Carrie arrived in Cyprus Saturday afternoon at 4:30. We toured around Larnaka in the evening, visiting the downtown area, an ancient medieval fort, and enjoyed a traditional Cyprus dinner before finally ending the night back at the school. It was wonderful to be reunited.
I told Carrie that I had an exciting date planned the next day so she had to get to bed, catch up on sleep, and be ready for an early morning. We headed out Sunday morning in a rental car to the city of Agia Napa, a beautiful coastal city on the south western side of Cyprus. After a day of beautiful beaches, vibrant blue water, huge caves, and tall cliffs, we ended up in the perfect secluded area on the edge of a cliff just as the sun was setting. We had just gotten to the spot when Carrie asked if I had locked the car doors. I found this to be the perfect excuse to leave her where she was and head back to the car to get a bouquet of flowers, my guitar I hid from her in the trunk, and a ring . After returning with everything, I got out my guitar and played for Carrie the song that I wrote just for her (I know, I'm SO romantic!). My crazed nerves along with Carrie's happy tears, made it almost impossible to sing and play, but somehow I finished the song. So then I kissed Carrie, put the guitar away and told her there was one more thing I wanted to do. I made her stand up and I got down on one knee. After some touching words I will spare you from (Yes, I can be serious and mushy), a few tears from both of us, I asked her if she would be my wife. She said YES! WOO HOO!
Carrie will be with me until the 27th, and we have lots of fun things planned to do and see on the island, as well as celebrating our engagement, and just enjoying time together.
Happy Jesus' Birthday,
Stuart AND CARRIE
Monday, December 24, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
An Iraqi Refugee in Cyprus
A few weeks ago, during our weekly outreach into the community, I met an Iraqi refugee named Joad. He was very friendly and very talkative. When I told him I was an American, I said, but it's OK, we can still be friends. He agreed, saying that it's all political and that the governments and the media of both of our countries practically try to make us hate each other. So, we had a really good chat for over an hour in the street. He told me and my other friend that it was really good just to be able to talk with someone about all the hard things that are going on in his life and have someone to listen to. Foreigners to Cyprus from the middle east are usually not treated well and not given equal status to natives. This man was very intelligent, friendly and his english was quite good. He told us he believes in God, because of the amazing intelligence and beauty and design he sees in nature. However, he said he was not a muslim nor a christian, because he says that religion has caused SO much hurt and pain and destruction in the world. He mentioned all the civil wars between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims as well as Christianity and the Crusades. He poured out his heart about the deaths of family and friends and the terrible destruction that has ravaged his homeland. He was lucky/smart enough to get out of Iraq before the war.
Pray that we meet him again and have a chance to hear more of his story and introduce him to Jesus, not a religion.
Pray that we meet him again and have a chance to hear more of his story and introduce him to Jesus, not a religion.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
The Way of the Burning Heart...
Now is the shining fabric of our day
Torn open, flung apart, rent wide by love.
Never again the tight, enclosing sky,
The blue bowl or the star-illumined tent.
We are laid open to infinity,
For Easter love has burst His tomb and ours.
Now nothing shelters us from God's desire --
Not flesh, not sky, not stars, not even sin.
Now glory waits so He can enter in.
Now does the dance begin.
- Elizabeth Rooney, from "The Opening"
Torn open, flung apart, rent wide by love.
Never again the tight, enclosing sky,
The blue bowl or the star-illumined tent.
We are laid open to infinity,
For Easter love has burst His tomb and ours.
Now nothing shelters us from God's desire --
Not flesh, not sky, not stars, not even sin.
Now glory waits so He can enter in.
Now does the dance begin.
- Elizabeth Rooney, from "The Opening"
Monday, October 15, 2007
My travel ADVENTURE to Cyprus... WOW!
I took off from Oshkosh on Thursday morning Sep. 27 about 8am. I didn't end up at my destination until Sunday Sep. 29 at around noon. Carrie & I drove to Milwaukee and my flight to Charlotte went well. I sat next to a very friendly and talkative christian man who was delighted to hear what I was going to do.
In the Charlotte airport I had a conversation with a lady who had not only heard of YWAM but is a great supporter. She gave me a book she was reading, cuz she wanted to bless me with it. A pastor from Tennessee noticed my InterVarsity t-shirt and an encouraging conversation ensued. My flight to London went well.
In London I had to disembark and get all my luggage to go through customs. The English customs lady was not very happy when I explained that I was going for a school and it would be 5 months. She said 90 days was the limit for visitors. I knew that the YWAM people in Cyprus told me that they would take care of my papers when I got there, but this was not good enough for this lady. Cyprus is changing to be more closely aligned with Europe (ie using the euro$ sometime soon) and so the customs paperwork and my visa to our outreach destination in January will change and it will be taken care of as a group in January. To everyone traveling or doing missions or any business in London (or really anywhere overseas), I give you this advice - “Just say “I am a tourist staying for a couple of weeks thank-you. that is all.” I had 8 hours in London to kill before my next flight so I took a train to Brighton (pictures in my web album; check the link to the left on this page).
