stuff. (Thank you Spencer ---> ) We also had our presentations in the afternoon, which was good for us. We were asked to give a 6-8 minute talk on IICS and what we were going to do. It was great to hear everyone's story about why God was calling them to teach overseas.

Okay, this is getting long, so let me get to the title of this post, Barnga. After the last presentation, we were invited over to the McCarthy's house (president Daryl and writer Teri) for some Jack Stack BBQ (the best in KC) and a cultural simulation game (Barnga). I will not go into all the rules, but it is amazing how frustrating it can be to communicate rules without being able to talk. A fun experience ;)

Orientation: The Plaza

Day two started with some inductive Bible study on the book of Jonah. The study was led by Spencer Stith (Director of Faculty Recruiting) with a list of seven questions and the mindset that all we knew was what we had just read. It was a great exercise to force us to look at the passage the way someone who had never read the Bible before would. We repeated this exercise each morning of orientation, which ended up being one of the highlights. Day two Bible study was followed by some more lectures on culture shock and balancing teaching and minstry. We were given the evening off and took the chance to check out Kansas City.

We drove down to an area called the Plaza, a shopping and dining area south of downtown. The weather was beautiful and we got a chance to walk around and check out some of Kansas City's many fountains. We learned after we got back to the hotel that Kansas City is known as the "City of Fountains." We had dinner at an Irish pub and then sat outside and had some gelato. Another excellent day!

Orientation: Movie Night

We wanted to share more with you about our IICS orientation and decided that it would be best to break it up into several posts. Let's start with day one. After driving for 13 hours on Saturday (with a small detour through Topeka to check out the Kansas state capital), we arrived at our hotel in Kansas City ready for some sleep.

Orientation started bright and early Sunday morning at 8:30 am with worship time and a chance to get to know each other. This was followed by Daryl McCarthy (IICS President) sharing the mission and vision of IICS (see below) and Teri McCarthy (IICS Writer-In-Residence) discussing culture shock and teaching us this mantra, "It's not good, it's not bad, it's just different." There were several other talks about raising support and earning the right to be heard, but the highlight of the day was Movie Night after dinner.

In order to help demonstrate the cultural immersion of an American in a foreign culture, we watched the 1956 film, The Teahouse of the August Moon, starring Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford. It is about American soldiers trying to help rebuild Japanese towns after WWII. We were initially skeptical, but it turned out to be an excellent film, with some great cultural lessons and a lot of great comedy, particularly the line "Socks up, Boss!" Highly recommend it! It also left me curious to know how good Marlon Brando's Japanese really is. Great way to end our first day, although we were definitely ready for some more sleep.

Their vision is that someday every university student in the world will have at least one instructor who will articulate and demonstrate the love and lordship of Jesus Christ for them.

Their mission is to bring glory to God and impact the world by developing godly leaders for every sector of society - government, business, home, church, the arts, law, the sciences, education - as we provide key universities and academic institutions with educational services and Christian faculty who teach and live in such a way as to draw others to faith and transformation in Christ.

Back From Orientation

We got back last night from Kansas City and our IICS (International Institute for Christian Studies - http://www.iics.com/) orientation. We spent a week with our fellow appointees (see picture) learning about how to deal with culture shock, ministering in a foreign country and building a support team. The best part was definitely getting to know the other IICS appointees, which wasn't hard since we spent 12-14 hours a day together. It also got us excited about going overseas to teach and minister.

As a part of our support-raising, starting a blog was suggested as a good way to stay in touch with our family, friends and support team. So, we decided that it was finally time to join the blogging world. We hope to post regularly, every 2-3 days, which seems manageable. I (Steve) was appointed as the official family blogger through a series of long discussions and a complex decision-making process in the traditional Peterson fashion. In other words, Diana told me to do it. :)

Hope that you enjoy our bloggin' and look forward to sharing our lives with you, Steve & Diana