Demasiada

Reflections of Haiti

2010-02-03T08:14:00.000-08:00

Thursday, Jan 21 Arrival in Jimani, Dominican Republic
There’s no way to prepare yourself emotionally as a human offering to alleviate pain and suffering in the face of a devastating and hopeless crisis, whose magnitude is too large to manage. It cannot be contained and dealt with in such a way as is possible to then “move on”. It is a bloody wound that mocks.
Entering in to this reality – the chaos – of wounded, dying, dead, surviving, grieving, searching – is intimidating. It is arriving on a battlefield seeing the unrelenting power of the victor, Mother Nature. And though the battle was brief, its effects and its fear remain, lingering so that despair is so powerful it enters into your pores, and your every instinct directs you to retreat.
You must conquer yourself first in order to enter in to the aftermath.
Friday, Jan 22 The First Plunge
Ambivalence. Living and feeling extremes simultaneously. Dread and Anticipation. Hunger and Nausea. Plunging in and Stepping back. Appearing or Hiding. Order and Chaos. Known and Unknown. Real or Supposed. Human or Object. Bed number or Person. Personal or Professional. Distant or Intimate. The Individual or The Masses. The wholeness of my body in a foreground of broken, crushed, and amputated patients’ bodies.
Over my head. Haitians speak Creole, a dialect of French that metamorphed as a mixture of French, Spanish, and English languages. The history of the island is bloody and treacherous, and is not forgotten by the Haitians and Dominicans who share the island today. The relation between the two countries is not amicable. The Dominican Republic views Haitians as contaminants to their country, and though the government could not refuse entry to the many wounded Haitians flooding the borders in every possible kind of vehicle – ambulance, SUV, helicopter – it is anxious to remove these undesirables as soon as possible from their midst.
Reluctant, but necessary, was the order given to Dominican public healthcare workers to immunize the hospitalized Haitians whose presence posed a health risk to their country. As the makeshift hospital in Jimani was staffed by volunteers, the majority of whom were American, the language barrier was a significant problem. Speaking Spanish was useful that day. The Dominicans arrived unannounced and began vaccinating patients without rhyme or reason, and without knowing which patients needed which injections. The head doctor on day shift asked for a Spanish-speaking nurse to supervise the administration of the immunizations. I volunteered and by the end of the day I knew the Creole word for injection “pique”, and we, two Dominican healthcare workers and I, had seen all 200+ patients in the four hospital wards to administer tetanus and other immunizations as indicated to the correct patients.
This in-your-face introduction to reality was – is – overwhelmingly difficult. Urgent, evolving needs demanding attention from too few a number of trained hands with the ability to give it. Faces swirling in and out of my mind – their pelvic fractures, their bandaged stumps, their limbs stabilized with hardware sticking sometimes almost three inches out of their skin in all directions, the women tending to their babies, the women whose exhausted bodies were working hard to protect the baby growing inside them, the men grieving the loss of limb and future livelihood, the resilience of children who cannot comprehend their future – the comprehensive reality of an entire country.
Tremors, “aftershocks”, are apparently common after large earthquakes, as tectonic plates flex their muscles and settle definitively into new position in the earth’s crust. The trauma of any natural disaster causes acute stress in the people affected; and even more so when the disaster is a large scale earthquake with continued aftershocks. Those whose homes were not destroyed now stand abandoned, as their former inhabitants take to sleeping outside in the streets just in case another earthquake should happen. No one wants to be caught under the rubble this time.
At around 7:00p.m. I felt two tremors. They were weak and no cause for alarm, insignificant to the untraumatized mind. But for the patients, there was instant panic. The facility we were using as a hospital was actually built to be an orphanage, a two story structure with several large rooms. The hospital was divided into four wards. There were so many patients in each room that some spilled out into the halls. Patients who could walk ran out of the hospital, while patients who were immobile dragged themselves out as best they could. Family members pulled patients out on their mattresses into the grass away from the building, and one desperate man jumped from the second story to get out of the building. The crack that was heard when he hit the ground was his spinal column breaking.
Chaos and fear. Pandemonium. Locating patients. Matching up charts. Assessing new injuries. Bringing a semblance of order to disorder. Quieting the chaos, calming the fear, soothing pain and discomfort, waiting for adrenaline to pass and sleep to take over the night.
Saturday, Jan 23 Day Shift in Ward D
Morning came abruptly. Having packed a sleeping bag, but no tent, I chose to pass the night in the rental vehicle. Scrubs double as great sleepwear, so getting ready was easy. The only oddity is entering into public without having had a look in the mirror first.
The crisp air does much to awaken the mind, just as the peace of sunrise brings hope and prompts compassion in the heart for the work to be done in the day ahead. I was anxious, but ready for the day.
8:00a.m. and it was already getting hot. We soon realized that the patients had no intention of returning inside the building, as we watched family members use whatever they could find – sticks, broken cinder blocks, rocks, bed sheets, plastic tarps – to erect crude tents to shade their loved one from the sun. We passed around sun block.
Ward D had about fifty patients, with only four nurses to care for them. Access to patients was a challenge, as patients shared tent “walls” and privatized their new living space. Just making sure that each patient had received his antibiotic and pain medication was difficult and time-consuming, let alone assessing vital signs, maintaining IV fluids, giving IV meds, and changing wound dressings. And charting. Charting was several scraps of paper with operative notes by surgeons in the OR, illegible handwriting by whatever doctor did rounds the previous morning and evening, and the conspicuous absence of standing orders and nursing interventions. Figuring out when the last time pain medication was administered to the patient was impossible, as many volunteer health professionals apparently considered charting an optional activity in this less-than-optimal environment.
By mid-morning, with sunburned necks and sore backs from bending down, leaning over, and squatting by patients whose mattresses were lying directly on the ground, an engineer pronounced the building structurally sound and the head day shift doctor announced that we should assist patients back into the building.
By this time many patients were sweltering in the heat and agreed to go back inside. Ward D was seven rooms in a row with an outside corridor at the top of a slight embankment. The patients were about twenty yards away. We began to move the willing patients by picking them up by their flimsy mattresses – this took four to six people – and walking slowly up the slight hill to the corridor and inside. The most painful transits were the patients with external fixators (screws, pins, and other hardware) holding their bone fragments together. After about four hours, a fourth of Ward D patients were no longer lying in the sun.
A beautiful thing about nursing care is that the very nature of it creates an instant intimate relationship between patient and nurse. In Room 7 of Ward D in bed 8, Jaune lay flat on her mattress on the floor with a tibial-fibular fracture to her right leg. She needed a dressing change, and it was going to hurt. External fixation – being able to screw bone fragments together for stabilization – means a much higher likelihood of correct healing. At the same time, it also means that care must be given to keep the hardware clean and dry for the next 8 weeks to avoid infection that has a direct pathway to the bone.
One of the most painful realities looking at a roomful of patients was seeing some patients with external fixation and other patients with amputations. It all had to do with timing. One might think that the first patients brought to the hospital would be at an advantage to the ones who spent more time under the rubble and were pulled out later. Not so. In the first few days following the earthquake, there were no supplies – no anesthesia, no pain medication, no hardware for external fixation. Amputation was the only treatment option. Those patients who came to the hospital a week later found ample volunteers, supplies, and hardware. Their limbs were saved.
And so it was with Jaune. As I cut through the dressing as gently as I could, I could see Jaune wincing. With the dressing off, I could see the ten inch incision they had made and stitched together again, and a huge chunk of missing tissue along the back of her leg. It looked like perhaps her leg had been pinned under rubble and as she was pulled free an 8 inch strip of calf muscle had gotten ripped off. Despite Jaune’s discomfort, she never cried out or asked me to stop. She resolutely accepted what had to be done. After washing and applying triple antibiotic ointment to the wound and pins sticking out of her leg, Jaune helped raise her leg as I wrapped the final dressing around it. As I gathered all my supplies and stood up, Jaune blew me a kiss. This is the people of Haiti. Strong, resilient, beautiful, thankful.
As the sun went down, the patients indoors began to relocate, yet again, outside. Aftershocks, they believed, happened at night.
Sunday, Jan 24 Floating, Finding, Filling
Sleep in a bed was good. There were a few rooms on the second floor, above the OR, and two beds became available for the three of us. Pushed together, three girls in sleeping bags can sleep great. We checked the schedule posted on the wall, expecting to work the day shift again, but we were not assigned for day shift or night shift. Since we knew that there were too many patients and not enough nurses, we decided to “float” and help with patient care again.
One might expect to find a patient in the morning in the same place that you saw them last night, but that assumption would be wrong. The patients were still constantly migrating. The hospital was no longer trying to move patients indoors. The outside areas were now delineated by two rolls of gauze bandages across the grass, creating three, no longer four, hospital wards. Many of the patients, especially the amputees, needed special wound care, under anesthesia. A minor procedures room was set up next to the pharmacy, and patients were taken to the room for debridement (cleaning and removal of dead tissue.)
Locating patients to take to the minor procedures room was a challenge, because patients were no longer in Ward X, Room Y, Bed Z. Finding a patient was like tracking a nomad – they were always moving – outdoors, indoors, hallway, etc – and hard to keep up with. As an “extra” for the day, I offered to take a patient census of Ward C so that patients on our ward could be found more quickly. Without a way to reference patient location by room and bed number, I used landmarks such as the barbed wire fence that ran along one side of the ward, and the gauze roll on the other side that distinguished our patients from those in Ward B. I also made a diagram of the ward and numbered the beds to match with a numbered list of patient names. As long as the bed was tracked and updated on the sheet, we would not lose track of a patient on our ward.
The day went on and as darkness set in, we lost electricity. I suppose that my head light is the reason I was approached and asked to locate a patient for discharge to another hospital. Thanks to the census, we found her quickly. She was a young mother with a possible pelvic fracture who had been separated from her baby when she was brought to Jimani and the baby was sent on to Santo Domingo. As I reviewed her chart, I could not find any standing orders for pain medication or an antibiotic regimen. Rather than track down a doctor in the dark, I prescribed both antibiotics and pain medication, filled the meds at the pharmacy, gave her discharge instructions, and dosed her heavily on pain medication for the six hour car ride she would endure to arrive at the capital to reunite with her baby.
Night shift is usually not nearly as busy as day shift. Sleep is one of the most important factors in healing, as growth and repair of body systems is more efficient during sleep. By 10:00p.m., all patients had received pain medication but not all had eaten dinner. An increasing number of patients and family members, and an increasing number of strangers pretending to be family members, were all receiving food three times a day. As more desperate people loitered around the hospital to get free food, the food ran out before all patients were fed.

