Ca$h for Clunker$ is Not for Me

Being in the middle of the complex process involved in purchasing a vehicle, I feel I can now, at least a little bit, comment on the government’s Cash for Clunkers program.

First, and my biggest problem with the program, is that in order to get a credit for your clunker you must purchase a NEW car. USED cars do not apply. Now, I understand that the idea is to get rid of older, less fuel efficient and more pollutive cars, but it seems that the program considers any car manufactured before 2009 to be a clunker. I am a college student, and cannot afford both tuition and car payments on a new car. I can only afford to purchase a used car outright, and hopefully for only a few thousand dollars. However, given that most new cars lose several thousand dollars in value as soon as you drive it off the lot, that usually makes them cheaper alternatives to purchase under the moniker “used” than would be a “new” car. As far as I know, we have been making relatively fuel efficient and cleaner cars since the turn of the millennium. What I really want to know is this: why can I not trade in my 1995 “clunker” (which I can afford) and purchase a used car manufactured after the year 2000?

In particular, I have been searching for a Jeep to purchase. My father owned a Wrangler at one point, and I have very nostalgic feelings about Jeeps. Furthermore, I don’t intend to drive my Jeep farther than six miles a day, simply needing transport back and forth to college for classes, and occasionally to the local Giant store for groceries, so fuel efficiency isn’t a terribly big deal to me. However, I have found that most used Jeeps made before 2000 are within my price range of $3500, that is, if you can find someone willing to part with their Jeep. Most of these Jeeps are 87-91’s, which, unfortunately, is within the Cash for Clunkers timeframe. If any of these owners wish to trade in their old Jeeps for credit towards a new one, my available pool evaporates. Unfortunately, my troubles are not over. Those Jeeps that are made after about 1998 that are available on the used car circuit are likely to still be in condition and mileage to make them priced around $6-7000, which is almost twice what I can afford, that is if they are being sold at all, because they are likely to be more fuel efficient, and still owned by somebody because they aren’t clunkers, just a few years old.

Here I come to my point: if the Cash for Clunkers program applied to used cars manufactured after 2000, I could indeed afford a used 2001 Jeep for $7000 because the program would net me at least $3500, which combined with my own budget would allow me to get a vastly cleaner and more fuel efficient Jeep, but in my price range. And isn’t that the point? Instead of driving a 1995, or worse, a 1988 Jeep, I would have one at least 15 years newer, but without having to pay for a brand new vehicle.

In general, I like the idea of an incentive to help people decide to drive cars better for the environment and that conserve fossil fuel usage, but that doesn’t demand the purchase of something new, or the total destruction of the old.

However, I am very glad to have found, and be taking possession of this afternoon, a 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee that has a new engine and transmission and will (hopefully) last me a few years until I can trade it in for perhaps a post-2000 Jeep, which by that time will be old enough to fall within my budget, that is, if they haven’t all been wantonly destroyed.

And, let’s say nothing of my fiancee’s 1992 Toyota Camry which is still getting around 29 mpg, which isn’t the best, but is still twice what “clunkers” must be under in order to qualify for the upper tier of credit ($4500). Why destroy such a fuel efficient and affordable car (she got hers used for $2300)?

I just simply do not understand destroying valuable vehicles, and in the process, an entire segment of the economy, for as we all know the Used Car market is an old and honored American tradition. We may be cleaning up the air, or at least, not polluting if further, but who will care if they are out of work or unable to afford transportation?

A New Step

Hello There!

Last week I took a new, rather large, step in my life: I put down a security deposit on a small apartment. This will be my first independent dwelling place, and I am very excited (though not as excited as my fiancee…more on that later).

It is a one bedroom apartment, actually located beneath a large house about 2.5 miles from the campus of Messiah College. It has a rather large bathroom (and it is private!! which, after 4 years of sharing a bathroom with college guys, is a Really Big Deal) and a large, spacious kitchen. The bedroom is about average sized, and the living room is slightly small, and all-in-all it is a terrific place to live.

I will move in around the 15th of May, and live there for year. Hannah, my fiancee, will move in the middle of December, but won’t start living there until we get married January 3, 2010. This would be why she is soo excited! Hannah is realizing that this will be our first “home” together, and where we will spend the first 5 months of our married lives. She literally bounced all the way home, and couldn’t keep a large smile off her face. It was very cute!

The grounds around the house are large and beautiful, with two weeping willow trees and many shrubs and flowers. A small creek runs along the edge of the property. Next to my apartment is a recreation room, which my landlords have graciously allowed me access to, which includes a pool table which is also a table tennis table, and a treadmill for exercising. This is a huge plus.

