I had great ambitions to give Josh his second haircut of our marriage before we went to visit our relatives for Christmas, but we ran out of time before our departure and Josh assured me that no one would think I was a bad wife for failing to give my husband a haircut. My worries were completely relieved when one of my younger brothers commented, “nice to see Josh has his hair back.”

On our return home, I gathered my courage together and decided to try giving Josh a haircut again. With some helpful advice from a professional hairdresser (and from my husband), we successfully accomplished the mission and I was satisfied that no one would be looking at Josh’s hair and wondering who his “butcher” wife is.

Last weekend, Lap Siu (pictured above) and his family visited Dallas to spend time with other Jarai. (There are about 100 Jarai in the Dallas area.) Lap is from Vietnam, and he immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee around the age of 18. He and I have been talking for the last year or so, but this was my first chance to meet him.

Lap graciously gave up a couple days to consult with me about the Jarai language and also to assist me in recording a 30-minute traditional Jarai tale, told by a middle-aged Jarai man, Dun (pictured below), who knows a lot of the old legends.

Part of the recording session involved going over a release form that all research participants must sign. One section of the form states that participates are not paid for their participation. Dun replied (in Jarai) something to this effect: “The words that come out of my mouth cost me nothing.”

Lap himself also recorded some rhymes for me. You can listen to one below and see the transcription and translation here. This particular one was written by Lap, and it goes along with a traditional Jarai tune. (I recorded Lap reciting the poem, too, but I just discovered that the file was corrupted. I tried to recover it from my backup, but apparently it was corrupted from the start. Anyway, here’s Lap singing it.)

This Christmas all six Sutter siblings (and three spouses) were able to celebrate at the Sutter household in PA. We enjoyed our visit with the whole family.

We had a wonderful time in SC visiting family and celebrating Christmas with the Jensens. We’re looking forward to spending more time with them this summer, when I take my last nine credits of classes at BJU.

Last night from 6 to 7 was Amy’s first PTA. It was a blast, even though I didn’t win the raffle. (Actually, I didn’t even get a (free) ticket. I think they were for the parents.) In addition to the raffle, a few other things reminded me of elementary Christmas programs I was in as a kid at Hampton Park: the enthusiastic chatter in the audience throughout the program, the crowd of parents in the aisle taking photos of their kids during the performances, and — the program’s climax — kindergartners jumping up and down on stage while Feliz Navidad was played on a boombox. (You wanna see that? You’ll have to click on Continue Reading, further down.) Okay, so maybe not quite like programs Amy and I were in as kids. But it was lots of fun!

Amy did have a nervous 20 minutes waiting for her kids to a arrive. From about 5:35 – 5:55 only 2 or 3 of her students had shown up. But by 6:05, about 12 total had come (out of Amy’s 40 1st graders from the last two weeks) to sing Jingle Bells and shake their instruments (first audio clip below). They sang loudly and with enthusiasm

The crowd thoroughly enjoyed their singing, as you can hear from the very appreciative applause:

Yeah, and they’re cute. Here are some photos.

If you want to see a video of Amy’s kiddos — and the kindergartners who, as their teacher told me, “Like to jump up and down”, go on to the next page: Continue reading 1st PTA →

These were Amy’s words when we went out to the ice-covered car this morning a little after 7. We’d started the car about 5 minutes before, and some of the ice on the windshield was melted, but not enough. Not finding my ice scraper, I made do with my umbrella (hey — it was better than my fingernails).

Sorry, no photos.

Last week was my first full week of teaching at Cochran Elementary School. The rotation for Special classes (music, art, gym, and computer) for grades K-6 is 5 consecutive days of each special every 6 weeks, so I see each class for one week out of each 6 week grading period. Last week I only had two classes per day . . . a nice way to be integrated into the school. (This week I have 7-8 classes per day — PreK-6th grade — in 45-minute back-to-back sessions. More on that later.) I’m currently working on trying to learn the names of my over 600 students. Or at least the 100+ I’ve had so far. Let me introduce you to class 2C and class Pre-KC.

Class 2C                                  Class Pre-KC

This afternoon while Amy worked on lesson plans, I threw together a new website (based on this one for its design) that I’ll use to market my small-scale web design business. I recycled an address I used while I was in Cambodia (www.josh-in-cambodia.org) and used the initials to create J.I.C. Web Design.