One of the things that had frustrated me the most over the weekend was the lack of consistent charting. So when the floor was given a real progress sheet in the evening for each patient chart, I was ecstatic. I couldn’t hide my enthusiasm and proceeded to transcribe the standing orders, medications, and procedures for each one of our patients. By the time that was done, it was nearly 11:00p.m. and the kitchen crew had finally returned with plates of food for those patients who had been waiting to eat since 7:00p.m.
The last contribution we made to the evening was trash detail. Having packed trash bags along with my stethoscope, otoscope, thermometer, and gloves, we moved along the entire “camp” and picked up the empty Styrofoam plates, water bottles, and miscellaneous trash that accumulated to overflowing every few hours. Another day was done.
Monday, Jan 25 Stepping Up
Another tremor, after midnight. Pretty strong. We were awake in bed, and heard many people run out of the building. You could hear the walls shaking, and feel the power underneath, above, and around you. I wondered what the tremor must feel like in Port-au-Prince, and said a prayer for calm for the patients trying to sleep in the field outside the hospital. Very soon after, I went to sleep.
In the morning, we contacted a missionary who was going into PAP each day, distributing food through trusted church leaders. These same churches wished to open their doors to the “walking wounded” who needed medical treatment. We stepped up to gather all the medications that we would need from the overflow of medication donations in the hospital pharmacy. Finding the medications, estimating the amounts needed, packing them in a way so as to access easily, and creating a formulary was our mission for the day.
When you’re in the hospital taking care of patients all day long, you don’t have much time to process what you see and feel. But today, grabbing medications off the shelf, I found myself asking, “What exactly are the rules, God?”
It seems we have been left to our own destruction. What is fair about the aftermath of natural disasters? Jesus came to earth and conquered death. Those who receive Him live forever with Him in a new body. God made certain rules, set certain limits – the age of man shall be 120 years (Genesis 6:3.) What about the young lives taken by the concrete and the rubble?
Why are some lives easy, soft, to excess? Why are some hard, insufferable? God made us in His image. When man began building the Tower of Babel, God destroyed it, saying “Nothing will be impossible for them.” (Genesis 11:6). He confused man with languages to limit his power.
Perhaps He saw we were not using the power He had given us for good. Perhaps God learned his lesson previously, chose to intervene and limit His creation so that humanity would not become another Satan. We have been put in our place for our own good.
All things are not yet under God’s submission (Eph 1:10). When will that day come? We pray for God to act after the disaster. And we expect Him to and believe He is. But why do we believe, are content to believe, that God will act after, but not before tragedy, and certainly not without petitions.
I want to know that God is my Pursuer, watching out for me, and keeping me safe in this world. So, God, What are the rules again?
Tuesday, Jan 26 The Walking Wounded
Crossing the border into Haiti turned out to be a piece of cake. Slap a Red Cross insignia on your windshield and you don’t even have to stop. Entering Haiti was a little eerie. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust and piles of rubble were everywhere. It was hard to know whether the damage we observed was old or new. Signs tacked on to posts or buildings in Creole, French, Spanish, and English advertised the desperation of the people, “We need help” and “Need food and water”. We noticed a long line of people along a sidewalk and U.S. soldiers patrolling the crowd as we neared the U.S. embassy. One the other side of the street our driver pointed out the collapsed U.N. building.
We parked in the street in front of a small church where many people were already waiting for the “clinic” to open. We worked steadily with the assistance of translators. The patients with severe wounds were shunted to one station manned by an orthopedic surgeon who had been at Jimani hospital earlier in the week. We received the rest of the patients, whose maladies ran the gamut of respiratory infections (due to the dust and rubble) to proximity-related diseases (skin and GI infections due to the crowded living conditions in the “tent cities” where the majority of people in PAP were now living without water or sanitation.)
Every single patient we saw was suffering from acute stress, commonly complaining of neck and back pain, headache, anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, panic, grief, and hopelessness. We were all very aware of how inadequate our pill box was, and I soon changed tactics after prescribing several patients a sleep aid and feeling lousy about it. The context was highly appropriate for anxiety, and as a matter of personal safety patients probably did not need to be able to sleep through the next big bang, with no security for their personal belongings and looters out on the streets taking what they wanted for their own. Prayer became my medical offering to each patient, and to my surprise, was eagerly and gratefully received.
Again, it was difficult to enter in voluntarily to the grief of each patient. The most heart wrenching for me were the elderly, who recounted the loss of children and grandchildren in terms of numbers, and could not hide the fear of the knowledge that the only people in their life obliged to care for them were gone. What would become of them?
Wednesday, Jan 27 Dawn of Day
Six days of deprivation of familiarity, comfort, loved ones, and common experience. Not long after sunrise Cameron and Kurt arrived with more medications for the hospital and other clinics. There was comfort in hugging people anchored to “home.”
We set out for the day with an actual agenda. After leaving medications at the hospital, our next stop was en route to PAP, at a Christian outreach clinic and small hospital that had no anesthesia or pain medication for the deluge of patients still flooding the compound fifteen days post-earthquake.
With nearly all health centers in PAP destroyed, health care for even the simplest conditions – a child’s ear infection, the labor and delivery of a baby, an asthma attack – became complicated. There was just nowhere to go. With this in mind, we returned to the church clinic at which we worked the day before.
When we arrived the surgeon called us his angels and we got right to work. I had a new translator, a beautiful twenty-year-old who was a member of the church. She and I got into a rhythm and I was so grateful for her. Towards the end of the afternoon, a young woman came in with a seven month old baby girl. As I asked questions, a sad story unfolded. The young woman holding the baby was not the mother, but a cousin of the mother. When I asked why the mother wasn’t there, the cousin replied that the mother had tried to kill the baby, so she took her. She was concerned that the baby couldn’t roll over yet.
The baby was obviously underweight, but until I took the baby in my arms I didn’t realize the severity of malnutrition – the baby had to be less than 7 pounds and was getting only two bottles a day. A quick assessment of her heart and lungs revealed pneumonia, and a fever of 103°F. We dosed the baby with Tylenol, and prepared a bottle of formula. Meanwhile I mixed a wide spectrum antibiotic for injection, and grabbed more cans of formula, some diaper rash ointment, Tylenol, and oral antibiotics. After giving the injection, and explaining the baby’s need to feed every two hours, we carefully wrote the directions for each medication, and emphasized using only clean boiled water for the baby’s bottle. To sum it all up, “lots of bottles, and lots of wet diapers” is a good thing.
Thursday, Jan 28 Decompression
We stayed the night in PAP. At about five in the morning there was another tremor. Each aftershock is a cruel and visceral reminder to victims that renews the vivid memory only the passage of time can fade.
The world is unraveled. It is a fabric coming undone exponentially. These unraveled threads – split fragments – have lost the inherent strength of the whole. It is beautiful to see fragments knit themselves back together for a time – disaster relief from all over the world – Spain, Japan, states all over the U.S., Canada, World Vision, IMA – yet it will hold only for a short time, not having really “mended” the rent in the fabric. We can tolerate proximity only for so long before the threads choose independence again. Threads are weak.
God, where are you when the earth trembles?
-On My throne. (Psalm 47:8)
God, get down here, it’s a mess.
-I did. It is finished (John 19:30).
Where is God now? In His people, the church. The only place you will find God is in His people, the body of Christ. In nature, at times you find an imprint of God, at times you find the horrors of natural disasters. But in His man, you find God Himself. That is the only place you will find God today. The body is His temple; that is where He will be found. I am His woman; God may be found in me.
Friday, Jan 29 Departure
God is seeking those who are not yet His. How does God seek people who are not yet His? – exclusively through the people who are already His, I believe. We live in end times. All I can say is, “God Come Quickly.” (Psalm 70) Shouldn’t we plead with God for His Second Coming?
How do you live your own life intentionally and conscientiously when you were given ease in the face of so much difficulty, wealth in the midst of poverty, opportunity in the midst of none?
Because you know, Go.
“Here am I. Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8)
When Haitians pray, “God, Come Quickly”, they mean you and me.
So be it.

2009-07-26T17:50:00.000-07:00

Some days are just magically productive. Others, you have to try harder. Like the other day when I needed to get meds out of the pharmacy because two of the kids at the home were sick with respiratory infections. Had it been an easy magical kind of day the key would have been in my pocket. But this day I had to try harder.
There was no one around with a key and I stubbornly refused to accept that I had no way in. I tried to break the crappy lock mechanism on the one big window but it held. So I had one other option. The small windows at the top of the back wall of the pharmacy. The windows are about a foot by a foot and a half.
I decided to go for it. But the background information that you should know is that, two of those windows give entrance to the pharmacy. The other two, don’t. It was lunchtime, thank God, so most people were out of the office when I went looking for a table and a sturdy chair to stack up to the outer wall to reach the little window.
It was quick. I jumped into the window headfirst and was sort of stuck there, and that is when I started wriggling. Finally I got through. And I was inside the window sill above a bathroom stall, as expected, because our provisional pharmacy is actually old, extra bathroom space.
So, I eyed the toilet below and jumped. I made it. But I was foiled. The bathroom door was locked from the outside. So I peeked into the next stall and saw the door wasn’t latched. So I got over the wall, jumped on that toilet, and came out of the stall.
The confusion that I felt when I realized I was in the men’s bathroom was … shocking. I just couldn’t believe I had gone through the wrong window. With as much dignity as I could muster, I walked out the bathroom and went back around to the table and chair. As betrayed as I felt by my circumstances, I had to smile about the idiot who put that furniture there.
I wish I could say my second attempt was a success but , I didn’t get the meds from our pharmacy. I had to buy the meds in town, and return that evening to the children’s home to deliver the medicine. I like the magical days that make me feel so competent and able, but I also kinda like taking my bows for my part in those unintended comical scenarios that help remind you that everyone needs a little ridiculous in their lives.

ridiculous moment 3 of 3

2008-12-19T12:22:00.000-08:00

Not that anyone's been holding their breath but it's just that, at times, the most trivial, nonsensical times, in my life in Honduras, though but for fleeting seconds, during ridiculous moments, I wonder... "what's my best friend doing right now?... where is my sister at this moment?" and I am at a loss. It's just too ridiculous.

If anyone were to ask that question about me, "What is Alli doing right now, where is my sister at this moment" the answer could very easily be...

Alli has been sitting in her car for more than two hours, with the seat back as far as it can go, to accomodate the laptop while the battery lasts, while waiting for the flooded river to go back down so that she can get home.

She has been socializing with her window down, with the pedestrian neighbors who are also waiting, stranded, as it were, to cross the river as well. She has been repeatedly encouraged to go ahead and cross the river because it's "not that deep" though no one on foot has the courage to cross it and the bridge is completely under water.

She has decided to roll up her window because being wet and cold sucks and it can't possibly be good for her laptop. She watches as one couragous man on a bike approaches the river bank where the bridge should be and tentatively steps in. He nearly loses his bike as he crosses on foot. But he makes it.

Now the pedestrians are all sure that I can cross without fear of mortal peril, although no one else tries to cross. So there is more waiting. The battery dies.

Alli decides she can go for it when she can barely see the outline of the bridge beneath the water. Bridge may be too generous a term. Think of a concrete pass the width of a single car, without side rails, old, and chipped away in places. But I can't stand it, and want to get home.

So I begin to inch my way forward. A couple of kids on the other side of the river begin to whoop and holler (whooping and hollering in Spanish sounds the same as in English) and I am encouraged. All of a sudden I wonder if they wouldn't like it better if I fell off the bridge. They were gesturing that I should scoot more to the left. You can't, of course, see directly below you in a car, you can see what is ahead of you. This might not be something that you ever notice unless you are driving across an under-water bridge. But it's kinda scary.

So I crossed. I would finally be home! I drive a mile further and turn into our driveway and -- our river is flooded too. No, no no no. Home is within sight. Powerlessness can be well defined in this way: Wanting to be warm and dry in one's home and instead finding oneself on the wrong side of a flooded river, with one's warm and dry home in sight. This is a good working definition.

Our bridge is underwater. Crossing in the car would be... not recommended. I couldn't judge how deep the water was. But I thought I could maybe cross on foot. I mean, if the current was to wash me away, I'd rather be washed away as me, and not washed away in a 4x4 vehicle.

So I took off my shoes, and socks, and rolled up my pants, and started in. And, I was confident I could sprint across. And so, in the twenty seconds that I was wading across yet another underwater bridge, the thought came: "I wonder what my best friend is doing right now?"

And then, there was victory. I was home.

Ironically, about fifteen minutes later, the water went down enough that I could have crossed in my Nissan Patrol. But that day, Powerlessness, I knew you not.

And that was good. And ridiculous.

Ciao.

ridiculous moment 2 of 3

2008-11-21T17:15:00.000-08:00

A lot of ridiculous moments occur while Jarrod is out of town. Reason being that I play a dual role: you know how it is, I have to be everything that is me AND play "Jarrod" at the same time. So I have to be a jack of all trades.

And, I guess the weather actually plays a big part in the formation of ridiculous moments, like the mud incident.

Anyway, we have a little farm, you know... and on it we have animals. This is right, and good. Just before Jarrod went out of town, he bought 18 sheep. And then he left. So, sheep are... easily confused. For that matter, so are chickens...

So when I was in the kitchen Sunday morning making pancakes and hearing the "baa" of the sheep get louder, it didn't really dawn on me that maybe the sheep were escaping. And because it was Sunday, none of the day workers were present to guide the sheep back in the right direction. They were going out the driveway when I realized I was going to have to play shepherd.

It was harder than I thought. Sheep are supposed to know their shepherd. Therefore, the shepherd can actually guide them. So first strike against me: I'm a total stranger to them. Second, I was behind them, running to catch up. This worked against me tremendously; it effectively pushed them farther in the exact wrong direction while simultaneously increasing the speed at which they moved away from me, scary stranger.

So in an effort to be a little smarter than my sheep friends, I decided to change tactics. I reckoned that if I walked around them in a wide semi-circle I could get to their other side, and then use my original scare tactic to herd them back in the right direction.

So they're already down the driveway by this time and to get around them I climbed up a rocky incline and stepped on several little bean plants ( now the neighbors are really gonna hate me). Then the whole ordeal was over relatively quickly; I was on the other side and all I had to do was be scary stranger again. Sheep in, gate shut. Everything was cool and life was good. Ridiculous but good.

So.

Moral #1: Don't let your spouse buy a herd of sheep and then leave the country.

Moral #2: Don't lose your sheep on everyone's day off -- because then there's no one left but you to deal with it.

Moral #3: Don't step on the neighbor's beans.

Ciao.

confession

2008-11-09T20:26:00.000-08:00

Jesus did some awesome things on Earth, while in his body. I wonder if doing miracles gave him a buzz. The woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years touched Jesus, and he immediately knew that “power had gone out of him” as she was immediately healed.

Jesus does some awesome things on Earth now. I feel sheepish saying it, having grown up in the church but really taking the shrug-my-shoulders stance when having asked myself, “So really, what is God up to these days?!”

It’s humbling to finally recognize at 30 years old that God is the captain of the team, after all; that there is a team, and many players, and that the captain actually is directing and strategizing.

