Catching Up

Where to start?

Well, we’re 5 days away from our next home assignment. Always a special time for a number of reasons.

We haven’t seen most of our siblings nor my parents and all but a couple of our many, many dear friends and relatives in at least two years. Trust me…we miss them. We have about 8,000 to 10,000 miles to travel ahead of us just over 2 months time. Trust me…this is not an easy thing to do.

It’s not just the driving but so many different beds and floors and whatever else we manage to sleep on…sometimes these agree with our tired and sore necks and backs and sometimes they don’t. Good attitudes are needed and remembering our precious Lord and Savior who had not even a place to call home for over 3 years…not just 3 months.

We really do enjoy sharing our ministry and what God is and has been doing in and through our lives and efforts here in Mexico. It’s our passion…sometimes our pain…but always our purpose.

Aside from the many thoughts that cloud our minds as we try to prepare for such a long trip and try to remember exactly who needs shoes and belts and shirts and pants and skivvies and how many bags of chocolate chips and how many bottles of motor oil and filters and those big bottles of coffee creamer at SAMS Club and what gifts should we return with, books for co-op, curriculum for the boys’ education, and on and on and on. And there’s paperwork to be filled out for the mission for our departure from the field as well as our planned travels and appointments and then…well…I could go on. But I just wanted you to get the picture that we don’t just plop stuff in suitcases and hit the road…it’s a rather daunting preparation project. When all is said and done…we pretty much just plop stuff in suitcases and pray that God will work it all out and we won’t forget something really important. 🙂

It’s work team season. We have one here now. Only 3 gals with us this week as part of a team of 11. We don’t have huge responsibilities but some transportation and a couple of meals (we just finished the last one tonight). They leave Tuesday and the next one arrives Tuesday with a few more guests. Beth’s mom is here for the summer so when we leave on Friday, we’ll still be hosting those guests.

I’ve been ill. Not a sickness…not the flu…but just a condition. It has really gotten to me the past week. Last Sunday I could barely get out of bed. It had been a lesser and unknown problem for about 2 years but worsened in early April, and a week ago I thought it was time to see a doctor so I could at least find out if it was terminal or not. Seriously, I wasn’t sure…I just knew I have never felt this badly before in my life. So, knowing I needed to see an internist, you can imagine the difficulty it is to get into see one on short notice. Beth called on Monday at about 10 a.m. and we were sitting in the surgeon’s office at 12 noon! Ha-ha…now THAT’S the way it should be when you really need to see a doctor.

Well, it turns out it isn’t terminal. It’s worse. It appears I’m going to live. But…he didn’t really tell us precisely what it is…just threw a couple of basic categorical names at us and gave me a few prescriptions. Basically, it’s colitis. My entire abdomen feels bruised…front and back. It really hurts. Sometimes it’s better but at other times it’s worse again. Now, I’ve only had meds going for about 5 days and I’ve got another 20 or so days to go. I am presuming that I’ll feel much better then, but if not, I’m not sure what I’ll do. We’ll be traveling and what can you do when you’re in a different place from day to day? Well, I guess we can pray, right? So…maybe you can pray too. Pray that God will heal this issue.

I lose a bit of sleep because of it and that’s not going to work out too well with the schedule that we’re looking at. Here I can deal with it b/c if I don’t have morning requirements, I can get the rest I need by sleeping later. But that won’t work out once we hit the road. I sometimes can’t sleep well b/c of the pain and often don’t fall asleep until 1 to 2 a.m. In fact, at times I don’t even try to go to bed b/c it seems pointless to go to bed until I’m so tired I can’t stay awake anymore. That’s when I sleep best…but that’s quite late. Anyway, I hope you’ll pray for me. Thanks.

We’re closing in on our last times with Jason and Kristin for a few months. They’re growing in Christ and we will miss them. We hope and pray that they do well in our absence. It feels a little like leaving your children off at university or boarding school or something like that. Of course, we know they have the Bible and they the Holy Spirit so they can make it fine. But they’re so young in the faith and have so many questions. We’ve just begun to work a bit with them as a couple in some marital issues. Normal ones really but neither of them had any kind of a role model growing up. They have no past experiences to help them know how to parent or how to treat each other respectfully and lovingly. They manage…but they are definitely in a stressed relationship and we’ve been helping them the past couple weeks with particular issues. It’s fun to watch because they seem to really want to make the marriage a better one and they seem willing to learn and to work at it.

I took Jason to the Christian bookstore here (Jornada Espiritual) last week. He’d never been there. He loves to read and he was overwhelmed by the quantity of books they have there. He had no idea on where to start so I picked out a book on eternal security which looked good. I wasn’t quite sure where to start either! Later we came here to the house and he looked through our shelves of Christian books and he took home a book that was really meant for teenagers as an overview of the Bible but it looked perfect for his level of English and comprehension. I think he’ll learn a lot from it. So, he’s got those two plus he’s going to read through the rest of Stranger on the Way to Emaus. I think he’s set. Oh and he was “commanded” by Beth to read aloud to Kristin, His Needs, Her Needs.

Finally, the rainy season has returned. We had some nice rains in May for about a week but then it was dry until a couple days ago. For Father’s Day I got myself a gadget I found in an electronics store downtown: an electric flyswatter. Wow…is this thing great! Flies are actually hard to hit but mosquitoes are much easier and we have lots of those. With the team here for meals we have had to leave the front door open in the evening and our house is just inundated with mosquitoes (which showed up when the rains returned) so I’ve been zapping mosquitoes constantly the past couple days. No more slapping them against the walls and ceilings with books. No more yucky spots on the walls and ceilings! I will have to pick up a couple more of these in the U.S. too. Oops…there’s something else to add to the list. Trust me…I’ll forget.

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