A Clammy Story

One day, there was a homeschool mom and her crew of students who decided to start "Peace Project." They lived in a neighborhood called "Peace" and decided to pray for the neighborhood and meet as many people as they could.  They also decided to stop every street vendor to learn who they were and what they sold.  First to come by was the vegetable seller.  So the Kelley Crew bought tomatoes, oranges and a bag of...clams.  

How do you cook clams?  The vegetable seller said, "Oh that's easy!"

Just boil some water...

With a little salt...

Wash the clams (she didn't mention how dirty they were)...

Put them in the boiling water...

for ten minutes...

And there you have it...

A cooked clam!

With a little ketchup mixed with sambal (hot sauce)...

They taste...

Eddy wants some...

because they taste...

well, they taste...

Well, yes, they do taste.  But mostly we just covered them in ketchup, so I can't really vouch for how they tasted.   But we did get to know the vegetable seller!

Puzzling Pictures: Parking Rules

Whatever you do, don't pararel park.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012!

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!  Last night we joined with friends to welcome the New Year.  We ate goodies, visited, played charades and enjoyed fireworks.

Then we went home and enjoyed watching the neighborhood fireworks from our own second floor terrace.  Just after midnight we lit sparklers.  I don't know if we enjoyed the sparklers or taking pictures of the sparklers more!  Here are a few:

Life on the Musi

A river runs through our city.  Life is active on the shores of this coffee colored waterway.  We took a boat trip to check it out.  Wanna come along?

There are ferries that transport people and goods to other locations along the river and even out to islands off the coast of the island.

I don't think the boat below is gonna be sea-worthy, hopefully it is just transporting along the river!

Below is a paint shop.  Look at those bright boats!

Every day is laundry day. 

Check out the goat skins on the front wall of this house!

You can see the dome of a blue mosque behind the houses.

Indonesian flag

Back at the shores of the main market area of a city.  

Object Lessons and Perspective

Here's why it's good to have time with the Lord first thing in the morning:  you never know what's going to happen that day...and God does!

This morning I woke up feeling rested.  Kris brought me coffee in bed, saWEEEEET!  Time with the Lord, priceless.  I got up and wandered into the living room.  Kris was relaxed on his recliner.  It is Sunday morning and he is looking forward to preaching at a house church fellowship and then coming home to a relaxing afternoon.  I hear the kids in the kitchen eating breakfast.  They remembered the pancakes from last night and are eating the leftovers for breakfast.  Looks to be an easy day!  But the kitchen smells bad.  I look in the kitty litter box...kitty missed the box!  I clean it up.  Now to throw the trash out.  I unlock the front door, or at least try to.  The key is stuck.  I go to the store room to get the WD40.  The store room is flooded by a broken pipe from an air conditioner.  OK, that's for later, but I go ahead and tell Kris about it.  WD40 doesn't work for the key because...the lock is broken...we can't get out of the door.  This one can't wait because we gotta go to church!  Kris tries all sorts of things but the cheap lock has crumbled and there isn't much to be done in the half hour we have before church.

At our worship time, Kris' sermon is very appropriate.  It's about our light and momentary troubles!  We all decide to go out to eat together.  We have four cars.  One car is hit by a motorcycle on the way. We arrive at the restaurant who says they aren't serving until 2 O'clock.  We pile back into our cars.  One car won't start, needs a new battery!  We leave it behind and go to the next restaurant!  Today feels like trying to run through mud: we are all working hard, but not getting anywhere very fast!  Today is a day of object lessons.

After lunch Kris brings the boys and I home and goes to help get a new battery for our friends' car.  Then our friend helps Kris fix the door.  When they left to go buy a new door handle, I went to take a picture.  And then it hit me...perspective!  Take a look at this picture.  What do you see?  A broken door leaning against the wall?

Well, that's what I was taking a picture of.  But as I looked at the picture I realized there are so many things that are "right" about this picture and only one thing that is "wrong."  At first I saw our front door...off it's hinges...leaning against the wall...that's WRONG!  But then I saw...a Christmas tree: we found one for sale here! ...and I saw our family picture on the wall:  we have a fun, loving, healthy family ...and I saw the grass outside:  the rains came and have refreshed us and made everything look so green and pretty ...and I saw our neighbor's house across the street: we have kind neighbors, who need to hear about Christ ...and I saw our furniture: the Lord has blessed us with beautiful furniture for our home...our home...God has provided that too.  There is so much to be thankful for.  I could spend my time sighing about the broken door, or I could look at the blessings all around me.  It's all about object lessons and perspective!

SEA Games!

Our city is hosting half of the South East Asian Games!  Amazingly, admission was FREE!  So we took a school field trip.  Hey, in Texas everyone is taking a State Fair Day, right?  I think we are entitled to a SEA Games Day! :)

After paying the parking dude 50 cents (20 cents for parking, he said, and 30 cents for snacks and a smoke!) we headed to our first event:  Sepak Takraw.

We had a friendly gun slinger escort us to the venue!

Sepak Takraw is a really cool sport.  It is a mix of volleyball and hacky sack!  Oh man, it was amazing to watch, like volleyball with no hands!

But first, a stop at the toilet.  We felt very safe since they controlled the doping! (?)

Kris and Joel got their picture taken with the Malaysian Sepak Takraw team!  This was just before Indonesia beat them!  AYO!  Indonesia Bisa!  Later, though, we got to ride a bus with this very team, we were looking for transport and a military commando dude invited us to ride with the team!  We dropped them off at their dorm and then went to our next venue (but I'm getting ahead of myself...)

Here is the gym and some of us from the group of 22 foreigners who all went together!  Parts of the day WE were the main attraction!

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the right setting on my camera to capture the amazing Takraw moves.  But if you Google it, you'll see how they fling their legs up over their heads to spike the ball!  Here is one of Indonesia's star players.  He was practicing right behind where we were sitting.

Here is part of the time we were the main attraction.  That's Seth with the Ladies' Takraw Team!

And Joel with a random girl who wanted her picture with him.  After awhile we were surrounded by giggly girls and couldn't even see the takraw game, so we excused ourselves, found some lunch, then headed to the next venue...

Gymnastics!  Men and Women were competing in the finals.  It was SO COOL!  We didn't get to see all of it, but we watched them practice and we watched men's floor, vault and pommel horse and the women's uneven bars!

Here is one of Malaysia's gymnasts.

Here is one of Indonesia's gymnasts.  

This is one of Indonesia's gymnasts.  I took this picture especially for my gymnast niece Kayla!!

What a great day of fun!  We got to see some neat stuff and still there was so much more to see!  What a great opportunity to see some great competition!