It seems I’m more often aware of the formidable opposing team’s captain, the deceiver. I personally have a tendency to blame my captain for poor planning, poor execution, no collaboration, or being just plain blind to the situation as I watch the other team score repeatedly.

And I get mad at God. This isn’t a recent thing for me; I remember being a teenager and feeling ticked off. In college and graduate school I told myself and others that God is patient and kind and certainly mature enough to stand one of my little temper tantrums, so I gave way to them and really let God have it on a few occasions.

But that is small compared to the anger I have felt as a Christian living and working in Honduras – again and again, a malnourished child, a prostitute mother, a broken spirit, bad medical outcomes, the cheap value of life, tragedy, powerlessness, poverty, rape, scandal, gossip, lust, jealousy, drunkenness, my own repeated sin/anger. It is easy to be overwhelmed and lose perspective.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2

I find Christianity, Jesus, God himself, to be very peculiar. I hate not having the answer to all the heartbreak in the world. I feel perpetually perplexed about God. I know that “His ways are not my ways.” The most peculiar thing about Christianity is its love, which is called to accept all things (I Cor 13). Accept the heartbreak, injustice, and tragedy in the world? This is peculiar.

Basically, I just want to say that I’m leaving the angry place. 2008 has been a heck of a year – escalating anger to rage in a cycle that has been extremely exhausting. God has been, and continues to be so gracious to me. He has used many people in the last six months to help me see that the anger and blame I throw at God is entirely misplaced.

The blame lands rightfully on me, you, on all of humanity. Until a few weeks ago, I never would have thought that I am guilty of Eve’s sin in the garden: wanting to be as God. I realize that I live in that place in the garden, and I constantly choose to eat the fruit, in hopes to have things my way – my judgment, my proclamation, my justice, be the final word.

I write this as a testament that God is patient, kind, gracious… slow to become angry… bears all things. (I Cor. 13)

God bears all things. God bore all sin on the cross. Only walking with Him in love are we able to also bear the heartbreak which we see in the world -- which is why it becomes unbearable and overwhelming, because we walk away from Him and try to solve it ourselves. We can not solve it, yet we can and should work with God against it (i.e., don't freelance, follow the captain's lead.)

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:21

I’m working on a post about miracles; ones that I have personally witnessed or been a part of here in Honduras. I have been so busy the last few years being angry at the injustices of life that I have failed to give God the glory for what He has done (God forgive me.)

God is working great miracles.

Ciao for now.

ridiculous moment 1 of 3

2008-10-22T05:56:00.001-07:00

So last Friday I went outside to put some stuff in the car. Normally this is a mundane and uneventful task for anyone involved, but this day was different. It’s rainy season in Honduras, and well, it rains a lot. But normally my driveway is not a mud pit so I didn’t even think about it when I slipped on some sandals to go outside. I was three steps out the door when it happened. MUD. Really deep, really sticky, really muddy mud. I knew it had happened when 1) I sank mid-calf, 2) my leg got stuck, and 3) I lost my shoe.

So I kinda stood there, before yanking my leg out of the mud, thinking, this is ridiculous. So I recovered my leg, but not the shoe and continued on, one shoe off, to the car to dump the stuff, planning to then go back inside and change shoes, socks, and pants. And it happened in that instant that the little white bus from the children’s home rolls up the driveway and out comes the driver, Paco, to ask me a question. Paco is a very polite man. He addresses me, not as Senora Allison, but as Dona Allison, usually a title you reserve for older, wiser women to show deep respect.

Now, I know I am not young anymore, but neither am I old. I also know that I am neither wise nor foolish. But Paco always calls me Dona Allison, and I have really not known what to do about it. So Paco looks at me, and, as he is saying “Dona Allison” he tracks my right leg, down to the calf, covered in mud, and notices my foot, shoeless, and, well – he’s dumbfounded, as though he can’t quite believe that I was in such a state, and didn’t I know where my shoe was?

In fact, when he regained the ability to speak, he asked, Where is your shoe? And I told him, Oh, it’s in the mud hole over there.

So I don’t think I have to worry about him calling me “Dona”, anymore.

He gallantly offered to retrieve it but I mustered up the most dignified expression I could and declined, and he left. So I chose my instrument, and using a stick and a dip-scoop technique I probably learned from watching Gilligan’s Island, I retrieved my sandal.

I was so disgusted with the sandal that I snottily left it for our maid to find when she arrived, so she could deal with it. So I ran back to the house, changed, and took Sol to school. I was pretty surprised to see Carmen, our awesome maid, waiting for me at the gate to Sol’s school. She told me the bus wasn’t running today due to the heavy rains and mud. How ironic, I told her, and gave her the day off, effectively disqualifying everyone but myself for dealing with my muddy sandal when I got back home. (As it turns out, my laziness knows no bounds, cause the first thing Carmen found to clean up on Monday was a three day old crusty, muddy sandal.)

Moral #1: Don’t wear sandals to take things to your car during rainy season in Honduras.

Moral #2: If you’re not sophisticated enough to be a “Dona”, don’t let others see you with a muddy, shoeless leg, no matter the circumstances.

Moral #3: Always credit Gilligan’s Island when implementing wilderness survival skills learned from the show.

Moral #4: Don’t be a snot. As my mom lovingly cross-stitched on a wall hanging once, If you make a mess, Clean it up.

Ciao, everybody.

things i learned away at camp

2008-05-29T19:00:00.000-07:00

well, i wasn't really away at camp. it was sorta like a girly grownup Christian boot camp, but whether you know where i was or not is completely irrelevant to whether you choose to appreciate these simple wrecking truths:

Your life is exactly as you want it to be.

You say you want comfort, but you do not.

You get as much (or as little) of God as you want.

You can not bear freedom, because it breeds chaos.

God does not dissociate.

You sabotage yourself when you or others begin to change.

Evil's strategy is to do the most damage in the shortest amount of time possible.

Evil wants to destroy your beauty.

Evil inoculates; you perpetuate.

The moment you acknowledge the sin of others against you, you must be ready to seek out and acknowledge your own sin against yourself and others.

Speak truth, and conflict ensues.

January 24, 2008

2008-01-29T20:01:00.000-08:00

Let's talk about that.

First, take a look at my last entry.

Yeah.

Way back... six months ago... our government granted Ronny a visa.

Then six months passed, and brought us to January 24, 2008.

And in seat 24C on Continental Flight 755 sat Ronny Noe Diaz, on his way to meet two surgeons in middle Tennessee.

I just couldn't post a blog about anything else until Ronny started his journey. Please forgive, everything else just seemed a little too petty and small. As I feel a little rusty on how to write a good blog narrative, let me just guide you to the following link from my coworker Meredith Jones, as she recounts the events of the last few days with Ronny in the U.S.

http://meredithljones.blogspot.com/2008/01/bashful-in-nashville.html

Keep checking her blog for more updates.

If I get just one comment, maybe, MAYBE, it will rejuvenate this rusty vessel into blogging once again.

and that's all, for the moment.
ciao.

4:00 a.m. and cold

2007-07-31T12:31:00.000-07:00

Living in Central America in a sub-tropical climate often misleads people to believe that it is never anything but hot in Honduras. Not so. It is very cool at our house at 4:00 a.m. at 3500 feet above sea level.

Still, we had to adjust the air to “max” when we reached Choluteca about an hour later, at sea level. The heat was already rising off of the asphalt from the highway. We made it to the capital in three hours and dropped off our first patient, one month old Emmanuel, for his third CT scan. It was almost eight o’clock. We then hurried to our second destination: Dunkin Donuts, to meet our second patient of the day, Ronny Diaz, and his mother, Sandra, to prep them both for their visa interviews at the American Embassy at 9:00 a.m.

“Are you nervous?” I asked Ronny and Sandra, adding, “I am.” I have done this before. I know the drill. I know which window to go to, in what order, and what line to sit in when. But it is nerve-wracking anytime you apply for a U.S. visa, because following the rules and fulfilling all requirements should guarantee the desired outcome, but sometimes doesn’t. Human factors always bring unforeseen elements into the equation.

As we stood outside the Embassy, waiting, I looked at Ronny. Ronny is fifteen years old. He is quiet, unobtrusive, and agreeable, even cautious. This day was ordinary, and at the same time, potentially monumental. This day, an American, behind a glass window, would call out “Next,” scan the paperwork, and make an assessment, deciding, in about the same amount of time as it takes to order and receive a McDonald’s cheeseburger, whether the U.S. government could risk allowing Ronny to receive medical treatment within U.S. borders, accompanied by his mother.

If compassion, care, and love for one’s neighbor were the criteria for granting visas, Ronny was an ideal recipient. Instead, political and legal criteria reign in the international arena. But that wasn’t the intimidating thing. We had our own formidable black folder with twelve tabs, neatly labeled with each document, and its copy, ready to be retrieved in an instant should anyone see past the calm façade and call our bluff.

There are four windows which hide the mysterious Americans trained as culturally savvy and language proficient risk assessors for visa applicants. These are windows 7, 8, 9, and 10. Well, since God rested on the seventh day I thought we might have a good chance at window 7. Eight and twelve are my personal lucky numbers, so 8 was a good bet, and window 9 had a lady in it who actually managed to smile at each applicant she waved to her window. But there’s always one sour grape in the bunch.

The guy at window 10 needed a haircut. Something about him was all wrong. Maybe the apathy glued to his face, maybe that his Spanish was terrible, or maybe just common boredom.

Whether by fate, luck, or doom, the window picks you. Its job has one purpose: to efficiently assess your risk potential. Convince the window of your intention to return to your home country, and the visa is granted. Convince him not, the visa is denied.

Well, our formidable little black folder with the tabs did the trick. The cool facade worked. All documents were present and accounted for. Ronny got his visa. So did his mom. Sometimes, the system our government uses actually works. But it all depends on the face behind the window, or, more accurately the heart, behind the face, which refuses to be apathetic, but is bursting to share its compassion.

See you in Nashville, Ronny.

no apologies

2007-07-31T12:28:00.000-07:00

i took an extended absence.

i'm back now.

thanks for not giving up on me completely.

life is too busy y'know what i mean.

more pics

2007-02-15T11:58:00.000-08:00

trip play by play

2006-12-27T20:30:00.000-08:00

Sol and Levi in Nashville, TN, at great-grandparents house.
Cold toes-es 'n' noses in Washington with Nana and Pop.
Matching pj's.
Cousin Levi (20mos old) with Cousin Gavin (17mos old)
Snow play.

Happy Holidays!

the unwanted... how many times

2006-12-14T08:12:00.000-08:00

Have you ever felt unwanted? I think if I were a mosquito, or a Scrooge, or a venereal disease I would know how that feels perfectly. I’m not one of those things, but I do remember isolated instances in childhood and adolescence when I felt unwanted. For the most part though, I was a likeable enough kid. I am athletic, so I was never the last pick for kickball at recess, and I wasn’t cut from varsity teams. It feels so good to be wanted.

There was, though, this time when I was six when my dad took me to get my haircut and I came out looking like a boy, and for the next six weeks my peers had to ask, “Are you a boy, or a girl?” That hurt a lot. I have shoulder length hair now.

I had an ugly stage, a long-lasting one. I would gladly burn all the yearbooks from Benvenue Middle School and Nash Central Middle School for the years 1990-1992. I was “shanked” in gym class one day in seventh grade. Being unwanted hurts.

So, my neurons are making rapid connections today. Maybe it’s because I bothered to eat breakfast. Being unwanted pretty much leaves you with your hands tied, alone. Can you really do anything for others if others are determined to have nothing to do with you?

On one hand I can argue yes and feel that is correct. On the other hand, I say an emphatic “NO.” Sometimes I wonder why good doesn’t happen to people. Not the question of “why bad things happen to good people” which I think is just because the world is chaotic and ruled by Satan. But I wonder, “Why do good things sometimes happen to people, and sometimes not.”

Example. Sometimes people’s cancer is cured. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes people survive car crashes, sometimes not. Sometimes miracles happen. Sometimes you ask for a miracle, and it doesn’t happen. So what about that.

I think evil is random, and I think goodness is not. Goodness always has a target. Every good and perfect thing comes from the Father above. He doesn’t accidently slosh his soup of blessings and spill noodles from heaven that hit some dimwitted Christian or non-Christian on earth – random blessings do not exist, that is what I am saying.

When you receive a blessing, that is direct personal interaction with God. Even if you are unaware that God is interacting with you. And many blessings go unrecognized. But, many blessings come by petitioning God. I think this is vital, the key, to why good things sometimes happen to people, and sometimes don’t.

Lillian, mentioned in my previous post, has been petitioning God on behalf of her daughter. And God answered.

So she’s on the easy side of the equation. The good thing happened, finally. Lillian is not in a situation unique to Honduras. Hundreds, if not thousands, of other mothers have had the same prayer for a child. Not all prayers are answered.

