Stories of the Gabrysch Family

The Land of Our Sojourn

2012-01-25T23:19:00.000-06:00

The first few weeks here in Ethiopia have not been easy. Writing this almost makes me laugh. Of course it hasn’t! But I think there is the expectation that the beginning stages will be that of an adventure. And then some time before “culture shock” sets in. With us, I noticed that we skipped over the adventure part. Some of it has been the convenience factor. Living in Africa for just 3 weeks now has shown me that I have come to idolize convenience. In the States, we have gone to great lengths to make everything convenient. We have a Starbucks inside the Target so we can shop an endless variety of goods and get a latte under the same roof! Here, the “simple” act of purchasing one item – say, a mop – may take all morning. To find the shop (that even sells mops), to get cash (because that is the only way to pay), to get to the shop (on 3 minibuses), etc. We are getting the hang of it. But when my frustration seeps out, I see how much I have come to expect that things be made convenient for me. Then, I realize that 80% of the world lives without this convenience – and they function just fine.

God is also teaching me through His word – in particular the latter chapters of Jeremiah addressed to the exiles. (I have been reading through the Bible in a year. Still in Jeremiah and it’s almost February of the next year. Oops!) I realized as I read these passages that I was really connecting with them. Something about living in a foreign culture brings new light to Scripture written to exiles. I was taking particular comfort for example in Jeremiah 31, where God tells the exiles repeatedly not to fear and that He will “turn their mourning into joy.” And it occurred to me that we are all exiles, and that this earth is not our home. It’s just that when I am surrounded by the comforts and conveniences that I am accustomed to, I lose sight of this. When I am plunged with my family into a foreign culture and forced to “figure it out,” it brings awareness to the fact that was there all along. This world has some amazing things in it – indeed created by our loving Father. But as the late Rich Mullins sang, it is the “land of our sojourn.” We are awaiting the far better country. May I long for it no matter where I am and long to lead others there too!

Addis Home

2012-01-21T07:34:00.004-06:00

Here is a walking tour of our home in Addis. This will be our home for the next 3 months while we are in language school. Enjoy!

Celebrating Early

2012-01-20T08:00:00.000-06:00

We celebrated Taylor's ONE year birthday a month early so her grandparents could see her covered in cake.

A few from Christmas...

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000-06:00

We enjoyed two weeks with our families over the Christmas holiday. Nate really loved opening gifts this year and Taylor was excited about the pretty decorations. This was a special time with our families just days before our departure to Ethiopia.

Sweet Goodbyes

2012-01-16T11:31:00.004-06:00

Our last few weeks in the States were full of sweet goodbyes.

We had an open house in Dallas just before Christmas and it was like a reunion with my friends from Aggie Sisters for Christ.

It was so fun to see all of you!

We also had a fun night of fellowship and prayer with our community group and dear friends from Austin. Thanks for walking through life with us over the past 6 years.

We have been blessed by all of you so much!

First few days in Africa

2012-01-11T16:12:00.001-06:00

We have been told that the first few weeks on the mission field are the most difficult. So far, we can say that this is true. It has been a little like an episode of survivor for our household. We have encountered several unexpected challenges and some spiritual warfare too. Thankfully, we have seen God providing for us in the midst of all of this and it has encouraged us that we are still in the center of His plan.

To say that things move slower here in Africa is an understatement! It takes an entire day to get one thing done. Here is an example (we have a million just like this one): Jeremy’s attempt to get an internet card. First you have to have passport photos for this and they drove 30 minutes to find a photo place, then the driver took him to 4 different roadside stands before they found one that had the internet card, then the driver’s car broke down so they had to wait for the driver’s friend to pick them up. In the meantime, Jeremy needed more cash so they walked to an ATM machine. The first one was broken, the second one was out of cash, and finally the third one worked! Finally his friend arrived and drove Jeremy back home. Jeremy setup our internet and it worked for about an hour before it stopped working for reasons still unknown. WELCOME TO AFRICA!

God’s hand has provided for us by placing other missionaries into our path at just the right time. Our first day here, we “ran” into a missionary from Soddo (in a city of 3 million people!) who helped us get medicine for Taylor as she was coming down with croup. Our third day here, our friends, Paul and Becca, came up to Addis to welcome a mission team. They have been so helpful for us. Today, Paul drove us around town to find many things that we need to live life here like a water filter and groceries (we had been close to starving for the first few days here). They also brought their kids and Nate has enjoyed playing with them! They have been an encouragement and comfort to us.

Sic 'em Bears!

2011-12-30T20:59:00.004-06:00

Earlier this week, I got to attend the 2011 Alamobowl. It was a great game, and as a Baylor alum, I was really pumped to see our

Heisman trophy winner play. I was able to re-connect with some great friends from college to go to the game, and it occurred to me what perfect timing that this game happened just before we leave for the mission field. My parents were there (my dad is a Baylor alumnus too!) so I got to see them too. And I realized what a sweet gift that I would get this opportunity just days before we leave for another continent. I mean, I know God didn't orchestrate a 10-win season, a Heisman trophy, and a bowl game in my state all for me to have that. Or did He?...

