climb

say what you want about Miley cyrus... but this song was pretty inspiring.

The Climb
I can almost see it
That dream I am dreaming
But there's a voice inside my head saying
"You'll never reach it"

Every step I'm taking
Every move I make feels
Lost with no direction
My faith is shaking

But I gotta keep trying
Gotta keep my head held high

There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb

The struggles I'm facing
The chances I'm taking
Sometimes might knock me down
But no, I'm not breaking

I may not know it
But these are the moments that
I'm gonna remember most, yeah
Just gotta keep going

And I, I got to be strong
Just keep pushing on

'Cause there's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb, yeah!

There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Somebody's gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb, yeah!

Keep on moving, keep climbing
Keep the faith, baby
It's all about, it's all about the climb
Keep the faith, keep your faith, whoa

A moment in Lebanon

I was surprised that I was able to walk off the streets of Minneapolis into Lebanon. The building, the music, the dancing, the families... and the food. I have not studied much about Lebanon nor the Lebanese culture. I felt very thrown into it.

an amazing experience:
...met many Lebanese people who are technically neighbors
...ate raw beef for the first time ever
...learn a few Lebanese words
... heightened my interest for other cultures once again.

Words of Wisdom that AIG continues to reinforce...

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Abraham Lincoln.

Lebanese Man and a blessing.

Some of you might remember my post last October about the man i helped on the side of the road while on my way to the Thrift store. he contacted me this weekend in hopes that I will be able to attend a Fiesta put on by local Lebanese people in Minneapolis. This is a family oriented event and he asked me to come and be a part of his family. This means the world to me and I can not wait to see how it will go.

in other news, I came back from ireland and found out i was laid off along with many others from my job. So that was a bummer, but i am confident that something better is to come.

1 more thing.

There are 32 counties in Ireland. We drove and prayed over at least 8 of them.

back home a changed person.

We are back in chicago. I am happy to be here. It was raining when we left and it is raining here too... but the grass here isn't neon green.

It is snowing. Bummer.

There was a lot of spiritual warefare we faced. I am not ready to post stuff right now.

Sorry I didn't post much. The internet is very slow when I could find it. And some places blocked my website.

new faces and more cold rain.

i feel like i have a lot to say about what happened today. but i am exhausted. i have never felt the power of spiritual warfare so deep in my soul as i do here in this land. we visited the old school for the deaf boys. it was very daunting and made my heart cry. i felt sick just looking at it. we were able to meet to older deaf men and they told us part of their experiences at the school.
terrible terrible things happened. i can not even describe it in english. the power of darkness is everywhere. this may sound wierd, but it is a very hard place. i never knew these things about the irish.
it was cold and rained all day today. the plans we have for tomorrow and some for the rest of the week are up in the air and some have already been cancelled. we were supposed to meet the big group of deaf in Dublin tomorrow but one of their members was killed in a car accident on sunday so everything is cancelled. they wil lnot have celebrations in a time like this. i have already learned enough ISL to tell one of my healing stories in their language. however, i am unsure if this will happen. If the Lord has other plans we will follow, but we want to be clear that this is not a distraction instead of the Lords will. We have all been in prayer and have really felt the soul of these deaf people meet. i met a about 10 deaf women tonight. instead of using their sign lanugage they were talking to eachother and trying to read eachothers lips. they woldn't even sign to eachother in front of the men. i am not sure if that is because they are REALLY serious about keeping their sign language a secret from the men or if this is somthing they were taught in their seperate school for the deaf for girls.

a lot of questions ,not many answers, a lot of pain, looking for restoration,

toni

Already Tuesday. and six hours ahead.

some letters on the keyboard are different here. so don't judge me.

time goes so fast once you are not in a van to chicago or on an 8 hour flight in the middle of two men three times the size of you. i did not sleep at all on the plane. neither of the men gave consent for me to use thier shoulder... depsite the fact that they were from my group. :) that was fine. I have never traveled with a group of people. it is a lot less stressful for me. mainly because i have chose for it to be. i just follow the group and do what they are doing and somehow... i arrived at my destination safely.

when we arrived it was very sunny and not raining. (josh, i should have brought my sunglasses!)
that didn't last too long. they have short showers. everyone just finds a place to stand and waits the 3 minutes until it stops then continues on their way.

