by KG & Laura | May 6, 2020 | culture, family
Intercultural life is hard. It’s also very interesting and full of stories. They are hilarious (like when you use the wrong word for something), heartbreaking (like when you come face to face with the realities of inequality), heartwarming (like when a family makes you one of their own), and flabbergasting (like when systems conspire to keep families apart).
For some time now, I’ve been dreaming of creating a forum and inviting others to share stories and insights from intercultural living. Is that something you would be interested in? Would you listen to a podcast dedicated to that type of content?
One of the unexpected delights of quarantine living has been new, truly excellent content by creatives. Phoebe Judge has been reading classic mysteries aloud and releasing a chapter daily. I love listening to books and it has been great.
Last night, I listened to Chapter 6 of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. In light of my musings about intercultural life, I found this paragraph fascinating. The author is describing a young man who grew up attending international schools abroad.
At the age when we are all of us most apt to take our colouring, in the form of a reflection from the colouring of other people, he had been sent abroad, and had been passed on from one nation to another, before there was time for anyone colouring more than another to settle itself on him firmly. As a consequence of this, he had come back with so many different sides to his character, all more or less jarring with each other, that he seemed to pass his life in a state of perpetual contradiction with himself. He could be a busy man, and a lazy man; cloudy in the head, and clear in the head; a model of determination, and a spectacle of helplessness, all together. He had his French side, and his German side, and his Italian side—the original English foundation showing through, every now and then, as much as to say, “Here I am, sorely transmogrified, as you see, but there’s something of me left at the bottom of him still.”
Guys, this is so, so good.
I learned the word transmogrify. It means (according to Google): transform in a surprising or magical manner. Google’s example involved cucumbers to pickles (haha). What an apt description of those of us who have lived abroad.
There is an aspect of an intercultural person that is disjointed. At least there is for me. I hope I am mostly a person whose different cultures are well-integrated, but the truth is that they aren’t always. Sometimes they are in conflict with each other. Often they are in conflict with the culture I live in.
When we embrace a new culture, we do change. It is good, it is beautiful, and it is hard.
by KG & Laura | Mar 13, 2020 | adventure, Africa, American, faith, family, friendship, international, News, Phaladi Family, thankful
Thank you
We just want to start by saying thank you to our friends and family in the US, Botswana, the UK and elsewhere for your support in various ways as we transitioned from Botswana to the US. We miss our amazing friends and family in Botswana and remain excited to be closer to other amazing friends and family in the US. We love you all so much and feel so loved by you. It has been a blessing to reconnect with many of you in Maryland and get to know others during our frequent trips into town. His People Gabs, THANK YOU for graciously and generously releasing and sending us out. Monument Church, THANK YOU for welcoming us with so much love and enthusiasm.
Increasing Dependence on God
We left Botswana over 8 months ago. Our intention was to stay with Laura’s parents in Lititz, PA area for a few weeks (up to a couple of months) while getting jobs sorted out, and then move to Gaithersburg, MD. For a lot of reasons, this seemed like a plan that would work. However, despite our efforts, that door has not opened, at least not yet. We trust that God’s plan for us has included this season of patience and persevering in faith (with lots of stumbles and lessons along the way). Our planning decreases daily while our dependency on our Father increases. His hand of direction becomes evident when He closes some doors and open some. He makes is easier to TRUST AND FOLLOW HIM when it might not all be making sense.
Act 16: 6-10: The call to Macedonia?
With the help of Laura’s parents, God has provided a home for us in Akron, PA, just outside of the city of Lancaster. The way it happened has been providential and we believe it is the Lord’s doing. It appears that, at least for the time being, He is redirecting us. We are scheduled to close and move into our new house in April. We are so grateful! Lancaster has an amazing legacy of faithful believers and we have enjoyed our visits to several local churches here. We look forward to fully engaging in one of them.
The house we are under contract for!
Prayer
As for work, Laura is a StoryBrand Certified Guide, marketing consultant, and website designer. If you’re curious about what that means, you can take a look at her website: www.pulamarketing.com. She has customers locally and internationally whom she loves working with. Now that we plan to stay in Lancaster, she is continuing to grow her business while also being open to full-time jobs that would allow her to continue this line of work as part of a team. KG is continuing to provide regulatory support to some pharmaceutical companies with products in Botswana while studying hard for his pharmacy board exams in both the USA and Canada. We really appreciate prayer for us work-wise.
Children are a blessing
The girls are having a lot of fun through all this! They love and enjoy their grandparents. They think ‘Pops is tops’ and ‘Mumzy is the true Fancy Nancy’!
Our girls with their grandparents and cousins.
by Laura | Apr 5, 2013 | Bradford, family, fitness, UK
Kagi and I had a really exciting week last week. There are lots of stories to be told, and although it is no longer lent so I probably won’t be blogging daily, I’ll try to tell them.