2011-12-19T10:46:00.002-06:00

We have less than one month left before our move and hopefully this will be a respite for our family. We have been going non-stop since Taylor was born in February planning, preparing, raising support, training, and packing for this big adventure. All of it is finally done and we are excited to spend the rest of our time in the States with family and friends.

We have felt incredibly loved over the past few weeks by our friends, community group, and church. We thank all of you who have prayed for us, helped us with our move, toasted our futures, came to our farewell parties, sent us encouraging emails, wrote on our facebook pages, and hugged our necks. We are so grateful to know all of you and have your support!

2011-12-06T19:53:00.005-06:00

Last Sunday, our home church prayed for us and hosted a reception to send us to Ethiopia with their love and support. We have attended First Evangelical Free Church for the past 6 years. This community of Christians has been a huge blessing in our lives. They have showered us with love and support and given us a place to serve in missions, adoption, and caring for orphans. Many in this community are on our financial support team and many more are praying for our family as we make this transition.
Thank you FEFC for caring for us so well during our time here in Austin. We will miss seeing all of you every week but look forward to our trips back to the States to reconnect.
And if you are looking for a great church in Austin, go visit this one!

Goodbyes have begun..

2011-11-30T19:53:00.000-06:00

We have been having dinner parties with these wonderful friends for the past 3 years. All of us are adoptive parents with Ethiopian children. We all love Jesus and are advocates for adoption in the Austin community and around the world. It has been a special blessing to have close friends with so much in common. Our children have become friends too. We had our last get together just before Thanksgiving. We are so thankful for all of you and we will miss you guys!!

Taylor at 9 Months

2011-11-21T16:29:00.002-06:00

We have a busy little lady on our hands. She has started crawling and pulling up. She is quick and determined. At 17lbs & 9 oz, she is in the 25% for weight and also for height. She just started "really eating" solid foods and she loves feeding herself cheerios. Her two bottom teeth finally made their appearance after many months of drooling and teething. Taylor is mostly all smiles, loves to laugh, play with her brother, and flirt with strangers. Here are the latest pictures:

PILAT Draws to a Close

2011-11-18T11:25:00.010-06:00

Today we finish our 2 week course in language acquisi tion. I can't say enough good things about this course. The course was started in 1975 by Dwight & Barbara Gradin. They had served with Wycliffe Bible Translators in the early 1970's among the Jeh people in Vietnam. Not only did they live in Vietnam during war, they managed to learn Jeh and translate the New Testament. We consider ourselves so fortunate to have taken this course from Dwight and his associates. Over 3 decades, they have perfected a strategy in language learning with their incredible skills in phonetics and a deep passion for seeing the Gospel taken to "every tribe and tongue." Dwight trains you with drills that emphasize the range of sounds the human mouth can produce. (See the video below - rather funny.) And he fills his teaching with incredible stories from the mission field and lots of humor. ("Did you hear the one about the cannibal who passed the anthropologist on the trail?") Thank you Gradins for equipping us and so many others so well.

Dwight teaching

Practicing all the sounds we learned

the New Testament in Jeh

2011-11-16T10:25:00.003-06:00

Ahhhhhhh! Time is zooming by us. We cannot believe we will be moving to Ethiopia in less than 2 months. Every time we think about this reality we get a huge pit-like feeling in our stomachs. Mostly because we are sad to leave our loved ones here and anxious about all of the unknowns of living in another culture.

The last few months have been filled with courses to prepare and equip us for this adventure. We have completed 12 weeks of online training and 4 weeks of live training. This training was extremely beneficial and encouraging. We learned SO many things, but here are two of my favorites:

The Big Rocks: Have you heard the analogy about the jar full of rocks? Put 5 large rocks in a jar, then add smaller rocks, then gravel, then sand, and finally water. The point of it is: If you don't put the large rocks in first, you will never fit them in at all. We were encouraged by our mission agency to determine the "big rocks" in our lives and intentionally spend our time on these things.
God calls the WHOLE family: We spent a lot of time learning how to do ministry with our kids. God wants to use our children for his kingdom purposes in Ethiopia as well. For those of you wanting to read more about doing ministry with your kids, here is a great article from a missionary parent.
Spiritual Vitality: We learned the importance of intentionally setting aside a good amount of time to work on our spiritual life. We are thankful that our agency requires us to take one workday a month and one 3 day retreat each year to rest and be with God. During this time we may choose to read His word, pray, sing praises, journal, read Christian books, and/or just be quiet and seek God's direction for us.

What is Language Acquisition School?

2011-11-13T17:57:00.002-06:00

Well, we are halfway through our 3 months of travels and currently in Palmer Lake, Colorado - just outside of Colorado Springs - at the MTI headquarters. This facility (left) is our home for these 2 weeks as we take PILAT - Program in Language Acquisition Techniques. We are halfway through and it has been a great chance to get to know some other missionary families (about 15 other families are here) and learn some really great material on acquiring a new language. Before this course, we were dreading the hours of language learning surrounded by grammar textbooks and flashcards. But now we see that learning Amharic will be a fun, interactive experience, and an opportunity to build relationships with Ethiopians. Here's an interesting fact for you: the English language has a total of 44 sounds, but the human mouth is capable of producing an infinite number of consonant and vowel sounds. How amazing that God has already designed us with the ability to learn and pronounce any language in the world!

