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!