Craving #2

Pancakes. Could eat them for every meal.

Truly Texas Salsa

I imagine there is a simple, FDA approved explanation for this, but if the people of Clint's salsa put this disclaimer on their salsa to appeal to true, Salsa eating Southerners, well, they won me over!

Jana and I are going through the mound of food that friends recently brought us.  We are reading expiration dates (as if they will last that long) and figuring out where to put everything.  On the side of one of the salsas, I read the following statement:

"Not Available in New York City."

How perfect is that?  Not only is it not made in New York City (as the commercial so aptly decries!) but it is not even sold there.

In fact, this salsa is made in San Antonio, Texas.  We have many favorite salsas, made fresh in Texas (D.L. Jardines leading the pack of store bought salsa, followed closely by Mrs. Renfro's).  However, our favorite salsa in this close race is one that you cannot buy in a jar.  It is made in Fort Worth and I will simply call it Rob's Salsa.

Back to Running and Riding

On Thursday, I finally started running again, after 2 weeks off and a sporadic few months.  Yesterday, I got another run in, while also getting to enjoy the beautiful Spring weather (still a bit chilly) that we are having at the moment.  The flowers and trees are blooming, making being outside very nice, when it is not raining.

To follow those runs, I went on a ride today with Brad (our AIA director in the office).  We only did 2 hours and it was a bit on the flat side until the last 6 km.  Again, it was nice to be outside.  The weather was that perfect combination of not too hot, but not cold.  In the sun, it felt wonderful.  In the shade, the air had that nice chill.

We hope to go again tomorrow.  In the next few rides, I will try to take a camera to show you what we see when we are riding (no, not Brad's backside!!).  We passed a field of rapseed which were in full bloom.  The entire field is a bright yellow.  It is amazing to see.  So sorry to not have a camera today!  Maybe tomorrow!

That's it for today.  Sorry to not have anything juicy!  Until next time...

Joy, love, and gratitude

Wow! I'm completely overwhelmed by the love and excitement being shared with us right now. Thank you for the many comments, emails, and Facebook messages. What a blessing to be touched by each of your prayers and well wishes.

My appointment today went really well. We saw hands and arms, and legs and feet; the face (well, at least the doctor said it was the face, I really couldn't tell!), heart, spine, and other such vital organs. Wow...completely surreal. My repetitive phrase for today is: "This is just really weird!"

Thad is really giddy...I waver between fright, excitement, joy, and grumpiness (the grumpiness is mostly because I'm always hungry!!).

I go back to ballet this week after having a week off. Pray for my energy level and balance...it's been a strange dynamic to see how uncoordinated and ungraceful I feel in class just because things are different. My last class, the instructor corrected me A LOT because I just wasn't standing right nor using the proper muscles...it was a really off day.

Pray also for me as I try to find a place to swim regularly...I've been advised that this is a great (and not overly-taxing) way to stay in shape throughout the next several months.

Well, it's that time...lunch time that is. I had better tackle the hunger before it takes over. Thank you again for being a part of our lives...we are thrilled to see how the Lord has blessed us through each of you. I hope we can be the same for you.

Blessings and love -- Jana

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Wonderful Care Packages

I recently posted that our friends from Frisco brought us 2 boxes full of goodies from Texas.  Well, when Jana and I arrived home today, sitting at our door was a box

for Jana.  The Christ Chapel Bible Church women's Bible study, Women In The Word, sent Jana a box full of many goodies!  They include make-up, journals, candy, spices, and, my favorite, DVDs from a recent Christ Chapel study.

As I write this, we have a DVD from Easter playing.  We are looking forward to the lesson shortly.  I subscribe to the CCBC and Mighty Men (men's ministry) podcasts and frequently listen to them on my Zune.  However, the one thing we do not get is the music.  This DVD includes the music from Easter.  I cannot tell you how joyful we are right now to get to listen to Brian Kieta and his team worship the Lord in music!

Thank you Christ Chapel Bible Church and Women In The Word for this wonderful gift!

Good-bye Paris

Yesterday, we arrived in Paris in the early morning.  After saying good-bye to a few people from the conference, we headed to our hotel to drop off our bags.  As a side note, we loved our hotel!  It was a real find for a last second search.  We will post more about the hotel later.  If you are going to Paris, this is definitely a good place to stay.

We left from there to go get breakfast near La Sorbonne.  After some bread, croissant, juice, and coffee, we felt ready to go our touring.  I hate to call this trip our "Loose ends" trip, but, in a way, it was.  We have never been to the Luxembourg gardens or Rodin museum/gardens.  Both of those went to the top of our list, so we walked to the Luxembourg gardens.  They are amazing!  Absolutely beautiful!  We walked around for a couple of hours, just taking in the flowers, greenery, and buildings.

After the gardens, we wanted to go the Rodin museum.  We decided to only tour the gardens.  Unfortunately, one of Jana's favorite sculptures was in the musum, The Kiss.  That just gives us something to look forward to next time!