What is the difference. God only knows if there is one. I guess it could be a matter of authenticity. Does the mother in question really, truly, have a faith that God will answer her petition? I can not know. Does a heavenly father require absolute faith in his child before He will answer a request? Are we not allowed fear, doubt, or skepticism? Are those ugly, unacceptable feelings to have towards God?

Does Lillian have an undoubting faith? She has demonstrated that she does. And she has been rewarded. I am not sure, and I’m no theologian, and I am only wondering if, perhaps, while God does not punish feelings of fear, doubt, and skepticism (he is very understanding that we are weak like sheep and easily led astray), is it possible there are rewards for the faithful.

It’s uncomfortable for me to think yes. How many blessings do I reject for fear, doubt, and skepticism. To what extent am I limiting the abundance of good God wants for me, my family, my coworkers, my friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world, all because of my pitiful faith? Just how different might my life be?

I think God knows what it’s like to be unwanted. The cross was one such experience in time that God was rejected by everyone, except his mother and his best friend John. I sideline God, give him dirty looks, sneer or just tell him, “I’ve got no time right now.”

I think God wants to help us, bless us, all. God is powerful. We are made in His image and that means we have a measure of power too. I think we are powerful enough to prevent God from sending us blessings. We make him “the unwanted.”

God is waiting for me to quit sneering and smile. A sign of acceptance. Will I accept His help? God is able to do more than we ask or imagine. If I can just believe that, I can discard the fear, doubt, and skepticism that rejects his blessings. I have to pray for it -- a simple enduring faith.

God will bless us abundantly. We will see that there is beauty and joy in life, even surrounded by the chaos of Satan. I am a witness to one woman’s enduring faith and the aid God is sending her. There is a balm in Gilead. Lillian is experiencing this. I hope she continues to, and may be an example for many others, especially me, to rid myself of my fear, and doubt, and skepticism, because I do believe in the one true God, who is truly powerful in tangible ways.

I really want to get grounded in this. What do you think ? I read through Hebrews the other day. Abraham was faithful and it was credited to him as righteousness. I know Abraham wasn't perfect, wasn't sinless, he goofed up sometimes -- but God saw his faith.

I know God's not a Vegas slot machine -- not random. And I know he's not a coke machine -- coins in, Coke out, faith in, blessing out, kind of a thing. We don't have a trade agreement with God. God is God. He does what He does. There's something we puny humans can't see.

We don't understand why God intervenes and sometimes does not intervene when we beg him to. I hope it doesn't depend on me having a six-pack faith. I'm completely unsteady, wavering. God is our rock because He is steady and unwavering. He was, is, and always will be.

I guess we just trust He knows what's best -- and that is the essence of the simple enduring faith.

So my question goes unanswered. I think I'm ok with that.

joy

2006-12-12T06:54:00.000-08:00

I feel like bursting into tears. I don’t know if most people consciously think about tears as a chemical release of emotion but that is what it is. It’s not just water that falls out of your eyes when you’re sad. It’s a bodily release of chemicals. That’s why sometimes we cry, not when we’re sad, but when we’re happy or joyful. Tears release our emotions when we are not equipped to handle them.

I don’t cry much. I don’t cry when I’m happy. I hold it in when I am hurt, and I try to keep it from coming out when I’m sad. That’s really bad for you. Crying is a mechanism which God designed to function when you are overwhelmed – be it from sadness, pain, happiness, or JOY.

Both JOY and tears come from God. Cool huh. Perhaps when you’re young it’s hard to differentiate happiness and joy, but as you mature, I think you can recognize the difference. Happiness is temporal but joy is eternal. Maybe that is why I don’t experience joy that much. I would like to experience it more often, but I keep getting in my own way a lot of times.

I mean, how many times do you respond to that offhand, workplace question, “How are you?” with, “Man, thanks for asking, today I am joyful!” Not much, for me anyway.

Joyfulness is a communion with God. That’s my own definition. It’s moments of purity and goodness and grace and blessing. I guess we could have more joyful moments in life if we were a little more dedicated to purity and goodness and grace and blessing but that is difficult to do.

So sometimes those moments come to us by surprise. That is what is happening to me now. And it’s not because I was working hard at my personal spiritual purity or goodness. It’s not because I earned it as a good behavior treat from God.

Those of you who are regulars to my blog might be thinking I am talking about last Thursday afternoon when we traipsed into the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa to get a visa for Sol. We did get it, and that does give me great joy - an undeserved blessing from God that I even recognize as coming from God, and without a doubt that is a moment of clear and undiluted joy.

But that is not what I am talking about today. God has given me more joy that surpasses any joy I have ever had before. I wrote my sentence that way on purpose. Did you catch that, or was it too subtle, but joy is something you have (as opposed to happiness which is a feeling that fades.) Joy is like holding hands with God – and to Jen and Emily, it’s only a metaphor, well, a simile, technically, and I am talking metaphysical, not physical, since I don’t have any idea what God’s hand feels like, although I would imagine tough and leathery and completely peacefully trustworthy.

Imagine you are a mom if you aren’t. Now, if you are a mom skip along to task number two, Imagine your child has a health problem and your family income is about three dollars a day. You are a determined mom. You live in a third world country. You save your money and go to a specialist in the capital city of your country. You get an answer to what is wrong with your child. Your child’s endocrine system is not making growth hormone. The treatment is simple, but expensive: Daily shots of growth hormone which cost U$S 36.00 per day. (Let’s say you are a mom who is good at math and you know this is $250.00 per week, or $1,000.00 per month.) Imagine, then, that health insurance doesn’t exist in your country. Imagine you are a Christian, and despite these magnificent economic obstacles, you have faith in a powerful God.

Imagine waiting for over a year, always in prayer. Always expectant, hopeful, and above all, patient and peaceful although an answer has not yet come.

Now, imagine that you are not that mom anymore.

Imagine instead you are the patient advocate who, after a year of prayer and many frustrating deadends, has the undeserved honor of getting to be the vessel who tells mom, “God has seen your faith and has answered your prayer." Imagine being the witness to the joy that God brings to a faithful mom.

Imagination is for what is not real. It is also for the potential of what could be. And God makes all things possible. And this situation is real.

And the mother’s name is Lillian. And the daughter’s name is Nancy. And her daughter’s medication is funded for a year.

Oh yeah, I'm crying. I will cry when I deliver the news this week. And then I will cry with Lillian and hug her and then we will say “Praise God!” together.

credit

2006-11-17T17:22:00.000-08:00

"Preach the gospel. If necessary, use words."
- St. Francis of Assisi

what does it mean

2006-11-17T16:57:00.000-08:00

"demasiada" means "too much."

should this have gone in the very first post? i would probably not have been asked a zillion times what it means that way.

"Too much" is the Christian life.

It's the abundant life.

It's the more than you could ask for, dream, or imagine life.

Sol got her Honduran passport today.

God is better to me than I deserve. I'm so humbly fantastically thankful to Him for this.

If you don't get it yet, we'll be seeing grandparents for Christmas.

you've got to meet....

2006-11-13T13:26:00.000-08:00

Local Baby Gym.
Air drying.
Teeth-y toy-y.
Who's got the remote?

Isn't she adorable. She's my niece. Mine mine mine.

Energy

2006-11-13T08:25:00.000-08:00

I just got back from a missions conference for medical professionals in Kentucky. It was very rejuvenating. I have more energy and excitement now, today, than I've had in the last few months (of course, that could have something to do with the energy-zapping power of mononucleosis, which, MOM, I am practically recovered from practically.)

Meanwhile, a friend asked for my thoughts on the value of humanitarian acts as pertains to a Christian's responsibility to the Great Commission. Here's what I think --

Ever heard of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? Always been a favorite of mine.

Humanitarian acts encompass fulfillment of the primary needs illustrated in the four lower tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Humanitarian acts provide the resources for potential fulfillment of physical, safety, social and emotional needs through benevolence, medical attention, education, and skill development, etc (i.e. the stuff we do at Mission Lazarus)

Evangelism is an intentional effort to confront individuals with truth, justice, wisdom, and meaning (top tier.) It is introducing individuals to the God of the universe and His saving grace. Humanitarian acts are a tangible demonstration of that intangible top tier. It's kinda the proof that such things as truth, justice, wisdom, and meaning even exist. Fulfilling fundamental needs are the only appropriate foundation that gives credibility to an evangelic message.

Biblically, according to Matthew 10:42, if a cup of water is needed, a cup of water is to be given. This is an act of love, the fundamental, and indeed, the only command that God uses to sum up the purpose of the law and the purpose of Jesus’ journey on this earth. It is not a means to an end; love is its own end, without a hidden or ulterior motive. It is not a means to manipulate or negotiate or wrangle an indebtedness on the part of the individual receiving love to also receive the gospel. It’s not a one-two punch with which to pummel unbelievers into lending an ear. You give water if there is thirst. Period.

Inevitably, meeting basic earthly needs sets up an atmosphere conducive to receive spiritual truth. But love, even a love message, such as the cross, does not seek to corner an unsaved individual in a fair trade scenario – I gave you a cup of water, now you owe me and must listen to the gospel message. This is contrary to love itself. Love is a completing act – it can quench thirst and hunger, can comfort through despair, and indeed can save from sin. But the m.o. is true, simple, sincere: I see that you have need. You are thirsty? Here is water. I give you water because love is completion and wholeness.

We see that Jesus himself recognizes this in Matthew 14. Jesus often preached to crowds, because everyone who has ever lived lacks spiritual fulfillment. But in this instance, the crowds also lack a basic physical necessity, which love demands be fulfilled. And so Jesus did:

“When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. … Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up into heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves.. and all ate and were filled.”

Specific to hispanic culture, among people of few socioeconomic means, humanitarian acts fulfill needs in a powerful way. Good acts are relevant to the majority of the daily life and circumstances of the people – as hunger, illness, and lack of work are a daily cause for worry.

I guess what I'm trying to say is a quote I heard last week during my missions conference:

"Preach the Gospel. If necessary, use words."

chicken anyone?

2006-10-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

Take a look at our chicken handout for the families in our nutrition program.
Know how to say, "Not for eatin', they're for layin'!" in Spanish?

sickie babies

2006-10-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

pneumonia
both
kids
bad
but getting
better

who cares about mono now
oh, i didn't mention?
i found out i have mono a few weeks ago
hurrah

good cat

2006-09-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

Jarrod's out of town. He usually does all my killing for me. I mean, not like a hitman, but when the need arises, which is occasional around here....

"Gotta be somebody round here needs some killin!" Oh yes, we do -- last night a scorpion in the shower, and this morning a snake in the living room.

Good cat, good cat, she helped me kill the thing, maimed it, so that I could smash its head. It was a boa constrictor, we get those all the time, can you believe it, this is the fourth one that's been in the house! The cat needs a reward.

Good thing when Sol yelled there was a snake in the house I didn't think she was crying wolf.
She does that, sometimes.

Jarrod has big feet and lots of heavy boots so he's perfect for snake-killin', scorpion-killin', tarantula-killin', and whatever else-killin.'

Come home soon Jarrod, we miss you!
Love, your family

Bad bird

2006-09-19T07:12:00.000-07:00

What do you do with unwanted family -- this is not a problem I have ever had to think about before because I have a great family on both my mom's and dad's side. They are very different from each other but both are great.

But I have a problem in my home. I am sick of our bird. The one that lives on a perch in our dining room and poops liquid green stool in the garden below his perch. His/her name (do you look up a bird's skirt to tell if it's a boy or girl?!) is Rita, and if our pregnant cat decides to eat her, I might not stop her.

The bird doesn't like his perch anymore.

The bird screeches and makes Levi cry. I might rename the bird Screech, except that it reminds me of that dork with the permed (or worse, natural) curly hair on Saved by the Bell.

So the bird (notice I refer to him as "the bird" as a way of distancing myself from the relationship) is exploring now. He likes to hang out on the rafters in the dining room, which is above the table (beware), and swoop down on people (I have been swooped down upon and had huge claws dug into my backside. I scream as this occurs.)

What can I do with it? He used to have a cage but that cage now contains our other two parrots, which hang out at the barn because they were banished from the house a year earlier for causing similar conflicts.

Jarrod likes Rita. He likes having her in the dining room. It really is pretty cool and exotic when she behaves. But she misbehaves. So, as I said, short of finding a recipe for Scarlet Macaw soup, what do I do with an unwanted family pest?

I heard him talk, I saw him smile!

2006-09-11T08:08:00.000-07:00

Little Geovany loves to play on the tire swing that Jarrod tied to a big branch growing out over the river in front of our house. He also likes to ride on the back of a big old-fashioned tricycle. These things make him smile.

They make his brothers and sisters smile too. Honduras has a national holiday for children -- it's brilliant and we should lobby for it in the U.S. - Children's Day, it is September 10th. It is bigger than birthdays and Christmas around here. We celebrated with the Beltran children by having cupcakes and Coke after having played hard all day outside.

