Escapades in Ankara

Hello from Abu Dhabi!!!

I will write about Abu Dhabi in my next blog, but we have just concluded a wonderful three day stay in Ankara, Turkey so that is the topic of this entry. Dan and Devri were wonderful hosts. They are both so devoted to the people there … Dan is the serious one, such an intellectual and an amazing wealth of information about everything from culture to politics to the legal system to…. you name it. Devri is the free spirited social butterfly full of sparkle and laughter, always meeting someone for lunch or coffee, always teaching someone something or hosting young girls or women for something. We had such neat opportunities to be with people they knew, some English-speaking, but most not, and yet we felt such a connection with so many of them. We met people in study groups, over lunch or tea, and at a special meeting at the church they attend. On our last day in Ankara, Maynard spent time with Dan organizing the library at their church while Devri and I got together with several women in their home. Here are a few pictures of those outings.

So here are two fun stories from our stay there. Driving in other countries is usually a little bit different from what feels familiar to us at home. We noticed that when cars were making a left turn at an intersection with a traffic light, they would sometimes stop when the red turn arrow was showing and sometime they would slow, look, and proceed. When we asked them how they knew what to do, they told us that if there were other cars already stopping at the light they would proceed because if everyone stopped to wait for the light to turn green it would just clog up traffic. Hmmmmm!!!! Now that’s a different approach! Don’t think we will try that one when we get back home!

Another fun story was our trip to the market. Oh my goodness! The produce was unbelievable! Very large, very lush, and very abundant. Of course, I loved seeing it all and pulled out the camera to capture the memory. When I did, the people at the stands got very interested and began calling out to me and pointing to their produce as if to say, “Take a picture of my stand!” One guy kept saying something to me in Turkish over and over so I asked Devri to translate. He was asking me what newspaper I was with! HA! Well, I guess this is sort of a newspaper… The Belson Big Adventure Times. So to my friends in the Ankara market, here are you two minutes of fame. :-)

It seemed as if we had just arrived when it was already time to leave. I had made such a deep connection with Devri that it was a bit tearful saying goodbye. She has a passion for life and work in Turkey that was contagious. I developed such deep admiration for her and felt she had so much to teach me. God willing, we will have time together again one day.

It is actually a little bit frightening to realize that we are finishing up the first week of our “big adventure”. As we were reflecting on the first week it dawned on me that we have spent years dreaming about this trip and a full year looking forward to and planning it. And in only a few more weeks the experience will have come and gone and we will make a shift from anticipation to memories. I think I will miss the anticipation, but we are definitely storing up memories to replace it with.

Until next week.....

Love,

Maynard and Sheryl

Leaving on a Jet Plane

As the song goes, all our bags are packed and we're ready to go..... We have made it! We finally depart today. We have dreamed and planned for this for so long and here we go. Wow!

We ended our last week with quite a bang. Meghan and Bryan's wedding was perfect beyond words. The weather could not have been nicer and the bride and groom could not have been more beautiful. Here are a few pictures from the evening.






It truly was a fabulous wedding weekend.

We wrapped the weekend up after all the family had said goodbye and the wedding dust had settled by going to help serve the evening meal at Calvert's Place, a men's homeless shelter, with several guys from Maynard's Saturday study group. Two wives joined in too ... Nancy and I. It was a rewarding experience, but then serving like this usually is.

Then yesterday it was final checklist time. We went to vote, tied up a few financial ends and finished packing. Things were so surprisingly together that Maynard spent his evening with the BAM guys in a meeting and I spent my evening with some girlfriends at a movie (Secret Life of Bees... it was FANTASTIC by the way).

So this brings me right back to the beginning of this entry. We really are going to do this! Bags packed... ready to go... and yes, leaving on a jet plane! Hopefully we will have Internet access while we travel so check back next week for the continuing saga of the Belson Big Adventure!

Love to all,
Sheryl B

T minus 7

It is almost impossible to believe that we leave in one week. As with each previous week, this past week we once again made progress toward our departure goal. We have packed all of the gifts for the families we will be visiting. That wasn't such a big task, but there are so many small tasks that it is important to chip away at a few every week so the last week won't be total chaos. And we confirmed that we have the right clothing and personal items we think we will need. We have prepared the list of "duties" for Dan O while he is house sitting and walked him through all of them. And we have done the "here are all of our important documents" talk with Meghan. Mark and Kelly will get their turn this coming week.

Now we are doing the "last" things before we go. I did my last session in the Women Who Believed God study at the homeless shelter yesterday. I am going for my last afternoon working in the office and the last Girl's Night there today. On Thursday I will spend my last afternoon in the Plano West Theatre class.

Then of course this weekend is the BIG event - Meghan and Bryan's wedding. We had a great time this week having dance lessons with our friend Cindy Hunt. She came over and Maynard cleared out the den furniture to make a big open dance floor. Here are a few pictures of the fun.

Like I said, it was a lot of fun. By the way, I want to give credit to our photographer for the evening. Kaela was behind the camera so she isn't in the pictures, but she was definitely here!