I must admit that I used to think that I speak English. This is not true. I speak American, an understandable and coherent language. The inhabitants of England speak this strange-sounding collection of weird phrases in an unintelligible accent called "English." Getting around the airport was confusing enough, but trying to figure out the train system was amazingly difficult. I ended up finding an American from Florida who explained to me (in American) how the train system worked and how to get to and from Brighton. However, the city of Brighton was beautiful and quaint and the whole area was very “British”. Also, I never knew how intimidating (yet also exhilarating) it is to travel alone internationally.
The flight to Pathos, Cyprus went well but I landed at 11 pm and it was Dark & Hot & No one spoke English!! The airport was small with only one runway. The cab drivers all just wanted me to get in but I just want directions to the bus station. It was hard to explain to them that even though it was 11 pm, I was not going to be staying in a hotel. Well, I managed to snag a map of Paphos from the Irish tourism booth. It turned out that the bus station that I wanted to reach to get a bus at 7:30 am the next morning was not as close to the airport as I had originally thought. It was probably 15 - 20km away. Mind you, it was only 11:30 pm when I found this out and I still had 8 hours to travel this distance, but I had one very large backpack, one medium backpack, and one large guitar case to take with me. So, I head off down this beach trail to try and find the bus station.
Let me say that this was the most beautiful part of my whole adventure. It was also the scariest. I literally had no idea where I was apart from this map I'd gotten 15 minutes ago from some bubbly, Irish tourism lady and the beach, which I assumed was the Mediterranean Sea. I also didn't know if what I was doing was illegal. And I didn't know if the beach was safe. And I didn't know if I were to get picked up by the cops or some zealous locals if they would even speak English. But, I can't complain, because the moon was full and the beach was empty. But, I was bearing my backpacks and guitar case which were, collectively, VERY awkward. The trail had the rocky beach on one side and barbed wire which lined the airport on the other. Planes would land and scare the crap out of me with their landing lights. I seriously thought one was the coast guard and it was going to find me and radio me in and then suddenly humvees roll up on the beach with spotlights. I had read about the country’s low crime rate which gave him comfort, but still this it's 2 am on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, noone speaks English and I read most of this on the internet!!!!!!! So then 10km later, 3am in the morning, walking by moonlight with extremely sore shoulders (in Stuart’s words) “I had difficulties with liquids - in & out”. I hadn't had anything to drink since the plane and I hadn't had a bathroom since the plane. So I looked for what the Cypriot people call a kiosk which to us is a convenience store. I did not want to get caught taking a leak. Then I found a store I could buy bottled water at, but I couldn't find a public restroom, so I peed behind a tree right next to a bus stop. There is a big difference between reading about adventure and finding yourself in the middle of the nite in a foreign country & carrying all you have into a crowded convenience store to buy water and the clerk just wants 50 cents and you hand her a $50 bill and she doesn’t get it. I had a difficult time getting thru the aisles in this tiny store with my packs and particularly the guitar which looks a little odd with the original duct tape around it for the airplane ride.
Once I got to the bus station, I had my first Cypriot coffee - black & very sweet. Soon it is 6am and there are a few women lining up at the bus stop. I finally got one of the bus drivers to say in broken English “Wait here - the Nicosia bus will come” - not very comforting. AT about 7:25 am a few WHITE people show up wearing butt bags and looking British and they all get on the next bus to Limassol together right at 7:30 am just as the internet predicted. The bus ride was pretty, but finally I could let down my guard to sleep - the bus contained me, the British tourists with fanny packs, a few elderly people, and one family in the back - pretty safe. The bus was really kind of a large van really. The streets are narrow and all the cars & trucks are small. We arrived in Limassol, then on to Nicosia.
Again, how do I get from the bus stop to the school. I knew that I would be staying in a church building. I had the address, but again I needed a map. I stopped in another kiosk to ask and the Chinese clerk who spoke very little English and she sold me a map, but there were 2 streets under the name of the street I needed to get to. Again the trip was double what I thought, but it was daylight and people speak English in Cyprus by day!
The next day we went to the demarcation line and went across. Nicosia is similar to Berlin, Germany -- there is a wall dividing the city (as well as the country) into two parts: The northern partand the Turkish Cypriot army is pretty laid back but the Turkish army (under orders from mainland Turkey) is rather militant and very serious. The Turkish Cypriots have lost much of the mainland Turkish people's islamic zeal." Very fascinating, because the Greek Cypriots have lost much of mainland Greece's Greek Orthodox Church zeal. The island is, for the most part, spiritually dead.
In the Charlotte airport I had a conversation with a lady who had not only heard of YWAM but is a great supporter. She gave me a book she was reading, cuz she wanted to bless me with it. A pastor from Tennessee noticed my InterVarsity t-shirt and an encouraging conversation ensued. My flight to London went well.
