Quiet Days and New Friends

As I exclaimed during school this morning, this past week has been so exceedingly pleasant. Since nothing extraordinary has been going on, life has been fairly quiet. Pat, Joel, Jodie, and I spend long hours sitting on the bed in the one air-conditioned room in the house reading aloud from a book of Bible stories, a biography of David Livingstone, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and The Hobbit. I greatly enjoy reading aloud, supplying voices, sound effects, and accents where needed. When I don’t feel like reading, Pat takes a turn. While listening, we all work on our own cross-stitch projects, Jodie on one I brought for her as a present, Joel and Pat on ancient projects that have been dug out of piles of handy crafts. Whenever we feel like it, Jodie or Joel runs over to the kitchen to fetch soda or cookies or chips for us to snack on. It is supremely luxurious and edifying.

One day at a time, life here is good. We are always doing something worthwhile, for others or for personal enrichment. We have meals as a family, sometimes while watching a movie, sometimes while having conversation. We have family devotions every night in which we read from a devotion book and pray together. We go to Body and Soul Exercise led by Pat. Pat uses Theophostic Prayer techniques to minister to women who come to her and leads a weekly class on the principles of Theophostic Prayer Ministry. Once a month, Paul leads “English Worship”, a worship service for families who want to learn worship songs in English. And I am only scratching the surface of what goes on here by recounting what I’ve personally witnessed in the past week and a half!

When I’m not following Pat around, shadowing her in her errands and meetings, I am spending time with the families that live right around the Stock’s house. I have met one family that I care about particularly. There are many people in the household but two are my special friends, Razia, 19 years old, and Sunila, 22 years old. They are both gentle, gracious, and dignified. Both have a winning quality of brightness about them; they bring peace and light into a room with them. They are proficient at the chores necessary to running the house and they are leaders in the community of young people. They have shown me their skills with hena painting, hair doing, clothes sewing, etc. We have accepted each other like sisters. The few times I have been able to visit in their hut, I have enjoyed sitting with them, exchanging Urdu and English words, and just being together. Right now, I’m working with Sunila and Pat to write a Vacation Bible School program to be put on at a nearby church in two weeks. Razia came with me to the bazaar today and held my hand faithfully as we traversed the labyrinth of tunnel-streets.

Razia has told me of how she wishes she could visit America. I raked my brains for reasonable possibilities of how she could arrange such a trip but none came to mind. It was very clear to me that I, a rich American, had only been able to visit Pakistan because of the faithful generosity of those who love me and believe in my potential. How can Razia, a 19 year old who lives in a three room hut hope to finance a trip abroad? Razia patted my hand as I looked at her helplessly. The only way I could think of was if someone would want to bring Razia with them on their trip to the United States to watch their children or attend some sort of important event. Razia nodded her head graciously; she appreciated my concern, but to her, visiting America was just a dream.

Yesterday I went to work on English with Sunila. Sunila was busy helping her older sister Nasreen get ready to attend a fancy party in honor of the bishop’s birthday. Sunila sewed some fashionable bodice seams into Nasreen’s chamese (shirt) and then plucked her eyebrows with a circlet of thread. When Nasreen was done, Sunila motioned for me to lie down so she could thread my eyebrows too! I was a little ambivalent since I wasn’t keen on the discomfort of the process and I didn’t think my eyebrows needed any attention. Still, I eventually succumbed and lay down. If I had known how much it would hurt, I would not have been so obliging. Sunila would select a hair, latch onto it with the thread, then every so slowly drag it out of my head. Before long, my eyes were watering with distress and it was all I could do to keep from sitting up and leaving with the job half done. Sunila laughed and said that my hair was very strong. Then she called Razia to come and hold my hand. The process went on and on; I started to wonder if they were reducing my eyebrows to pencil thinness. When I inspected the work afterward, however, I had to admit that the end product looked good, even if the skin over my eyes was red and raw.

Today I will go to Razia and Sunila’s house again. They have invited me to come so that they can dress me up in tribal clothes, do my make-up, and take pictures. Nasreen has promised that she will put on music and the three sisters will teach me to dance! This pleased me greatly since learning to dance in the Pakistani way was one of my hopes for this trip.