Mid-Summer Activities

I don't seem to be getting any better with this cut and pasting of pictures! Anyway......Here we are mid-summer and already thinking of the rainy season and some of the preparation to plant a few things. The second pic is me painting some of the kid's shelves for their books. To think our furniture for our escuelita came from the Opal House property. We still have more at the carpenter's that is being made into chapel side tables. And we want to build some cabinets for Veronica's kitchen. We have 'visitors' that come into her house and leave their 'calling cards'. We are trying to show her that there is definitely a connection between the food she leaves out on the counters and her little friends that know where they can get an easy meal! The first picture is at San Lucas, actually from our coffee harvest from last year. This year we didn't do so bad about 125 lbs. We have more than 500 more plants to get into the ground this year. We want to work on that aspect of the farm. The other two pictures are of the grand opening of the San Lucas' Women's Center. This is a place where the women of the parish can meet, weave, I've heard bake bread (we sampled some....mmmmm)and I believe receive educational talks and things of that nature. Chonu, Fr. Greg's assistant had tears in her eyes as she shared what the center means to her and the parish. It's a very beautiful building, big kitchen and medicinal herb gardens surround it. It's just one example of the solidarity that we have witnessed in the parish. We are grateful to be a part of that community. One of the pictures that I can't seem to find in our camera, is of me and the beginning of a preschool. I have 4 little 4 yr. old boys who are a treasure to me. I have them for a few hours, 3 times a week. I read to them, and am helping them become familiar with the alphabet, we do little crafts and ofcourse...PLAY :) The first week, Will and I took them out 'avocado hunting'. One of the boy's big brother was out of school early and climbed the tree to shake them down, while the little guys ran here and there collecting them. We got quite a basket full and brought them home to their moms. We picked sunflowers and ate little apples off of a struggling apple tree. Our great discovery this season is that we have 2.....count them 2! Peach trees. Now I don't know plants and trees like country people do but the flowering of a particular tree caught my attention one morning when I was running. And I see lots of peaches for the future. Will and Juan cleaned and watered them and hopefully with some care we will have our first taste of them soon. The boys were thrilled when they found a bird's nest as they hunted. This is the part of being on this land that is starting to bring the seeds of a dream in the future. God willing, maybe we can have a holistic preschool where the tending of animals and having gardens for the children to take care of are part of the curriculum. I'm going to be receiving my first little critter (baby chick) here soon. A family who wanted to say thank you to Will for helping with some minor surgery is giving us one of their pollitos. They already gave us a freshly killed chicken which Veronica made into one of their Guatemalan dishes called pepian. The chicken was a little tough but it was a really delicious dish. I don't think I have the guts to watch this baby chick grow and kill it, so I told Will this one will be a pet. Unless of course, our Rottweiler, Izzy gets a little hungry for another kill. She just kills chickens but doesn't eat them. She's probably waiting for someone to cook them for her.

So, it has been a beautiful summer. We have made new friends and God continues to bring visitors to us and we are grateful. Even with our continuing struggle to become fluent we can carry on conversations now. Diego continues to be a blessing to us. Will is teaching him to drive and so one day we will release one more young person onto the streets of Agua Escondida. At least he won't be driving a chicken bus.....

Every Dentist's Nightmare

This entry is Will's as he had first hand experience of taking our kids to the dentist today!
Wow-fourteen children, ages 4-13, all for their very first dental visit at the San Lucas dental clinic, the same hospital/clinic where Diane and I volunteer. All 14 needed anesthesia, with seven having mulitple abcesses needing both needles and extractions of one or more teeth, most needing 2 or more. ALL 14 need more work as the 2 dentists and 3 technicians could not complete all of the necessary procedures. Many children had two or three abcessess on one side of their mouth, and will need to come back for needed work on the other side of their mouth, so at least they can use one side to chew properly. Angelica, our special 5 year old who has such a bad diet of coke and chips and no fruits or vegetables, has a history of complete bowel impaction with fissuring and bleeding not long ago(we immediately took her to the visiting pediatrician at San Lucas who diagnosed fecal impaction and dehydration) has equally bad teeth(Surprise!) She had so many abcesses in her teeth that the local anesthesia could hardly work and I held her hand as she cried and cried during her procedures-she couldn't have had a higher dose of anesthesia safely! My heart and soul goes out to those sweet children(all students of Diane and mine) who are suffering from Coca Cola diets and single parent syndrome, moms who are abandoned and overwhelmed and just placate kids with sweets, processed chips and Coke. No wonder Guatemala is the most malnourished country in all of the Americas.(G8 data 2009). Not one of these kids had ever had hot water for a shower(before our mission), much less floss for their teeth. May God give us the strength to always love unconditionally, come alongside those around us and be Christ to our neighbors. I'll blog about part two of the dental nightmare visits soon. Love, Will

Reflection.....