One last picture since Reagan will be 4 months old tomorrow. Here is her latest trick. She can hold herself up and can roll over too. Yea!

Well, that's the news for this week. I plan to try to post the day we depart, but no promises. I'm not so sure anyone is reading this stuff anyway, so the only person who may care about that post is me. :-)

Love to anyone reading,

Sheryl B

T minus 14

Hello friends,

You should see the couch in my study. It is piled high with things I will pack either for myself or for our friends on the other side of the world. This has been another week at the speed of blur. But we have accomplished several important steps toward the trip. I think we have everything we need to pack for ourselves except one black shirt and it is being shipped as I type. And I think we have everything we plan to take to our friends except another box of things being shipped as I type. We have upgraded our cell phone with an international calling plan. We got our international driving permit this week too. Who knew you needed that!?! Praise God for our finding out before we stood at the rent car counter in Crete! I find myself asking what else don't we know?!? Before I enter another entry next week, I hope to have all of the gifts packed with the suitcase closed. And we will have all of our personal items together just waiting for the final moment to be folded and closed into the suitcase. I have this whole red, white, black color scheme thing going to try to minimize the clothing by maximizing the mix-n-match. I wish I could say we are cool as a cucumber, but in reality, we are entering that EEK! zone where you keep saying "Oh, yea! We mustn't forget that! Write it down somewhere! Quick!

Thankfully, the wedding coming up next weekend is a lot like a well oiled machine. You would be amazed to see how organized Meghan has everything. She sent us a wedding day task list today. And she sent us a wedding weekend schedule... blow by blow schedule... last week. We are amazed at how together she has everything. You go girl!

Kathy is taking a more relaxed approach to their wedding, but I think it is shaping up really great too. Kelly got her bridesmaid dress in so I drove to Austin last weekend to make a slight alteration. That was another task I needed to complete before we left on our trip. The dress is beautiful, by the way.

That's one of the additional challenges to our getting our trip off the ground. Getting all the last things done before we leave that have nothing to do with our trip but everything to do with the fact that we will be away from home. Well, this trip is sure to be an experience of a life time, so it is very worth the effort we have put into getting ready to go.

Oh, I just have to tell you about something that happened at the homeless shelter this week. I help process intake requests every Tuesday afternoon. Part of that process includes sharing the belief foundation of the shelter. I use the bridge diagram to tell about that. Well, since the number one objective on every woman's mind at this point in the process is that I will tell her the magic words, "We have a room for you", she is eager to please me and tell me whatever she thinks I want to hear. So most of them tell me they are already firmly planted on the right side of the gap in the diagram. The woman I was working with this week seemed different. And the net of the discussion was that she decided to step across the gap right then. I just helped her understand how. Now, I can't know if that was a people pleasing step or not, but as Maynard reminded me, it isn't my job to discern that anyway. So I am grateful to have been able to participate in this assignment.

Well, guess I will go check on Mark and Maynard. It is Mark's 27th birthday today and his wish was to come over for dinner then after Kathy left for work (she does childcare at BTBF) to work on the car with Maynard. They are doing some sort of filter or intake stuff. Whatever it is, they are having fun. Oh yeah, they have come to realize that the original hood won't fit now that they have added the big aftermarket muscle parts. Oops! Now they will have to get a new hood with one of those holes in the top so the big part can peek out. Stop laughing all you grease monkeys reading this. I am writing it in my girl fashion which is the only way I know how. :-)

Until next week,
Sheryl B

T minus 21

I think life between now and when we leave on our big adventure is destined to be life at the speed of blur.

There are all of the regular activities that I want to continue until we leave because I love doing them..... things like teaching, mentoring, and admitting new residents at the Center of Hope shelter for homeless women and children. Things like helping theatre students at Plano West with costume measurements, selecting monologues, and various other gofer-type tasks. Things like spending time with Reagan... Kaela is busy with school. Here is one of Reagan's latest pictures:

There are the unique activities like Maynard working with a orphanage and their medical clinic in Rwanda, like scheduling all of the visitor logistic for the upcoming festival at Bent Tree, like determining what we need to purchase in the way of travel clothes, and collecting all the goodies from friends here at home to take to our friends across the sea. Oh and also the exciting activities on the boy toy - it's the 1988 Mustang GT they are restoring! I have had some requests from some of the guys out in the blog community to post a picture, so here you go.

And then there are the unexpected activities like getting the flu! Thankfully that didn't hang around too long. Or the unexpected, but extremely productive trip Kathy made to Michigan to check on her sick dad. Thankfully he was better than excepted so with the help of some very energetic aunts she was able to make all of the arrangements for their November wedding. And the unexpected excitement of Meghan getting the new job she has been hoping for! She will get started the Monday before the wedding. EEK! What a full week it will be for her! But she is so incredibly organized it will all work out just fine and this is a job move she has really wanted to make.

So, at this point in our journey toward the starting line, blur is the pace. Joyful blur, but blur nonetheless.

Until next week....

Love,

Sheryl