Dana - Central Asia Updates

One Year Down

By on November 6, 2018 Track: Business Region: Asia - Central

Has it really already been a year? Wowzer. And this year has been hard! Not that life in your home country isn’t, but at least one can usually go grocery shopping without needing a dictionary. I’m not complaining, each new challenge is an opportunity for growth and for God to show His power and be glorified, but I don’t want to sugar-coat this either. It’s tough. And there are growing pains as I work to become the person God designed me to be. Yesterday, I came across a verse in 2nd Corinthians about sorrow. Paul is reflecting on the reaction his first letter, a reprimand, caused among the… Read more >>

Out of the City

By on October 9, 2018 Track: Business Region: Asia - Central

Greetings Friends! I failed to write a post last month, so this month you get an extra long one. Yippee! In previous posts I’ve mentioned my awesome landlord, Otto*, and his daughter Marie*, who owns my apartment, yes? Over the summer they invited us (my boss, his wife and me) to their summer/ancestral home several times, and in mid-September we finally went! It is only 168 miles away but takes 4.5 hours to drive due to the lower speeds required for traversing switchbacks and mountain roads. Coloradans know something about that kind of journey. We left the city around 8:30am, picking up Marie… Read more >>

International Grocery Shopping

By on July 31, 2018 Track: Business Region: Asia - Central

Picture; multi-lingual pantry: Russian, Turkish, Greek, Italian, German, Georgian, French and Dutch with some English throughout. Most of us have experienced this: you go to a different city or state and the water tastes a little (or a lot) different. Here, everything tastes different. Particularly all raw ingredients, like milk, flour, and eggs have a different taste from their US counterparts. Which kinda makes sense – the milk is highly pasteurized, the grain and vegetables grow in different soils, and the water has other minerals in it. Unfortunately, this means that pancakes, muffins,… Read more >>

Waiting for Rain

By on July 13, 2018 Track: Business Region: Asia - Central

It’s hot. Maybe not as hot as some of you are used to, but it’s hot. A friend, who used to live in a country in this region, told me that during the summer it would get so hot they didn’t think they could stand it, and then it would rain. That would cool everything down a bit, and the process would start all over again. That’s about how it was last week. We celebrated the 4th in 103°F heat, and then it rained on Friday night. Saturday was beautiful and cool and fresh. And then we’ve started over. The forecast for the next month is looking better, but this month has been significantly hotter… Read more >>

For His Name's Sake

By on July 11, 2018 Track: Business Region: Asia - Central

For over a month now I’ve been working my way, slowly, through the book of Ezekiel. If you don’t remember which one he was, he lived during the Babylonian exile, ate a scroll, had to lay on his left side for 390 days, one day for each year of Israel’s sinning, and then another 40 days on his right side for the sins of Judah, and prophesied his own wife’s death. But he’s really famous for the vision in the valley where an army of dry bones comes back to life. That guy. Anyway, as I’ve been reading, one phrase is constantly repeated (at least 50 times in the whole book): “Then [they] will know… Read more >>