The most important events make no stir on their first taking place, nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem hedged about by secrecy. It is concussion, or the rushing together of air to fill a vacuum, which makes a noise. The great events to which all things consent, and for which they have prepared the way, produce no explosion, for they are gradual, and create no vacuum which requires to be suddenly filled; as a birth takes place in silence, and is whispered about the neighborhood. Corn grows in the night. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Back to School

Ahhh, it's that time of year for all the little ones to give their moms a little break! I know...we're a little behind here with the school year. Here's a great picture of Diego and all our little munchkins and some of the bigger kids in the background. We had planned to only take the small kids and make two separate trips but ended up with 19 on this trip. Like a worry wart I was worrying that we didn't bring enough hot dogs and all the other stuff, but we had more than enough. It would have been mayhem but with Will, Diego and I it turned out to be a fun time for all of us. And the older kids, some not more than 8 or 9 yrs. old are very responsible for taking care of their younger siblings. They learn that pretty early here. Sometimes I think it's so funny to see a 4 yr. old carrying a two year old. They are strong and hard-working kids. The lake water is cold which is wonderful if the sun is out but the wind was blowing which with the wind chill factor made going in sound insufferable. But there they were wading and laying down in that freezing cold water having a good time. Some of the kids were very, very focused on collecting bottle caps.......all the bottle caps in the country of Guatemala from what I witnessed. Thank goodness for Pepsi and Coca cola, huh?

This year, Mishel, our little 4 yr. old is now entering a Montessori school especially created for 4 yr. olds at the San Lucas parish. This is the town that Will and I volunteer at their hospital. We were all so looking forward to her experience in this new school that we took her there one week before she needed to be there! Guess that's better than forgetting her at the house :) She is pretty intelligent and we couldn't see her attending the public school. The schools are under-funded (no surprise for a poor country) and we just thought we should take advantage of Fr. Greg's invitation to us in the beginning of Opal House, that whatever kids we had here he would educate them. We are very thankful. We hope that she has a running start. The first day I took her she looked so small and lost. But she enjoyed it all. Very grown up now after one week. I like the scene in the movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan called "You've Got Mail". He tells her that he really enjoys autumn and the whole back to school scene. It makes him want to go out and buy a dozen pencils. Like a bouquet I suppose. That's how I feel watching the kids come in so timidly at first but with their new backpacks and supplies, called 'utiles' here. Lots of utiles. We sponsored some of the same children again this year and so I took a few of the older girls to the local town and shopped for their new school stuff. I treated them to a wonderful (and I mean WONDERFUL) apple fritter and some tea. Made by the shop that donated the christmas donuts. Man, I have that ladie's number! And where in the U.S. can you get tea for .25 cents and a huge fritter for .60 cents? That's a bargain. The shopping was as simple as handing our lists, about 6 of them, to the guys across the counter and watching them in one fell swoop gather it all together for us. Yahoo, that's the way it should be! Very simple pleasures, and for the girls this is like taking your girls to the malls. They don't get out to 'shop' very often. And when they get a new backpack or whatever it is something of which they are very grateful. These girls were hanging out in front of their homes to talk to me because they had not started school because they had no supplies, like last year. Just $10 can keep a kid from attending classes.

