Home Sweet Holidays

I have made it back from Dubai!!! Yay!

The adventures with my friends, new and old, will never be forgotten! This was a trip that I will never forget.
I am happy to be in the States with my family, but I miss Dubai.  It was 11 days of wonderful, and these next days will be filled with jolliness!

Our last day in Dubai was nothing short of wonderful! We got to make one last swanky mall trip and get ready with the bridal party for Adrienne and Kaia's wedding.  Kaia looked so beautiful! It was a fun reception, but for sure hard to leave all of our wonderful new friends.  We set off to make the 34 hour day!! Last night after we arrived in Knoxville, I drove to Murfreesboro to make an appearance at the Thomas family Christmas Party and to be with my parents, sister, aunt B and uncle Wayne.  Collin and Cameron even willingly picked me up in Cookeville to bring me home!! Love them.  My wonderful sister brought me red velvet from donut country <3

I am just chilling with my family and friends for the next few days to celebrate the birth, life, death, and resurrection of the wonderful Savior.  I wish you all a very happy Christmas! It's good to be home. 

The Final Days

I write this evening filled with many different emotions.  I am sad to leave Dubai.  This is a wonderful place where God is doing big and good things!  I have learned a lot by being among the believers in Christ here, about genuine faith and the boldness to share it with others around me.  I will leave with a fresh thankfulness for the opportunities that I have in America, and continue to seek the Lord as I think about where He will take me next.  I wish that we had more time here, but I am so thankful for all the crazy adventures that we have gotten the privilege to have here, and all the amazing people that we have shared time with

However much we wish to stay and keep doing life here, I am thrilled to come back to my home and spend Christmas with my dear family and friends.  I have missed everyone very much while we have been gone, but don't worry kids! We'll be back SO soon!! ...maybe we'll come with gifts

I feel like I should share one thing that has been on my heart since we have been in Dubai. :: God is so much bigger than our momentary lives, situations, moments, fears, doubts, trials, and successes. :: He created us with a word, and still to this moment sustains our lives.  And more than that, even after we rebelled against Him, He made a way for us to know Him and be reconciled to Him through the death of Jesus for our sins, and His Resurrection for our justification (Romans 4:25).  He still interceeds in our lives with the power of His Spirit and loves us with the eagerness and compassion of a Father.  I have been so challenged to live my life in a display of this gospel.  Where that takes me next, who knows?  But I know that wherever I am, I will praise His great name and share in this knowledge with others.  

To be real, I can't remember everything that we have done in the past couple of days that I haven't written, but it included going to the top of the Burj Khalifa, taking a boat through the creek in Old Dubai, shopping in the Sukhs, studying the Bible, hanging out with Mark Donald, going to Dibba Oman, taking a boat ride to swim with the piranhas and just being us.  And it was beautiful

Here are a couple of shots over the past few days

precious Parks princesses

in front of the aquarium in the Mall of Dubai

Being at the top of the tallest building in the world just makes some of the biggest things seem so small

these gypsies put their heads out of the building!!!l

our abra ride in the creek

welcome to Oman!l

holla at some Dramamine 

Omani sunset

the fisherman gathering their fish after a hard days work

Day... oh well, I don't know anymore

So,  I have been super tired each night when we return from our activities. But look people! Here I am recounting all the fabulous things that have happened again!  Friday is the day in this part of the country when Christians go to church and Muslims go to the Mosque to hear the Friday preaching.  So, we traveled downtown and went to church.  It was so wonderful to be gathered with so many people that I have heard Hannah talk about.  And we all got to sing praises to Jesus together!! Josh White did some fantastic preaching on “we preach Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23).  If there is a way to get that sermon, I am going to be grabbing it for sure! I was encouraged by his bold statements.  This is after church with some new friends

 We were introduced to maybe 100 people before we left to eat a big lunch at the Park’s house.  We had delightful conversation about college and it’s benefits and effect on us personally and other people that we know.  After lunch, we went to a church picnic at Creek Park.  Now this I find interesting.. the creek is actually a really BIG inlet of water.  But anywho, that is what we did.  It was fun to chat with the people that we had met and got to play games with

 

before the picnic

listening to Josh!l

 Then, in honor of Josh’s last night in Dubai, we went to a real Dubai treasure.  It’s a restaurant called Bu Qtair.  Literally might be the only sketchy place in all of Dubai.  It’s where a lot of locals go and eat spicy seafood.  The place is hilarious, you eat on plastic tables that are like my playschool bench.  And its pretty dark, so you can hardly see anything that you are eating.  All I know is that they brought us a whole fish and we just grabbed some and dipped it in our curry and put it in our mouths.  Then once we finished we played with the fish and I could have barfed how gross it was

 

outside Bu Qtair (Anthony Bourdaine was here on his show!!)l

Joanne and Brian ordering for us across the sea of dead fish

 Later that night we went back to the parks house and played games with some of our friends and the fam.  I have had so much fun just getting to be with all of these people.  I hope that there is some time that they get to come to Tennessee!!l

