Today

Many days are normal and occur without incident. Today, however was not one of them. We woke up this morning to 10 minutes of electricity. Normally my first half an hour is spent reading my Bible and praying. So in those few short minutes that we had, I didn't get my clothes ironed or my hair done. Normally I try to iron clothes the night before, but last night I was tired and had clothes to fold. After that I decided to be lazy and iron in the morning. That probably won't happen again.

For those of you who don't know me really well, my hair is very thin and fine. Being without a curling iron is a scary occurrence. I did have some pretty bobby pins that I used to secure my bangs back so I didn't look too scary.

The doctor thinks that I have gestational diabetes, but they don't test for it here. Because of this I cannot eat cereal or anything sweet. I don't feel well afterwards if I do. I usually have a bowl of rice, or toast and an egg for breakfast. Both of those meals require cooking so they were not an option today. Since there were no curling irons or electrical appliances to take up our time we were ready early for church. Jason took us to Burger King for breakfast. This is only a few blocks from our house and wouldn't take much time. We didn't realize though that all of Honduras didn't have electricity either and they were also at Burger King. We did get breakfast, but it took about 45 minutes. If I hadn't been pregnant we would not have waited, but I am so glad we did.

Thankfully this didn't make us late. We got to church on time and had a good attendance. We had 44 kids in attendance. This is good because there is a Medical Brigade going on in Ojojona today and that normally steals a lot of people from church. When we were picking up one girl on the way into church her mom and a visitor were with her. We were excited as her mom rarely comes to church. We had almost gotten to the church when her mom signaled for us to stop and she got out with her visitor. Her mom just used us for a ride so she could go the medical brigade. She tried to get her daughter to come with her to the brigade, but Alison told her mom that she would come after church got out. I have never been so proud of someone. Alison is only 12 years old, but she showed us how much she has grown in the Lord lately.

We have been having trouble with some of the kids we pick up for Sunday School. They have been coming faithful, but we can't keep them in the church for the adult service. Today all but one was quite and sat still the whole time. The one who was not so obedient only tried to run away once. I caught him by the shirt as he rushed past me to the door. It was during the preaching so I whispered in his ear "it is time to sit down now" and he went and sat down quietly for the rest of the service. It was a MIRACLE.

While today was full of incidents, we are so thankful for the miraculous ones that God brought our way.

Muddy Water

Ever since last Friday's rainstorm we have had muddy water throughout the house. We decided to clean our below ground cistern out. It filled with mud when our back rooms flooded. Since it needs to be done just about once a year and hasn't been done in a long time, we figured it was time. We turned the city water off on Saturday so we could empty the tank. We got it mostly empty on Thursday and Jason got inside. It is about 7 ft tall and 6 or 7 ft wide. He used a two buckets. One was put underneath the pump spout and the other he used to fill that bucket. We turned on all of the faucets in the house and started draining all of the gross muddy water. We had about 2 inches of mud in the bottom of the tank. Jason did a great job cleaning it out. Once he had it mostly clean he used the wet dry vac to get it really good.

Because of the amount of rain that has been falling lately we have been getting water every day (almost). We were hoping to get water that afternoon, but we didn't. We had to eat out for dinner. Normally this would not be a problem for me, but I was so tired I just wanted to stay home. I have to admit though, the pizza was really good.

Friday morning we still hadn't gotten any water. Thankfully we had the presence of mind to save several buckets of water aside for flushing toilets. We all bathed with baby wipes, but still didn't really feel clean. Around 1:30 pm we started to hear air flowing through our pipes and not long after water also started coming in. At 4:00 pm our tank had filled enough that we could turn on the pump. It was so wonderful to take a shower.

The only problem was that all of the muddy water that we had taken out of the cistern using the pump had been sitting in our pipes all day. We flushed our toilets more than 20 times before the water came out clean. All of the sinks were pumping out black water for a while.

Thankfully,the water has finally started coming out clean today. The little things we take for granted are sorely missed when we don't have them. We are very thankful for clean water.

Sunday Services

Today we had a great day in Sunday school. Our attendance has been low, but the kids that are coming are excited. We had 5 teenagers in Sunday school today which is a record for us. They are all so excited to be there. For the past three weeks we have been missing most of our regulars. Hopefully I can go and visit them next Saturday. If they were there we wouldn't have enough places for everyone.

Two of the teenage girls that come are so white they are almost albinos. They both have white skin (like mine) and very blond hair, but beautiful blue eyes. They are the sweetest things. Today I gave them some foundation (makeup) as the Lord blessed me with lots while we were on furlough. They were so excited. It is not exactly easy to find our shade here in Honduras.

Their mother hasn't been able to come for the past two weeks since her sister came and dropped her mentally handicapped little brother (29 years old) on her door step. They woke up to find him sitting there with a note saying that it was their turn to take care of him. Cristina, the lady who comes to our church and has the blond girls, has been staying home as Oscar (her brother) has been violent. Jason encouraged her to come. She was afraid of what he would do to a kid, but Jason told her that there were many men around to help control him.

