World of Wonder - Homeschool Blogger

Just a note...

Wed, 13 May 2009 02:40:00 -0500

I haven't been updating this recently.. first because life was about trying to get out of the bush as the mission made its changes and we had to move on, and since then because I have very little time. We are, admittedly, struggling financially in a poor job market and I have had to give up homeschooling for this year... that was HaaaaaRD! Still remember you all and occasionally read your blogs... and still keep the families here in my prayers.

Bless you all. :-)

What Happened to Homeschooling?

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 15:49:00 -0500

Most of the posts that I added on here are from my personal paid blog space on TypePad and are not specifically homeschool related (except for the robins) so I am sure if anyone is still checking on this blog that you will wonder -- what about schooling?

I have to admit, homeschooling has sort of been taken over by real life. Having raised 3 children who are now over 18, this doesn't give me the heebee-jeebees the way it might have in decades gone by.

Some of you already know that we had thought we were staying with the mission (finally - after quite a roller coaster ride waiting on decisions) until next spring, only to get it sprung that we had to be out in 5 months. This meant not quitting my second job during the busy season, packing, and some panic (albeit resting in faith panic) because I still have no certainty where we will live or what work I might find and whether it will be enough to support a single parent family come August 27th. Moving out of the bush is not the same as moving from, say, Chicago to Atlanta.

I do feel some guilt how little time we have spent with books, and know I have a lot to make up to Brad for when this transition is behind us -- and not for the sake of academics.

We thought we would be leaving for Washington but God made one thing clear -- not to abandon the relationships with the native community of Christians that it took this long to build. So we expect to be in Alaska still... and this year's real homeschool lesson is about listening to the still small voice of God and walking on in faith, even when we feel like saying, "Lord, I believe - help my unbelief!"

Learning About Robins

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 15:42:00 -0500

There was a little confusion with out ATV robins' nest over why the largest robin chick seems to be the only one remaining. If there was a remaining chick, not willing to become a fledgling, one would expect it to be the smallest, wouldn't one?

Having raised the question, it was time for some research. I've heard that in the grand scheme of things there are some young that will knock the others from the nest so that only the most fit survives. Surely something as beloved as a robin could not be capable of such unhumanlike behavior?

Much to my relief, I was right -- Robins are not so barbaric. But I did learn some things. For example, I didn't know that most robins will have 2 nests and 2 families in a single season, and they can overlap. I wonder if they do that in Alaska where we have shorter summers and less wonderful placement for nests out here on the tundra? I suppose it would make more sense, really -- less chance of survival, you would want to hedge the odds in your favor as a parent. And certainly a 14 day growing up period from hatching to fledgling is not too long even for the short Alaskan summer.

Here are links to a couple of robin blogs (one even has a lot of video links). They made me wish we had done better documentation. I want to say there is always next year but since my call at the mission ends abruptly on August 27th, I have no idea where we will be or what birds might live near us next summer.

http://www.howpeg.com/robinblog2005/
http://www.i-pets.com/rpet19.html

Flying the Coop... Er, the ATV...

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:48:00 -0500

I had no idea how quickly robins grew and left the nest! Here we see the last one left, up on the edge of the nest and looking about ready to leave... I guess the 4-wheeler will get hauled off with no trouble about time!

The "Other" Robins' Nest

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:21:00 -0500

Well, thanks to a friend's camera, we got a look at what's in the other nest without me having to lift up my 7-year-old again (we're trying to give these parents a little space, they are more skittish than the ATV robins). It only had one egg and we thought maybe they'd lay more, but apprently not. This one is obviously very recently hatched.

Robins Nest in the Craziest Places

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:16:00 -0500

It wouldn't look like a safe place for a nest to me, but I'm a human, so what do I know. It isn't like we have lots of trees out here and I suppose an ATV engine is safer than a lot of places.

We have had one pair of robins that always comes and makes a nest in the residential doorway of the mission radio station. Every year I take the nest down when they have abandoned it, and every year I promise myself that NEXT year I will get out there and remove everything they could possibly nest on till after the nest building season has passed... and then every year the robins still beat me to it and I post a "Robins' Nest - Please Use Other Door" sign.

This year we added to the drama because a 4-wheeler that we need to have hauled off was adopted by a new pair of robins. Now we're just hoping the babies are big enough to be in the brush before we leave because we need to put the wheels back on and repair it. The timing should be okay, but it has added some drama to the whole spring nesting period.

Brad, of course, is thrilled. He loves birds anyway, and in a short time he has gotten to see close up these tiny wet balls turn into something that resembles a bird by more than the beak. We've watched the parents change from feeding them little green things (worms or catterpillars of some sort?) to something brown, and the parents have become less concerned about us coming and going from the door, and less concerned about our van, which parks quite close to them. The one thing they still seem less than thrilled about is the whole idea of bicycles - they must seem less predictable.

Manokotak

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:49:00 -0500

When I talk to village friends on Yahoo Messenger we inevitably refer to most villages by their airport codes. Manokotak is KMO, Dillingham is DLG -- makes for faster typing. It took me some getting used to at first... as did "poor" as a general negative or saddish sort of agreement.

