Made in China

What made this Chinese dinner particularly delicious was Yuan's own words when we asked him how it tasted: "Ummm, just like home."

After 7,000 miles of travel by jet, four days of living in an unfamiliar country, in an unfamiliar culture, with an unfamiliar host-family, eating unfamiliar food, on a 13-hour time-difference schedule, breathing unfamiliar cooler air, walking among unfamiliar Anglo people, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed... it was time for something familiar. It was time for a little bit of "home."

Yuan and Youkang asked if they could cook FOR US, since we had been cooking for them these last four days after arriving from China. “Sure!” (A night off, we naively thought.)

MJ took them to Cub—first grocery store they had seen in the U.S. It was HUGE. But they loved the “Asian Aisle.” It was filled with just what they needed. MJ thought she should buy more pork—10 oz. would not nearly be enough! But Yuan was insistent. So, she bought only what they needed… some mushrooms, cabbage, pork slices, tomatoes, and "Chinese soy sauce"--none of that U.S.--type stuff.

“The secret to Chinese cooking” Youkang told us “is high heat and plenty of oil.” MJ and I watched. “Hovered” I suppose you could say. But they did just fine, electric heat and all (electric burners are hard to control). We laughed and learned in the kitchen that night (sounds like Alpha!) as they prepared and cooked the food. Fried eggs and stewed tomatoes mixed together, fried cabbage (uummm!), fried pork in a special flour batter (uummm!), and, of course, rice.

It was delicious. No matter how hard we had tried to cook food that would be familiar to them with our best “Chinese” touches and knowledge, it just wasn’t quite the genuine thing. THIS meal was definitely MADE IN CHINA.

I asked if I could pray for them… “bless them,” as we sat down to eat. This was our gift to them each evening over dinner. We are growing fond of our new friends. And we want them to experience the fullness of God’s love.

Lawn-Mowing 101

The things you take for granted. Like lawn-mowing, for example.

As our two Chinese students were getting in my truck to go get cell phones Merlajean was rolling the lawnmower out of the garage. As exciting as “finally getting connected” would be, AND making their first purchase in the USA… the little four-wheel machine with “HONDA” stamped on its side caught their eye and wouldn’t let go.

There they stood, frozen mid-step in the driveway, insatiably curious as my wife pulled on the starter rope. (Yup, it started on the first pull. Always does.) As the roar of the machine drowned out any further conversation, they inched closer to watch as my wife flipped the transmission to “drive” and took off across the lawn, shaving a nice clean path down the middle of the shaggy lawn!

Forget the cell phones. They wanted in on the action! So my wife proceeded to teach them how to run the lawnmower across the lawn… which levers to push and which ones to pull. Yuan went first. Away it went! A little faster than he expected. He ended up doing a wheelie up the hillside! Youkang was next. He too bordered on doing wheelies and running level. Up and down they went.

I snuck inside to get my camera and snapped a few pics. (For their mama’s, of course.)

Then they stood and watched Merlajean for a while. Funny. The things you take for granted. It never occurred to me that neither one had never cut the grass before. But then, why would they have? There’s very little private lawn to mow where they live.

As we hopped in the truck and headed for the cell phone store, I realized the joke was really on me: I just passed up the opportunity to give them a “free gift” of operating our mower as they mowed our lawn!

Hosting x2

“Could we take another Chinese student?” Phyllis asked? “Let me talk with my wife about it,” I responded as my mind quickly scanned a mental check-list of reasons “for” and “against” it.

Let's see... we just moved into our new home 3 weeks ago. Our living room is scattered with ladders, paint cans and tarps and furniture stacked up in the middle of the room. Both guest bedrooms look the same way. The basement is filled with tons of unopened boxes. The garage is a disaster. My mother is just emerging from brain cancer surgery and needs care. I've just returned from 6 days with my son at Olympic National Park. Oh, and by the way... I have a job. Remember?

I put my cell phone down as I continued driving up to St. Cloud to visit my recuperating mother. "Hmmm. Can we take another student?" The prospects don't look good.

The “we-can-do-everything” side of me was already making plans to host this other student while my weaker “wait-a-second-let’s-think-this-through” side of me was stepping on the brakes with both feet!

As I prayed about it the next morning just after I had come up with six solid reasons that it would probably not work out at this time, I heard a clear voice say:

“Daaahhh! Who cares if the bedroom is not painted yet? Who cares if the living room has ladders and paint tarps scattered about? Who cares if there’s no room in the garage to walk? Who cares if there are no pictures up yet? Let’s look at the facts: 1. You have two empty bedrooms in your home. 2. Two new graduate students from China need a place to land for several days after they fly in from China, begin to get settled, get registered, open bank accounts, get cell phones, find an apartment, prepare for classes at the U., etc.”