I had intended to use Jensen Dimension for my web portfolio, but I started to doubt the wisdom of passing out – for business purposes – the address to a web site devote mainly to family news.

We celebrated Thanksgiving with the Park family this year. Jun Suk is one of Josh’s fellow students, and this is his first year working on his Ph.D. at UTA. We had a lovely time with their family and enjoyed our fellowship together.

Thanksgiving preparations kept us busy both Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Wednesday night, while Josh was in class, I made three loaves of Challah bread. (Challah bread is traditionally served in Jewish homes for the Sabbath meal and at feast times, but I love it and decided to add some Jewish flavor into our Thanksgiving meal.)

Thursday morning I popped the turkey in the oven (love those oven bags), and when it was cooked, Josh did a wonderful job carving the turkey – just finishing as our guests were arriving.

After our guests left, we took a traditional after Thanksgiving meal nap, finished reading Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, went on an evening walk, and enjoyed warm turkey sandwiches for dinner.

We have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving – our salvation, our marriage, our apartment, our jobs, and the many other blessings God daily gives us. He is our faithful Father. To God be the glory.

Being married is one of the most wonderful things in the world – I love it!  I love living with and sharing everything with my best friend – my husband. I love the way he points me to Christ and challenges me to be more like our Savior.  Happy 5th month anniversary, Josh- thank you for choosing me!

Saturday afternoon, I had Lily over to practice our pie making skills. Our plan for the afternoon was to make three pies – a cherry pie for Lily, a pumpkin pie for the Hills (friends of my Grandma Buecher), and a peach pie for Josh and me. We successfully completed our mission with time for two games of Othello and a couple games of Uno before Josh arrived home with our pizza dinner.

After dinner, we drove to visit the Hills. Mrs. Hill took a nasty fall last Friday and broke her shoulder, but she was in good spirits and we enjoyed our visit with them. From the Hills we drove to Lily’s grandparents (the Kahlers) to drop Lily off. Mrs. Kalher has an amazing rock collection, and she took time to show us a “few” of her rocks and fossils, and Mr. Kahler made us some very rich hot chocolate.

Sunday evening (while writing this post), the fire alarms in our apartment building went off . Apparently, there was a grease fire in one of the first floor apartments – exciting times.

For the past 3 months, many of you have been praying with us that the Lord would provide a job for me. For weeks, I spent countless hours searching for jobs and sending applications and resumes to employers, with little to no response. About a month ago I got an unexpected call from the Dallas School District, and to make a long story short, I have been hired to teach music at Cochran Elementary School. Cochran Elementary is a Title One K-6 school, primarily made up of Hispanics and African Americans (I have yet to see a Caucasian student in the school). Cochran has not had a music program, so I will be starting  and building their music program. I spent today (my first day) cleaning out the classroom, learning my way around the school, and making friends with the head custodian (something they taught me in school as being essential to the well being of my music program).

Thank you for praying for my job. The Lord has provided in unexpected ways a job that I am trained for and I will truly enjoy. To God be the glorly.

You already know that I’m past the exam, but now I can announce that I passed it, too!

I had a noon-time appointment today in the office of one of my professors: present were my former PhD advisor, my current PhD advisor, and the department chair. (Such was the arrangement for announcing the results to each test taker.) After showing me my scores, they congratulated me and shook my hand. And that was about it.

(In the photo, that’s me and one of my Korean classmates, Sok Hun, who also took the test this semester.)

For those of you who are wondering where we’ve been in the blog-world, here’s a short update on our weekend adventures. Friday night we went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner (compliments of the Bixbys), and then I took Josh on a surprise adventure to UTA’s planetarium show Seven Wonders, and we enjoyed seeing the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World and the constellations of the Texas night sky. Friday night was buy one get one free, so with Josh’s student discount, we paid $2.00 for the show (and the $2 was compliments of Grandma Sutter’s change).

Saturday night we played another game of Monopoly, and I, once again, beat Josh. He now regrets “teaching” me how to play. Sunday we enjoyed fellowshipping with our NLB Church family and during the afternoon Josh finished our new church website. Sunday evening we enjoyed a time of food and games (Dutch Blitz, Taboo, and Scattergories) at Debbie and Lynnelle’s. This week is “normal” for the Jensen family – Josh is working and studying and I’m enjoying being his wife.

