Wafra Trip

Yesterday afternoon our friend Muhammed (abu Khaled) Failakawi (the guy in the yellow shirt in the pictures) dropped by to pick us up for a trip south to Wafra. Wafra is in the southwestern corner of Kuwait, just north of the Saudi border. It contains mostly farms that use the brackish water in that area to raise a surprising number of different crops. If it says "from Kuwait" in the grocery store, then it probably came from Wafra.

Muhammed's friend Mubarrak has a small grass farm down there, along with some camels and goats that he raises primarily for milk. We were privileged to spend some time in his tent (next to his house) lounging on the ground, drinking coffee, tea and eating dates. Then he showed us his camels, and proceeded to milk one of them. Apparently, you can't milk a camel directly...you have to fool it by letting one of its babies drink, and then you can milk it simultaneously. We then took the huge bowl of warm milk into the tent and each had a bowl...well...Rowan had 3 bowls. He digs the camel milk.

Afterwards, we walked around his property, which is lovely and green due to the grass he grows for sale elsewhere in Kuwait. He also had a pen of many goats, which we had some fun with as you can see in the pictures above. We also had a delicious meal of kebab and shish tawouk afterwards before bidding him good night and heading back to Fahaheel where we live. It's about 1 to 1 1/2 hours depending on which road you take, so we were home in no time, which was good as I had to crash having stayed up way past my usual bedtime (7 or 8pm).

Such a good time had by all, once again Muhammed has shown us a lovely time in Kuwait.

Return of the Sun

Wow...it's been a loooong time since our last post. Not much has been happening honestly...I've been working the night shift, which has been unpleasant for Kerri as her weekends become pretty meaningless. We've endured and finally, tonight is my last night! I'll be converting over the next 3 days to dayshift and back to work again.

Who knows? Maybe something interesting will start to happen...

Been reading John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion on my ipod and enjoying it immensely. Best 99c I've ever spent. It's easier to understand than I thought it would be and every other line is packed with profundity.

So we did try going to church during this night shift, and I have to say I was disappointed. The service we went to is trying really hard to be...I dunno..."hip" or something. Pretty typical worship time, then the pastor and another pastor (younger guy) sits up on stools and everyone else sits around tables. The preaching was very shallow and many times cringe inducing. And I *hate* being told to share my deepest personal feelings/secrets/experiences during a 5 minute window with total strangers. There's a very anti-intellectual bent in this church, lots of "don't think about it, just go with the spirit" mentality that I don't agree with. Once a "team" visited from another church somewhere in the middle east to do some sort of spiritual ministry and there were several individuals that night who did the whole "word from the lord" thing which in this case I was pretty sure was just intuitive guesses about people. I've been around the block many times with these types of churches and finally it got too much and I just couldn't stand it anymore. In addition, there are some fundamental doctrinal differences we have with them that would be difficult to ignore.

The good news though is that when I switch to days my weekend will now be Wed, Thurs, Fri, so we'll be able to check out all the services on Friday which are much more common, since Friday is "sunday" here. I'm hoping we can find a fellowship with which we can agree doctrinally, and that we can really try to stick with however long this schedule lasts. Barring that, maybe we can find a home group nearby, or perhaps start one for others in our complex. We know several families that have given up finding a church that they can consistently go to for various reasons.