Also, this apartment is at a fair price, especially considering that it includes utilities, cable television, and internet access.

I am very excited, and cannot wait to move it. I praise my Father God for his provision and blessing.

This will be another big step for me, and I feel ready to make it!

The Rains of Spring

Hello readers!

It has been awhile since I have posted on this blog, and I therefore apologize. Ironically, I spend alot of my time these days writing, but writing poems for my Workshop class, and writing essays for my Advanced writing class, and writing reports for my Ethics classes, and not writing insightful blog posts.

Lately, spring has been sluggishly arriving to central PA, with a few warm and sunny days interspersed with many rainy and overcast cool ones. I don’t mind, I enjoy rain, both literally and physically, but also metaphorically and spiritually. The rains outside my window run off the top of my dorm, down my window pane, and out across the brick and concrete of the campus. It trickles across the branches and drops off the leaves and sparkles on the green green grass. It washes clean the grime and dust that collects across our hives of rooms and classes.

Last night, I experienced a rain of a different sort: I had a good cry. I consider myself to be a real man and crying isn’t something that I do often, but once in a while some things just get to an overwhelming point. Hannah came by, and we sat in the room and cried together. After a bit of time passed, I needed to hear a song that often encourages my heart, and one that I had not played in a long time: Ready for the Storm by the late great Rich Mullins. The song talks about a lonely sailor at sea during a storm, desperately following the dim light of a lighthouse, and finding out that, after the storm, he was near to shore and safe the entire night, and had “no reasons to be frightened.” After that, I listened to a great many of Rich’s songs. After about an hour, my heart was uplifted, and I felt cleansed and refreshed.

Rich Mullins, known by many as a “ragamuffin” (n: person who is poor, tattered), wandered around most of his life, and sang about the trials of life while praising God through strange Scriptural references. He was on the outside, the fringe, and the edges of popular Christian thought, but he really had a notion of what it meant to follow God and really serve him.

Today, I actually spent most of the day sleeping. I think my body and mind got so weary that I needed to recharge. And it was raining again, and was just one of those days that want to curl up next to a fire and read. I am thankful for the opportunity to slow down and renew.

I feel like a ragamuffin, wandering about and working hard to understand life, God, and the universe. Most days I can’t explain my faith, even to myself, but I do know that God is worth following, in spite of my doubts and confusions. Some days, I enjoy a nice rain shower to wash the stress away, and make things new, clean, and young: like a spring time that creeps upon a wearied winter world.

I am the Prophet : Love

Love: Abandoned baby kicking on the side of the road…(1)

Hosea was a man called by God specifically to love. “Go, marry a woman…” (2) was God’s call to the prophet, and one he performed faithfully. His love story is intertwined with God’s allegorical love story with the nation of Israel, as told by Ezekiel (3):

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a baby. This baby was born to an Amorite father, and a Hittite mother, but they abandoned her along the side of the path. The baby wept and screamed, still covered in blood, and fluid, naked for the world to see. People walked by, and heard the wails of the child, but none cared, none pitied, none even stopped to cast a glance in the direction of the shrieks. Compassion fled, and sympathy turned away. Abhorred, this child was cast away.

But, a man, walking through the field, suddenly stopped. The child, now weakening in the elements and sun’s harsh glare, was barely able to whimper. The blood had crusted to her body, and dust was caked to mud in the fluids. The man rushed with gentle steps to the baby’s side. His eyes welled with tears, and he knelt over the small, fragile form. His lips began to move, and a whisper was heard, “Live!” All the urgency, all the power, all the will of the master of the universe was embodied in that command. “Live!” he commanded again, this time in a strong clear voice, stretching out a hand over the baby’s brow.

Taking the baby home, he cared for her, and gave her everything she needed, everything she wanted. The little baby girl grew into the most beautiful woman in the land. The man passing by one day, saw her anew, and loved her with not just the love of a caretaker, but the love of a husband. He rushed with passionate steps to her side, and spread his cloak over her. He washed her, and anointed her, and dressed her in the most stunning clothes. He covered her with gold, and precious stones, so that her natural beauty was enhanced, and she outshone the stars.

But this rags-to-riches princess betrayed her true love, and went into the markets, brazenly displaying her beautiful body, and selling her affections to anyone who paused. So lusting was she that she took her jewels, her gold, her expensive clothes and bartered them for sex, paying her lovers. She took her sustenance, given by her husband, and used it to feed her partners.

