MakQuest

Happy happy birthday Brie!

Thu, 16 May 2013 03:07:59 -0400

Happy happy birthday Brie!

I’m totally digging this song, or rather, it’s...

Thu, 16 May 2013 02:40:19 -0400

I’m totally digging this song, or rather, it’s ‘digging’ on me - I need the encouragement!

Rend Collective Experiment

What to do in TZ when you need a guitar pick. Loretta asks, “why...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 03:53:19 -0400

What to do in TZ when you need a guitar pick. Loretta asks, “why isn’t it a picture of me?”

Mr. Mudpuddle, conquered.

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:22:13 -0400

Mr. Mudpuddle, conquered.

gablemak: untitled on Flickr. Who wouldn’t like getting rainbow...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:42:39 -0400

gablemak:

untitled on Flickr.

Who wouldn’t like getting rainbow hands in the mail? Judah’s getting big! @toby_mak

April FAQ

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:19:00 -0400

Q: What did you do for Easter?

A: We went to Lushoto, a small town high up in the mountains, about 7-8 hours drive away.

Q: What were you thinking?

A: We weren’t. Well, I mean, we were looking forward to spending some quality time with the Cawley family. What we had forgotten was that there is no such thing as a vacation with two small children. NO SUCH THING.

Q: How long did you go for?

A: The plan was three nights. We barely made it two because 1) IT WAS SO COLD (yes, we were all born in Canada, yes, I’ve acclimated to the +30 degree plus humidity climate of Dar), 2) Brie. Crying. Not sleeping. So much for putting the kids down and hanging out and 3) Judah started getting a temperature.

Q: Is that…?

A: Yes, that is Brie in the shower. That is where she slept the second night.

Q: Did you take Judah to the doctor?

A: Yes. We arrived back home on Wednesday and then monitored him on Thursday. He continued to heat up so we took him in that late afternoon. I dropped Loretta and J off and proceeded to run errands since we aren’t always in that part of town for the shops, etc.

Q: Is he ok?

A: Yes, he is now. We suspect he had Roseola, since he broke out in a rash. He burned up that night, over forty degrees, and then had a low grade fever for the rest of the time. All in all it took him eight days to get better and we are thankful.

Q: So what’s all that?

A: That night we took him to the doctor, while I was running errands with Brie, our car door lock failed. I was locked out of the car with two packs of ground beef in there…mmmm. Our friend and neighbour Patrick came to the rescue, drove us home while we left our car in town.

Q: Why didn’t you open another door?

A: Only one door lock worked on the car. I know, brilliant. As it was beginning to get sticky in the past few weeks, I had actually stopped locking the door, but thinking it was better after some lubricant spray, I continued to lock the door like I normally did, that night for the last time.

Q: So, what did you use the unlock the car?

A: At our office, there were (surprisingly) a number of people who had ‘experience’ breaking into their ‘own’ cars or a ‘friend’s’. I had no less than three methods ready to use: 1) door hanger between glass and door 2) pry open door at the top corner, then use hanger with tape for the lock and 3) pry open door again, and slide cable down to lasso lock.

Q: What worked?

A: The solution ended up being secret answer number four. Our friend Patrick, again to the rescue, had heard from a friend to lift the door handle, insert modified coat hanger and just try to push the button up. It worked! (Ok, I was shocked.) We had all the locks replaced so they all work now!

Q: Any more pictures from the trip?

A: Yes…

And more from Dan’s camera, including our epic hike!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11149561@N08/sets/72157633159142145/

Mr. Mudpuddle, we meet again.

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 02:45:47 -0400

Mr. Mudpuddle, we meet again.

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 09:58:47 -0400

Mr. Mudpuddle, we meet again.

Something New

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:39:33 -0400

March has been a particular month of experiencing God’s goodness. Perhaps, it has only been special because we have been made aware of just how good He is; He is good all the time.