“Well….?” I heard the voice say. “OK, we’ll do it,” I said. “When you put it like that, it’s a no-brainer.” And it is. My wife agreed.

If I was the visiting student, for example, I would ask myself, “would I rather sleep on the street, or in an unpainted bedroom?” It’s a no-brainer. Right?

I’m glad God speaks to me so clearly sometimes. I’m even more glad when my brain is sufficiently unclogged to actually “hear” God’s voice, and my heart is sufficiently motivated to be agreeable. Because whenever you hear and follow God’s voice, you get blessed. And we have been. Tons.

Direct from China

I wasn’t sure what I would say when I saw Yuan for the first time. Maybe, “Welcome to the USA.” No, maybe “Welcome to America.” Or maybe just “Welcome” would be sufficient—said with a genuine, warm smile, of course.

At least, that’s what I thought I would appreciate if I had just packed up my life into three huge suitcases and left for China without knowing exactly who I would be staying with, where I would end up living, or if I was somehow being taken advantage of. Or even “set up?” (When you take such a big step into the unknown your mind plays all kinds of games with you.)

To my surprise there were lots of other Anglos in the Waiting Area of MSP, where all the international flights empty out, each ready with their warm smiles and rehearsed lines to say when “their” student appeared. Then, as if on cue, as each “Chinese-looking-student” appeared from out of the Customs area, we each held up our hand-made cards with the name of our student printed in large black letters. And each of the students would carefully scan each card—without appearing to scan each card, of course, since they still had that “teen-age edge” to them. As each student spotted “their” name and Host Family they suddenly broke into a huge smile, and you could watch a sense of relief and calm unfold across their face.

I caught Yuan’s eye as he appeared from out of Customs. He had emailed a picture of himself, as I had to him, so I had a sense of what he looked like. Our eyes met and locked. Somehow… we just knew. I held up my card anyway and he came straight-away toward me, with—you guessed it—a huge smile. We shook hands and after saying “hello” I uttered my line, “Welcome to America.”

It’s amazing, really, that two strangers who live 7,000 miles from each other, can, upon meeting each other, break out in genuine warm smiles and greet each other. Which says that… when you get right down to it, we’re all pretty much the same, aren’t we?

18 month-old Golden Retriever CHEAP! (Part 1)

by Merlajean Gartland

18 Month-old Golden Retriever CHEAP!
Answers to the name of "Toast" and/or "Bad Dog".

She is the perfect dog if you can live with the following:

You can never go anywhere because:
--You cannot put her in a crate or she will throw herself from side to side so that, when you let her out, she limps and you’ll have to take her to the vet, who wants to call in an orthopedic surgeon.
--If you decide to crate her anyway she will pee on herself, which requires bathing her and washing everything in her crate when you get home. (This can be especially annoying if you have a day when you are in and out.)
--If you leave her in the bathroom she will unroll the toilet paper, pull out all the Kleenex, and rip up the bath mat and towels.
--If you leave her in your bedroom, she will rip up your blinds, even if they are new.
--If you leave her in the garage she will frantically claw at the door to the house, scratching it and taking the paint off.
--If you leave her in the garage she will chew through all the knots of the rope that you’ve used to tie the boat’s tarp on with. More than once. She will also chew the handle off of the starter-rope on the lawnmower, making the rope disappear into the mower. Again, more than once.
--You can’t leave her with your sister-in-law for the weekend because, while she’s hanging freshly washed clothes in the basement, she’ll see something dripping on them from upstairs. She’ll go up to see that the dog has peed. She will say ‘Never again’.

You cannot have company because:
--She jumps on people, which annoys adults and terrifies kids.
-- If you hug someone, she will wedge her body between you.
--If you boil a chicken to use in a casserole, you will put it in a strainer in the sink to cool while you go upstairs to do a quick errand. When you come back, the bird will be on the floor with both leg/thigh portions and one wing missing.
--She will chew your guests' shoes, purse, briefcase, glasses, wallets, hats/mittens/coat, sweater, cell phone, contact lenses (case and all). This can get expensive.

You cannot take her anywhere in the car because:
-- if you have to run in somewhere for just a minute, a woman will run in the store a few seconds later yelling that someone’s dog just crawled out of a sun roof (which, being the good dog owner that you are, you have left open so the dog gets fresh air), walked all over the car and is now tearing around the parking lot.
--If you close the sun roof ¾ of the way and go back into the store, a boy will come running in yelling that someone’s dog just crawled out of a sun roof, walked all over the car and is now tearing around the parking lot.
--If you run into the library you will come back to find the driver’s seat and steering wheel covered with anxious "I-thought-you-were-never-coming-back!" drool.