We are so honored to have these children in our lives and I think that they feel valued as well, a new feeling for some, if not all, of the children.

Children's Day -- get one!

in love again

2006-09-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

Those six children living at the end of our road have done absolutely nothing to make me fall in love with them -- but I have. It is astonishing to me that the family of these little ones is not madly in love with them too.

The mother of these children passed away on Monday. She was buried Tuesday. The father tried to pawn off each child on a different aunt, but no one wanted to take any of them. Selfishly, I am glad they are together and back again with us.

I ache for them and the feelings they are dealing with -- loss, grief, abandonment, confusion, fear. The youngest, Geovany, seems traumatized more than ever. The three little girls, age 3, 7, and 8 -- seem so resilient, it's hard to tell what they really are feeling.

Selvin and Diana, 10 and 12 years old, as the pre-teens, aren't talking much, but then, they've never had anyone show any interest in them.

I can't replace their mother. I need my role defined. Who am I to be for these children? Of what significance? Nurturer and comforter help me to be.

Precious children. Goodness exists. Help us teach them this truth. Amen.

good questions don't have question marks

2006-09-07T11:46:00.000-07:00

I might let the bird eat the cat.

I think the cat is pregnant. My eye itches.

Jarrod blogs! http://missionlazarus.blogspot.com When did the cat get a boyfriend. Why can't I keep up.

the cock-eyed uniform

2006-09-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

Non P.E. days.

First Day of School

2006-08-29T06:27:00.000-07:00

Whew, it's like going straight into the Big Leagues -- Prekindergarten in Honduras - complete with school uniforms! Monday and Thursday are P.E. days so Sol has to wear what you see pictured here (a ridiculous pair of white sweat pants in the hundred something degree heat here in Choluteca.) Also required is the monogrammed school shirt (ALCS - Abundant Life Christian School) and completely white shoes with shoelaces.

On non-P.E. days, Sol wears a white button down shirt, a tie (!!), blue striped coulottes (how do you spell that word), knee socks, and black shoes with black shoelaces. Hair tyes can only be blue, black, or white. I just know we're gonna get in trouble for forgetting one of the rules.

Sol will probably get used to it, but I don't know how I'm going to adjust. It sure kicks us into a more predictable routine. Since school here is just half a day, Sol still gets to spend half the day with her favorite person in the world, her nanny Juanita, so all around, life is good for Sol.

Plus, my parents are here visiting right now, so she has a special cheering section that witnessed the first day of school. What could be better!

today

2006-08-24T11:43:00.000-07:00

Remember how it felt in second grade when everyone said you had "cooties" and you couldn't get your cootie shot til after lunch? You just felt all wrong, right?! Or maybe a better parallel is that feeling you got when you were a novice at public speaking and you got red patches on your face and neck and your voice got all wavery on you, and you were wishing you had a Xanax to calm you down. Or, no, better still, that first date with a person you barely even knew but wanted to try really hard to impress --- pressure.

Today. I feel like maybe I put my shoes on the wrong feet and still haven't noticed yet. That maybe everything I am doing is wrong. Well, everything Jarrod and I are doing is wrong. I like it better when I feel like I have all the answers to situations presented to us, and that I always do the right thing, in God's eyes, and that when I act in love that all the consequences of my actions will be what I envision, and what I intend, without any consequences that might be harmful in the long run.

I could be talking about our life, our mission here, in general, and, in a way I am, and that is why I feel this weight on my chest that won't let me breathe. But this feeling has been thrown in my face by a particular situation that has presented itself in the last month.

Yesterday Jarrod and I took action in a delicate situation involving a family of eight children, a dying mother, and a drunk father. We've been asking ourselves what do to, what to do, and have felt hopeless about the situation. The mother is dying of cancer and the oldest daughter has gone to the city to be with her. The father is a drunk and visits the mother but leaves the other seven children alone for days at a time (highest record we know of is eight consecutive days.) The children are skin and bones, have no clothes, no food, no neighbors nearby, no electricity. No one caring for them.

The six youngest children are now in our care. The oldest daughter is with the mom and the oldest son is working and caring for their house. We have permission from both the mother and the father to keep the children in our care until -- who knows. We have rented a house on our road and hired a woman to care for the children.

We have started our children's home way ahead of schedule. We don't know what we're doing, I'm scared, I'm relieved, I am kissing and hugging Sol and Levi more tightly and more often.

These children, Diana, age 12, Selvin, age 10, Noelia, age 8, Iris, age 7, Gabriela, age 3, and Geovany, age 2, need prayers. Their new "tia" who takes care of them is a young 21 year old woman named Elba. Thank you for the prayers I know you will offer on their behalf.

2006-08-21T18:50:00.000-07:00

We have had so many guests this summer. It's a good thing we have a guest house, a converted shed made into a small bedroom, living room and kitchen area with a bathroom. It's lovely and relaxing really, and the general guest house guest has no idea the room they sleep in was formerly a chicken coop.

The Richter family may be joining us here next year to help with our newest project -- a seven hundred acre ranch (the site of our future children's home) and a coffee plantation which will sustain the cost of the children's home.

You know how it is when you're all checking each other out, wondering about backgrounds and doctrinal views and just personality quirks, and everything. We had a pleasant week. God is definitely putting his team together for Las Palmas Refuge.

I am really excited about Chad and Shelly Hedgepath joining us here in October. That's right around the corner. Right now they are in language school in Antigua, Guatemala, where I had my language training. I know they are having a blast, Antigua is a very cool city. They've started a blog about this experience at shellyandchad.blogspot.com

And on yet another mission front, my sister in law Rebecca is going to Africa. Like, is on a plane right now.

God, watch over Rebecca, and Chad and Shelly, as they eagerly and devotedly follow your leading hand. Give them peace, strength, good health, and keep them safe in your hands. Increase our passion to serve others and remind us that our first love is you. May we glorify you in all that we do so that others may see us but learn only of You. Amen.

So be it for all of us.

Atypical day

2006-08-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

So there are those atypical days too. Like last week when I went on a "home visit" to a family whose twin boys are in our nutrition program, and found them all (all 11 persons) sick with skin infections and respiratory infections. You know that yucky looking honey-colored crusty stuff kids get on their face -- impetigo -- they all had it, everywhere, even in their ears, and the little ones had respiratory infections.

I parked my car, a recent purchase - the aformentioned Toyota 4Runner - and hopped out of my air-conditioned luxury 4WD vehicle and was greeted with courteous and excited hellos and come ins from the family. Then they told me they were all sick, and they were.

It's humbling to impose yourself on others without any forewarning and to be greeted warmly in a household where everyone is miserably ill, noses running, feverish to the touch, half-clothed, unbathed, and plain worn-out. And still be received as though my presence is much more important than their present reality and state of health.

I visited with them and then told them to expect our clinic staff to come by at noon with medicine for everyone.

Then I got back in my car (I was perspiring slightly by this time) and sat in front of the frigid cold air-conditioning again and drove away from their reality and back into mine.

Oh, and, perspiring nothing, I sweat like a dude.

The atypical days are most disturbing, but are the reminder of one aspect of my reason for being here, to alleviate physical suffering. It is a challenge to my soul to find and carry out wise and godly interventions to minister to a people impoverished but it is encouraging to witness the same people find a faith in God that makes their poverty and my excess, irrelevant. I like feeling ministered to as well as ministering, and I find that here in the quiet of the most humble circumstances.

a typical day

2006-08-16T08:36:00.000-07:00

I can't imagine anyone really being interested in my typical day. Jarrod and I made a choice as a couple to live out in the middle of a village without electricity, and have been doing so for two and a half years. It took a little getting used to but now it's not a big deal, as long as our generator is working that gives us 3-4 hours of electricity in the evening.

Jarrod just started drinking coffee faithfully a few months ago, so it's been kinda annoying for him to have to make coffee on our propane stove each morning, but really, not having electricity during daylight hours just means that we depend less on electric devices to entertain us. We go outdoors a lot. We live on a beautiful little 15 acre farm at about 3200 feet above sea level so it's very pleasant to be outside.

One of the tradeoffs we considered in buying the land we live on now is that it means a one-hour commute down the mountain to get to Choluteca, a hot town of 120,000 at sea level, very hot, like unbearable. That is our base of operations where our main office is located. Here's where I'm typically American. We (Sol, Levi, and I) usually grab cereal bars for breakfast on our way out the door at seven so that I can get us to the office at eight. Jarrod and I usually take separate vehicles because there's no telling where he will be day to day. I'm more "stable" - depending on how you define it I guess.

We have a nanny, tia Juanita (Aunt Juanita,) we watches Sol and Levi in their nursery room at the office. Sol has totally outgrown the nursery and is starting pre-school in about three weeks, right after Nana and Pop (my parents) come for a visit -- off the subject, but, we're renting a Caribbean island off the coast of Honduras to stay in a private lodge that sleeps 14 people for three nights at $75 a night (another one of those missionary perks.)

So. I do office work -- I administrate the office, warehouse, I manage our clinic and staff, one day a week I see patients, and the rest of the time I play an untrained Honduran social worker who tries to meet special medical/surgical needs for patients we encounter at church or in the clinic. That means penetrating the mangled and fragmented Honduran medical system and/or partnering with certain U.S. organizations to get what these patients need.

I get to eat lunch with my kids if I want, or my husband sometimes, and I can set my own hours. It's mostly an office job, I like it, feel productive, and it feeds my desire to serve.

We leave the office about three or four in the afternoon and I get home about four or five o'clock. I come home to a clean kitchen and house because we have a maid who comes five days a week. I fix dinner (and I LIKE to cook) so I love doing that. So don't feel like I'm living a martyr's life for sure. Like I said, there are perks!

Course, finding a rattlesnake in the kitchen a few weeks ago is not exactly a perk.

So anyway, I sit on my big old butt in an office each day -- typically.

Ciao!

We're electric, almost!

2006-08-15T13:06:00.000-07:00

Look and you can see two men at the very top of the wooden poles that hold the wire that will bring electricity to our house.

Those are our poles. We bought them. They go down our driveway, they will connect to the main line running down the dirt road in our village, and we might even have electricity by the end of the month.

Boy will that be fun!

Marriott Upgrade

2006-07-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

We were recently upgraded a floor or two when we were given our cardkey to suite 1200 in Tegucigalpa. I wondered what the Presidential suite would look like. It's bigger than our house. It has a half-kitchen, dining room, living room, foyer, bathroom, sitting area, master bedroom with walk-in closet, enormous master bathroom with a jacuzzi and bidet, balcony, and chocolate on your pillow. Needless to say, Sol and Levi familiarized themselves intimately with both the jacuzzi and the bidet. For those unfamiliar:

A bidet is a low-mounted plumbing fixture or type of sink intended for washing the external genitalia and the anus. They may also be used to clean any other part of the body; they are very convenient for cleaning the feet for example. Despite appearing similar to a toilet, it would be more accurate to compare it to the washbasin or bathtub. In fact, the bidet makes an excellent baby bath. Anyone who has mobility problems and finds it difficult to get into a bathtub, or is afraid of slipping in the shower, may find a bidet an excellent solution for maintaining personal hygiene.
Users who are unfamiliar with bidets often confuse a bidet with a urinal, toilet, or even a drinking fountain. The user should use the toilet before using the bidet; its purpose is to wash afterwards. It is generally understood that you should sit on a bidet facing the tap and nozzle, however that is not necessarily the case. It's just as efficient and, some say, less awkward with your back to the tap and wall.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pic 1: All eleven interns dining on pizza and ice cream in the dining room of the Presidential suite.
Pic 2: Childplay in the Bidet.
Pics 3&4: Pomp and Circumstance, aka Sol and Levi in Bubbly Bath

Catching up

2006-07-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

all about she she she

2006-06-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

she's here now, I mean, on the outside. Clare, Sol's and Levi's first cousin on their mom's side. I'm so proud of you Jen! Congratulations Brent! I am sick to see her!

We also have news regarding our baby girl, Sol. Even at 3 and so grown up, she needs to know she'll always be mom's first baby. In the past month we have made some progress toward our legal status with Sol. First, we were able to get Sol a birth certificate, which we had thought was going to be a problem because Sol was born at home.

But God is good and we now have a birth certificate. Last Friday we were scheduled to have a home visit, during which the judge in charge of children was to interview us. Unfortunately, the judge had to be in court regarding a case of child abuse and was unable to make the home visit. He sent a social worker and a psychologist in his place to interview us.

I just knew (and had mentally prepared) that because we were foreigners our interviewers would probably hold us to a different standard and that they were bound, at some point, to tell us something hondiculous.

For those of you unfamiliar with the vernacular, Hondiculous is a cultural occurance in which a Honduran says or does something ridiculous.

I will get to that in a minute, but let's just say my goal was just to make sure that by the end of the interview, we had gotten on their good side to insure a favorable report. And, to cut the suspense, all went well.

