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Trip To The Aral Sea 2003 Page 1 |
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Our friend Roozilla is from Kulanda, a small village on the west side of the Aral Sea. In 2002, her father (Djekeah) came to visit her in Almaty and came to one of our evangelistic lunches. Djekeah invited us to visit him. So we did. Roozilla came with us. She had not been home for 2 years. We stayed for 6 days, one day longer than we planned. Amanda's asthma was severe there. Even on her steroidal inhaler here "peak flow" went from 375 to 250. 200 is the lowest she can go without being hospitalized. |
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Our trip started with a 40 hour train ride to Shalkar, Kazakhstan. We left Saturday afternoon and arrived Monday morning. We were met by one of Roozilla's relatives (Zeka) from Kulanda at the train station. He had traveled 12 hours to meet us! |
Above (left to right) Lucy, Zeka, Roozilla, other bus passengers, Molly. Next we traveled in this bus over mostly uninhabited sand tracks for 12 hours. We made 15 stops, one for lunch, two for breakdowns, and once to pray at the shrines of some 16th century Muslim Missionaries. |
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Above (Left to Right) Zekeah, Hrainadeen, Almagool (Timor Han's wife), Almagool's son, Djekeah (Roozilla's father), Noah, Molly, Amanda, Roozilla, Lucy, Timor Han (Djekeah's nephew). The bus only went as far as Bazoi, where Zekeah's nephew (Timor Han) lives. Zekeah met us there. We had tea and drank our first camel's milk. Lucy and I liked it! Then we continued the last 70 km by jeep to Kulandah. Half way there we stopped to rest and took this photo. |
When we finally arrived at Djekeah house at around 10pm they trotted a sheep by us, said "there is your sheep", and started preparing it for dinner. |
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The head and feet go in the fire even before the sheep is skinned. In this photo Roozilla's mother is roasting the hair off of the head and feet. Once the hair is gone the head and feet are boiled. By the way, this is the kitchen. They have an indoor area for rolling out dough for noodles but everything is cooked outside. They use samovars (a silver urn with handles and a small chimney in the center) to boil the water for tea. They put small pieces of wood into the chimney area, pour sheep fat on it and light it to heat the water inside. |
While the meat was boiling we all had tea on this low table. As guests, we sat in the places of honor farthest from the door. The children love having guests because they get to eat special candy that they don't usually have. They don't usually have fruit either. Vegetables are even more rare. We didn't see any all week. The diet is meat, milk, candy, and tea. They drink camels milk and put it in tea and a special bread that tastes like sour dough bread. The cows milk is fed to the animals after they separate out the butter every day. They only use their refrigerator to chill juice. They have electricity every day from 6 or 8pm until midnight. |
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After tea we moved to another room where a vinyl table cloth was spread out on the floor. We sat around it and the boiled meat, onions, broth, and noodles came in on two platters. The men cut the meat into smaller chunks and mixed it into the broth, noodles, and onions with their hands. The head was dissected and passed out ceremoniously ("an eye, so that you will have clear vision", "a tongue, so that you will have eloquent speech", "an ear, so that you will listen to your parents") The brains were scooped out and mixed with fat and rice to make "brain fried rice". Then we all ate from the two large platters with our hands! We were so glad that we were used to this after 4 years in Kazakhstan. (The photo above is from our ministry center in Almaty, where we use spoons to eat.) |
At 11:55 (5 minutes before the power went out) The 3 women who made the food (called "kellins") bowed to me. As the guest I fulfilled my obligation by pronouncing the traditional blessing: "May you have health. May you be happy. May you be prosperous." The "kellins" gathered up the dishes and leftovers. We all went outside and washed up, drank some camel's milk, looked at the stars and said good night. |
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The second night Roozilla's father (Djekeah) asked us questions about Christianity and why we were in Kazakhstan for about 30 minutes after dinner. As the guest, I was required to say a blessing on the host's house after every evening meal. I used these prayers to thank God for providing a Savior who died for our sins, for making it possible for us to have peace with God., for saving us through faith alone and not works, etc. |
The third night I was also able to explain the Gospel to the men from 4 or 5 families the night we went to Zekeah's house. The women also "heard" the testimony of our marriage relationship and our children's lives. These times when we were able to proclaim the forgiveness we have in Christ were the reason we had come so far. We also gave as gifts the book of proverbs, and some very good short evangelistic booklets. Please pray that God will cause these seeds to bear fruit. |
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