And a Belated Happy New Year

I forgot to mention what we did on Christmas morn'. Will and I were a little tired but had received a donation from a generous lady in Panajachel who owns a donut shop (can you believe that you can buy a huge fritter and a cup of coffee for about .70 cents?). She gave us lots of her Christmas donuts and so we got our ATV out (red, mind you....) and jumped on with the donuts and chocolate bars that make hot chocolate, and drove to the neighborhood where the majority of our kids come from and handed out those donuts for breakfast. After that, we loaded up our old Subaru (again red, like a very old sleigh) with trinkets and a large bag of candy and drove out along the main highway and threw them out the window yelling "Feliz Navidad". Now, this is not something new we conjured up in our heads. In 2007 when we were heading up to Opal House during Christmas time, we were met on the mountain highways with children, as well as families, waving and yelling to us. I actually thought "Wow, they're wishing us Merry Christmas, Will!" Until I saw the car in front of us open up the passenger window and toss out some candy and saw the families running and gathering up the goodies! We had a good laugh over that one and then I thought next Christmas we'll do that. It was a wonderful, joyful time for us! It's one of the best Christmas' I've had.....

Belated "Merry Christmas"

Merry Christmas to everyone! We hope that you, friends and family enjoyed your Advent and the celebration of 'God with us'! We can celebrate Christmas every day because He continues to be 'with us'. This was our first Christmas without friends or family around. Elaine Hayden and her daughter, April came to visit for about a week and a half and we enjoyed their company. It was a Christmas delivery for the children as they hauled more donations of toys for them. We had two separate fiestas for the big kids and the smaller ones. It can become somewhat dangerous when you have large kids diving over the little ones to collect the candy and toys. We had a scavenger hunt in which they had to find the baby Jesus (who was hiding in the chapel....)One child was a little ticked that he was not in the winning group and pouted the whole entire time afterwards. Pretty stubborn. Elaine, April, Diego and Veronica and her kids helped us decorate and trim the tree. April and I made sugar cookies which we all got to decorate and had hot chocolate to boot. I enjoyed playing 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' on the boom box.....over and over and over again. I really enjoy that CD. We had the employees from the San Lucas Mission Hospital over for a fiesta and now we know that we can fit 38 or more into our sunroom which is where the kids have their classroom! Lots of outdoor cooking....we had tortillas and meat and chicken BBQ, fruit punch and ofcourse, those Christmas cookies, some things you cannot be compromised. Diego wrote out the Christmas story and used our puppets to tell the story once again, of Jesus' birth.We plan on using this form of storytelling in the future. Maybe even teach them how to present lessons for one another. The kids seem to enjoy it. (Thank you again, Glen, for your labor of love!)By now, some of you know Will had a little accident on the scooter and fractured his fibula. So now he is on crutches and healing. There are some pretty good size holes in the roads due to the wash-outs from those past storms. He had a brief encounter with one of them. He's doing well but ofcourse, it's difficult doing those things he normally does.

The other picture is of our new guardian family. Juan, Felipa, Jose and little Miriam. Juan was one of our masons who worked on the chapel. He brings alot of skills to Opal House as well as good character. We thank God for leading him here.

We hope that this blog finds all of you well. It's hard to believe how quickly this year flew by. But I need Will to remind me of those blessings that God has given us as this year was somewhat difficult for me. I am reminded that He will never leave me or us or forsake us. God tabernacles with us each and every day. I am grateful for the quiet moments where I can just reflect on who He is and what He has done. May you all know contentment and peace this year.......

Winter

It's not winter here but it feels like winter inside my soul, a need to bundle myself up. No pictures this time, just reflection. Autumn and winter are necessary for nature and for us, I suppose. I know suffering is part of the clothing we wear here. I read this today and thought I would share it. I know many who are suffering from different trials and tests, I am one of them. I'm trying to be still because I am in a place where I can do nothing but wait and pray. This year has been a year like that....waiting....praying.

(From the devotional "Streams in the Desert"
"Steel is iron plus fire. Soil is rock, plus heat, or glacier crushing. Linen is flax plus the bath that cleans, the comb that separates, and the flail that pounds, and the shuttle that weaves. Human character must have a plus attached to it. The world does not forget great characters. But great characters are not made of luxuries, they are made by suffering.
I heard of a mother who brought into her home as a companion to her own son, a crippled boy who was also a hunchback. She had warned her boy to be very careful in his relations to him, and not to touch the sensitive part of his life but to go right on playing with him as if he were an ordinary boy. She listened to her son as they were playing; and after a few minutes he said to his companion: "Do you know what you have got on your back?" The little hunchb ack was embarrassed, and he hesitated a moment. The boy said: "It is the box in which your wings are; and some day God is going to cut it open, and then you will fly away and be an angel."