Saturday! ::: SO GREAT

Maybe my favorite day so far.  We started the day with a ride out to the desert so that we could go dunning!  Eeek!  We had so much fun flying around and listening to really loud music!! The experience was so wonderful! We climbed up a dune and ate our lunch on one of the cliffs, then we got to pray together as we looked out across the huge desert.  It really built my faith as we directed our gaze toward God and asked boldly for him to do big things!  I wish for everyone to get to do this! Both cars got stuck at one point, but only because of our great strength were we able to push the car out! (well maybe some help from ropes and other cars)l

Duneing

Kim tamed the camels 

duneing on the outside

 We hit up a little petrol station on the way out and headed home with ice cream in hand.  Once we got home some of us headed to the beach to watch the sun set with our blankets and books.  There was some prime people watching there!l

After dinner we headed with Mark Donald to the Global Village.  I thought this was just going to be shops and such from all around the world, and yes there was some of that, but this place is fantastic! It’s like an open air shopping palace with carnival rides and entertaining dances from all over the world.  I had a blast shopping and chatting with people from all different places.  I bought more Christmas presents J

Global Village

Anyway, I think there is more to tell, but I hope this is satisfying enough, my fingers are a little tired!l

number 4

Hello Friends!!l

Sorry I didn't write yesterday, but we played games and watched movies until pretty late last night, so I didn't get a chance to post.  I guess this will just have to be a pretty long post!l

Yesterday was just great! We started the day by going to Mr. Parks office! We saw GDSKC and met with the interns. Legit, this part of the day was so so so encouraging.  We went around the room and each shared how we came to know Jesus. These were such wonderful stories! I loved getting to hear about the backgrounds of these friends and how God was so faithful to draw each of us to himself. We heard story after story of how people responded to the message of the Gospel.l

After this meeting we went to Sharjah to the American University there.  Sharjah is one of the Emirates, next to Dubai, about fourty-five minutes away.  We went with David Laurence and Nader to meet up with some students there. We had lunch with Basem, who is Egyptian, and Paul, from the U.K. They are so great! Basem is so funny and he responds with huge eyes to all of our little antecdotes.  Paul is very academic, and we got to have a fun discussion about American culture and politics.l

On the real this is the nicest campus that I have ever been on! Its like American government buildings but way newer and cleaner.l 

After lunch we went through the library to the study room and read the Bible together.  It was really fun to hear people's perspective on the parable of the relentless widow.  We came back home by way of the desert!! It was hilarious, our dunning during the commute :)l

We had a fun dinner at home with some of the Stiles, three guys in the youth group (Deno, Delino, and Pratik) , and Josh.  We had so much fun with a big table of people! We got to share funny stories and then after dinner we talked for a while over brownies and went in to the living room to play a game. We taught the Dubai kids to play Fishbowl!! They were so funny about learning it! It was fun to play with all of our cross cultural phrases.l 

Have I mentioned that sunsets are just GREAT here! Honestly, this picture is crap compared to what it is really like.l

Now: TODAY

In the morning Natalie and I (the little aspiring teachers [and now globe trotters]) went to the Universal American School, where Kris Laurence is a teacher.  She was so gracious and let us into her precious 3 year-old classroom. I really enjoyed getting to hear from her and other teachers in the school about how they got to be where they are,  classroom policies, cirriculum, strategies and other array of helpful info! These teachers here really seem to love being in Dubai!l

Natalie and I took a taxi, which are very very safe (mom!) and for super cheap he took us to the Mall of the Emirates (where Ski Dubai is).  Nat and I debated for a bit whether we should sit in the front or both in the back.  We picked the back and the driver didn't even talk to us.  It was different, but honestly a really fun experience. Then, Mrs. Parks picked us up there to take us to The American School of Dubai so we could pick up Emma and Leah from school.  This school is seriously impressive! We were trying to compare it to things that we had seen before, and really it is SO nice.  Its like a secret government research campus.l 

We ate some leftovers at the house, and then headed to what Hannah called the sketch area of town (which I don't think that anywhere I have been in Dubai is sketchy).  But we went to the Antique Museum.  IT WAS CRAZY.  Seriously, the place was COVERED with antiques.  There were sections of like everything imaginable for us to buy there. They had scarves and trinkets from a variety of different countries.  If you can imagine me in there, you know that I was happier than any other day of shopping in my life!  I bought Christmas presents :)l

We went to the really nice park in Jumiera, called Safa Park.  It cost 3 dirhams (1 US dollar) to get in.  There were a ton of people there from FOCUS having a barbeque and hanging out listening to Josh White play some more tunes.  So we have been chillin at the house since then getting aquainted with the funny stories of the child called Hannah Parks.l 