Just want to mention one particularly outrageous Hondiculous moment.

The psychologist asked me to give an example of something, and you know how you can never think of a great example under pressure... anyway, I told the psychologist that we have rules (gasp) regarding the sofa. Sol knows to take off her shoes before she gets on the couch, because shoes are dirty (and muddy during the rainy season.) Sol obeys that rule really well. But, we also have a rule about not jumping on the couch, the rationale being, obviously, safety, especially since we have very hard ceramic tile floors. Sol's not so great at remembering that rule.

Psychologist response: "You should really consider letting Sol jump on the couch, you know, it's good for muscle development."

Oh, I said, I usually just take her outside.

No, he doesn't have kids.

Hondiculous, I know.

breakdown

2006-06-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

Okay. Some of you might be shaking your heads, saying, "I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner -- poor gal, a mental breakdown." Well, that's not it, yet. What are those thingys called where you make up a word for each letter of another word, my great aunt is fond of those, anyway, here's my best shot ....

Baby now walking and putting everything in mouth
Red welt where the unthinkable happened -- a scorpion stung Sol (now, I know what that's called, alliteration)
Eating out every night with obnoxious and/or anxious mission group leaders
Ally responsible for eleven summer interns
Kitty cat's fleas in the house
Deadly snake inside clinic
Obvious sleep deprivation
Washing machine broken
No cell phone signal + car breakdown on side of mountain with hungry children at night with husband away

On the upside of things, apparently our community will be getting electricity by the end of the year because God just happened to make the tallest mountain around near our village and the cell phone company is putting a tower on it to shoot a signal straight to the capital city. (A double blessing since not only will night lights and alarm clocks work in our house, but also this will make future car breakdowns much more managable.) I can hardly wait.

Ciao.

p.s. My older sister is maybe having a baby like right this minute but I KNOW she would have called me to let me know, or AT LEAST mom would have. Right guys?!??

at the beach

2006-05-09T10:51:00.000-07:00

"Boy in hole in Sand" and "White Cake in the Hood"

2006-05-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

the very merry month of May

2006-05-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

One the very first day of the merry merry month of May we celebrated Levi's first birthday. This is a great day to be born in Honduras because it is the Dia del Trabajador, yeah, Labor Day, so we went to the beach to vacation and celebrate.

To all the family, I'm sorry we missed out on all the Thweatt festivities, and Congratulations, Em, on graduation, and Happy Birthday late, SuBaba.

claws, nails, and hoofs

2006-04-30T17:03:00.000-07:00

Claws: I think the last time I cut Levi's fingernails was like three weeks ago. I hope he doesn't poke an eyeball out.

Nails: Sol's are kept trimmed regularly, because we have weekly manicure sessions (the little girl has her own fingernail polish Caboodle, for cryin' out loud.)

Hoofs: Regarding those previous post comments, my little piggie is not grosse!! She's beautiful and it's not snot, it's just moist, AND, for a little more context, I was eating dinner while the hickey was being created, I wasn't just sitting there letting it happen, AND ALSO, I'm not into hickeys -- the post was a complaint, not a suggestion, and FINALLY, piggie has been weaned and now lives in the barn, so this will never happen again.

so..... So.... SO........

2006-04-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

... I’ve got a hickey and my husband is out of the country. I already fessed up, I called and we talked about it, and so that you can avoid this particular scenario in your own life, be warned : Incessant rubbing from a pig snout to the ankle produce the same type of pressure and friction as occurs with hickey-producing activities.

bye!

Neighbors

2006-04-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

They'd do anything for me, I'm sure, including carry fifty pounds of firewood on their backs, should I, uhh, ever need firewood.

Update -- Milson

2006-04-10T11:41:00.000-07:00

Milson underwent six hours of surgery on Friday, and came home Saturday evening. He will be on bedrest for a month while his feet heal. Milson requires a second surgery to further correct his left foot. On behalf of Milson, and his mother, Ada, Thank you for your prayers!

Update

2006-04-10T10:06:00.000-07:00

I have a new baby, a now seven-day old pig, little girl, runt of the litter. She just couldn't get in there, amongst eleven other siblings, to get any milk. Jarrod found her at the farm down the road where he took our one and only lady pig to be whooed by an eligible bachelor pig.

She likes to be bottlefed every three hours. She gets cold and actually likes being covered up (my kids always kick the covers off.) She grunts and also says "wee, wee, wee" when she's hungry. She is soft and pink with scabs on her knees and ears where she got beat up in her old life at the other farm. I think she will have a brown spot on her hindquarters when she's older, you can just barely see it now. She has very sharp teeth and beautiful soft hoofs. Pigs don't jump or climb very well (have you ever seen a pig jump, ever?) but it's amazing what they can do when they see a bottle of milk.

Her name is Charlotte and Jarrod is her favorite person.

In His shoes

2006-04-06T07:48:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog I decided I didn't want to include stuff about my work life, and since have realized that I am more passionate about what I do than I previously thought. This morning at 6:00 a.m. I drove to one of our elementary schools to pick up six year old Milson and his mother, where the director of the school and all the teachers had arrived early to send him off with the blessing of Christ to Tegucigalpa for his surgery. Milson has a congenital deformity that is commonly referred to as "club foot." In the U.S., this deformity is corrected very soon after birth. Here in Honduras, many cases go untreated. Please rejoice and pray with me that Milson's operation will be successful!

watch out, it'll get you too

2006-04-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

My sister Emily used to be so cute when she was little. Well, she's still cute now, too, but, she was the cutest of us three girls. When she was sick, no matter what was wrong, she used to say she had "the coughs, the sneezes, and the throwups!"

Most everyone I know is getting this virus that leaves you running hot, heaving for two days and running for the bathroom at the same time. It's already hit the blogosphere, and seems to inferm the whole family.

We got it over the weekend. Sol threw up, twice, in her new birthday dress. Well, she threw up once in the dress, since I somehow left our office without Levi's diaper bag, I had not the proper tools to clean her up, and I had to stop on the side of the PanAmerican highway to strip her down. I DID find an old half-full (or did I see it as half-empty) bottle of water under the seat that I hosed her down with.

Being a nurse you would think that I don't mind the smell of vomit. Very very not true.

So my naked child got to sit in the front seat for the first time in her life, all the while with me praying for us to get home safely since Sol was out of her safety seat. Then, bam, she threw up again.

By Saturday, it had gotten us all.

But today is Monday. We survived. It's survivable. It just isn't pleasant and it doesn't smell good.

Thanks for the uplifting comments out there.
Take care, wash your hands frequently, and watch out. It's out there.

Her other half

2006-03-28T13:14:00.000-08:00

Grandpa kept live crickets in the refrigerator in five-gallon buckets for fishing. I wondered why they didn’t jump out. I sometimes got up at 4 in the morning to go with him. I was really squeamish about baiting the hook, and grandpa always did it for me.

Grandpa belonged to the Lion’s Club. When they had fish fries, he gave us tickets to eat catfish and fries and drink sweet tea. I got so excited every time, even though it was just a bunch of old people there. It’s funny what kids can pick up on; I could just tell that everyone loved and respected my grandpa, and I felt special to be his granddaughter.

There’s this thing called “the Grandpa prayer” that my sisters and I fondly talk about with all the cousins. I think it had to be because my grandma was such a good cook but Grandpa said the shortest mealtime prayer in history. It was simple and sincere, and always the same. It was a norm to be counted on.

My grandpa owned a place in Mexico Beach, Florida. We drove down there a couple of times for vacation when I was a kid. If Grandpa hadn’t let us use his place, we would never have gone on vacation.

My grandpa loved his cows. And they loved him. He took very good care of them. When he got older, he sold them, but then he’d miss them, or get bored for not having anyone to look after, and he’d buy himself more cows. Buy and sell, buy and sell.

Grandpa had a lot of friends. He used to have “chitlin” parties at the cabin, and we kids didn’t go in the cabin when they had those parties. I didn’t exactly know what chitlins were, but now that I do, I’m glad I was never invited to those parties.

Grandpa loved to play Rook. I don’t even understand how to play it, but it seems like no matter what room you were in at the house, every drawer had a set of Rook cards, just in case.

Grandpa really liked baseball caps. He had a lot of them. He loved UT football too, and the cabin was appropriately decorated. Go Big Orange. That was actually one of Emily’s greatest challenges for this cabin wedding, but it was one that was lovingly and respectably confronted.

We lived across the field (behind) my grandparents’ house. When we moved when I was twelve, I really missed being able to climb over the fence and cutting through the field, jumping over huge cowpies, and arriving unannounced for a visit. We always came in the kitchen door. It was a magnificent kitchen with more cabinets and countertop space than I’ve ever seen in any kitchen anywhere.

It was a different house after my grandma died. It wasn’t any more quiet than before, but it seemed more quiet. What really happened is that part of the house became dormant, and remained unchanged. We got used to calling it “grandpa’s house.” My dad moved to North Carolina a few months ahead of the rest of us, so we moved into grandpa’s house for the meantime. It sure was nice of my grandpa to let us do that – his grown daughter and three grandkids must have cramped his style a bit.

So it was different when we moved away. I saw my grandpa less frequently. Children take family relationships for granted; they are not something that must be maintained. Once I moved to Honduras, I started writing my grandpa letters. I told him once that I felt like I witnessed everyday the life that he had growing up – his family was poor, lived in a shack in Texas without running water or a toilet.

When Levi was born I wrote him and told him what a strange experience that was – having a baby in Honduras and communicating in Spanish with my nurses and doctors, and ending up with a c-section.

I swear Levi looks like my grandpa, which is like this awesome thing because my grandpa is one of the most handsome men I've ever seen, especially in uniform. He was in the Navy in World War II. I never heard him talk about it. My grandparents were a handsome couple. At my grandpa’s funeral, the man who spoke the eulogy said a few things about my grandpa that I wasn’t aware of, naturally, as my grandpa lived sixty years of his life before I came along. Integrity, in a single word. That is how my grandpa lived. He left this earth, integrity intact

My aunt began interviewing my grandpa about ten years ago and recording his stories for the family. At Christmas she gave me four cd's full of stories. I rejoice that my grandpa is in heaven, and the sadness I feel isn't the part of me that wishes he was still here, it's the part of me that wishes I could be with him where he is now. Amen.

About my grandma

2006-03-27T14:02:00.000-08:00

My grandpa died last August, living seventeen years longer than my grandma. Their deaths, in my mind, are no farther apart from each other than the tombstone they share in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. I have been writing this for a while, never satisfied that it was "complete" enough to stop. I think I have exhausted my memories, so I want to introduce you now, to my grandma.

When grandpa’s house was called grandma and grandpa’s we used to spend the night in grandma’s sewing room. There were bunk beds in there, and built-in bookshelves with old books. If we didn’t spend the night we came over on Saturdays and watched cartoons. Sometimes we watched You Can’t Do That on Television and Pinwheel on Nickelodeon. We didn’t have cable at our house.

Grandma had a thing that would crush ice above the sink. If we climbed on the countertop and threw some ice in, all you had to do was turn the crank. Then we would add orange juice. (I think that’s why I’m a smoothie addict even today.)

Breakfasts at grandma’s were so good. We had scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, toast, and a glass of orange juice, milk, and water – always. Grandma’s glasses were mason jars, heavy and large. There was no way a child’s bladder could handle that much fluid. Grandma was always washing dishes, she was always in the kitchen, it was like she never left.

I never once remember her reprimanding us. Grandma liked to sit in a rocking chair that was beside the fireplace in the living room. That was her place. She and grandpa used to sit on the couch and watch my sisters and me and my cousin John act out plays that we would make up.

Grandma always let me pour my own Hershey’s syrup on my ice cream. She bought the canned syrup and always opened it with the can opener so that it had two little triangles opposite each other.

Grandma liked Saltine crackers, and I thought they made good snacks with peanut butter, especially after swimming in the swimming pool.

Grandma let me play in her jewelry box and I think she knew that I jumped on the bed, but she never told me not to. Grandma didn’t have pierced ears, she wore clip-ons.

Grandma was a really good cook. She made great pies, especially chess pie, and she made the best mashed potatoes I’ve ever had. The looked whipped they were so smooth, and almost like meringue because she baked them in the oven. I don’t really know the secret, I’m just guessing. Grandma and grandpa used a percolator to make coffee, and it always made a funny noise.

Grandma liked birds I think. I know she loved flowers. She planted yellow flowers all along the driveway and around the fence perimeter on their farm. They make me think of her always. I used to see her sit in the swing outside under the big magnolia tree. I didn’t know why she did that then.

The driveway at my grandparent’s house seemed like a million miles long to me when I was a kid. I often saw rabbits, possums, and occasionally, a fox, when we drove up the driveway at night. It was really cool. Grandma planted buttercups all the way down the driveway to the highway.

There was a bird bath in the backyard that you could see from the big kitchen window where the formica table was. You could also see the birdhouse from the sewing room. I’m sure grandma positioned it there on purpose.

