Author: Robin Chartier

Theme: Praise the Lord

Thank you that we have the freedom to worship and praise your name in person. I thank you for these glimpses of Normal life that we are getting now that we are meeting together as a church in person. 

I pray that things will continue to open and that more people would be able to worship in person and that all the churches in UAE would have freedom and the ability to meet legally in person. I pray that all paperwork would be in order and all the applications would swiftly be approved. I thank you that our services are full and pray that more would be able to attend in person and that the restrictions would lift, allowing us to have more people in each meeting.

Thank you Lord that as we begin this season of Ramadan that you first sacrificed for us. Thank you that we don’t have to earn your grace and favor but that the price has already been paid. I praise your name that you offer us SURITY of salvation — that we don’t have to wait and hope the scales balance in our favor, but that you have preloaded our side of the scale to overflowing. When we are measured at the end there is no doubt that we will be judged as worthy because you are worthy. 

Thank you for all the people in unseen roles here who work to make this country successful. The builders, the cleaners, the street sweepers, the car washers, the security guards, the entire hospitality and service industry, and many others. UAE is prosperous because all of these people who are serving. I pray that you would bless them in their work, protect their families back at home, and I pray that these sacrifices would be short term with long lasting blessings. 

I praise you that you care about us and want to have a relationship with us. I pray that the world would be awakened to the knowledge that they are able to have a personal relationship with Lord and Creator of all. 

Thank you for the various ways you communicate with us: through your word, by your spirit, and through dreams. I pray that over the next 30 days that people who don’t know you would be filled with dreams of you reaching out to them. Please make your greatness and your grace known to them. Amen. 

PS: this one is shorter because of a Ramadan scheduling fail. I ended up praying in my car before and after a dentist appointment that I forgot I had. I’m always annoyed that all offices call to remind and confirm the appointment the day before (even if I made the appointment an hour earlier for the next day!), but this time I was happy for the reminder.

Ramadan Kareem! I’ll be sipping coffee under my desk for the next 30 days.

Not much has been going on here in the land of sand and skyscrapers. We’re plodding along, thankfully still in school, but Josh is still working from home. Camille goes to campus every day and Caleb goes 2 or 3 days each week and the rest is online. The biggest change to our schedule has been church starting up in person 2 weeks ago.

Masks on, groups of 2, seating every other row, but it’s better than being stuck at home! We are meeting in person, but in limited numbers, so are also live streaming each service. The technological wizardry that goes on behind the scenes to make that happen is incredible.

This is one of 6-8 tech/camera people working on a Friday morning: The Producer. All the feeds from the different cameras, computers, slide overlays, sound, etc all come to him and he chooses what is broadcast at the moment. Since they needed volunteers, I joined the AV team last week and I’m one of the people who is in charge of throwing the correct slides over the stream, whether it’s song lyrics, name tags, preaching slides, video clips and whatever else is needed. I thought it was going to be as easy as advancing the slides in powerpoint. Um, no. Technology has advanced well beyond what it was the last time I did this and the night before I was scheduled for service I had a nightmare that I had forgotten to set up the projectors and couldn’t find the Clear All button so all the slides were displaying on top of each other.

Thankfully, I had Caleb to help me with the projector set up (Thursday evening service has a small tech crew of 2), and to show me how to get the image from the computer onto the wall and I was able to use the Clear All function without issue. Not bad for week 1. I’m committed to in-person church so I’m happy to volunteer. Whatever it takes to keep us meeting.

The Thursday night location requires that everyone, even those from the same family, sit 2 meters apart. It feels a bit like we’ve all been put in Time Out.

Ramadan begins in 2 days, Inshallah, based on the moon sighting and all that, but I’m not sure yet how it will change life for us. Last year we were in the middle of Covid (are we still in the middle of Covid? Please let us be past the middle) so we spent the month sitting on the couch and there may or may not have been a curfew at that time. I think most things were closed/restricted and we were doing school from home so Ramadan 2020 had a very minor impact compared to all the other restrictions in our lives at the time. I could go back and check my blog for April/May 2020 to see what it was really like, but I don’t want to relive that era until we are well past it.

For Ramadan 2021 we’ll be in school (as long as we don’t have multiple positive tests in our biweekly school testing), malls and restaurants are open, and things are mostly normal. Fake normal. We still can’t have people over to our houses “legally” and only 3 people in a car, (but in tonight’s carpool we had 6 . . . ) so the rules exist, but implementation is questionable so bending is happening. But with Ramadan starting there may be a stepped up reinforcement of the rules and fines. We’ll see . . . Still no school sports, but we have both kids signed up for sports with outside organizations — Caleb is running and Camille is swimming.

Something that makes me happy: when Camille and Caleb are getting along. It’s like spotting a unicorn, but I keep hoping for it to appear.

Don’t mind me. I’m just over here living my fake prairie girl life while the world decides how we’re going to handle covid as we enter year 2 of this disaster. Wake me up when I don’t have to wear a mask anymore.

I’ve always thought gaming was antisocial, staring at a screen when in the same room with other people, but I am seeing the light. When I’m driving a group of 3 boys (breaking the law btw, because we are only allowed to have people from the same family in the car OR no more than 2 passengers) and they all have their heads buried in their phones, it seems like such a waste. But when you’re in a game with other people, I can see how it’s a social activity within the game, even as it looks completely useless to someone on the outside.