One of these blessings has been meeting new friends – two families who moved to Dar in December to plant a church. It’s been years in the making for them, uprooting their families (three young kids each) to obey God’s call. In some ways we feel like it’s been years in the making for us too. Being involved in the early stages of a church plant is something we’ve never done; we feel ready and inadequate at the same time. It is ultimately bringing us to our knees in prayer like never before.

Here are some images from our “fun day,” an opportunity to invite friends and build community. The point was, we are planting a church but we’re just normal people! What made it fun? Sliding down a massive blow-up water slide, eating apples hanging from a string (kind of) and building sand castles. Fun indeed!

I’ve been on a total Francis Chan binge. I’m not...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 07:47:00 -0500

I’ve been on a total Francis Chan binge. I’m not going to lie, it’s partly because he’s Chinese/American and shaves his head…but mostly it’s has passion for Jesus.

He expresses my sentiments exactly here, only our work is to give people God’s Word in their heart language. I still commend Crossway for this effort though, and wonder if our translators wouldn’t benefit from a tool like it.

This is where we live.

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:09:23 -0500

This is where we live.:

Found this artist when we were looking for post cards. Seeing her work gives me an odd sense of home, of familiarity, of ‘oh my gosh you get it!’

Love her style. Check it out.

And a Happy Chinese New Year

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:15:39 -0500

We were (surprisingly) reminded that it was the lunar new year via…facebook. Right. Well, anyways, seeing that there are handful of Chinese restaurants in town we headed there on Sunday afternoon. The irony of it all? We didn’t do the ordering but our American (African-American) friend did it in straight up Mandarin. Word.

The real surprise was finding a tiny little shop that was air lifted out of China and dropped on the coast of east Africa! Now, to be fair, we don’t recognize a lot of this stuff but it was really a slice of home. And now…we can eat tofu!

Bags of Chinese stuff!

Mushrooms! (about $40CAD/kg)

Chinese toothpaste? CHECK

Beans! I think Mom will definitely be excited about this on her next visit.

And last but not least…

Tofu. In a dirty little fridge. Mmmmm.

The gang.

For the first time.

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 07:31:00 -0500

God has been REALLY SPEAKING TO US. Even though these past 5 months have had it’s challenges, I (Loretta) can say confidently that GOD was with us in every situation and gave us exactly what we needed. God has really brought us to our knees, yearning and thirsting for more of him. He has challenged everything we have ever believed about our faith and what we know of being a Christian.

We have been listening to sermons by David Platt, Darryl Johnson, Tim Keller and others, and have been challenged each time. I finished reading the book Radical by David Platt and for many of the chapters I was just weeping. I’ve been saying to Toby that God has really stripped me of everything. My career, my friends, my family, comforts of a developed country. I really believe that God has brought me out of Canada, and here to confront all my idols.

For Toby, God’s voice was the loudest on Christmas day. We had some major miscommunication that day and he thought he had really disappointed me, and the whole family…he felt like a failure. But he realized that he had made the family an idol. And even though I was reaching out to him the whole day, he just couldn’t let it go that he had disappointed us or thought he had ruined Christmas for us. He was ministered to by a sermon by Tullian Tchividjian (Billy Graham’s grand son) that day…and the point of his sermon Jesus + Nothing = Everything (see his book by that title).

So we’ve been falling and falling, falling harder and deeper..but into the arms of our beautiful Jesus. We’ve been challenged more and more about the message of the gospel, the “good news”, is that HE is enough for us. So strange, but I just feel like I’m hearing it all for the first time.

"Oh, no worries, it’s just more protein."

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 03:41:26 -0500

““Oh, no worries, it’s just more protein.””

- Loretta upon seeing a bug in her food. Oh my, how far we’ve come indeed.

Pic of the Week: Home?

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 06:35:15 -0500

Eighteen months since our arrival in Tanzania, is it possible? Really? The moving and unpacking starts next week (hopefully).

Pic(s) of the Week: Outtakes

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:46:33 -0500

We took over a hundred photos to get one (1!) photo for our Christmas card. The result? Many, many, outtakes.

Last but not least, Loretta being poked by the ‘giant pineapple’ and taking out on Judah. Oh, poor Judah.