Grandma used to save the Clearing House Sweepstakes entry forms because they always had tons of stamps that we liked to play with. Grandma and grandpa let us watch tv in their room, on their bed, and play on their walking treadmill. Their bedroom was neat with lots of windows, and a huge tree shaded it all.

I used to be scared of the basement at their house but sometimes I would go down with Grandma anyway – I don’t know what Grandma went down there for.

Grandma used one of those dirt roller thingy’s that’s like a vacuum but doesn’t use electricity. She also vacuumed the house with a real vacuum, but she used that little rolly thingy all the time.

At Christmas time, Grandma decorated the front door. She cut out scenes from Christmas cards and fit them inside canning jar lids, then strung them together vertically on a ribbon that she tacked on to the long windows that were on either side of the front door. My mom, (and I, too,) are carrying on this unique decorating custom.

Holidays were so much fun because grandma and grandpa had a cabin where we – aunts, uncles, cousins, etc – had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner each year. There was an old stove in one corner that warmed the little cabin. That is where Grandma put up all eleven stockings, one for each grandchild, each one red and white, with our name on it. The cabin was a special place, and my grandparents held all kinds of events there. I had a couple of birthday parties there. My little sister got married there last December. It holds more than average wedding memories for me.

My grandparents celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary perhaps six months before my grandma died. I remember that I had to dress up, and there were tons of people there. There’s a picture of my grandparents cutting their cake (it was the most magnificent wedding cake I’d ever seen) with a big “50” on the top. They looked very happy. I didn’t even know she was sick.

Grandma was a packrat, she saved everything, every note she ever got. She was frugal and washed aluminum foil and plastic wrap to use over again. Mom says she had cold hands and slender feet, just like me, and she was left-handed, just like me.

My mom looks just like her, and I look just like my mom. Grandma was a neat freak, and I am too. I am proud to be so much like my grandma. I regret I never loved her in grown-up ways but I do also cherish my childish love of her.

It might not be true but I like to think that she saw Jarrod and I get married, witnessed how Sol became a part of our lives, and watched her great-grandson Levi be born. That would mean she has seen much of my life, and knows the best and worst of me. There’s no mistaking she knows me completely if that is the case. When I get to heaven, I can’t wait to know her in the same way.

2006-03-27T10:30:00.000-08:00

I would not blog if it weren't for the comments. They are the only reason a blog is worthwhile. Because the ironic thing is that you can actually feel connected to other people while you're staring at a big computer screen -- I really like that, I like actual hugs and visits to the U.S. even better, but this is really great, I appreciate the support I receive from comments, especially when I'm not good at keeping up with everyone else. I mostly "check in" once a week but I rarely leave comments myself. I'll have to remember that from now on.

So I'd like to lay it out, briefly. I can tell I'm depressed because I don't even feel like I have energy to explain myself.

Sometimes it's difficult being a missionary because of the solitude. Socializing is difficult when there's no one to socialize with. Not that we don't have friends here, but those around us are more interested in just trying to earn a dollar fifty that day to buy food for their family.

Until last November, Jarrod and I could have emphatically told anyone that our closest friends in Honduras were Juan and Roxana Flores, one of several preachers that we work with. Jarrod and I are no longer absolute missionary rookies -- I have lived here three years now, and Jarrod, five. We are familiar with the easiest and most common ways that Satan likes to throw kinks in the church down here. The easiest is with gossip.

My take on gossip is just to leave it be, let it die out on its own. After all, I don't think truth needs a defense. Truth comes shining through eventually. Jarrod is more of an action man; if you see gossip, and it's destroying the church, or someone therein, do all you can do to dismantle it.

That's why when gossip about his best friend finally found itself on the evening news, Jarrod decided to go clear Juan's name. The rumor this time was that Juan had gotten a girl from the church pregnant, and in order to keep it a secret, that he kidnapped the girl and had her hidden. Long story short, Jarrod's intentions to clear Juan failed miserably when he gathered all the information he had, picked up the missing girl's mother, who was understandably frantic, and set out searching for her. What they found was a former landlady who described Juan, his car, his motorcycle, the pregnant girl, and lastly, positively identified Juan from a photograph Jarrod had as the man who had relocated this girl to a room, she had heard, was several blocks away, closer to the hospital.

I am Jarrod's wife. I promised God, I promised Jarrod, and I promised myself, that I would never break his heart. I never anticipated that someone else would, or could. I still don't know how to go about ministering to him, to process the disappointment, sadness, anger, sorrow that I can still see 5 months later. I haven't processed it myself. Perhaps that is what this endless headache and muscle tension is about.

So that you know, the girl, Lilian, had a healthy baby girl.

Life is so not what God intended it to be for us. I don't think that God anticipated just how messed up it was going to get. I really don't.

I work with Juan's wife, Roxana. She is the nurse at our clinic. My attempt to minister to her was a miserable failure. In Honduras, you don't talk about problems, you hide them. But, like I said, eventually, the truth comes shining through and sheds light on dark places.

My Current Favorites

2006-03-27T10:25:00.000-08:00

2006-03-23T10:14:00.000-08:00

So my blog is turning into a photo gallery. This is the thing, well, one of the things.
1. I've got cute kids. How can I not constantly post pictures about them.
2. I don't talk much.
3. I'm often judgmental when I open my mouth.

My conclusion is that most of the time it's better not to say anything at all. And it's not like, Wow, she's really got her mouth under control, you never hear her say a mean thing about anybody. It's not that at all, the fact is I'm terrified for some of the thoughts in my head to come out of my mouth. So it's not like, wow, she's a great person, it's more like, wow, she's so horrible she is conscientious of that fact and she tries her hardest to keep her trap shut.

I mean, if anyone's noticed, I started out all exuberant (I had such a great vision for my blog in my mind) but I've posted less and less. Well, I wanted everything on my blog to be light and sweet, like yummy homemade ice cream (just makes ya feel good, ya know what I mean) and I didn't want any heavy, discouraging, wrestling with life type posts.

But, as I secretly knew in my mind all along, life isn't always about homemade ice cream and warm fuzzies. I mean, those are great, and definitely necessary, in fact, the ice cream and warm fuzzies are like the moments that give you sanity and a moment's peace from the turmoil that sometimes is quite... turmoiling.

I haven't really posted at all since December, and, there is a reason. Turmoil. I've been depressed, I've been sad, I've been frustrated. Specifically. This is the stuff I didn't want to turn up on my blog, but here it is. Ministry is like that, sometimes things happen that take you down, not on your knees, but flat prostrate on the ground.

But now I'm looking up. I'll try to be here more often. But even so, I'm still going to post lots of pics of my kiddos.

Ciao.

I love today

2006-03-10T07:33:00.000-08:00

i LOVE today
why
new life
kitty
horsey
squawking bird
may you love well today as well

Clic!

2006-03-10T07:26:00.000-08:00

"Critter Cam"

2006-03-06T07:10:00.000-08:00

Coming soon... I will soon post pictures of our newest arrivals on the farm, showcasing our baby horse, three adopted kittens, and our scarlet macaw named Rita. I am also collecting pictures of the various unwanted houseguests we have -- scorpions, snakes, kissing bugs, tarantulas, etc... for your viewing pleasure (what do you mean you don't like that icky squirmy feeling !?)

Pictures are worth many a word.

Adios.

a.m. airport reunion

2006-02-22T14:08:00.000-08:00

Baby Levi, of San Marcos, Honduras, with Baby Tegan, of San Diego, California.

tagged... by a scorpion

2006-02-21T13:18:00.000-08:00

Well, almost. Wouldn’t that be an exciting entry. I had a stowaway in my laptop bag Monday morning. I took him (they say the hims are black and the hers are brown) in the car with me, the backseat, with my children as companions, all the way to our office, an hour away. I was holding Levi while I one-handedly heaved my laptop, a whopping 7 pounds, from the bag when I saw something and promptly screamed. My husband took appropriate action by killing the beast, then, somewhat inappropriately, chastized me for screaming out a four-lettered no-no. That should have waited til the end of the work day, or after dinner, even.

tagged

2006-02-13T11:50:00.000-08:00

Four Jobs I’ve Had
1) first job: walking the neighbor's dog Auggie aka "Auggie Doggie"
2) Sears - whatever the young people's department is called
3) law firm of Browning & Pfeifer
4) Day care - snot city

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over
1) The Sound of Music
2) Hitch
3) Lord of the Rings
4) Liar Liar

Four Books I Could Read Over and Over
1) Harry Potter
2) can't remember the name of those awesome books where there's this other world and the star is this girl named Meg. Anyone know what I'm talking about? I'd love a set of those for Christmas.
3)#2 should count for 3 and 4.
4)

Four Places I've Lived
1) Rocky Mount, NC
2) Murfreesboro, TN
3) Albuquerque, NM
4) Searcy, AR

Four TV Shows I Watch
1) Law and Order
2) Dora
3) Go Diego Go!
4) CSI

Four Places I've Been On Vacation
1) Taipei, Taiwan
2) Roatan, Honduras
3) Cusco, Peru
4) Florida

Four Favorite Foods
1) pasta
2) country ham
3) Thweatt rolls
4) pie a la mode

Four Places I'd Like to Be Right Now
1) in bed asleep
2) Washington state
3) Princeton, NJ
4) Murfreesboro, TN

Spaghetti Twirl

2006-02-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

So yesterday we had family business to attend to when we got home, a kind of Operation Freedom, without all the controversy. Jarrod decided to buy four iguanas from some kids who were selling them, bound, upside down (the iguanas, not the kids) on the side of the highway. Hondurans eat the craziest food sometimes! Thinking he would save them from certain death, we decided to release them on our farm, a humane and definitely iguana-friendly environment where they can well you know multiply and prosper, instead of, uck, get eaten.

Well then it was time to go inside and eat dinner... what to cook... and fast. I decided on pasta - spaghetti, salad, bread. It was easy, and the sourdough bread yummy, homemade from the day before. Spaghetti is simple, messy but fun (it's a shirts-off affair for Sol) and oh-so Italian but so American too. Much to my surprise, Sol began twirling her spaghetti. I don't even twirl my spaghetti.

Iguanas and an almost three-year-old twirly girly. Life is beautiful.

Hiding Out

2006-01-13T07:22:00.000-08:00

Here we are again... isn't this nice, sorry about the extended absence. Just haven't felt like blogging with all the holiday cheer and self-indulgent Christmas-binge-eating and all. And then there was my birthday, the big 28. It's kind-of anti-climactic to have a January birthday because, honestly, I'm just plain presented-out.

So, since I'm just getting my groove back, this is gonna be it for now. Cuidense.

oh wow, it's gonna be a great day

2005-12-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

I brought it on myself. I was being a braggart about the whole I-get-to-stay-at-The-Marriott thing, and wouldn't ya know it, our last big stay at the Marriott was horrible. I shouldn't have bragged, I wanted you to envy me.

I got sick that night. I'd been having some joint and muscle pain for the last couple of days, the kind that feels like your new year's resolution to start working out and the day after you can't move your whole body type thing. That night at The Marriott, I had chills and high fever.

Wouldn't ya know it, malaria strikes again. Nope, wrong. Blood came back negative for the little protozoans. Bad shrimp at the beach? Nope, wrong, although my stool sample did show that I have intestinal parasites (wow!)

After five days of fever and chills that Tylenol just couldn't knock out, the bloodwork came back: Dengue fever.

I hate being sick over holidays. I hate being sick while company's here. But Jen and I did make a Thanksgiving dinner, we did eat turkey, skipped the cranberry giggly stuff, had stuffing, fruit salad, green beans, squash, delicious homemade Thweatt rolls (mom's recipe), and had an exquisite dessert.

And really, Dengue is no big deal after the fevers stop. I feel great. It's gonna be a great day. Thanks for visiting us, Miss Jen.

room service

2005-11-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

So like, you know there are perks to being a missionary. No really, there are. Por ejemplo, Jarrod and I host so many mission groups during the year that we give The Marriott in Tegucigalpa a bunch of business and they're so grateful that we get to stay at The Marriott for an extremely reduced rate anytime we need to.

In fact, the manager of The Marriott let me stay in a room for eleven nights in a row in April while I was waiting for Levi to come along and be born already. He let me stay for free. The only bill I paid was for the room service I ordered on a daily basis.

We're staying at The Marriott this Wednesday and Thursday. My preggie sister is coming on Friday to stay with me over Thanksgiving while Jarrod is in the U.S. I'm really excited. Of course about my sister, I wasn't referring to the room service. Sheesh, what kinda person do you think I am, I'm a missionary, for heaven's sake.