If that were not enough wickedness in the face of undying love, and rescue from certain death, she took the sons and daughters born in the marriage, and sacrificed them to the heathen gods, in the fire of ash of darkest evil. What then were her whorings? She no longer remembered her beginnings, and the babe covered in blood and dust of so long ago.

It was in the height of her flagrant wantonness that her husband had his fill, and stretched out his hand against her. He cut off her support, and gave her up to be raped and robbed. He wept bitter tears, for her longed only to love her, in passion and compassion, but she would not take his selfless offerings. He cried out to her, “My love, I gave you all! You were to stay faithful, not spend your beauty on anyone who chanced by! I was your husband; I loved you!” But he had no choice: he brought lawsuit against her, and judged her as an adulteress and a murderess. He destroyed completely her whore houses and her beds of lust. And then he left, heart shattered.

Many years later, the woman, now ashamed and utterly destitute, sat by the road with nothing at all. Silent tears streamed down her cheeks. A man passed by, but she did not glance at him, she had long since abandoned her licentious ways. But the man had stopped, and was staring at her. When, after many moments, she dared cast her eyes up to him, she saw the face of her husband. He too was crying, and held his arms out to her. He gathered her to himself, and restored her as his wife, and forgave her evil.

Hosea married a prostitute, and had children with her (4). A few years later, his wife returned to prostitution, leaving her devoted husband and children. At God’s request, Hosea went, and found her, and re-married her. Imagine the heartache, the devastation, the worry and the confusion of a husband who does everything to care, support, and love a wife who leaves him, and shares the most sacred physical act of marriage with complete strangers for love. Imagine going and finding her, and trying to love her again. Issues of trust, resentment, heartache would threaten daily civility, and Hosea’s trust in a sovereign God must have been a constant question mark upon his soul.

Gomer, Hosea’s wife was not quite as evil as Ezekiel portrays God’s bride, but her betrayal was real. Not just a work of fiction to stir up the emotions, when she left Hosea she shattered his heart. What devotion to his wife, and to God, Hosea must have had, to endure such personal turmoil as a prophet! His eyes surely wept God’s tears as a grieving husband.

Notes :
1. Michael Card Lyrics
2. Hosea 1:2
3. Ezekiel 16
4. Hosea 1

I am the Prophet: Introduction

This is a look at the prophets of Ancient Israel, as discovered through the Hebrew Old Testament, in six parts…

Part One Introduction:

How do you see an invisible God? How do you interact with a spirit you cannot touch? God has emotions, and a voice, but how can you experience that emotion, and how do you hear the voice of God?

This question plagued the children of Israel. As a fledgling nation, no bigger than a large family, the patriarchs directly interacted with God. After four generations, they found themselves enslaved in Egypt without a God. The deliverer Moses then stepped into the role of proxy to God through the wilderness wanderings on the way back to the promised homeland. After the reconquest of Canaan, the Hebrew people again lost sight of God through a series of semi-king judges and into the establishment of the Israelite Kingdom. To answer this loss of vision, God ordained the prophets, after the tradition of Moses, to be His physical presence, to show His emotion, and to speak His words. The prophets became the being and essence of God in the nation of Israel.

There is an ancient Asian proverb which states: “You cannot love without knowing pleasure; you cannot be happy without knowing sorrow; you need to know all of them to know one”(1) and I think this truth is evident in the great love story told through the ages by the prophets of God. The prophets exhibited the emotions of an intensely personal God to a wayward nation.

Michael Card in his song entitled “The Prophet” references many of the ancient prophets, and portrays their deep emotional frustration, “I am the prophet, and I smolder and burn…won’t you listen to me? I sorrow in His anger; my eyes weep His tears” (2) These man of ancient faith struggled mightily to bear the emotions of an awesome God.

In portraying the interactions of the primary emotions of life (love pleasure sorrow and happiness) I will personify them through the lives of seven prophets, six of whom were contemporaries, and across the backdrop of the fall of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon, and demonstrate them to be the multi-faceted emotions of God displayed in humanity.

Notes

(1) As referenced by director Jieho Lee according to his film The Air I Breathe

(2) Michael Card Lyrics

A Meaning in Life

The pond ripples and the marsh reeds drift in the breeze. This from the same wind that pushes the clouds far above. To the west, the sun sinks dying, burning, igniting the sky with orange and tinting the heavens with deep purple.

Unconcerned with it all, the swans wander the surface of the pond aimlessly, white, and stark against the gathering shadow of night.