(Read more on Part II)

18 month-old Golden Retriever CHEAP! (Part 2)

18 month-old Golden Retriever CHEAP! (Part 2)
by Merlajean Gartland

She is the perfect dog if you can live with the following:

You can’t leave her in the yard alone because:
--She will chew all the branches off of the bushes in the front yard and then do it again when you’ve replaced them with new bushes.
--She will incessantly bark at anything that looks different: the garbage can is at the end of the drive way, the sprinkler is on, the neighbor’s sprinkler is on.
--If the battery to the electric fence dies, she will sense it immediately and take off on a tour of your neighbor's back yards, gardens and garages.
--She will dig.

If you take her to Obedience School:
--She will behave marvelously at home when you have food. If you are not inside your own house or do not have food, she will look at you like you’re speaking Greek.
--She will follow no commands while at class. She will just bark, bark, and bark to let you know that she wants to play with the other (good) dogs.
--You can never leave a door open in the house or she will retrieve your underwear from the bedroom closet , pictures from your night stand, your computer mouse from the office, brushes/sponges from the laundry room.

A good dog is a tired dog, but:
--You cannot take her down to the lake to swim because, after fetching the stick only once, she will hunt for dead fish, which she will give a few chomps on and then swallow whole before you have a chance to get it away from her. Or roll in it.
--You cannot take her to the park to play fetch because, after retrieving the ball only once, she will run off chasing bunnies, which, if she catches one (and she will) she will treat it the same way she treats dead fish.
-- You can never hold on to her leash as you bike because she will get spooked when a bag blows across the road and put on her brakes, which means you’ll get a ride to the Emergency Room in an ambulance.

If you let her sleep on the floor of your bedroom, you will wake up each and every morning to find her in bed with you.

Bidding starts today with an opening bid of $1.00. Bidding ends 12/31/2024.
No refunds. No returns.

Contact me at: mj@mjpuppet.com

(PS: The next time I get a pet, it’s going to be a minnow.)

Fasting for Larry

May 2, 2009. I’ve been meaning to fast and pray for quite some time, but I just never seem to get to it. Until Thursday. Now it was urgent. And maybe that’s what it requires in the first place: an urgency.

One of our House Church members had a “suspicious mass” show up in a CAT scan, so he was referred down to Mayo for a closer look on Thursday.

Our group was stunned when we heard the news. Larry is so healthy!

Since our group had just started to study fasting, we decided to just do it. We would fast and pray on Thursday, throughout the day, for Larry while he ran through a battery of tests. That Tuesday evening in our group meeting we anointed him in the name of Jesus and prayed for our brother. He said it was already bringing him great strength just to know that we would be fasting and praying throughout the day.

I didn’t remember it being so difficult. Fasting, that is. The morning was pretty normal. But around lunch time my stomach went on strike and let me know it for the rest of the day. Which is what a fast is all about: giving up something as an act of faith and sacrifice.

Our House Church gave up food for a day as an act of sacrifice to demonstrate our sincerity before God as we prayed for Larry. The lack of food functioned as a constant alarm clock, reminding us to pray throughout the day. The act of fasting itself demonstrated our oneness with our brother. We would voluntarily suffer a few hours without food, while he involuntarily suffered an invasion of his body by unknown forces.

We received the preliminary results around 3:15—an encouraging prognosis!

That night I savored plain white rice with a little butter. Rice never tasted so good. Unity with my brother Larry never felt so good either. And the prayer-mode that I entered into that day was new, and rich, and deep.

A totally out-of-the-box, brand new, ground-breaking approach to the economic crisis!

I just finished watching Gov Arnold Schwartzenegger being interviewed on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” I was absolutely stunned in amazement by the governor’s ground-breaking approach to solving the $42 Billion economic crisis in the state of California. Somehow he’s figured out how to bring both Republicans and Democrats together to solve the largest state deficit in the nation this year. Forty-nine other governors have been racking their brains trying to figure this out too for their own states, and for the nation. Not to mention Obama, the Fed, and all the others.

Arnold’s solution? “Listen to the people.” He said that to get out of this emergency situation the people asked for two things: spending cuts and tax increases. So that's what he's doing.

Stunning, isn’t it? Who woulda thunk? I’m not even sure I know what "listen to the people" means, do you? I remember reading about this out-of-the-box concept in my 6th grade civics class, but only as a theory, of course. No one ever really practices it! At least that’s been my experience. Until today, listening to Arnold.

The concept is probably as unfamiliar to you as it is to me. So let me explain. (First, I have to dust off my brain cells in this area.) I think the basic idea is that as “public servants” (Gov. Schwartzenegger’s term, not mine) your primary responsibility is to “do what is right for the people” that you govern, not what is necessarily right for your party.