In London I had to disembark and get all my luggage to go through customs. The English customs lady was not very happy when I explained that I was going for a school and it would be 5 months. She said 90 days was the limit for visitors. I knew that the YWAM people in Cyprus told me that they would take care of my papers when I got there, but this was not good enough for this lady. Cyprus is changing to be more closely aligned with Europe (ie using the euro$ sometime soon) and so the customs paperwork and my visa to our outreach destination in January will change and it will be taken care of as a group in January. To everyone traveling or doing missions or any business in London (or really anywhere overseas), I give you this advice - “Just say “I am a tourist staying for a couple of weeks thank-you. that is all.” I had 8 hours in London to kill before my next flight so I took a train to Brighton (pictures in my web album; check the link to the left on this page).
I must admit that I used to think that I speak English. This is not true. I speak American, an understandable and coherent language. The inhabitants of England speak this strange-sounding collection of weird phrases in an unintelligible accent called "English." Getting around the airport was confusing enough, but trying to figure out the train system was amazingly difficult. I ended up finding an American from Florida who explained to me (in American) how the train system worked and how to get to and from Brighton. However, the city of Brighton was beautiful and quaint and the whole area was very “British”. Also, I never knew how intimidating (yet also exhilarating) it is to travel alone internationally.
The flight to Pathos, Cyprus went well but I landed at 11 pm and it was Dark & Hot & No one spoke English!! The airport was small with only one runway. The cab drivers all just wanted me to get in but I just want directions to the bus station. It was hard to explain to them that even though it was 11 pm, I was not going to be staying in a hotel. Well, I managed to snag a map of Paphos from the Irish tourism booth. It turned out that the bus station that I wanted to reach to get a bus at 7:30 am the next morning was not as close to the airport as I had originally thought. It was probably 15 - 20km away. Mind you, it was only 11:30 pm when I found this out and I still had 8 hours to travel this distance, but I had one very large backpack, one medium backpack, and one large guitar case to take with me. So, I head off down this beach trail to try and find the bus station.
Let me say that this was the most beautiful part of my whole adventure. It was also the scariest. I literally had no idea where I was apart from this map I'd gotten 15 minutes ago from some bubbly, Irish tourism lady and the beach, which I assumed was the Mediterranean Sea. I also didn't know if what I was doing was illegal. And I didn't know if the beach was safe. And I didn't know if I were to get picked up by the cops or some zealous locals if they would even speak English. But, I can't complain, because the moon was full and the beach was empty. But, I was bearing my backpacks and guitar case which were, collectively, VERY awkward. The trail had the rocky beach on one side and barbed wire which lined the airport on the other. Planes would land and scare the crap out of me with their landing lights. I seriously thought one was the coast guard and it was going to find me and radio me in and then suddenly humvees roll up on the beach with spotlights. I had read about the country’s low crime rate which gave him comfort, but still this it's 2 am on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, noone speaks English and I read most of this on the internet!!!!!!! So then 10km later, 3am in the morning, walking by moonlight with extremely sore shoulders (in Stuart’s words) “I had difficulties with liquids - in & out”. I hadn't had anything to drink since the plane and I hadn't had a bathroom since the plane. So I looked for what the Cypriot people call a kiosk which to us is a convenience store. I did not want to get caught taking a leak. Then I found a store I could buy bottled water at, but I couldn't find a public restroom, so I peed behind a tree right next to a bus stop. There is a big difference between reading about adventure and finding yourself in the middle of the nite in a foreign country & carrying all you have into a crowded convenience store to buy water and the clerk just wants 50 cents and you hand her a $50 bill and she doesn’t get it. I had a difficult time getting thru the aisles in this tiny store with my packs and particularly the guitar which looks a little odd with the original duct tape around it for the airplane ride.
Once I got to the bus station, I had my first Cypriot coffee - black & very sweet. Soon it is 6am and there are a few women lining up at the bus stop. I finally got one of the bus drivers to say in broken English “Wait here - the Nicosia bus will come” - not very comforting. AT about 7:25 am a few WHITE people show up wearing butt bags and looking British and they all get on the next bus to Limassol together right at 7:30 am just as the internet predicted. The bus ride was pretty, but finally I could let down my guard to sleep - the bus contained me, the British tourists with fanny packs, a few elderly people, and one family in the back - pretty safe. The bus was really kind of a large van really. The streets are narrow and all the cars & trucks are small. We arrived in Limassol, then on to Nicosia.
Again, how do I get from the bus stop to the school. I knew that I would be staying in a church building. I had the address, but again I needed a map. I stopped in another kiosk to ask and the Chinese clerk who spoke very little English and she sold me a map, but there were 2 streets under the name of the street I needed to get to. Again the trip was double what I thought, but it was daylight and people speak English in Cyprus by day!
The next day we went to the demarcation line and went across. Nicosia is similar to Berlin, Germany -- there is a wall dividing the city (as well as the country) into two parts: The northern partand the Turkish Cypriot army is pretty laid back but the Turkish army (under orders from mainland Turkey) is rather militant and very serious. The Turkish Cypriots have lost much of the mainland Turkish people's islamic zeal." Very fascinating, because the Greek Cypriots have lost much of mainland Greece's Greek Orthodox Church zeal. The island is, for the most part, spiritually dead.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
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