Monstrous supercells lurk across the expanse above, waiting for a time for unleashing and storm. Gales whip between the buildings, rushing across the grass, bending green to their will, catching an end of scarf or tail of coat, and tossing them high.

Unconcerned with it all, the swans wander the surface of the pond aimlessly, white, and stark against the gathering shadow of night.

A dog barks dangerously into the encroaching dark, and cars, as armored ants scurry the neglected streets, in fain straining sickly yellow light into the night. From shrouded lounges, students stare into the ending day, searching for a meaning in life.

Unconcerned with it all, the swans wander the surface of the pond aimlessly, white, and stark against the gathering shadow of night.

The buildings across the pond are peeling, and worn. They are tired and weary of the world, and yet they stand. Fading graffiti decorates their walls, painting sad faces beneath broken panes. A bit of dust wails, whipped into zephyr-hood, and scatters into the prevailing winds to settle back to the beaten path.

Unconcerned with it all, the swans wander the surface of the pond aimlessly, white, and stark against the gathering shadow of night.

Land of My Exile

I hear Russian through my window, rising from the street below. Students are walking by, to and from class. Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Albanian I hear in my room on a regular basis, and I encounter several other languages if I stroll through my dorm…or through the Klaipeda city streets. When I go to the Orthodox church, beneath the tall spires and domes, looking up at the priests I could hear Polish, depending on which church I am in.

I go to the store, called IKI meaning “see you later”, and the packages are in Lithuanian, or Russian, or sometimes something else…rarely in English. I select what I want by looking at the picture. The cashier greets me, and I do not know what she says. After I pay, and receive my change, I usually respond “Achu” meaning “Thank you” and go my way, arms full.

I feel alone, separated here. I am learning the language, becoming familiar with the customs, but I am a man apart: I am in exile here. It is an exile because I am completely removed from the environment that is comfortable to me, that I grew up in, that I know best. Exile because I am living so far from home, from family, from where I usually see God.

I find it interesting that the root idea of the word, which we get from the Latin by way of Old French, is the idea of a “wanderer.” Certainly I feel like a wanderer here…having recently visited Latvia and Estonia and soon will be visiting a small corner of Russia. I am moving, seeing, experiencing, living.

The Old Testament of the Bible tells how the entire nation of Israel was forced into exile for their generations of disobedience of God. They were deported to Babylon for over 70 years, and most of the nation never returned. Here in the Baltics I have learned that the Soviet Russians exiled Lithuanians by the thousands to Siberia, and few ever came home.

What is the purpose of my exile? I have not disobeyed God, at least not as Israel did. I am not being oppressed by a Communist regime. Mine is an exile of being; to learn: about other countries, ways of life…and myself; to grow, for that is the direct result of learning. One cannot truly learn without growing. To mature, for I am still a boy, awkwardly being a man. In seeing who I am from different perspectives, like viewing my reflection in foreign shop windows, layers of vision are added to my sight. In experiencing God in totally different contexts, like standing in churches I would never have entered before, dimension is added to my faith. In being transplanted into Lithuanian soil, like living in a foreign city, I branch out in ways I never thought possible. In losing comfort, familiarity, friends, and family, like in being exiled, I mature in the wake of those losses.

Sometimes it takes exile, a crucible of life, to grow a man.

Killing Time

It’s the waiting that kills.

It seems like I have spent a good part of my life waiting: for Christmas, birthdays, visits from relatives, to grow up, to finish schoolwork, for my life to change around me. I somehow thought that if I just waited long enough that everything I hoped for, dreamed for, and wanted would come to me.

Like magic.

Funny thing: the magic never came.

Even now, I catch myself holding my breath, waiting for something. Some days, I don’t even know what that something is. Abstract, I know, but here is the ironic twist: I think I am supposed to be waiting. Take a read through the mid-Bible book of Psalms some time, and not just 5 or 10, but 30-40 of them, and I think you will notice a pattern emerging: waiting. David, Asaph, or whoever wrote many of the Psalms seemed to understand waiting, because the writer often urges the reader to “wait on the Lord.”

What does that mean? It is quite simple, actually: to wait on God is to believe that He is able to act and that He will act, and then to live each moment in that certainty just as much as you believe in gravity and live depending on that data. It is active trust in a future occurrence based upon the knowledge of who God is (see: the Bible for more information). But, its not like you must believe every second…this isn’t a magic formula for a genii…it is a lifestyle that allows for doubt, despair, disbelief, and struggle with the rationality of such a lifestyle. God is big enough to allow for you to wait on Him even when you yourself may not be totally convinced that He even exists. I knew growing up that my parents loved me, but when I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar, I despaired of all such knowledge. Eventually, though, I learned again that they did love me, and wanted me to be more than a sugar junkie. It was a cycle of constant rediscovery.