Wow. Crazy huh? I KNOW that this is a very difficult concept to get your head around, friends. But—please!—try to stay with me. I thought the whole idea of a “public servant” disappeared long ago from our vernacular. In fact, wasn’t it about the same time (coincidently) that “elected office” transitioned into a stepping stone to further one’s career into a more lucrative job offers down the road? The idea of actually listening to what the people are asking for, and then drawing up policy based on that is… well, antithetical to what political parties are all about, isn’t it?

When Stephanopoulos asked Schwartzenegger how the rest of his Republican Party is reacting to his leadership, Schwartzenegger responded that “we have to get beyond the fighting between the two parties—whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican—and do what’s best for the people.” There it is again! “Brilliant” is the only word I can come up to describe such radical thinking. I have no idea whether this vintage concept will ever catch on in a big-time way among members of the two parties. But just the thought of it makes me want to sit in the yoga “loctus” position for several hours just to reflect on the profundity of this idea! Don’t you too?

Toast Goes South on Vacation

It seemed like a great idea. My daughter had been wanting to get a dog for several months. We, on the other hand, had been gently counseling her on what a dog would actually require of her in her young adult, on-the-go life.

So when MJ and I had the chance to get away to the Sunshine State for a week in January (part-business, part-pleasure), we had only one big hurdle to jump: what to do with our dog “Toast” for seven days? One of us put two-and-two together and decided that Toast would go south on vacation too—to our daughter’s house in Chicago! (Hey—Toast loves the snow and cold weather, okay? She doesn’t need to know that no one goes “south” to Chicago on vacation.)

Okay, got the picture? Have dog, will travel (for a visit). A win-win deal.

So when I drove half-way to Chicago today to pick up Toast at the end of her two-week “vacation”… well, let’s just say that Janna has decided that she won’t be getting a dog anytime soon after all. It’s not that she hates dogs. Or Toast. It’s just that, well… dogs require a little more attention than what one might first think. Basically, they come into your house with one motto: “It’s all about me.”

What happened? Maybe the best way to describe it is to let you read the “Thank You” card that Toast gave to Janna today. It reads…

“Thank you for taking care of me when Mom and Dad went somewhere without me. I enjoyed almost everything—the curtains, shades, towels, toilet paper, Kleenex, the wallet (including the credit cards, dollar bills and pictures), and the chicken nuggets you laid out for me on the counter to defrost. Thanks again for all the walks, games of fetch and cuddle-time on the couch. I was on my best behavior, but if I wasn’t perfect, just remember that bad dogs have more fun! P.S. I was disappointed that I didn’t get a better look at your boyfriend’s new cell phone, since his old one was so fun to chew on last summer!”

Mob Hysteria at Sunset

At first we didn’t take much notice. Just an older couple dawdling along toward the direction of the beach. Then another couple. But as we strolled along, scoping out this unfamiliar neighborhood of tiny houses just a half a block from the beach, the street quickly and strangely filled with more and more people. So much so that it was un-nerving! But there was something that wasn’t quite right either… it took me a minute to decipher what it was.

That’s it! They were all walking in the same direction. Scary. Like one of those mass hysteria scenes that you see on movies when news comes over the TV that an impending asteroid is about to hit the earth, and everyone comes streaming out of their homes into the streets with blank bewildered looks in their eyes, resigned to face their own death within the next half hour!

Well, ok. Maybe it wasn’t quite that much mass hysteria. But it was strangely similar! Merlajean and I both wondered, “What’s going on? What’s wrong? Maybe a plane just went down in the ocean, like in New York.”

So we joined the panic-stricken mob and scurried down to the beach.

We headed toward a little park. Through palm trees. Over the grass. Around flowering bushes. And out into an opening. And there they all were. Dozens of people. Just standing around. Many were looking in the same direction. We quickly glanced in that direction and saw—the setting sun. It was a big, bright firey-orange ball, just hanging on the horizon. Hmmm. We quickly looked out to sea for signs of a tall black plumage of smoke. We scanned the horizon for rescue choppers. For cop cars. For panic-stricken dads and moms. Nothing.

So I struck up a conversation with the elderly couple six feet in front of us and asked them what was going on. “Just watchin’ the sun set,” they said. They could tell we were from out of town, so they let us in on their secret. “When you get to be our age, this is the most exciting thing that happens each day! Everyone comes out for it.”

We looked around. Sure enough, most of the crowd was 60 years-old-plus folks. Walter, the husband, told us that tonight wouldn’t be too spectacular since the sky was so clear. But last night—wow! It was something else! We struck up a warm conversation, and kidded and joked about coming down here to Florida from the Snowy North.

The sun had now set. Like clock-work, everyone all turned and began streaming off the beach, out of the park, back toward their homes. One more day had yet again slipped away from the people in the Sunshine State. They had come to pay their daily homage to this god. And in another twelve hours it would begin all over again. God willing.