First, I’ll tell about the climax of our week. In the autumn,
+Kara and Forrest blessed us with a gift of a night at a bed and breakfast where they spent a night while in England. Kagi and I were looking forward to using it for months, but obviously needed to wait until I got back to use it. It worked perfectly to take a few days in the Dales during the university’s Easter break.
Kagi also arranged with Jako and Anneke and their family to visit and coincide with our trip so we could get a day out together. They stayed with us on Sunday evening and then Monday morning we headed out, planning to meet them at Bolton Abby.
We rode our bikes down to the train station about a mile from home and took the train to Ilkley, a beautiful town on the edge of the Dales. From there, we rode our bikes to Bolton Abby.
 |
| Our cycle route from Ilkley to Bolton Abby. It’s about 7 miles, and thankfully mostly down hill. |
 |
| On some of the Abby ruins, next to the main part and looking at the main house. I believe all of this belongs to the Duchess of Devonshire. We had a picnick here. It was nice but it was unbelievably cold. |
 |
| Kagi skipping rocks near the Abby. |
After our lunch, Kagi and I headed off on our bikes toward the bed and breakfast. Here is the route we took:
 |
| It was about 20 miles to our destination. |
 |
| I loved this — a solitary ewe with her lamb in the Dales. |
 |
| When we came upon this Kagi and I did a little exploring. It’s a very old ruined building. |
 |
| One view of the inside. |
 |
| We think this was a defensive tower from some of the signs we saw around. |
 |
| I thought the flower boxes in the walls were interesting. Between them and the fire places you can imagine what this might have been like. |
We continued cycling, and at one point were held up by the traffic:
Finally, exhausted but very happy, we arrived at the Tudor House. The owner served us tea with brownies and a dessert bar, and we decided to spend the evening in. We really enjoyed being there!
 |
| Our room. |
 |
| Fresh flowers on the window sill. |
In the morning, we had an absolutely wonderful breakfast made from local produce which included everything you could imagine. We enjoyed our time eating and then relaxed again before heading on our way.
 |
| The B&B owner recommended the scenic route back to civilization. It was beautiful… |
 |
| And then we came upon a little problem since we had bikes. |
 |
| But the only option was to keep going at that point! |
 |
| I know… looking cool! |
 |
| Eventually, we made it back to the main route. We rode along this canal for 10-15 miles before getting on a train toward home. |
It was a really nice trip, and it was also nice to get home and rest up:-)!
by Laura | Mar 9, 2013 | adventure, family
Today is my baby brother, +Jesse Fritz‘s twenty-second birthday. I guess he isn’t a baby any more.
But I remember when he was. I have vivid memories of the day he was born, in fact. I was almost six at the time and remember how my friends loved him. It drove me crazy how when they came over they figured it was their turn to “hold the baby” since I could hold him anytime. It didn’t seem fair to me… he was my baby, not theirs:-).
I remember when Jesse was three and we had a Pumba and Timone birthday party for him. My mom made a cool Lion King cake. He remained three in my mind for a long time. He was so funny, playing outside in the snow in shorts and galoshes. He was the topic of conversation for my dad at work every day — I guess he was funny from the start. Boy was he cute!
 |
| Halloween |
 |
| Christmas Morning |
I have a few specific memories of him in elementary school, going through hard things. I remember trying to take care of him. I remember being protective of him as he grew up. It seemed to me that being a boy was more dangerous than being a girl. Especially when you are a boy like Jesse who knows no fear.
When I came home from college one time, Jesse took me to ride bikes in the greenbelt near our house. I thought I could do anything and was a pretty brave person. Let’s just say I was terrified the whole time as he went through the dirt path with ramps and jumps everywhere. At that point, I was more scared for me than I was for him. He seemed to really know what he was doing. And how did he get so cool? I wouldn’t have been eligible to talk to guys that cool in high school!
I remember when I was living and working in Maryland and +Jennifer Fritz was staying with me for the summer. We woke up early one day and drove down to Dullis Airport to see Jesse and his friend as they were traveling home from six months in West Africa. They told us stories and we drank coffee. Jesse was 18 and I was so proud of him. Truth is, I’ve always been proud of him.