Discipleship... What does it look like?

2011-11-05T23:21:00.002-05:00

I want to tell you about a course I just attended in Post Falls, Idaho that deserves your attention. The course is called Immersion, and it is an intense 2 day experience in small group discipleship. Jim Putman founded Real Life Ministries in 1999 with 4 families, and the church now has over 8,000 attenders. But it’s not just another mega-church that is all about the “event” – that is, the weekend service. They believe (and practice) that everyone in the church is to be making disciples of Jesus Christ through the ministry of small groups. I have seen other churches doing this – notably Antioch in Waco, Texas when I was in college. The thing that is so cool about RLM is that they have taken the model and made it into a reproducible process for making disciples who truly go and make more disciples. The multiplicative effort produces fruit in the form of new converts to Christ, and existing believers growing in their faith.

Why is the church in America not making new disciples of Jesus? Our churches grow but many are just swapping members rather than growing through new converts. These folks seem to be on to something here. There is a way to grow churches by truly deepening one's walk with Christ and bringing new converts along the way. At RLM, it happens in the context of relationship in small groups with a strategic purpose - to make disciples. I would highly recommend Jim Putman’s book - Church is a Team Sport – or attend an Immersion.

A few from Halloween....

2011-11-02T21:46:00.007-05:00

Traditional Pumpkin Carving Party

Traditional photo of us mirroring our pumpkin faces

Kids in their costumes! Nate refused to smile but Taylor is all ears

To infinity and beyond!

Our little flower

Pre-Field Training!

2011-10-19T22:01:00.004-05:00

What are we up to this week? We are in Minneapolis (which is already quite cold!) at Pre-Field Training. What is that, you ask? Why do we have to do it? How does it work? All good questions...

Pre-field training is about 160 hours of training that ReachGlobal requires of us before going to the mission field. RG breaks it up into 3 parts. We did 2 on-line courses that lasted 4 weeks each to cover the first 80 hours of material. Then we come to Minneapolis to do the remainder of the 80 hours in person. We are staying with a very generous host family and attending courses during the day.

Here are some of the topics we have been covering:

Culture shock - How do you know you're having it? How do you deal with it?
Working on a team - Understanding what it means to have a "healthy" team.
Worldview analysis - What does your new culture really believe? How does it affect what they do?
Tell or help? - How do you balance compassion ministries with preaching the Gospel?

This, and many other topics. It has been exhausting but excellent, and tomorrow we're all done! The kids have been with us, by the way, and have done great.

Apple & Me

2011-10-11T22:27:00.002-05:00

So I've been a little obsessed with Steve Jobs and Apple Computer in general for the past week. Like staying up way too late watching "Triumph of the Nerds" and TiVo-ing "Pirates of Silicon Valley". See, the whole Steve Jobs thing really got me reminiscing about my first computer, which was in fact, an Apple IIc. My parents got it for us for Christmas in 1986. I think it was supposed to be the family computer, but my parents had no idea how to use it, and I pretty much played King's Quest on it all the time anyway.

The next computer we had was a Macintosh LCII which we got sometime in the early 90's. I went off to college in 1994, and didn't have a computer for a few years, but the "Computer Lab" (remember those?) at Baylor was filled with Macs. The point is, for 25 years I've used Apple products. In fact, the only time I deviated from this was in medical school because UTSW required that we purchase a PC for some lame computer-based curriculum. In retrospect, I should have refused and dropped out on principle. That's what SJ would've done.

I have read a lot about Jobs in the past week. And I am grateful for the contributions that he made to personal computing and the technology that we enjoy. As a Christian, I had been struggling a bit with how to reconcile my faith with all of the praise for his creative genius. After all, I do love my iPhone, but the bottom line is that technology, no matter how much it improves our life on this earth, doesn't mean much for our life after it. I loved this blog post by Albert Mohler: "Christians cannot leave the matter where the secular world will settle on Steve Jobs’ legacy. The secular conversation will evade questions of eternal significance, but Christians cannot. As is the case with so many kings, rulers, inventors, leaders, and shapers of history, Christians can learn from Steve Jobs and even admire many of his gifts and contributions. Yet, we must also observe what is missing here... unerring taste, aesthetic achievement, and technological genius will not save the world."

Just a couple more things. Since this blog often deal with adoption issues, I wanted to bring up the fact that Jobs was adopted. As is discussed here, his life and his contributions make a strong case for the pro-life, pro-adoption position. He was an unplanned pregnancy, and could easily have been another abortion statistic, even more so if he had been born 20 years later in the post Roe vs. Wade era. Another thing I found interesting was in this article. He never liked the term "adoptive parent." To Jobs, it just didn't make sense. His adoptive parents were the only parents he had ever known.