2 truths and a lie answers

A couple of days ago, for the blog hop game, I posted 2 truths and a lie .

Here are the answers...

For those of you who guessed that I was lying about #3, pat yourself on the back, you were correct!

Here's a little bit of the story behind my three statements.

1) I have lived in 4 countries.  TRUE!  When I was a little girl, my parents served as missionaries for a few years.  Dad served in Mission Aviation Fellowship, as a pilot.  We traveled to Costa Rica for Spanish language school, Haiti for the first mission, then to Baja, Mexico, where Dad pioneered a new program.  (I know what you're thinking...That's three countries, not four.  Yeah, but I have lived in the United States too!  Still do!)

2) I had my first paying article published when I was 18.  TRUE!  I learned that one of the keys to getting published is to get in on the ground floor of a new publication.  That, folks, is when the editors still need you and that's what you want.  Back when I was but a slip of a girl at 18, there was this new Christian magazine called Right Road.  They were planning a theme on religious persecution for an upcoming edition.  I remembered that I had read this book from the library called The Siberian Seven.  It was about seven members of a Pentecostal family in the Soviet Union who were persecuted for their faith.  In 1978, they fled into the American embassy in Moscow, seeking to immigrate to the United States for freedom.  When the book by John Pollock ended, the Seven were still in the embassy, hanging in political limbo.  The story struck me powerfully.  I wanted to find out what had happened to them.  It was now many years after the book had been published but I didn't know what had happened.  I managed to track down articles from the New York Times on microfilm reels.  I assembled a binder of these news clips and found out that the ordeal had lasted for 5 years before the family was finally allowed to immigrate to the United States.  5 years!  Can you imagine?  It was the early days of the Internet as I assembled my story, but using an online phone book, I managed to track down two members of the family.  I was able to conduct an interview with Timothy Chmykhalov, who was a teenage boy at the time his family entered the embassy.  I was honored that he was willing to talk to me.  My story was published in Right Road.  They even paid me, but I would have written it for free!

3) I have lived in Africa.  FALSE!  I have never lived in or even visited Africa.  My Dad did, however, live there after my parents' divorce.  He lived in several African countries, working as an aid pilot.  One of my great regrets was that I was not able to visit him there.  Dad did offer, but it would have required my brother and I traveling there by ourselves, which didn't seem advisable as we were just kids at the time.  I wish there would have been a safe way to pull it off though.

Thanks to everybody for playing!