Finding a routine despite some craziness

This past week has been busy, but more of the typical day to day stuff. Definitely getting into a routine of going to clinic on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and helping my grandson with his school on Tuesday and Thursday. Yelsi and I met up with Marielle in Antigua and had a great time together last Tuesday. I finally met Noe’s dog, Misha Rivera. Marielle and I laughed so hard when her eyebrows were just going up and down as she was watching someone to her right and then left, while she had her head down. Oh my word, it was hilarious. She has the Rottweiler head and perfect brown eyebrows on her black head. We went out to this little place to eat the most amazing gringas and then got ice cream afterwards in this tiny store that sells crazy combinations that sound like they shouldn’t work, but they do. We talked a lot about missions, how God has been preparing our lives for what is to come, and how he is using our past experiences to help others. She asked me what percentage I was to make the plunge. For the record, I didn’t give an exact percentage on that day. That day was something I needed. Marielle, you are a huge blessing to so many, especially me! Thank you! Everything you said, I really took to heart. Love you!

On Wednesday, we walked into clinic to find that 2 of the rooms were flooded from the rain the previous night. Leaves fall off the trees during the dry season and then when rainy season starts, the leaves clog the drain and then we flood. I had to laugh, thinking about when we flooded in the ED this past year and how I asked the one doc how it was going. He asked if he should start collecting animals 2 by 2. I told him that they should probably build an ark first. Apparently, another doc was building the ark. It didn’t take long for us to clean up the clinic and then get started with seeing the patients. We continued our usual that I see the kids, who mostly have cough and diarrhea. In the afternoons, the boy staying with us for the month (well, now month and a half) works on his school. That evening, we had a semi-impromptu family worship night. Just right there at the dinner table while eating brownies in a mug and ice cream. I didn’t expect to get emotional, but I did. While we were singing “Good, Good Father,” I was thinking about how much crap I had been through this past year, and how I felt like I would never get back to my old self. But here I am feeling even better than before. He is a good, good father. He has used so many of you to help get me to where I am today. So, thank you.

Thursday, Yelsi, Jenny, and I cleaned the house and made food for our game night while my grandson worked on his school. Peter came over early to help make biscuits with ham and cheese inside. Mine were a hot mess. He has way more patience for that than I do. I told him about how we watch chopped and I would be chopped on presentation alone. People just need to eat my food with a blindfold and then I’d be ok. That night, we had a great time laughing, pigging out on food, playing twister, fishbowl, apples to apples, and this clapping game with animal motions…and then noises. Oh my word, we laughed so hard! We ended the night by going out to the lookout to see the lights of Guatemala City. We climbed up this concrete wall that had silo steps on the outside.

The following day, we did our usual clinic in the morning and my grandson’s school in the afternoon. We pretty much keep seeing the typical stuff: coughs, diarrhea, fever, abdominal pain, etc. After clinic, my grandson and I picked up Yelsi in town and we went to Peter’s house to plan for the camp that we’re going to do this coming weekend in his hometown. We ended up helping to move some furniture out of a house and had some fun with taking pictures at different places as we moved the furniture from one house to another…and then another. That evening, we planned out camp and attempted to sing some songs that would be good for camp. That was some quality entertainment right there. Ha. On our way back from youth group, I saw Addisyn opening the gate along the road. It was great to see her for a few minutes. Addisyn is the one who took in Emma last year as her own daughter after Emma was abandoned at birth at the hospital. Emma had a really short life (she had hydroanencephaly and lived 31 days. I talked about her in a previous post), but made a huge impact on so many people all over the world and continues to do so.

On Saturday, since Drew, Cindy, and family were away Friday into Saturday, Peter and I worked with the horse for a while and gave her a bath…and our hands turned black. We got her to look a little whiter at least. I’m used to cows. We all know this. My dad says that my co-workers should do the Hoard’s Dairyman contest for dairy judging and could probably win for how much I have taught them about cows. But I know squat about horses. So when you look at their manes and think that it can’t be that thick, think again. Good grief. I worked on that sucker for a long time and it still was matted with dirt and fly repellant. Peter translated the rest of the cards for apples to apples into Spanish so we can play that this coming weekend and just in general in the future. My grandson was working on math all day. He says he focused better while being upstairs. But when I went to check on him, the binoculars were beside him and the bird book was lying there as well…yeah. Focused. He claims he only did it for 51 seconds. I’m sure he counted that out.

Sunday morning, I woke up feeling like a truck hit me. I finally caught what everyone else had: gripe. Excellent. I downed some ibuprofen and dragged myself out of bed to get ready for church. After church, Siana, Yelsi, Peter, and I went to the city to get supplies for camp. Since the food court at the mall was jammed packed at lunch, we walked around for a while. Once we finally found a place to eat, it was later in the afternoon and Yelsi was about to go nuts if we didn’t eat soon. So we went to this restaurant that looked like it had great food for decent price. We all ordered and as the waiter put the plate down in front of me, Yelsi exclaimed, “That’s all you ordered!?” Well, the amusing part is that we got 4 tiny pieces of chicken, but she only got 2 small pieces of steak. We all started laughing. Siana ordered octopus and we tried it. It was ok. Tasted like chewy fish. The joke all day was that the octopus was what was making us laugh at everything for no reason at all (we literally laughed the whole way home) and if someone started coughing, it was the octopus crawling back up our throats. Do you know how to kill an octopus? Look it up. Go ahead and google that right now. You won’t be disappointed. That night, we went back to Siana’s house and had a good time singing obnoxiously to 90’s music, played dutch blitz, watched a movie, and just hung out. When Yelsi and I got back that night, Conner (aka Coroner, corner, conquer, father, grandson) and Kayla (aka aunt) had arrived from PA. Yelsi and I couldn’t find them when we got home. We figured they were upstairs getting settled in. Nope. Yelsi said she was going to go to the kitchen to get some food. I was still upstairs at this point, heard her scream, and then everyone laughing. Apparently, Conner, Kayla, and Carla hid and then popped out when Yelsi came into the kitchen. We stayed up for a while talking. Conner was annoyed that I wasn’t talking fast enough about my whole time here. I asked if he read this blog at all. He said, “No, I don’t read!” and then he laughed. What a punk. So really, it’s your own fault Conner that you don’t know what all that has happened since I arrived. (And yes, I know that he won’t be reading this).

