Jamie's mom arrived here in Amman last Friday. Jamie and I had a fun adventure getting to the airport to welcome her and bring her back to our apartment. We decided to try to find the airport shuttle again. We've already done this a couple times in our experience as a group (departing for the Feast and Kelley's departure to go home to MN), but we haven't had much luck but figured we just needed to get our facts completely straight (even though that is not always a sure recipe for success when it comes to traveling here in Jordan). Jamie researched a lot before Friday and everything we read said that the airport shuttle left from the Abdali bus station every half hour. So we caught a taxi after walking to the main road around our apartment here and told the taxi driver "Abdali bus station." He seemed to understand immediately which is always a very encouraging way to begin any journey here (let alone anywhere). So we made the 10-15 min. journey there only to find a fairly empty parking lot with a few buses looking like nobody was going to be going anywhere anytime soon. At that point our taxi driver asked "where are you going?" We replied "we need the airport shuttle." His immediate and full of vigor response was "you need the airport shuttle? that's at the North station not Abdali. These buses are going to Saudi Arabia. I thought you wanted to go to Saudi Arabia and you said Abdali bus station." All we could respond with was "no we're not going to Saudi Arabia and everything we read said the shuttle left from Abdali. This is where we thought we needed to go." Then Jamie says in a quieter voice "well, can you take us to the North station?" So after all this and our apparent attempt to go to Saudi Arabia, we finally arrived at North station (which indeed we've been to before after telling a taxi drive "Abdali bus station" ...I don't know if we'll ever figure all of that out). At the far end of the station was a very clearly marked "airport shuttle" bus which was also a very welcome sign as most of the time things don't seem to be marked that well. As we pulled up, to our bewilderment, the shuttle was just pulling off. We rushed to pay the taxi driver and then talked to a couple men who were with a smaller bus from the same company. They were very helpful (displaying the Jordanian hospitality that is not the least bit uncommon); they called ahead to the big bus that had just left and had it pull over and gave us a ride in the smaller bus to where the big one had pulled over on the side of a busy road. This is when we felt like true Jordanians. If you've ever ridden a bus here, it always seems as if they pull over at random places (on the side of highways too) and pick up people. We finally received our turn to be the random riders. :) We arrived to the airport about 15 minutes before Jamie's mom walked through the arrival gate. We took a regular taxi back to the apartment and only got pulled over once by an official of some sort for some reason that we still don't know.
Last Sabbath was really wonderful having Mrs. Franks here to visit. It's amazing what encouragement and excitement it can be to have even just one visitor. We ended the Sabbath with some wine and light appetizers as we watched the beautiful sunset from our rooftop. We are very spoiled with many beautiful sunsets here and a perfect location to view them.
This Sabbath was a little different as well. It was just Stephanie, Eduardo and I here as Jamie and her mom left on their adventure this past Monday. We've established a sort of routine in how we spend the Sabbath here as a group already but had a little fork thrown in today. It began normally last evening with dinner at our (girls') apartment and wonderful conversation. This morning we had a casual brunch as usual as well. We typically have services in the afternoon starting somewhere between 1-2pm. We decided to begin today at 1:30 and had the pre-downloaded webcast service recorded from the home office chosen to use for services today. Then about 20 minutes before services were going to begin the electricity went out. It wouldn't have been that big of a deal if all laptops had been charged, but as it was the sermon was downloaded on a laptop that only had about 20 minutes worth of battery power and the other one as well only had a little battery power and the third didn't have the program to support however the sermon needed to be played. So we found on the third laptop (the only one that had enough battery power to go for a while) only one message saved on it without using the internet which depends on electricity. We enjoyed singing hymns a capella and listening to the ABC class on Acts 17. It was amazing because the message was very much related and tied in to a conversation we had only last night about meeting people where they are in teaching and sharing the truth with them. Stephanie made the comment about singing the hymns a capella that it helped her to think about the words we were singing that much more which I completely agreed with. Not that we will from now on always sing hymns that way, but I think it was an interesting lesson about how much those words really mean and with how much involvement we should be singing them. Towards the end of the first message, the electricity came back on and so we ended up listening to the sermon we had intended to as well which was also tied into other parts of our conversation last night. It's simply amazing what a little obstacle could not prevent from happening. We were still able to assemble together, sing praise to God and learn about His way.
So it's been a little bit different the past couple Sabbaths, but in a very good way. This upcoming week Stephanie will be traveling to Alexandria, Egypt to attend a conference hosted by the Human Security Center she is working for here in Amman. Jamie will return on Wednesday and Kelley on Friday. It will be wonderful when we're all back together again; I have to say that our (girls') apartment is much too quiet without Jamie and Kelley here. Until the next post I hope everyone out there is doing very well!
~Audry~
Amman Time
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