Manokotak for the last two years has run out of fuel before the end of the winter. This year they were out and the river still frozen, so no barge could get in. In fact, their river is shallow, and not just ANY barge can make it anyway. They flew gas in by plane (and you think you can complain about the cost of gasoline??). Then they ran out again.

Not a hundred miles from me and I had no idea they didn't have their tanks on full... I assumed with break up that a barge got in and everything was fine. On Yahoo, I was told a friend's sister had bummed a ride with someone. She told me they had 5 gallons of gas squirreled away and a little in the truck and a little in the ATV, but were feeling basically housebound. (They live 7 miles outside the main village.) I suddenly felt blessed even paying $5.51 a gallon where I am. She went on to tell me she and her husband, even as her boys were prepping to go to fish camp with their uncle, were discussing whether they needed to move onto the road system. I wondered for not the first time how some of these villages are going to survive, and what that will mean for the Yu'pik culture.

A barge was scheduled in there yesterday, and talking to my friend she complained that they were rationed to 20 gallons of heating oil. I didn't ask her what it cost. I had seen enough of the prices of things in the Bristol Bay Times article.

Dillingham Trip, Part 5: Jimmy

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Somewhere in B's talk he referred to someone in the audience "back there by Jimmy." My mind did a cartwheel. There was a Jimmy from Dillingham who was and is a regular caller to the radio station. I didn't think I'd get to meet him because he was singing at "Grandma's House" that night, and my one regret was the overlap -- singing for the elders, which I would have liked to have joined them for, was from 18:30 till 19:30 or "whenever the Grandmas let them leave." Grace's gathering, the main reason for my visit, was to begin at 19:00 and I had promised to meet her there a little before so we could talk. Having recently switched sides of the church because the side I was on, though close to where Grace had her keyboard and had been sitting, was really not proving to be very good for pictures, and Bonnie (who had left to bring Steve home to rest, since he had just got in from his Medevac) was sitting alone on the other side as well. I had moved to the pew in front of her, so it allowed me to turn and sneak a picture of two Native gentlemen sitting together. If one was Jimmy and I didn't get a chance to be introduced, perhaps I would still find out later and at least have the picture. (It came out terribly!)

I worried for nothing. After B packed up his guitar and headed back to Grandma's House, someone said Jimmy wanted to sing. He started to the front of the church but stopped and said, "But first! Hello [insert my name.] I am Jimmy." We shook hands.

When he got up by the pulpit he turned to everyone and said "I have to first say thank you to [insert my name] for she always plays my two favorite songs from the Patkotak sisters." (Inupiat Gospel singers from up in Barrow.) "The first song is so important to me, It Will Be Worth it After All, because they were here singing that when I rededicated my life to the Lord and it changed my life. And every time I hear it now it reminds me. And the other song is Family Ties, because last year my mother dear and my step father and many others went home to be with the Lord, and it gives me such hope."

I could feel my eyes fill with tears for a moment. I remember last year, there had been a run on deaths in his extended family. His stepfather died in a hospital in Anchorage, and just a few weeks later his mother passed away. Mother dear, as he always calls her still. He had called to request the song, and he thought he would have to tell me about it, but thanks to some connections to his home village I already had the news and he was praising God that I already knew and that we had already been praying for him. I know it isn't "good radio" to always play the same two songs together by the same singers, but I always play them anyway, because mission radio is about service and not just entertainment. I thanked God then, for the trip to Dillingham, just for the chance to shake hands with this one person, even though I had come primarily for Grace.

Then he sang. I had heard him on the phone a number of times and always had asked him when he was going to send me a CD. It isn't the same on the phone though... I got video footage of some of it and then wanted to kick myself for quitting because he went on to sing a verse in Yupik and the camera was busy saving the other so I missed most of the Yupik. I had shared there, and will share here, that when I first made the move to put on an increasing amount of Native Gospel music it was against everything I had been taught about radio -- where we play a lot of music which has had endless amounts of money put into everything being just so -- and very much at the insistence of God, who had basically told me to get over myself and listen with God's ears instead of my worldly ones. I will be adding some of the video footage later, after I can encode it to a different format. I encourage anyone who listens here then to try to do the same, listening with God's ears.

Dillingham Trip. Part 4: Testimonies & Songs of Praise

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:29:00 -0500

I know I got up there, I just don't really remember what I said. I began jokingly with the warning that I hate public speaking, and that since this was my second time in this church and the second time I'd been called on without warning or preparation to speak that I might not be back a third time! I know I gave a bit of the story of coming to learn about God and Christ in my early years, but the rest is a bit of a blurr... I know I touched on unity, on the fact that when we look at race - white, Native, mixed, Chinese, whatever - that we do damage to the testimony of the body of Christ... I mentioned the way the Lord has used Grace in my life and how He wants to use all of us in that way, that if we can live it, nothing would stop people -- all the lonely, hurting people out there -- from wanting what we have. For someone who hates public speaking I think I went on some fifteen minutes. Go figure. [Let me insert an apology that at the moment I can't resize images here at the station - also most of the images of Grace and all the ones of me were on a corrupted card.]