Cristina came today and brought Oscar. He sat so good during the lesson and even though he can't talk, he tried to sing with us during son time. It was so cute and we were impressed to see how good he was. We just hope that he will continue to be good. The mentally handicapped are often unpredictable so we won't be surprised if he has problems next week.

After Sunday school I had to meet with the Teachers. We discussed the plans for Christmas and the kids' Christmas program. It was encouraging to see them take the lead. Several times I told them that I would help if I could, but they assured me that they were not planning on it. What a difference from a year ago when I had to do everything and trying to get someone to help me was like pulling teeth. I am so thankful for the maturing that God has brought about in the ladies.

We have had several ladies express desire to help and at this time I am still letting them grow a bit. One lady wore a dress to church today. This is the first time I have ever seen her in a dress. It is exciting to see how God is moving in the hearts of the people here in Ojojona.

Life's Little Joys...or Frustrations

Last night Jason was in Campamento for his once monthly preaching trip. It was a warm night and so the newly falling rain felt so good. I was exhausted as is to be expected when you are 7 months pregnant and Daddy is gone. I put the kids to bed and as I laid listening to the rain my brain was thinking of all the thing I wanted to get done the next day. I fell asleep, but was awakened about an hour later to very hard rain. Now if you know anything about windows in Honduras you will know that all of ours are glass shutter style windows and leak if it rains really hard. I checked all of the kids' rooms and thankfully no rain inside the rooms. So I went back to bed and tried to sleep, but it was raining so hard that I couldn't doze off until after 3:00 am. I did get some good prayer time in so that was a blessing.

This morning the kids woke me up at 6:00 am. Normally on Saturdays they can sleep in until 8:00 if I am lucky. This morning after a wakeful night, I was not to be so lucky. Oh well, I had a lot to do so I wasn't too frustrated.

As is our custom I made a nice breakfast for the kids. This morning it was crepes. This is the first time I had made them and they were quite yummy I must admit. While Audrey was doing the dishes, I started on my projects for the day. I went into the kitchen to straighten up as she doesn't do a good job on that yet, and found my counters were full of water. I seems that Jordan "helped" her a bit and then "tried to clean it up". In the process of cleaning all of the water up I had to take all of my counter appliances out and clean behind them. I had been wanting to reorganize my kitchen to give me a little more accessibility, but today it was not in my plans. It sure looks and works a lot better for me now.

After cleaning the kitchen I asked Audrey to take the dirty rags to the laundry room. She did and started yelling for me to come quick. It seems that the hard rain filled my laundry and storage room with about 1/4 inch of mud. We have lived here for quite a few years and have never had this problem. My thinking that I had never seen it rain this hard here made perfect sense now. I hadn't and my laundry and storage rooms took the brunt of the damage.

Once again, cleaning out these two rooms had been on my To Do List ever since we took all of the baby things out, but I cannot lift anything heavy so Jason had to have the time available too and that just hadn't happened yet. Well, tonight we were forced to rectify that situation. We had to take everything out and then get rid of the mud. Thankfully it was a very liquidy mud and so the wet/dry vac took care of everything. The rooms look so much nicer now.

I love spring cleaning. Unfortunately today there were several things that needed to get done, but couldn't as a result of other factors helping me decide to spring clean.

We also found out today that when it rains it pours. After cleaning everything up, I tried to wash and dry a load of towels and after 5 seconds my dryer stopped working. We are praying that it will be a cheap, easy fix.

Library

If you are like me, the library has to be your favorite place in the whole wide world. Unfortunately, Honduras does not have a library system. So yesterday I got a box of books out of storage (we have no bookshelves) and put it in my office. The kids have enjoyed getting one book at a time out. They call it the library and have to return the book before they can get a new one. When we were in Washington we went to the library often and I think the kids miss it. When we build our own house we have one room planned for a library/office. We have at least a year or two to wait until we can get it built. We are just glad that we now know where it is going to be and now we are just waiting until we save the money to get started. It does give me more time to add/change my design again. :-) We did have to change the design when we found out that we are having a boy. We could never fit three kids in the size rooms that I had planned. I added 5 feet to the downstairs floor plan and was able to make my schoolroom bigger at the same time. YEAH!!!! As building supplies are different here, I have to take out one foot of floorspace for every two walls I have. I have been trying to make allowances for this. I just hope that everything won't be too big when it is built. It looks good on paper, but we will have to see when it is done.

We are praying that we can get a house outside of town to rent that will help us save more money every month. As it is impossible to get a loan to build the house as we are foreigners. We must save the money and put it aside so we can start building. In our house plans we are including a 2 bedroom guest apartment. Once it is built we need lots of people to come and visit us. :-)

The rat

A few months ago we started to smell a very strange odor. It was centered near the garbage and we found out that while it was near the garbage, that was not the offending member. The smell came from a bunch of plastic bags that I was keeping for later use. We threw them away thinking that maybe the cat had gone back there and used them for a litter box. That took care of the problem and life was peaceful again for a few days.