One of our true finds was near our hotel.  It was a crepe restaurant.  When we walked by it on Thursday, it was packed with people, so we got a chocolate crepe.  We decided that would be our lunch stop. 

The lunch was just was good as the dessert.  Mine was a ham and cheese "sandwich."  Jana got tuna.  Of course, we got another Nutella and banana crepe!  To make it better, it was cheap!

After the first two sites, we went Trocodero Plaza to see the Eiffel Tower, followed by the Champs-Elysee and the Arc de Triomphe.  We were ready to figure out dinner, following quite a bit of walking, .  We trained to the Latin Quarter.  We looked at a few places but nothing sounded good, but remembering that we saw a Mexican restaurant, we went there.  That was a brave decision considering our experience in Germany with Tex-mex.

It was really good, not Texas Mexican Inn good, but European Tex-mex good.  We bought some of their home-made corn tortilla chips to take home with us.

Exhausted, we went back to the hotel to pack.  We also got to talk to our niece who turn 6 yesterday!  So, Happy Birthday IsEB!!!

Now, we are on the train heading home.  I started this as we were pulling away from Gare Est, so Good Bye, Paris!  Until next time.

Paris with Friends from Texas

In the last week we have had a real treat.  We had 2 visitors from Texas.  As I mentioned before, Jason and Shannon came to Kandern last weekend.  Yesterday, we had the privilege of spending Thursday evening with

Jonathan and Flora.  We had a very French meal at a restaurant run by Phillippe that included escargot, lobster soup, avocado salad, beef stew (I cannot spell the french name), duck, roasted chicken, chocolate cake and lemon pie!  It was wonderful, as was Phillippe.  His restaurant, between the Eiffel Tower and the Rue Cler district, would seat about 15 people.  Very small and quaint.

Afterward, we took the Metro to the Champs-Elysees.  We walked a bit but ended up going to Laduree to buy macaroons.  Jana and I ate one last night!  It was more than wonderful!

We continue to walk along the Champs-Elysees, finally ending up taking pictures of the Arc de Triomphe.  Needing to catch a train back to Torcy, we departed from Jonathan and Flora, and headed for the Metro.

Thank you, Jonathan and Flora, for a

great evening!

How I lost 7 pounds then gained it back in Paris!

Since arriving in Paris, I have eaten enough food for 2 weeks!  I wish I could say that was because it was so good that I could not help myself.  Unfortunately, that is not really true.  As it turns out most of the time, I have a big meal that does not really live up to the Paris/France expectation.  Then, for dinner, there is really good food available.  I cannot help but eat the good meal, but I have also stuffed myself with the bad meal, so I way over ate!

Today, I hope to reverse that trend.  I had a small breakfast, I plan to skip lunch (or a piece of fruit), then we are having dinner in the Paris city center.  I hope I can eat sensibly for dinner as well!

I hope to update tomorrow or Saturday to say that I have done well for the remainder of this trip to get back on track.

Day 2 of Meetings in Paris

We are working on getting the French ministry changed over to a new Donation processing system.  What this has meant for me is that I have been able to get to know 2 guys that are very instrumental in the creation and rollout of Donorwise and Tnt.Dataserver worldwide, where I am working with Dataserver and, on a limited basis, helping with Donorwise.

Both products are meant to help our field staff that raise support.  We try to help them manage their support better, keep in contact with their supporters more effectively, and spend less time on both of those.

The other benefit is that the ministry can do all 3 of those as well.  We are trying to free people to do other ministry activities, whether that is field ministry or other operations duties.

Our time has been spent figuring out how the French ministry processes these things and what will be affected if and when we change them to something else.  We are trying to identify the cracks in advance.  This is time consuming and tedious.  One of the guys, Bob, is pouring through 7,000 contact records to clean up the data!

Tomorrow, we start training some national staff from Lithuania, Latvia, France, Greece, Spain, and Italy on how to use Donorwise.

In Paris

After a very uneventful train ride, we arrived in Paris.  Getting from Paris to Torcy was a bit more tricky, but only in the fact that we did not buy a RER ticket.  This only became an issue when we tried to leave the Torcy station, but it required us inserting our RER ticket to open the gate.  Since we did not have one, we could not get out.

My brave wife crawled under the gate to go to the ticket window to buy our tickets.  The lady at the ticket window could not understand what were needing for a couple reasons.  1) How did we get there without a ticket.  2) Why would we go to that much trouble to buy a ticket at this point?  As we stood there, more people climbed over the turnstile than inserted tickets.  We were unusual to want to pay!

After some explaining, she sold Jana our return tickets for Saturday and let us out of the Torcy station for free!

All that to say, that we are here!!  We get started today!