Grace would touch on the issues of race as well, and about the Word going out in Spirit and in Truth from our testimonies -- something I had recently written to Grace about.

"J" and her daughter got up and shared from two perspectives "J's" fight with cancer 27 years ago. Her daughter spoke of being a 3-year-old child who had to learn how to cook from directions her mother gave her from the couch when she couldn't get up, and about sitting behind a plant in the doctor's office crying as they told her mother to go home to her village, be with her family and wait to die. Janice spoke of how in Anchorage at that time there was no Native New Life and how alone she had been, and her cry to God of would take care of her daughter? God spared her, she believed, to answer that simple prayer question.

The woman in the front of this picture got up and shared her testimony of the many years she waited for her husband to come to Christ, and he had shared his side of living a double life between his family and drugs & alcohol.

"B" is the manager at the assisted living home, "Grandma's House." (It has a long Yupik name I can't really pronounce very well yet - and certainly can't spell! -- but everyone just calls it "Grandma's House.") He looked so mild mannered but when he got up he shared and preached with such force I didn't see it coming. "B" and his wife had fostered many children and when he felt the Lord release him from that he rejoiced. "No more kids! Thank you, Lord! I'm going upriver.. gonna do some fishing, gonna do some camping!" But then the Lord opened another door -- at Grandma's House. More kids! Only these "kids" needed even more care even though they were older than him, and they didn't think they needed to listen to him because he was the youngest one there. He had to leave and go back to Grandma's House after he sang -- but I wished he could have shared more and I wish I had thought to get video footage of him singing.

Dillingham Trip, Part 3: No Rest for the Weary

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:53:00 -0500

So my initial grand plan, seeing as I had been up till three in the morning prepping the radio station for my departure and didn't have to be at the church till 19:00, was to get to Dillingham and sleeeeeep! Blessed sleep... not to happen. That five hour wait for the flight, then needing to pick up Steve when he returned from his Medevac pushed us to dinner time. My gracious hosts took me out to eat at the Muddy Rudder. The tough thing about people taking you out to eat anywhere in Bush Alaska is figuring out what to eat when the cheapest thing, usually a cheeseburger, usually still rings in at $15.00 -- and that is this far south. Heaven help me if anyone in ministry ever tries to take me out for a meal further north.

After we eat there is a chance to stop by the house and freshen up and try to track down Grace -- because the great irony of all this effort is that I still don't know for certain that she is actually here. We'd been announcing it on the radio - but we've had mistyped faxes before. Nobody had ascertained for me that she had arrived and been there the night before. As Bonnie and I had wandered around town we had asked people from that church if they knew if Grace was going to be there that night and we always got a sheepish look and a "You know, I think something is going on -- but I'm not sure what." Apparently I needed someone Native to ask.

So after deciding not to do anything about the two braids sticking out from under the baseball cap making look more like a kid than a mother of grown children and the missionary manager of a bush radio station, I tried calling the church hoping for an answering machine. In the bush I'm not usually that lucky and this was no exception.

Bonnie and I brain-stormed a bit and thought we knew where perhaps Grace might be staying. Bonnie made the call and then as Janice, the woman whose house we had called, passed the phone on her end, Bonnie passed it to me.

"[Insert my name here], you called! I can't believe it! I've been listening to your radio station and I heard my nephew on there this morning but I don't hear you except maybe for an announcement. I keep listening and listening for you!"

Ignoring the fact that on weekends I'm not usually on the air except for weather, emergency announcements and song request dedications, I said, "Well, it's hard for me to be on the radio right now because I'm not in [my village]. I'm in Dillingham."

A moment's silence was followed by "You're in DILLINGHAM? " and I could hear her turn to Janice and say "She's in Dillingham! She's here!" Back on the phone to me, "You came? I can't believe you came!"

"I came, and I'll be there tonight."

"I can't believe it. You have to introduce yourself tonight so that I know it is you -- oh never mind, you'll probably be the only white person there. White people never come to these things."

"Well, I certainly look white so you should have no problem if that is the case." But my heart gave a pang over the lack of racial unity within the body of Christ.

It was almost time for both them and us to head to the church so we didn't linger on the phone. When I got there, Janice, whom I had never met before, took one look at me and said, "Oh you must be [my name], you have to come meet Grace!" She called out as we entered the sanctuary but Grace and I only needed to look at each other to know each other. I, of course, had lots of photos from her CDs, but she had never seen me. Our friendship had been built solely by phone and prayer.

One thing was clear to me that evening, there was something very heavy about my friend's spirit that evening... she seemed more concerned about me though, as I insisted I was fine but only tired. She was also hurried to get going.

Most of the people who had already arrived were tightly packed in the back pews. I sat in the front row in support of Grace, who told me God had me there for a purpose -- Janice would open, Grace would sing and give some opening words and then she was going to call on me to get up there and share something?

ME?? Whoa, wait a minute... I don't DO public speaking. I have nothing prepared, I... I... dang it.

Steve was called for the opening prayer. He got up, hobbled to the edge of his pew with his brace, and gave the evening to the Lord. I tried to concentrate on all the words to follow... wondering in the other half of my mind just what the Lord would have me say.