the first story that had us laughing and crying. we rented a van here. they drive on the other side of the road. you think you would get used to it. we havn't. we have driven a lot already and all of us scream when the cars are coming at us still. or when we have to pull out onto the left side of the road. barbara(our professor) is the only one permitted do drive. all of us at some point have given her directions on how to drive. the thing is... the roads here are VERY narrow. they are about three inches wider than one side of our street, but they expect two cars or buses, or tractors to go down the same road. they originally were for horses, and they have never extended them. there is no shoulder, just the middle of the road or you hit a wall of grass. while i was sitting on the left side passenger seat in the front i was so terrified that when we came so close to a pole on that side all i could do was hold my breath until we hit it rather than yell at her to move more to the left. but there was a bus coming on her side of the street, so in our american minds, we had no choice but to hit the pole. no worries, it was just the side mirror, and they anticipate that here. every car has retractable side mirrors. so i just rolled the window down and pushed the mirror, with my shaking hand, back to the position it was supposed to be in. of course i blame myself more than barbara for that situation! but laughed a lot, screamed a lot, then finally reached our home for the week.

a few differences in the spoken language:

boot: trunk of a car
they say hesh for the letter H and zed for the letter Z (just like you jim!)
Mineral: soda
tin: can
collect: pick-up we will collect him from the airport
cheaky: sassy
gents/lads: men
mobile: cell phone
so many more but i can't think of them all.


they have 4 meals here(times vary with families):

breakfast (8am): kind of a large meal
dinner(1pm): the largest meal for the day
tea(5-6pm): a light meal
supper (9p or before bed): a bowl of cereal or something light
anytime you are offered coffee there is always tea too. the question is: coffee or tea? and they think it is odd that American's put honey in their tea.

We have learned a lot about the history of the Irish people and the oppression against them from England. I feel like such an ignorant American. However, I subscribe to CNN and Newsweek and I never hear anything about what is going on here. Northern Ireland and Ireland only stopped bombing eachother 5 to 7 years ago! The woman i am living with, her brother and her daughter were in two seperate bombings! both lived and were not hurt physically. The resession here has seemed to hit the people harder than it has in America. Which is interesting because i think Americans might have this false persumsion that our money is actually worth something still. even though we have no silver or gold left to trade. With Obama being president in the US now and working on a way to tax those businesses who are out of the country, Ireland has been hit hard with unemployment. American businesses here have shut down and left. This left thousands of Irish people and immigrants to Ireland jobless. and there is no where else for them to turn. in the past 6 weeks there have been 770,000 people who have immigrated out of Ireland to find work elsewhere in the European Union. That is only Ireland, not Northern Ireland! there is so much oppression against them and the history is so deep i can not explain it all on here. I am upset i have not heard anything about this!

we landed in the dublin airport, picked up our rental van and drove to the church to meet the missionaries. it was embarrasing how hard it was for all of us to stay awake in church. I feel worse for the two Deaf guys in our group trying to watch an interpreter interpreting in a completely different language! they had to have been tired.

we met many Deaf the first day and started to pick up the language right away. it is a lot easier when you have hearing people who know the sign language and can tell you what things mean, rather than in the philippines where i had to figure it out on my own. It took me about 3 hours to learn as much of ISL as it did for me to learn FSL. our group tries to communicate and we go in and out of ASL and ISL. it is kind of funny. The deaf boys and girls were seperated into two different schools by the English, they were afraid the deaf children would start liking each other and they would bread more deaf children. (this is false of course). This stemed TWO different signed languages in Ireland! Northern Ireland has thier own sign language too. But the girls have thier own (secret) signs they use with each other and they also learn the boys sign language. But the boys are not permitted to know the girls sign language. The deaf here have kept it that way even though some of the schools have integrated. it is more of a tradition now. so us girls are learning a lot more signs and trying to figure out what can use and when. confusing. The deaf here are opposite from america. Irish Deaf do not trust other deaf people. American deaf do not trust hearing people. When England took over they would tie the chilren's hands behind their backs and beat them if they would sign ISL verses British sign language. We tried to learn some british sign language but it is very difficult. the Deaf here are very scarred from being beaten by the nuns and well as sexual abuse that they have almost ALL encountered. very deep pain. this is a barrier we are trying to break through, but it is deeply routed into the mental issues of the persons and the bondage must first be broken.

there are many motorcycles here and it is making me more anxcious to drive mine. the license plates here make it obvious who has what care. they look like this:
97-D-506
they list the year of the car, the county the car is registered, and what number that make of car was sold in that county.

The toilets have to buttons on top of the tank. One is for a lighter spray of water and the other for a more forceful flush depending on what you put in the toilet. you must hold the button down until things have properly dissapeared as well. this, is much better than the philippines who did not have any flushing system. :)

today we are going to Phoenix Park which is the largest park in all of Eroupe. so that will be fun.

things are much more different than they are the same. i am suprised. and luara, there are a few people here from lithuania... i guess they came for work. :)


wanting and irish accent and getting funny looks when i try,

Toni