A Suicide Bomber At The American Embassy

Before you freak out read the story.

The American Embassy here looks more like a fortress than a diplomatic building: high walls, security, the works. Yesterday we had house group and one of our members came in and was sweating and looked a little flushed. He went on to tell the story of “The Suicide Bomber at the American Embassy.”

That morning he needed to go to the Embassy to get more pages put in his passport. He had he backpack around his shoulder and his passport in his back pocket. He picked up a taxi and headed to the embassy. He had the taxi pull right up to the security gate so he could get out and pull out his passport and go in. He paid the taxi and got out. The taxi pulled off and he reached in his back pocket for his passport, and guess what!?! No passport. He checked again. No passport. He threw his bag down by the gate and took off running after the taxi.

I want to pull the attention away from him now and think of what the guards saw. A man got out of a taxi, looked at the gate, threw down a bag, and took off running. The guards went stiff.
Well he eventually flagged down the taxi and got his passport out of the cab and walked back the 100 yards to the gate where the guards were obviously very suspensions of him. Needless to say the thought of losing your passport and being an alleged suicide bomber in the same day took a lot out of him.

Tell Me What To Do

I have a plethora of material I could put on a blog during any given week. Anything from funny stories of me failing at language learning, really funny stories of my friends learning the culture, to be great conversations with the family, to deep theological truths the LORD is teaching me, with an occasional video thrown in. The problem comes with that I only have so much time to update this and I can’t put everything. I know that this blog only will be read by you guys if you get what you want from me.

If I put nothing but theology I will lose some of you. If I plant nothing but silly, stupid stories some will think I’ve done absolutely nothing since I’ve been, and if I tell too many stories about the people I meet I’ve blown security and could be on the next plane home.

So here is the deal: I need you to comment and tell me your vote.

It’s the people’s choice awards in a sense. Would you rather have:

Theology
Funny Stories
Stories of Friends
Pictures of Everything
A Video for Everything, even stupid stuff.

Let me know.

We Have A New Nephew Video!

We have a new nephew! Jaden Dakota was born on Friday. We are so excited! I recommend this video to everyone no matter how long it takes to download.


Jaden Dakota Nowell Video


This footage was shot by my father who was there. This experience thus far has been the hardest things to experience overseas. Watching our family celebrate and the only way we get to experience it is through a video. But praise God. Every good and perfect thing comes down from the Father of the heavenly light. And Jaden is definately a good gift as well as the technology to allow us to see him only hours after his birth via camera. God is good.

Shikkin Buub

I wish this was my story. This happened to a friend that I go to school with, but I am going to tell it in first person just the same.

I went into a restaurant the other day to grab some food. I’ve been learning to read Arabic, so I try to read the Arabic script first and then if I can’t do it I revert back to the English.

So I am scanning my options when I come across in Arabic, “shikkin buub.” I was thinking, “What the heck?” I know most of my foods by now and I’ve never heard of shikkin buub. So I asked the waiter, “What’s this?” He told me it was jaaj and then it hit me. Jaaj is the Arabic word for chicken. You got it yet?

This was a transliteration from English to Arabic. This restaurant wasn’t serving “shikkin buub.” It was serving, and I kid you not, “chicken boobs.” Apparently grilled chicken breasts had gotten switched and shortened to chicken boob in the translation. Haha, I love this country!

Are All Muslims Terrorists?

The quick easy answer is, "no, of course not." I am probably the most pro-Arab person I know. I know that most people in the west have a skewded perspective of the Arab world and tend to lean towards the "shoot first, apologize second, and then maybe ask why later." So anyway, I am going to try to keep this as middle of the road as possible without jumping on my soapbox on how stupid, ignorant, and agrogant Americans are. :) Take that with a grain of salt please. Remember I am talking about us, myself included.

So back to me being pro-Arab. I love them, but I, as most foriegners, tend to look and think of them or any civilization as maybe a little primitive or "rough around the edges." So today the Lord used this guy to bring me back down from my Crusaders ego and "liberating the Holy Land from the infidels" mentality.