On Monday, my grandson and I went to clinic in the morning. More kids with diarrhea, cough, and fever. It wasn’t too busy that day and I was able to play with some of the kids waiting at the clinic for their meds from the pharmacy. Afterwards, we went to visit one our patients at her house, gave her clean drinking water, brought meds to her, put on cream for her arthritis, swept out her house, changed her bedsheets, washed her hair, took her outside to get some sun, and prayed with her. She is always so happy and thankful for everything. She lives such a simple life and has a smile on her face no matter what. I think we can all learn from her attitude. That night, we played apples to apples on the roof after some of the other kids played basketball. My grandson found out that Conner and Kayla were not fans of these ridiculously large beetles that are around. He went to throw one at Conner, and Conner got up from the table, ran around the roof, yelling in a high pitch voice, “GRANDMA! GRANDMA! SAVE ME! HELP ME!” I was laughing so hard. Kayla was hanging on my arm, laughing and half freaked out that my grandson was going to throw a beetle at her. So now, I have 2 grandsons. And Yelsi is calling Conner her father and Kayla her aunt. So, we have quite the family dynamics going on. And I guess I have a great-granddaughter now too if Conner is Yelsi’s dad. I made brownies that night, put them in the oven, went up to the roof to talk and hang out, and totally forgot about the brownies. I was midsentence, yelled, “CRAP! THE BROWNIES!” and went running downstairs. As I was going down the steps, the timer went off. Whew! We polished them off within 10 minutes. Earlier when I was making the brownies, I had said that I would make them gluten free so Yelsi could eat them. Conner asked what kind of flour I was using. I said rice flour. He said, "Yeah. But what kind of flour are you using?" Kayla and I both say at the same time, "Rice flour." He said, "No. What kind of flour are you using." Kayla and I look at each other and yell, "RICE FLOUR!" We had an intern for Casa Shalom over for dinner. Sammy is going to be helping at Casa Shalom in one of the girls’ homes for the next 6 weeks.

Tuesday morning, I worked with my 1^st grandson with his math and that afternoon, Yelsi, Kayla, and I went to Peter’s house to get stuff ready for camp. We cut out lion faces for the kids to make after we talk about Daniel and the lion’s den, and made the letters for the camp title. We set up the projector to watch a movie, while eating bacon wrapped chicken, parmesan potatoes, chocolate zucchini cake, and ice cream. Yeah, we ate well. We facetimed Kayla’s family for a while too. Her sister, Lauren, had to hide in the bathroom for the majority of the conversation since she couldn’t hear with so many people around her. I love her family. Her five year old brother from China thought it was rude that she went into the bathroom to talk to us.

The following day, we went to clinic as usual. But the highway was blocked from construction and everyone had to take the new highway as a detour. It’s a nice road and beautiful view, but we were in standstill or crawling traffic the whole way. So our normal 20 minute trip took about an hour. We started about an hour late, but we kept the flow going and quickly made up for lost time. It was crazy busy though since we had a dental team from the States at the clinic working as well. While the doctor was finishing up with the last few patients, Jeamy (sister to my 1^st grandson) and I went to our patient’s house that we visited on Monday to trim her fingernails and toenails. While her hands and feet were soaking to soften her nails, Jeamy colored with the kids who live nearby. The kids absolutely loved it and even the shy ones eventually talked a little. After I finished cutting our patient’s nails, I filled up another water jug for her, took it back to her, and prayed with her and the kids. Our day may not have started as planned and we had the same detour on the way back, but it still turned out to be a great day. That night, we had family worship night and once again I got a little teary. I don’t know what it is with worship night and me being a hot mess. But happens pretty much every time down here. Earlier that day, I had thought a lot about my friend Glenna and the walk that is coming up next week to raise awareness for postpartum depression. We were singing “It is well” and I was thinking about how messy life can be, you miss people like crazy, but have to wait to see them again in Heaven. But through it all, you can still have a sense of peace and say “It is well with my soul.” We prayed with Jenny and welcomed her into the We Help Children ministry with Drew and Cindy. Yelsi and I stayed up pretty late talking about the future and next steps in our lives, and how frustrating and great it is at the same time that we don’t always know the next step, but God will provide and show us the way.

 Conner has been doing a great job taking pictures, videos, and working on the website for We Help Children. We all were laughing hysterically while Yelsi was doing her video segment late last night. She wanted us to sit in the kitchen with her so she felt like she was talking to people and not at a camera. She has some of the best facial expressions and one liners. Oh my, that video was straight up Yelsi in a nutshell. At one point, I choked on my hot chocolate from what she said. She kept calling it the “shut up and listen show.” (Don’t worry, we’re cutting that part out of the official video). Kayla has been a beast at working with the horse and is now going to make a stable for the horse as well. They did their first equine therapy session with some of the girls from Casa Shalom yesterday, which went really well! Today, I have been working on math with my first grandson and we’re preparing to have 5 more people come live with us for the next few days. We’ll have 15 people living here for a little while. Packed house and bunch of things going on over the next few days. Again thank you for your support. We’re in the works to start having medical teams come down in October. So keep your vacation days spared for some of that and be a part of a life changing experience for you and for those you serve while down here!