Pic of the Week: Shopping

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 05:11:49 -0500

Roadside shopping is probably familiar to those who have travelled outside of the Canada/US. In Dar? Lounge chairs, coat hangers, electronics, blow up water toys, mosquito killing rackets…check, check and check. My favourite?

Pet fish. In a tiny little aquarium. No kidding.

Pic of the Week: Friends, Neighbours, and Now Family

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 05:37:51 -0500

Not sure what we’d do without them, Micah and Adah. Oh and their parents too, Dan and Stacy.

As it turns out, the villain is me.

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:21:00 -0400

The movies and shows we watch often draw us in not only to the story line but the characters themselves. You know, the protaganist, the headliner, the hero(es). We are to identify with them, to cheer for them, and after they’ve triumphantly ‘saved the world’, march out of the theatre feeling (almost) like we could too. Very rarely do we end up identifying with the antagonist. After all, they are the villan. So it was a strange moment for me when precisely this thing happened. As it turns out, the villain is me.

What I was reading was no Hollywood script but the Bible. As it happens so often, it was reading me more than I was reading it. You know, the many stories of the grumbling, fumbling, never grateful Israelites. So rarely in the Old Testament are they getting it right. So often is God pouring out His overflowing gracious love all the while dialing back His justified wrath.

We recently sent out a newsletter and posted a number of blogs about our first couple of weeks back in Tanzania. It was tough and continues to be in various ways. But a few weeks in, after the dust settled on the initial move, there came upon me a deep sense of shame. I had been grumbling, complaining and pouting my way through when all around me was God’s unmerited favour was being poured out all over our family:

1) Since spending the first two weeks in one room (the four of us), we were given the opportunity to housesit one of the nices houses in the area. Like, when we tell people who we are housesitting for, they give us this look, like, “oh! you’re living there.” Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, ‘You must be having such a hard time transitioning.’ Not. Other missionaries in the area and from all over the country come here and stay at the guest house to rest, relax, and recouperate. We’ve stayed in the main house for a month. For free. Right.

2) We have had no incidents on the road. This includes any run-ins with the local police, which I did plenty of last year. Neither have I bumped or been bumped by anyone. Our friends recently had a ‘fender bender’, and trust me, it’s not just a ‘let’s take down each others information and get on with it’ kind of deal. It could’ve gotten a lot uglier than it turned out.

3) We had an awesome two weeks with my parents. They were the last goodbye’s, which was hard, but my mom even left a bag of clothes here because they will be back!

4) It looks like we have a house lined up…for January. And guess what, in the meantime we’re going to stay put, moving into the guest house (instead of the main house). It’s smaller and we’ll have to make some compromises but overall we couldn’t ask for a better situation.

So there it is. I am the villain; I am the grumbling, fumbling never grateful one. Thanks be to God for his great mercies!

Tension

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 09:34:29 -0400

In the past couple of weeks there has been mounting tension between Christians and Muslims in and around Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, an island about a two hour ferry ride away. It began when a teenage Christian wanted to prove a Muslim boy wrong that harm would fall on him if he harmed the Qu’ran. He proceeded to urinate on it. Because of this violence broke out in a neighbourhood about 15 km away from us. Several churches were attacked. This week in an unrelated situation involving a missing Muslim leader, violence and rioting broke out in Zanzibar. At church this morning we heard how the bishop at the Anglican church went in hiding for threat of his life. More than 90% of the population of Zanzibar is Muslim.

Having not been in contact with any of the violence or rioting nothing is seemingly different around us. We are aware however, that things can change very quickly. Reaching out to some of our prayer partners in Canada we have been encouraged by their prayer support and feel covered by them. I wanted to share with you one verse in particular that was sent to us. Deuteronomy 33:12:

“Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders.”

I must have missed it Sunday school. Or perhaps I’m hearing it anew as a father. I know what it is to have someone rest between my shoulders. I know what it is to carry someone on top of my shoulders. I know what it is to have someone, ever so peacefully, fall asleep on my shoulder. Now, if we could do as Brie does in the Lord. Continue to pray for peace.