About a week later we smelt the same smell again, but this time it was coming when I turned on the oven. It wasn't strong, but I decided that we needed to mop the floor under the stove too. We did a lot of things, but the smell started fading. The only time you could smell anything was when the oven was on. I just figured that it was my pregnant nose acting up again.

Finally, last week it got so bad that I asked Jason to take to back off and see if something had died in the outer wall of the oven. He started taking the oven apart and the smell just kept getting worse and worse. We thought it would be a quick fix so I had bread rising on the counter. When we realized that something was on the insulation and it wouldn't be a quick fix we started taking the oven all the way apart to remove all of the insulation. I didn't get my bread made and ended up having to throw the dough away as we didn't get the insulation replaced until the next day. We did find a store near us that sells the insulation though.

After the stove was completely disassembled I was poking at the holes in it with a screwdriver and something moved. I shut the cat in the kitchen for the night as Jason was gone and I didn't want to see what had been in the insulation until it was dead.

The mouse escaped under the fridge and so we bought traps and more insulation and fixed things up again.

A few days after that we started to smell that smell again and so we moved the fridge and cleaned up behind it. It was so gross!!! As we were cleaning we didn't find the mouse and the cat all of the sudden had a great interest in our stove again.

Yesterday as I tried to cook dinner in the oven we once again smelt that familiar smell, although this time it was much worse. We found out that since the new insulation that we bought is thinner, it doesn't hide the smell as much. It was so bad that we had to turn off the stove, put dinner in the fridge for the next day, and eat out at Burger King after the service.

This morning Jason started to disassemble the oven once again to replace the padding, but this time we were determined to catch the mouse before we put everything back together. We put the cat on the top of the insulation and he started sniffing away. Jason tried pushing on the insulation to get the mouse to run out and couldn't find it. I started to poke with him on the top of the insulation and my hand hit this big bulge. I jumped back and told him that this was no little mouse that I felt.

That started an almost three hour time frame of chasing the mouse from fridge to stove and back again. During one of the trips between to the fridge we were able to see that this mouse was no mouse, but a rat. The little mouse traps we bought went off, but couldn't harm this rat as he was too big. The cat, we learned didn't want to kill the rat, but just wanted to play with him. Mittens was a great help though in letting us know where the rat was. After about 2 hours of chasing him all over the kitchen, the rat ran to my classroom/pantry. We kept chasing him and putting traps where ever we could to try and catch him. We finally succeeded when he was on the second shelf of my pantry with his tail hanging through one of the holes in the shelf. He was hiding from us. Jason took the rat trap (we went out and bought a new one that was bigger) and snapped it on his tail so he couldn't take off. He did manage to get loose from that, but he left about 1/3 of his tail behind. After that we chased him and he ran right into a glue trap. He caught his face in it. I took a picture of him (thinking he was dead) and then he started working his face loose from the trap so Jason took the dull end of a very big kitchen knife and beat him to death.

This whole time the kids were getting in the way so we told them to go sit on the couch and we would let them know when the mouse was dead. They were so excited to see it.

Our kitchen is now all back in order. We did move some things around to allow for ease of removing critters in the future, if needed. We are so very thankful that this is the first time this has happened to us. Ernesto and Nelly (Honduran friends of ours) told us that this is a very common occurrence and it happens to them a lot. No wonder the oven insulation is not hard to find. This is the first time for us in 5 years and I am very thankful for that. We did make a few changes to our house though. The dog food and water now stays outside and the inside garbage was moved so that nothing can fall behind it again. We are hoping that this will be the last time we have this problem.

Agua Splash

Today we had the honor to be invited to Agua Splash (a water park) by the colonel in charge of the Honduran Presidential Honor Guard. The military paid to take all of the families of these soldiers, and us, to the water park just outside of Teguc. Normally if we go to a water park it would be when no one is there and that was not the case today, but to refuse the invitation would be a huge insult. So we went and the kids had a blast.

The day started off with a bang when we found out that the time we had been given to be there by (7:00 am) was not correct and we didn't need to be there until 9:00 am. The bad thing was that we didn't get this call until 6:45 when we were dressed and ready to go, yet very sleepy. We got there a little before 9:00 am and had to wait until 10:00 am because the bus to pick everyone up was late. We were taking our own car, but we couldn't get to the park before them.

We have had a lot of heat and humidity these past few weeks. We were hoping that would last through today, but as our luck would have it, today was the day it started to rain. It rained and rained and then rained some more. The kids were already wet so we didn't make them come out of the water. It did make it cold though and they were shaking from the cold at times. Audrey (who must be part fish) came out of the water only for lunch and when we made her change to leave.

We are all tired out, but had a nice field trip day and are looking forward to a good nights sleep.