I ran into Josh while he was waiting for a carpool pickup and I was home with Camille. I’m in the green hat and he’s sitting across the campfire from me. I texted him to say, “I spy you in the game!”

So we’ve been that family recently — out to dinner, huddled around our phones, probably causing people to lament about the demise of the family in this technology driven age. But what they can’t see is that we’re collaborating on our town. Yes, we all made it down the trail to the frontier settlement, bought plots of land and then moved our settlements into one town. So while it looked to an outsider like we were in our own worlds, we were in one world together: “Mom, do you have 5 hemp fibers? I need to upgrade my house.” or “Go to my shelves and take the bags I made and put them in the warehouse and I’ll take them at the same time so we get double credit.” or “You have to go through all 10 levels of training your dog to fetch before they start picking up trail items for you.”

Josh and I live next door to each other, but I’m the mayor because my house is the biggest. (That would be because I had the most time to play and upgrade my house while we were on remote school and he was busy working.)

Now that we’re back in school in person, I have much less time to work on my frontier house, but yay for being able to have kids back at school! The only thing I don’t like about being back is having to wake up at 7 every morning instead of sleeping until 8:10, waking Camille up, and having her roll into class online at 8:15 in her pjs with a school sweatshirt thrown on over the top. Right now Camille goes every day, but Caleb goes 2-3 days per week because we don’t have enough space on campus to have all grade on campus with students spaced out to the distance required by the district.

We have one more week until Spring break and I’m thankful that school has remained open for 6 weeks in a row. We don’t have any travel plans (not even within UAE) as Josh is saving his vacation days for our trip to the US in June! Yes, we are coming to America — June 16th. God bless Texas and freedom and liberty and a whole bunch of other things that I’m missing these days. While we’re traveling in the US I’ll be on the hunt for my future real little house on the prairie . . . someday.

Dear Lord, I pray for breakthrough with the coronavirus — whether it’s through a vaccine, holistic medicine, a miracle, whatever form eradication may take, please send it our way. I thank your for your faithfulness throughout this past year. For all those who have had covid and recovered. For all those people working to bring an end to this sickness, both through service and research. I thank you that our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made and more complex than we can even imagine. I pray that you would protect us physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, and socially, from all the effects of coronavirus on our world.

I pray for the economy here in Abu Dhabi, that it would recover and rebound. That the leadership would take steps to make tourism possible once again. That jobs that have been lost would be regained and that those who have been on reduced pay would be made whole again. I pray for peace for those who are living with the uncertainty of whether their visas will be renewed or if they will lose their jobs. For those who are trying to support a family back in their home country and don’t see a future without this source of income. I pray that you would be their encourager and provider and that you will open and close doors to bring them closer to you and meet their spiritual needs along with their physical needs.

I pray for Expo 2020 this fall, that it would be able to go ahead as was originally planned. I pray that as the government opens the borders for other nations to come and visit and as they are in the global spotlight, that human rights initiatives and religious tolerance that has been started would continue and flourish. I pray that the churches that are all waiting for approval to be recognized by the government would have their applications fly through the process, that all the needed stamps would be issued, and that there would not be limits put on where and when they can meet. Please open all avenues for ministry to these congregations and I pray that they would bring the Good News to this country in an uninhibited way.

I pray for breakthrough in personal relationships. That we would be free to interact with each other outside of our immediate family unit. That gathering in each other’s homes would once again be allowed and that mandated isolation would end. I thank you that we have been able to be with others at work and at school, but I pray that we’d be able to open our homes once again. I pray that those who are looking for personal connection will be drawn to our family and that we’d be able to introduce them to your family. I thank you for the ministry opportunities that we have been able to have over this past year and I pray that you continue to open our eyes to those in need. Please show us how we can be your hands and feet in spiritual and physical ways.

Help us to not grow weary in doing good and help us continue on so that we may reap a harvest at the right time (Galatians 6:9)

After reading my post about my newfound proficiency with a slingshot, one of my sisters said she had been wondering why I hadn’t been blogging. It’s nice to know that when I don’t show up here, there are one or two people who miss it.

I told her that one of the reasons I haven’t been writing is because the most interesting/exciting/ridiculous thing to happen to us lately is it’s cat mating season so our sleep has been an interrupted mess as the cat yowling sets off the dogs, wakes us up, we yell at the dogs, try to fall back asleep, and repeat. All. Night. Long.

I’m positive I’ve written about this before . . . probably each year around this time, but there are at least 20 stray cats on our street. At any time of day I can walk outside and spot at least 6 lying on top of cars, under cars and in driveways. Well, this time of year they “fight” all night, filling the air with yowls and shrieks. The dogs hear the cats, jump up and run back and forth in our bedroom panting, wanting to get outside to chase them. The other night it was so ridiculous that Josh went outside at 2am and aimed the garden hose in the direction of the noise and broke up the cat “fight.” At least that seemed to shut them down for the rest of the night.

So far the only solution that has been mildly successful is playing cat meowing and hissing noises throughout the day to try and desensitize the dogs to cat noises. Thanks YouTube for providing a video library of cat fights to choose from. Of course that means I have to listen to cat yowling and fighting in the daytime, but desperate times. If it means we can sleep at night it will be worth it.