Reverse Culture Shock

I, Jana, experienced what I guess was reverse culture shock in New York. All of a sudden, I was amongst crowds of people in the subway and overwhelmed because I could understand EVERYTHING around me without “thinking”. The signs. Advertisements. Conversations. I found myself eaves-dropping...oh dear! And choosing from long Restaurant Menus ...wow, that was difficult!! Who would have thought!?! Oh, but I did get to enjoy drinking Root Beer for nearly every meal!

April 2008

Opposite Ends

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Fun Day with the Blakes

Jason and Shannon arrived Friday with gifts from Texas.  Yesterday, we took them on a driving tour of the area around Kandern, then we took them to France to visit one of our favorite villages, Ribeauville.  There is a shop, run by Jean Gazeau, that sells table clothes that we visit nearly every time we are in the area.  Many gifts for family in the US come from Jean!

After visiting Jean, we strolled down the main street, looking at closed shops (lunchtime on Saturday), searching for somewhere to eat.  There is one restaurant at which we have eaten a couple of time.  Knowing there is good food there, we stopped in for a bite.

After a couple of ours of shopping and walking, our stomachs once again lead us into a restaurant, or rather a Patisserie.  We tried some wonderful pastries, coffees, and teas, then resumed our tour and shopping. 

Ribeauville is absolutely beautiful.  The city is cute and quaint, picturesque Alsace and Black Florest.

After spending these few hours in France (with many comments from the Blakes of "We're in France!!"), we headed back to Germany to go eat.  Of course, we had a favorite place to take them!  The Gruenern Straussi.  Schnitzel, many varieties of potato, and a huge salad, and we were full again!

Leaving Gruenern gave us some wonderful pictures of the area where we live.

Lastly, we took a dark 9 PM walking tour of little Kandern.  Don't worry, we bundled up and the walk was only 30 minutes or so.

We said good bye to the Blakes this morning, as they were headed to Zurich to catch a plain to Prague.  We wish them a wonderful trip and we miss them already!

Friends from Texas!!

Jason and Shannon just arrived!  Let me just say WOW!!  They brought us 2 huge boxes full of Texas goodies...literally a Fiesta in a box!  Salsa, corn tortillas, chips, beans, cheese, corn bread kits, candy, and much, much more.  Thank you so much to everyone that contributed to this wonderful care package.  We will not be in want of Texas food for a while, not that we would not appreciate more!

Stewart - Harvey Conflict

An element of conflict in any discussion is a very good thing. It shows everybody’s taking part and nobody’s left out. I like that.

Upcoming Travels

On Sunday, Jana and I leave for Paris for a Finance training.  As you may know, I have been traveling quite a bit recently.  This trip is a welcome change since Jana gets to come with me!  What next?

We have both just been asked to attend an Innovation Conference being put on by the Jesus Film.  This conference is Barcelona, Spain and will be the end of April, beginning of May.

After that will be a trip to Florence, Italy.  I am going to talk to them about 2 tools that may be able to help their ministry.  Jana will also being going to help consult with them on some graphic design issues. 

And finally, at least for this post, I head to Birmingham, England May 20th.  We will be discussing the same 2 tools, about which I will talk with Italy.

We do not have to go anywhere for a bit after I go to Birmingham, but we have my brother and his family at the end of May, followed by a Communications Conference in Kandern the first week of June.

Not a juicy post, but please pray for us as we will be traveling a bit!

Computer Backup and Free time

At the moment, I am running a backup of my computer.  A few months ago, I had a major issue with my computer that cost me a bit of data.  That is a bit painful, but since I had done a backup very recently, I only lost a small amount of information.  So, with that, DO YOUR BACKUPS!!!!!!!!

While I am doing the backup, I am listening to a podcast called Major Nelson.  He is the official unofficial XBox Live spokesman.  It is a fun podcast to listen to if you like video games.  Of course he focuses a lot on XBox 360, he covers all gaming.  Very fun to listen to.

Do you have a Facebook account?  Jana and I are both on Facebook.  Go search for us and add us as a friend!

Since I have some downtime during this backup, I thought I would post something else to the website.  Well, now I have created the post, it is going up now!  Later!

Beginning of the Season

I am back from South Africa and have just enough time to tell you that I will be traveling again! Fortunately, this time Jana gets to go with me and it is not that far away. We are heading to the lovely city of Paris for a Finance Training on a product called Donorwise. Before we leave on Sunday, we will receive our first guests of the year, hence the "Beginning of the Season."

Jason and Shannon, formerly of Doulos (one of our previous Sunday Schools), arrive on Friday and will be with us until early Sunday morning. We leave for Paris that afternoon for Paris, where will be to meet-up with Jonathan and Flora, also formerly of Doulos!

After that, we are looking forward to the 25th of May when my brother's family arrives!!! We are very excited to get to see them, especially our 2 wonderful nieces!

That is just the beginning though! More updates to come on more traveling. Just a preview would be that I will not be in Kandern for much of May. More on that later!

Stewart - Harvey Pleasant