For our wedding, Amy’s close friend Rebekah Pringle (pictured at right with Amy’s sister, Emily, who likes to be in photos) wrote us a wonderful song text, which Brian Pinner (a close friend of mine) set to music for us. [update on 11/21: the setting was co-written by Dianne Pinner and Brian Pinner – and now that I’ve been reminded of this by Brian, I realize that I left Mrs. Pinner out of the wedding program; sorry, Mrs. Pinner!] Amy and I were thrilled with both the text and the setting. In case you didn’t hear it (or want to hear it again), you can listen to it as streaming audio here (guitar and vocal: Brian Pinner). The song starts about 5 seconds into the track.

“Song of a Covenant” is a translation of the Hebrew song title, Shir Berith.

The text of the song is below: Continue reading Song of a Covenant (Shir Berith) →

Living on-campus works out really well for our one-car family. Josh is able to walk to class and work, and usually, I’m able to walk with him to class and meet him after he’s finished for the day. I always enjoy meeting him on his way home, and sometimes I hide along the way and “surprise” during his walk. You should have seen his face the time I ran up behind him and grabbed his hand!

Fall has arrived in Texas, and I’m enjoying the cooler weather and the autumn colors.

Josh “celebrated” Election Day in a unique way (actually – it was a study break and a way to make his wife burst out with laughter).

I’ve been having fun with the Johnson girls. Last week we made cupcakes, and this week we played hide-n-go-seek. I was surprised how many good hiding places there are in our little home.

This past Saturday the PhD Diagnostic Exam was given, and 7 hours after the procedure began, I emerged, thoroughly examined. I won’t know the results for a couple weeks. I suppose that until then, I can’t say that I’ve actually been diagnosed, unless the act of taking the test is itself the diagnosis.

The test was divided into four sections: sound structure (phonology), grammatical structure (syntax), meaning and use (pragmatics & semantics), and meaning in context (sociolinguistics and historical & comparative linguistics). Each section had 2 or 3 essay questions to choose from, and for each section, there was at least one question that I felt reasonably confident answering. I thank the Lord for mental alertness and help for my hand, which sometimes cramps up badly if I write for an extended period of time.

When I came home, Amy prepared chicken fajitas, and we had a nice relaxing evening. Homework was prohibited. (A little more praise for my wife: as the exam was approaching, Amy was such a help to me in carving out time to study, relieving me from other work, and encouraging me.)

And thanks to you all for praying.

This morning we received a call from the campus police requesting that Josh come down to meet them in the apartment parking lot. Josh asked if I wanted to come along, but I decided to let him face the police on his own, while I watched (and took pictures) from the window.

Apparently, someone had a little fun last night and ripped several peoples’ sideview mirrors off, and we were one of their chosen cars. The police took down our information, but there’s little hope that the vandal will turn up. This morning I drove into Dallas and have found that driving without a sideview mirror is an interesting experience.

On a typical class day for Josh, I walk him to class and meet him on his way home from campus. He usually gives me a call, when he’s leaving campus, and I start on my way to meet him somewhere along the way. Sometimes I leave before he calls, so I can pop up unexpectedly and surprise/scare him on his way home. (You should have seen his face the time I came up behind him and grabbed his hand.)

Today when Josh called, I pretended to be well on my way to meet him, when I was actually trying to finish up some last minute things before I walked out the door. To my surprise, when I went to meet Josh, he was coming around the last bend before our apartment. He surprised me! As we walked together to check the mail (another daily ritual), Josh tied his jacket over my eyes so I could practice being blind (a remnant from Education for Exceptional Learners at BJU). As I was trying to find our mailbox with my eyes closed, my hands felt something rather different than the usual keyhole. My dear husband bought me roses for our four month anniversary. I was so surprised! After class instead of working in the lab, Josh had walked to our parking lot, taken our car (he was really worried I would notice that our car was missing), and went to buy roses and pickles (I love Claussen pickles!). I should tell you that Josh went to three grocery stores and called my mom before he found my favorite pickles. I have such a sweet husband. It was one of those “blah” days for me, and Josh’s gift of roses and pickles was simply perfect.