So I hopped in Nasel's cab today and on the dash was a picture of his two sons. They were cute! They were 4 years and 16 months I think. They were standing next to each other and they were in they little suits and their little matching ties. I asked him about them and his face lit up and he talked my ears off about them. The little one is getting to where he is talking everyone's ear off and how good they are and on and on and on in Arabic using words that I haven't learned yet, but I could definately tell I was talking to a proud Papa.

This was a glimpse of what I need to learn from them. I may have the answers on how to get to heaven, but I am telling you, I don't have all the answers on how to live heaven here on earth. This guy, even though he is a Muslim, had something that could only be from God. Every good and perfect gift comes from above from the Father of Lights (James 1:17) He knew that by the way he loved his children. I have a lot to learn about life and priorities from these people. The funny thing is that almost every Muslim I've met has been the same way. They want you to know how much they love their kids and what they are doing.

If you think all Muslims are terrorists than you obvisously have never met a Muslim.

Silicon Cookware Saved My Life!

Let me start off this story with a preface on the postal system here. The more you know about it the more remarkable and realistic the title of this blog becomes.

The postal system here is…..corrupt and terribly insufficient. They don’t have physical addresses here. If you want mail, you get a P.O. Box. With that it guarantees the Post Office has control. They process goes like this: If you get something that is to big for you box, then you have to go down to the main post office to retrieve it. You go upstairs to a guy that takes you slip and gives you another slip. You then go to a guy who looks at your new slip of paper and then sends you back to the “box room” where you give your slip to a guy who gets your box. Then you go back to the same guy who sent you into the “box room” and he sends you to a long line. Here the guy opens your box and looks in it. Usually you are charged a “custom’s tax.” I don’t know how legit this is, but you may end up paying up the 30 US dollars to get a package out of the post office, if they let you take everything with you. Most people stop by the ATM before going to the post office. Get the picture?

So, today we got that slip that says that we had to go to the post office and get shuffled around. I was a bit hesitant but everything ran really smooth. We finally got to the guy and he opened up the box and what did he find? Silicon cookware! Its floppy and folds up and is ideal for travel. Does it work? Of course! Does he know what it is? Nope!

You should have seen his face when he pulled out a floppy muffin tin and a floppy cookie sheet. He just looked at me like, “what is this stuff?” I told him that it was the oven. He held it up and yelled out the all his buddies, “Hey, look at this! This is for your oven!” They loved it. Then he let us go. For free! With all of it. I don’t whether he just thought it was stupid and wouldn’t work or that it was so cool that he let us have it, but whatever the reason…..

Silicon cookware saved my life!

The Umayyad Palace Ruins Video

This is a video of our search for the Dead Sea Scrolls. We found them. The musuem is in the midst of the ruins from the Romans, and early Islamic Period ancestors in this region. It is on the hill in the midst of the city. Great place to see the city.


Umayyad Palace Ruins Video

Shopping At Ramadan

Ramadan is upon us. The best way to describe this event without taking a whole post is to say that is a month long daytime only fast. Fast when the sun is up and feast while the sun is down. It has the feeling of Christmas and the food like Thanksgiving.

Today we had to run to the store to pick up the essentials. . .Coke, sugar, cheese, more coke, some candy. . .you know, all the important/healthy stuff. Well, have you ever been to Wal-Mart the Wednesday before Thanksgiving? Do you recall the huge masses of people?

Imagine something similar to that, but with Arabs. Arabs don’t have several key attributes that we seem to find important in the West: patience, the use of deodorant, or the ability to form lines. Not only that but they have huge families, and not only that they are shopping for food to feed those huge families for the equivalent of 30 Thanksgivings! Moms had their carts with their kids pushing the other carts. It was mayhem.

We made it out. We are alive and I plan to go back with a camera and try to capture this amazing site on camera for all to see. Expect to see “The Crowds At Cosmos” coming up this next week. Inshallah.

The Birds In The Window Video

This is video of the baby birds outside our window. I know this has really nothing to do with anything, but I just wanted to put together a video of something so here it is.


The Birds In the Window