Maybe I am reading too much into an English translation of a Hebrew concept, but I think the principle applies: hurry up, and wait (as the cliche goes). God is good, He is sovereign, and He is at work…taken together with everything else the Bible reveals about God and you have a Person that you can wait on. Unlike your mother at the department store, your sister in the bathroom, your brother with the car, or the professor with the endless lecture, God is worth waiting on. Why? Will He give you everything you are waiting for if you hang around long enough? Not likely; but He will act, usually in exactly the way you needed but not the way you thought.

Consider: David, author of psalms, was a battle-hardened warrior ordained king as a youth, but he had to wait on the Lord for the throne, and he didn’t win it through a military coup, or even when his predecessor met his doom at the foot of a mountain, but several years later through a complicated set of circumstances (like that really long sentence). Point being, waiting always yields results.

However, waiting should not be understood as inaction. Back to David, he fought in countless engagements, took down belligerent giants, learned leadership by making mistakes, and forged relationships with men who would support him his entire life while hiding in caves and honoring God’s choice of a corrupt king even when it wasn’t convenient. In short, he was busy learning to be king while he was waiting to be king…and proved it by being the greatest king the nation of Israel ever had.

But why God? Couldn’t one wait on their own…and have all good things come to them? I suppose so, but to pile on the triteness…that might be a long wait for a train don’t come. You see, it really is God that causes “all things to work together” because mankind is utterly impotent to bring about meaningful change: we still fight wars, world hunger, and see families fall apart around us after having observed millennia of heartache without solution. Honestly, how much progress has unaided man made?

So wait on God for whatever it is you think you need, would like to see, or want to survive: a difficult class, an ungrateful child, world peace, or marriage to the woman of your dreams, and while you wait, go ahead and be busy learning to be king. Some day coming the waiting will end, and the solution you sought will have been formed in a way that could only have been arranged through divine intervention.

You may even be surprised.

Uniquely Lithuanian

When one first encounters Lithuania, the most striking feature for many is the language. It has its own melody, a cadence that is mesmerizing. Life here is the same way: melodic and rapturous; but this isn’t something that you can see, that is obvious, it is an undercurrent, that comes at you from behind and sweeps you along. Suddenly, you realize that you are in Lithuania, and it is amazing. But this culture did not appear, or gradually evolve: it was fought for, and forcibly built over one thousand years of history, occupation, oppression, revolution, and finally freedom.

When the Roman Empire spanned the breadth of the Mediterranean and further, Lithuania was there, though not in a strictly national form. The loose Baltic tribes that would become this amazing nation mined a rare golden substance, and traded it with other “barbarian” tribes, who in turn, carried this strange jewel to the centers of Rome along what was know as the “Amber Road.”

At the turn of the first millennium these amber traders were immortalized forever, this time as a nation called Lithuania, for in 1009 a brief entry in a German manuscript notes that the first person who tried to bring the growing religion of Christianity to the pagans of Lithuania was killed in the attempt. Lithuania would be the last European nation to adopt Christianity, desiring to remain free, even from the religion of their neighbors. Russian manuscripts from the next 100 years make mention of Lithuania, usually to note battles fought with the Lithuanians. Ironically, the Russians should have listened to what was already evident: Lithuanians do not take to being ruled by foreign powers.

By 1253 a man by the name of Mindaugus unified the loose Baltic peoples into the State of Lithuania and he was crowned king of the Lithuanians. Lithuania grew until Vytautas the Great came to power and instituted a rule that encompassed Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia, but the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was not to last. By the 1400’s Lithuania as a nation was starting to break apart, and under threat of a growing Russia, they formed a union with Poland in 1569. This lasted for almost 200 years until 1795 when Russia grew to enormous size and swallowed Poland and 90% of the land that was Lithuania. They would not be free again until 1918 when Lithuania would declare its independence from the Russian Empire.

Even though the political nation was under much duress and change during the latter half of the first millennium, the culture was stronger than before. In 1547 the first book, a catechism, was published in Lithuania. Books would become a unique feature of the culture, and a sign of rebellion, once Lithuania fell under the control of Russia. By 1865 there was an underground publishing movement that printed books by the thousands and smuggled them throughout Lithuania. The Russians had forced the populace to learn Russian, and only allowed Russian to be printed, but these illegal book makers preserved the language, and through it, the culture of Lithuania in a time of oppression. Fascinatingly enough, the majority of those involved in this process were ordinary peasants, and not intellectuals. The common people of Lithuania fought a revolution, not with swords and bullets, but with culture and literature.

