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It's been awhile since we wrote, and the last few e-mails may have been a bit discouraged sounding, with their repeated prayer requests for our health. So, this time I think a bit of more light news would be in order. Janice and I are both doing well now, although Janice's vertigo continues to trouble her.
Janice and I went to Brugge last Saturday afternoon and had a wonderful time. It's the "Venice of Western Europe," a city full of canals as Brugge ("bridges). Yes, the Brueggemann name is low-German for "man of bridges." Perhaps our family lived in an area that had lots of the, or built them, or collected tolls on them. Janice thinks perhaps we were trolls living under them.
As is often the case, we're rushing around to get things done at the office before we head off on some trip. A week from today we leave for a week in Stokholm for a Northern Europe education conference. We have a lot that must be done before that. That's all the more pressing, because immediately after we return from Stokholm, Dale leaves and won't be back until November 28th: New York > Philadelphia > Boston > Kiev > home.
Oh boy, just think of hte air miles I'm racking up for wonderful benefits on Air Ukraine. Of course, in January we'll get some wonderful miles on the kind of air carriers that move people between places like Moscow, Siberia, Ekatarina in the Urals, Moldova, and Estonia. Airlines like Aeroflot--better known affectionately as Aero-flop for their great safety record.
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For you theological travlers, I tell everyone that I sign up as a hard-line calvinist before boarding these planes. I remind God that I believe in his absolute, unqualified sovereignty, in absolute foreordination.
I say to myself, "This plane cannot crash, because it was foreordained, before the foundation of the earth, to make this flight sucessfully. I tell myself, "There's not a thing in the world that the pilot, mechanics, or machine itself can do to result in a non-foreordained crash."
It may sound like a theology of convenience for you, but it seems like a good theological position to hold in some of the planes on which Janice and I have flown.
I think of the plane we recently took from Kiev, Ukraine to Minsk, Belarus:
- It was issing light bulbs in the cabin so it was murky during the night flight.
- The carpet down the aisle was a wrinkled, torn thing that you could trip on. It looked just like the black and red aisle runners we have seen in churches and schools all over eastern Europe and the former USSR.
- We took all of the runway to take off, while listening to engines that were straining in their uneven beat--were all the cylinders firing?
- The windows beside Janice's seat leaked air so badly, it whistled the whole flight, and just about froze her left elbow.
- Sometime during the flight a scruffy looking fellow, who probably slept on airport steamvents, decided to visit the cockpit--and they let him in!
- My seat back wouldn't stay up at all, it kept falling into the lap of the guy behind me.
- Our in-flight beverage was a Russian attempt at Tang (remember that stuff?). I guess the rationale for that is that it used to be advertized as the juice of NASA astronauts.
- We landed in a totally darkened field, and there was no one to meet the plane for passengers or luggage. I couldn't see anything around us except our own plane lights.
- We crawled off the plane by a ladder-like thing they leaned against it, and stood around in the dark for a few minutes. Finally, a tractor came up pulling something like a farm trailer.
- Then a "lady"--and I use the term loosely--stood up and started yelling at the other missionary and me. She said we had left luggage on the plane. I pointed to my carry-on bag, telling her I had mine. Finally she got through to us that she meant our checked bags. We were supposed to unload that ourselves and take it with us to the terminal. We got off the cattle car and returned to the plane, but the luggage area was about head height, and there was no ladder for it. I didn't think either of us missionaries were up to chinning ourselves on the doorsill and getting in that way. They kept yelling at us about our luggage, and we were standing ther a bit bemused about our "situation." Eventually some fellow from the airport decided he could go around and hand our luggage down to us.
- After that, we drove of in the direction of the terminal--which our eyes were finally picking out as they got accustomed to the totally dark field. There were no lights on the field--and none in the terminal either. We entered a door and looked across a huge open area. Parhaps 100 yards away in the dark building, there was a single light bulb hanging over a desk that seemed to be their version of passport control. So we crept through the dark to find one passport control officer, and four or five armed security agents in military garb.
- We got checked through there in good order and went out into the waiting area--but no one was waiting. There was no one there--and still no lights. We had landed at an airport that was closed. They had built a huge showpiece airport but had been unable to keep running it. No one to pick us up, no phones in this closed airport. And the security guys were standing around tellinng us we had to leave. Great! We're out in the country, no one knows where we are; there's no taxis, because the airport is closed; there's no phones to call anyone.
- I stayed with the ladies and the luggage, and the other missionary took my flashlight and went off looking for a phone. He was amazed to actually find one somewhere in the dark, cavernous building--and it work! He called the people who were supposed to pick us up at the "real airport." Eventually, he figured out where we were and came for us.
- So we got on with business.
Well, that's a short travelougue from our last trip in the CIS. Now we have another planned for Jan 6-20. Hm-mm-mm, what might we experience next go-round? Oh, the romance of travel!
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Janice and I often laugh over product descriptions, menu entries, and so forth in our travels. Here's a nice little bit we fund on a package of honey in Kyrgyzstan. I give it to you just "as is":
- Kyrghyzstan is one of the most beautiful countires in the world. 90% of its area is mountains.
- Khyghyzstan's vegetation ist rich and various. There are over 3500 kinds of flowering plants, of which 300 are melliferous and pollen-bearing blossoming from early spring till late autumn. These are wild onion, eremurus, raspberry, sage, dragonhead, malva, marjoram, sveet clover, thyme, ets.
- Nature is very favourable for obtaining flower honey, ecologically clear and possessing valuable medicinal properties.
- Honey is thought to be the most wonderful gift of nature. Its main components are glucose and fructose which help regulate narve system, expanding blood vessels, improving feeing of heart musle, improve metabolism in the organism.
- Minerals in honey as salts play an important biological role as thanks to their interacting with number of ferments, vitamins and hormones nerve system functions, tissue breathes and humatopoysis occurs, etc.
- It is worth mentioning that practically all elements man's blood consists of are constituents of honey.
- Honey also includes some organize acids (oxalic, citric, lactic, tartaric acids) which are favoura ble for digestion, good for assimilability of nutritious substances, raises appetite, increases secretion of mucous membrane of stomah.
- Honey intensifies resistance of human organism to diseases, strengthens cardiovascular system, reduces acidity of gastric juice. It has anaesthetic and preservative and bactericidal properties. It helps restore nerve cells, increases hemoglobin ratio in blood and makes oxidizing ractions active.
- Honey is wholesome for children, elderly people, and all those having a weak health.
Now, doesn't that make you want to rush out and buy some honey for the table?
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