A Frog's Delight

2005-11-09T08:41:00.000-08:00

I wasn't planning two themed entries about frogs but, well, it happened anyway. I guess frogs are a big part of my life. Jarrod informed me that the venomous snake that was living in our kitchen had probably been there quite some time, feasting on the frogs in the kitchen. (Not cute little tree frogs, just regular old toady frogs, that do indeed live in our kitchen surviving on bugs and such, as frogs do.) So, if the frogs are responsible for bringing the snake, should I go after the frogs? I'm uncomfortable with this thought. But wait, no, the bugs are responsible for bringing the frogs, so I should go after the bugs. (It's kind of a "why'd the old lady swallow the fly" type of logic.) The problem is, there are lots of bugs in Honduras. How to rid myself of them all? It's not gonna be easy.

But I'm not going to take my frustration out on the frogs, even the toady ones.

So about the pic, I call it "A Frog's Delight", taken by my father-in-law, just days ago. It's rather pretty isn't it. They're lily pads that are growing in our water tank. Not so Monet-ish when you know the facts, but still, it's a great place to liberate my tree frogs.

If you look closely, you can find the froggy in the picture.

Frog resuscitation

2005-11-08T06:13:00.000-08:00

Recent animal sightings at the Brown house include a venomous snake in the kitchen (which had its head swiftly smashed in), a black tarantula on the deck/dining area, which was swiftly aerosoled with Raid (stepping on spiders that big is like stepping on a mouse, ick), a baby tree frog in the shower, and a grandaddy tree frog in Sol's room (reported at one a.m. by hysterical sobbing from Sol.)

We don't of course kill cute little tree frogs on purpose. Jarrod let grandaddy tree frog go. But many baby tree frogs find their way into the house and die there. Yesterday I found a severely dehydrated baby frog that I was sure would die. I put him in a bowl with some water and an hour later he was hopping around, happy as can be. I put him in a tree and said goodbye. I'm one for four in frog resuscitation. I'll have to save the next four in a row to boast a 50-50 chance of survival in my resuscitation/rehabilitation/liberation program.

It's probably better for the frogs just to stay in the trees.

Chicka chicka boom boom...

2005-11-06T18:28:00.000-08:00

...will there be enough room?

Meet Emma and Alexa, not necessarily in that order, standing beneath the shade of a coconut tree.

They were born February 12th, 2003, ten days before Jarrod and I got married. Parents Johnny and Ashlie weren't able to come to our wedding with ten-day old twins, but we finally all got to catch up with each other two and a half years later (last week) in Honduras, on the island of Roatan.

We had a great time! Jarrod and I are already plotting when we can do it again. It was precious to see Sol make friends with girls her own age.

Johnny, Ashlie -- I cherish the friendship; your girls are beautiful blessings and we pray God's next blessing is being well-cared for. Keep us updated.

Nah!!! (aka Honduran Wives' Tales)

2005-11-02T16:03:00.000-08:00

A pig that’s never been castrated tastes like urine.
If you leave a baby in a wet diaper too long, the baby gets hiccups.
If you pee on the end of the rainbow, you’ll turn into a woman.
If your wife’s pregnant and you kill a snake that wraps its body around your arm, your baby’s umbilical cord will wrap around its neck.
If a person who is committing adultery looks at your baby, your baby will get sick.
If a person with pink eye looks at you, you’ll get it too.
If you have pink eye and wear sunglasses, you won’t be contagious.
When it’s misty/rainy and the sun’s out, deer are having babies.
When it’s cold and grey outside but it won’t rain, it’s because there’s ice in the clouds.
When you pull a muscle it’s because there’s air inside that needs out.
Duck eggs are good for your brain.
Iguanas have to lie in the sun to get energy.
It’s dangerous for old people to eat iguana because iguanas have too much energy and it will kill them.
If you take a shower after you sweat it will make you sick.
If you have a cold you should drink warm liquids, not cold ones.
The Mormons are really CIA.
Jarrod is really CIA.
Witch doctors can turn you into a donkey.

Now, #4 happened to us, but still, it couldn’t really….. Nah!!!

rice cereal experience

2005-11-02T10:43:00.000-08:00

No two halves are alike.

2005-11-01T17:20:00.000-08:00

Happy half-birthday, baby Levi! For any of you who aren’t familiar with half-birthdays, here’s the formula for figuring yours. So simple, it’s tricky:

Take your birthdate (we’ll use, I dunno, May 1 as an example) and add (or subtract, have I confused you?) six months to it. Voila, you have your half-birthday.

May 1 + 6months = November 1

If any of you still don’t get it, I’m saying my baby boy is six months old today. Bummer you folks that didn’t grow up in the Thweatt family where we had half-birthday cakes. Of course, I can’t let Levi eat half a cake, or any at all as my two and a half year old pointed out (Baby Levi can’t eat cake, right Mami?) – he’s a baby for goodness sake. But just for a treat I gave him half a tablespoon of rice cereal with half a tablespoon of breastmilk. Mmmm, good!

bad people

2005-11-01T04:59:00.000-08:00

So, about our loong weekend vacation to Roatan that actually turned out to be just regular-weekend length because we came back early because there was a hurricane headed straight for us because God is mad at the world because bad people are everywhere nowadays because who wants to be nice to anyone else anyways.

My husband made breakfast for me. Scrambled eggs, grits, and whole wheat toast. He's good people. I'm glad I married him.

But the hurricane changed course the same evening that we decided to head back home early. This involved three short flights from Roatan to La Ceiba... to San Pedro Sula... to Tegucigalpa. Then a three hour drive home. It's always good to be home right.

Speaking of nice and family, my daughter is so polite. She just asked me to cut up her eggs please. And now please excuse me, I want to enjoy breakfast with my family without this silly laptop in front of me.

UN-dust the furniture please.

2005-10-29T19:39:00.000-07:00

That Amelia Bedelia, she cracks me up! She's English right? Well anyway, she is like the worst maid ever, dusting the furniture, drawing the drapes, dressing the turkey. If you don't know what I'm talking about -- get outta here!!!

My question is, does she - does anyone - know the correct order of vacuuming and dusting... or is it, dusting, then vaccuming? How do you spell vakkumming? Jarrod and I have opposite, ehr, opinions, of the correct order of these activities, even though, ehr, we don't actually DO them, not on a regular basis anyway... and not, like consecutively.

But, if we were to do them consecutively, how would we resolve this? I'd like to be prepared, just in case the situation ever occurs. This seems pollworthy to me... I made some changes to my settings (word verification, very cool) and Bill, try to leave a comment now, I truly want some feedback here.

Coming soon -- "Honduran Wives Tales" -- don't miss it!

Twiddlin'

2005-10-26T12:40:00.001-07:00

Put on another mattress!

2005-10-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

Hey, whoa ho, hey. Lots of people think I don’t have a clue what’s going on. In some respects, even my husband. He calls it going through life “tripping through the daisies.” I think he may refer to his little sister that way too (which, Rebecca, I take as a compliment.)

Is it because I’m a missionary? Because I live in Honduras? Is that it? Or does it have something to do with my personality? I know I’m sometimes forgetful, and often times fretful – something of a cross between the Princess and the Pea and that “the sky is falling, the sky is falling!” chicken – but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on in the world of things that count. I’m savvy. About lotsa things. I mean, I didn’t know that Britney Spears had a baby, but if she was a personal friend of mine, I would have totally known and totally sent a baby gift. That’s probably not a good example, since she is someone I scorn regularly as her face is plastered all over Central America to sell more for PepsiCo, which, I recently found out is owned by the Mormons, but that, is a whole other blog entry for some other day.

So I admit I’m not up on pop culture. I also don’t chat or email my friends and family nearly as much as I should. But I do aim to get more than just the highlights of my loved ones’ lives. Blogs are a great way to drop in on someone and glimpse something personal, big or otherwise, in those daily happenings of life, like my big sister with morning sickness, and my little sister and her fiancée picking a florist for their wedding, and my mom going to work for the U.S. Postal Service (actually that’s just a maybe.)

I could see her as my mailman. She’s the kind you would definitely leave a present for in the mailbox at Christmas.
I’m not every woman, but I am many things. Neurotic, Hysterical, Domestic, Sensitive, Humerous on occasion, Clueless, and Savvy. Watch out, here I come.

"Do I have to touch it?"

2005-10-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

So we went fishing on Saturday at a pond about fifteen minutes from our house. I taught Sol how to be appropriately girlishly squeamish about worms so she could get out of baiting the hook, then Jarrod undid all my efforts when he got Sol to actually touch a slimy fish. I'm so proud of her!

"Raf Raf"

2005-10-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

"I got two hands in my pockets, Mami."

Sleep clothes courtesy of Carter's, 1976. Thanks for bringing us

the "Raf Raf" pajama sleepwear, Schelley.

Papi is so proud.

leche materna

2005-10-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

i have no words.

Are ya kiddin' me?

2005-10-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

Dangerous flood waters are merely an inconvenience for some (like me) but are a tragedy for thousands in Central America who have lost homes or family members. This is a picture of a bridge in Guatemala; the bridge remains but the highway that is supposed to be around it is gone. Amazingly enough, these flooded rivers will all but disappear as soon as November, when dry season begins.

I cross two rivers to get to my house in the village of El Trapiche. Last week we were forced to camp out in the nearby town of San Marcos, where we rent an apartment, because our bridges were under water. It was more of a reverse camp out, though, since the apartment has electricity, and our house does not. It was pretty cool.

We're back at home now, my son, daughter, and I, and I warily assess the rising of the river on a constant basis. Jarrod is in the U.S. until next Monday, and contending with adverse weather makes me feel entirely incapable of surviving with my husband gone.

But, as long as the river behaves, I think we'll be all right. Funny thing, though, Jarrod suggested to me once that we should get bungee cables to tie from our house to the guard house that is on the other side of the river on our property. Now I wonder if he was kidding. Let's hope so; that guy in the picture is an idiot.

Sonrisas y Besos

2005-10-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

Smiles and Kisses.

Good for giving and receiving.

Free for everyone.

From Levi. To you.

cluck

2005-10-06T07:36:00.000-07:00

One day a few years ago, a young boy named Jose got a fish for his birthday. He and his family shared it that night. Angel, Jose’s brother, was excited to have fish for dinner and even more excited with his deduction that he too would receive a fish from the same man on his birthday.

One day quite recently, the man who gave the fish received a present of his own. A chicken. He shared it with his family, and they adopted her as one of their own.

These are true stories. Jose never received another fish. Angel got a cd for his next birthday. The chicken, a birthday present to my husband from a woman in a mountain village, ran away two days later.

29

2005-09-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

My husband is a wonderful person. He always has a good attitude. That's what makes him so lovable. Some people think that kind of life-outlook comes naturally, but they're only making excuses for what they lack themselves. It's a matter of will.

For example, this morning Jarrod went out to the car to find a set of keys I had misplaced. After he found them he got out to shut the passenger door of our LandCruiser, and then it happened. It slammed right into his shin. "Shin" isn't the word I was thinking of as I sympathized from my view on the porch.

Our daughter was looking on as well. Perhaps that is why he turned his back on us, and I watched his reflection in the car door for several moments until the pain passed. Not a word escaped his lips.

I'll take that as a lesson. Maybe in about eighty years or so I'll be able to give Jarrod a run for his money on good-attitudinal-ness. Until then, I really love him for that.

Oh, and by the way, Happy Birthday, darling.
I love you.

Cedeno

2005-09-21T18:05:00.000-07:00

Cedeno
Fried fish, fried gills, fried eyeballs. It's the experience.

Currency matters

2005-09-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

At the beach
Here's a heads up about the Carribbean. Don't get your two year old daughter's hair braided. It costs thirty dollars, not thirty lempiras. She's never even had a haircut for goodness sake.

Frozen treats

2005-09-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

For a good bribe my child will do anything. I think. I haven't tried to get her to do anything outrageous, but she has taught me that the difference between a good bribe and a bad one is a matter of taste. Literally. We commenced potty training about a month ago, and things were going well until she decided she would rather be a baby like her little brother. Back to diapers she went. We weren't about to plead or beg, so we let it go, admitted temporary defeat.

So we've started the process again, but Sol is all the wiser. She no longer wants stickers for "making pee pee" in the potty, her list of demands include ice cream and charramusca, your old-time frozen fruit juice popsicle that your mom made out of Minute Maid juice and little popsicle molds.

We're off to a good start. Only one accident so far. You should hear the cheering that goes on in the bathroom. Thank God there's no Dairy Queen in Honduras. I'd be spending a fortune in gas. At least I'm winning this round .... or, am I?

Jarrod and Allison

2005-09-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

Jarrod & Allison
I'm not sure why I'm clutching Jarrod's arm for dear life. Maybe it's the newlywed thing.

firsts

2005-09-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

My first sip of Minute Maid orange juice since moving to Honduras. You just can't find it here.
My first experience chasing a tree frog out of my house. I am too much of a squeamish girl to pick up the thing.
My first attempt to blog. Lame.
My first taste of rotten watermelon. I'm trying to eat healthy for breakfast now.

These are all from this morning. I'll probably eat some cookies later.