For forty years Lithuania struggled to maintain itself, and in 1940 a new Russia, the Soviet Union, occupied Lithuania. Utilizing their self-reliance and deep commitment already learned under hardship, the Lithuanians maintained their culture and endured. From the 1970s and beyond, a small cultural revolution was being fought, again, mostly through culture: music, films, and literature. The Soviets were cruel, and ruthless, but they could not conquerer, only occupy, and when, in 1991, the Iron Curtain shattered, Lithuanians were there to sweep away the pieces and found a new Lithuania for the second millennium.

Since March 11, 1991 Lithuania has been free, joining the European Union and NATO of a free will, and in 2009, on the 1000 year anniversary of their first mention, they will become the cultural centre of a unified Europe. Surely this is a moving tribute to the long standing Lithuania that refused to die.

Throughout their history, Lithuanians have been set apart by fierce independence as a nation, and unyielding devotion to language and literature as a people, building from that a culture truly unique.

Am I Ugly?

I have something to confess: I traffic in cultural stereotypes. The French are pansies and hate America; Canadians are bumblers; Mexicans just want to cross the border illegally; Americans are the best. I tell jokes about them, I laugh, I amuse with my stereotypical ideas. I tend to think that American has it going on, America is right, and the rest of the world is trying to be America, and they just aren’t right until they have Wal-Mart and Wendy’s.

That is, I used to stereotype. I don’t so much anymore. What caused this change? I left America. I saw a few small corners of the world. First: Papua New Guinea for a year. Second: Japan, for twelve hours. Third: Quebec, for three weeks. Fourth: the Netherlands, for four days. Now: Lithuania, for 19 days and counting. Even my short times in Japan, the Netherlands, and Quebec were enough to give me glimpses and snapshots into the lives and cultures of the people who live there.

Papua New Guinea for a year was certainly a time of personal revolution. For the first time, I was a white minority in a black majority. For a white southern American, the reversal was startling. Other things changed my thinking as well: for instance, we shopped for our vegetables at an outdoor market. We didn’t buy the imported American brands at the local store because they were at three times more expensive. We walked. How much we walked…something a bit odd for an American to do.

In Japan, everything seemed small, conservative. The cars were half the size of American cars. Space was a premium commodity in Tokyo. My mother, surfing channels in our hotel room was perturbed that there wasn’t a channel in English. And then it struck me: why should there be? We don’t have Japanese channels back home.

Quebec showed me French people that weren’t anything like I imagined them. Despite cynicism that says French Canada is different that France itself, I found many Quebecers who had only recently moved from France. Most everyone I met was kind, gracious, and very friendly.

Holland, the Netherlands, was peace itself. Quiet, homely, and tranquil. I marveled at the slowness. Bicycles outnumbered cars, and pedestrians had the right of way at any roadway. People were friendly, others-centered, and hospitable.

And in Lithuania, I have found a new home. For me, it is a culmination of the past four years of experience. I am once again living in a country that is not my own. I am not passing through in hours, days, or even weeks: I am here for a third of a year. I buy, work, walk, and breathe the air day after day. I wake and sleep under the same sun at a new angle. I insinuate myself into a culture, into the lives of people who are not like me. We speak differing languages, and have different ideas, but I feel at home. I feel settled.

For me, the breaking of stereotypes comes in the infusion of experience. Moving beyond borders, boundaries, and barriers. Shopping for food by picture and deciphering strange alphabets; riding buses and walking rather than jumping in a car; counting hours to 24 instead of 12 twice. All of this is the experience that breaks down stereotypes, for me. I look around and realize that here is a culture, similar and contrary to mine in many ways, and it works every single day for thousands of people. They find joy, happiness, and contentment just as I would back home in America, and suddenly I can find no criticism, no joke, no feeling of superiority: only a feeling of community, of oneness with the family of humanity.

I am so glad that God moved my family to become missionaries, and moved us far beyond the borders of the “Land of the Free” so that I might encounter the free souls of a hundred cultures and lands in places I could never have imagined. I pray that through my own change, I may enact change in others. I would like that the image of ugly America the world tends to see is not reflected in me, and that I can play some small part in changing the ideas of those that would see me as I once saw them, as facades of what they are not, instead of seeing them as the people they are.