I was able to go with my parents to Jesse’s graduation from Army boot camp the following spring. He earned an extremely prestigious award and was clearly loved by the other soldiers and the drill sergeants alike (although they tried hard not to show it!). It was so special to hang out with him for a few days and see how life had been for him. I wished I could shield him from how hard life in the army can be, but there was no way. Jesse doesn’t take the easy road, and the reality is he doesn’t need his big sister’s protection.
 |
| Saying bye. |
 |
| Pops, Jesse, and me. |
There are lots of other memories, like the times Jesse took me on dates when I was lonely, when he was the life of the party at my wedding, came to my rescue during my recent visa troubles, or when he was my primary partner to inspire the family to clean out our parents’ basement. Or when Jesse and I were “sniper running” through a crowd right after the New Year was rung in when our paths quite literally collided and we almost took a few other people down as we fell.
 |
| New Years |
So here’s to the best brother I could have ever asked for on his birthday!
 |
| Goofing around at my wedding. |
I love you!
by Laura | Mar 2, 2013 | family
I moved the pictures from my camera to my computer today and thought I’d share some of the fun ones with you.
Here are some from Christmastime:
 |
| Sisters! |
 |
| Playing around on Christmas Eve. |
Now, fast forward to last weekend when I went for a drive and ended up taking some pictures:
 |
| Can anyone guess what this is? |
 |
| That bird was sooo cool looking. Too bad the picture doesn’t do him justice. If only he would have posed for me! |
Sunday, Pops and I went for a walk and found some fun things along the way.
 |
| This beautiful dog stood as a century guarding his house. |
 |
| Haha, no caption necessary! |
Happy Saturday, everyone! I may take Sunday off as usual but will try to write while in-transit on Monday. I leave Spokane at 6am Monday and arrive in Manchester on Tuesday morning.
by Laura | Feb 24, 2013 | faith, family, Laura (me), reconciliation
Today I was thinking about grace. Grace sounds so nice. It brings images to mind like a graceful flower or a swan. Beautiful, peaceful, gentle, natural.
In the dictionary, I found some interesting definitions here. Grace is a deep word. I’ve heard it defined as unmerited favor. The word can be what a king does when he visits a peasant. It can mean approval, favor, mercy, or pardon. It can mean “sense of propriety or right,” which seems to contradict some of the other definitions. Our Sunday school teacher in Spokane keeps saying that grace is scandelous. It doesn’t seem right. It’s unnatural.
In my observation, grace is hard. It’s costly and active. It demands tremendous self-sacrifice to bestow unmerited favor. It’s unfair.
This got me thinking about my experience with grace, especially as it relates to conflict. When my siblings and I were kids, we were great at getting underneath one another’s skin. Allison and I are the closest in age, and had the most run-ins. She was always a lot cooler than me and although 13 months younger she was always socially a step ahead. I remember several instances when it went like this:
She did something that hurt my feelings.
I could have chosen, at this point, to respond with grace.
However, I responded naturally, and got angry. Acting on that anger, my fists started flying. I was always a lot bigger and was also a good fighter, so the physical odds were decidedly in my favor.
The circumstances, however, were not. The one who gets in trouble when a fight starts is almost always the big one who is punching, no matter what the little one did to deserve it.
I have a vague memory of my mom making me apologize while I was still seeing red. Imagine her holding me back so I couldn’t continue the physical onslaught.
Mom: “Laura, apologize to your sister.”
Laura (spitting the words): “I’m sorry.”
Allison: “Mom, she didn’t mean it!”
Mom: “Laura, you know how we do this in our family. Look her in the EYES, say you’re sorry, and ask her to forgive you.”
OH the pain of that moment! Trying to make myself apologize was swimming against the current of every emotion in me. Sure, I knew I shouldn’t have been beating my sister up. But from my perspective, she totally deserved it! I had reacted in the only way I knew I could win. In my eyes, I was justified.
If I apologize, doesn’t she get off scot-free for what she did to me? Worse, to ask for forgiveness was to ask her to be gracious to me. Maybe she would see that as weakness and use it against me. Still, I knew I wasn’t going to get out of the situation until I did an unnatural thing: apologize.
Breathe. Stop looking at your feet. Just get it over with.
Laura (pushing out the words while trying to make eye contact with her smug opponent): “I’m sorry. (Long pause, breathe, breathe, breathe.) Will you forgive me?”
Mom: “Allison, tell her you forgive her.”
Allison (reluctantly, and looking a little less smug): “I forgive you.”
Although somewhat forced, she did grant me favor with those words.
In that feeling of swimming upstream against my emotions, I was learning some big lessons. I felt I had the right to make her pay. She hurt me, and how else could I convey how hurt I was other than to show her what hurt feels like? Still, I wasn’t right to make her pay. In hindsight here is no way I could have punished her fairly. You may think that my reaction was disproportionate to her crime. But it certainly wasn’t to me!
The Bible has a lot of unnatural commands regarding dealing with conflict. This one comes to mind today:
Romans 12:17-21
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”says the Lord. On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Allison is far from evil and neither is she my enemy. But what if I had in mind that I would fight with kindness, giving her grace when she offended me? It would have been a lot less painful for me, for starters. I should have done that unnatural thing then, and I should do it more often now.