Day 2: Can't touch the girls

Day one is done.  And day two brought its mighty fine adventure.  We got up and went to Abu Dhabi, which is the capital of the U.A.E. It takes around an hour and a half to get there from Dubai, so we spent some time driving in the traffic today.  It really was nice time in the car hearing from Mr. Parks about some of the things that we saw yesterday and what was to come for us today.  So, when we arrived, we met Mack, Victoria, Andrei and Josh White at the Sheikh Zayed Mosque

I seriously have so many pictures of this place, but not one, even captures close to the whole thing.  This mosque is enormous.  Seriously, it was crazy.  When we walked up they asked us to put on an abaya, which is the cloak that muslim women wear over their clothing to hide their shape from men.  The men though, did not have to wear anything special, except for the men with visible tattoos.  And we happened to be with Josh, who is what I would call tatted up. Also, they asked Josh not to touch the women as we were taking a picture with him.  That's why he is awkwardly standing on the side there.l

After leaving the mosque, we went to downtown Abu Dhabi to the NYU branch in the city.  We went there to meet with some of the student leaders from the campus ministry there.  They told us that this is one of the THREE Universities in the Middle East that is allowed to have a Christian club on the campus.  

The people that we met here were so great! We got to get to know some of the students.  It was a neat time, because I almost felt like we weren't in the Emirates any more.  Everyone was speaking English, there was grass, and especially after we had been to the mosque it was a bit of a shock to talk about Jesus so freely with the friends there.  We had a nice little pow wow in their grass courtyard, and got to chat as Josh played us a little music that he wrote and they would typically sing at his church.  Check out the website.  I really like what this guy is doing for Christ in Portland http://www.doorofhopepdx.org/

As we rode back to Dubai, we had an amazing time watching the sun set over the city.  This might be my glorious photography moment

 

We ate TONS of DELICIOUS Lebanese food when we got back to Dubai, and did I mention it was delicious??l

Until tomrrow. Check my twitter @LauraCantrell1

Dia Uno

Today has been so crazy wonderful! After getting breakfast this morning, we went out to the beach and I got schooled on the Arabian/Persian Gulf.  So, I put my toes in "The Gulf " and just had a wonderful time chatting with my friends and the Parks fam

people, I finally met the famous, the only, THE Mac Styles
It was quite a milestone in my life. I have been hearing about him, ever since me and Hannah started this whole friends thing

Joanne took us around town.  First we saw the palm tree islands! These things are amazing! It is just so crazy that they were made so recently.  To get to the end of it where the Atlantis is, you have to drive through a tunnel that goes UNDERWATER. If you aren't freakin out, you're crazy.
Next we saw the famous Burj al Arab.  It is very famous, in fact, I first saw it on the cover of the Owl City Album cover and later learned that it was the world's only 7 star hotel.
 That's right 7.

I mean you can see why right?? (I clearly took this picture)l
We got to see the church that the girls grew up going to, and started the church that they go to now!  It is called The United Christian Church of Dubai.  I suggest you Google it.  Great things are happening there.  We talked with the pastor there, John.  He is an American from North Carolina, and he spent a lot of time talking with us about Jesus, the church, Dubai and why it's so great to live here.l
After visiting for a while, we went to the suuuuper swank Mall of the Emirates (imagine me saying that in my high class accent). And saw the indoor ski slop!  Now, my intention is not to burst anyone's bubble, but merely to state my observation.  When I say ski slope, I mean slope. Singular.  I guess I was expecting a mountain inside of there! But I will say that it was really cute, but I don't think we will be needing to go down it.l
After a funny scurry through the mall, weighing the pros and cons of taking the metro, and chatting over hummus, we got in the car with Corsaire, a Redeemer intern, and headed down the busy streets to the Parks home, where a church Bible Study was going on.  We got to participate in a really encouraging discussion on 1 Corinthians 1:10-31.  I can give you a great lesson on it when I return.  Don't worry, I took notes.l

I have to say that the thing I have enjoyed most are the people that we have met and get to spend the rest of the week with! We got to spend some time with the GDSKC interns: Victoria, Nader and Andrei today

Oh, AND they have Versa's here :) yay! Except they decided to name them Tiida?? I don't really know what's up with that either

Now that it is 11, I am thrilled to announce that I made it through the jetlag with no hesitation to jump in bed!l

WE'RE HERE!! ptl

WE have arrived people!  The Dubai internet however is in Arabic, so me actually posting this blog is kind of a miracle! So our plane rides were fantastic.  John and I were talking about why it felt like such a long time even though it had only really been 24 hours.  But the sun set twice! So it felt like a couple of days all together! After 8 hours of layover, being called tweens, riding the monorail in the buildings (!) and some of us sleeping... we arrived in Dubai, spent a while in the Passport line and were greeted by the Parks! eeek! It has been so fun gettting to be in their home for a little while. We walked out to the beach this morning! It's so close to their home! We got breakfast from a place called the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.  It was so great! I have already enjoyed being here so much, I can't wait to see what is to come next on our adventure!

Pictures to come, stalkers