Something Different

A couple months ago I bit my tongue…literally. I’m sure you can probably imagine what happened after that. Yes of course, some friends flew down from Maryland and spent their vacation with us. Well, maybe you wouldn’t have predicted that would have happened and neither would we, but it happened nonetheless.

When I bit my tongue, the wound was rather deep and located in the middle of my tongue rather than on the edge. That odd location for such an injury combined with the fact that a couple of my meds interact in such a way so that my blood doesn’t coagulate easily led to a rather serious bleeding situation that I couldn’t get under control. We weren’t quite sure what to do, and the ideas we found on the Internet were not helping. Just at the moment that we opened the front door to head to an emergency room, our friends from Maryland called and coached us through the medical solution. They’re both nurses and have both worked in ERs and many other situations over their medical careers. After over 2 hours on a video chat session, the worst of the bleeding finally passed and about 5 or 6 hours later, the bleeding finally fully stopped.

While we were on the video chat (of course, I wasn’t doing much talking because I was applying a lot of pressure to the middle of my tongue with my thumb and fingers), they mentioned that for a long time, they’d been thinking about coming down here for a visit. In fact, we’d initially met them here when they came for a week of family ministry with their teen daughters. We hadn’t known them at that time, but their trip down here coincided with the presence of other work teams staying with our co-workers, and since we had just moved here from language school a couple weeks before their arrival and were just settling in, we had the only missionary guest room available in the area. So, they stayed with us, and we’ve been friends ever since!

While Beverly (the wife) talked with Beth (and I listened), Glenn (the husband) was searching for flights to Mexico. He came up with a flight itinerary for mid-February, and the planning began. This would be their vacation time, and they really wanted a chance to see and observe the culture and our ministry as much as possible.

We took them all over the place to some great local and regional destinations. We visited museums and an opal mine, climbed a pyramid, toured an official Talavera ceramic pottery factory, soaked in very hot thermal water at a water park, and ate lots of great food including Indian/Hindu, Canadian poutine (they’re both Canadians!), tacos al pastor, enchiladas, mole poblano, tacos arabes, a molcajete filled with meats, melted cheese, cactus, onions and salsa, fresh squeezed juice, churros, and much more! I think I gained 10 pounds from all our culinary excursions despite walking well over 10 miles throughout their visit!

We also  visited the Bible seminary and Christian school in Puebla, met a number of our missionary co-workers, helped a few people with some minor medical issues. They shared some of their life and church experiences with our church body, and they did a great job teaching our MKs about the heart and how it works (I got to be part of the heart “display!”), as well as showing our older MKs some microscope slides involving blood and organ tissue. Cool stuff!

Whew! What a vacation! They’re anxious to come back and are seriously considering becoming part-time “finishers” doing some ministry of some kind down here when they retire some time in the not too distant future (maybe 5 years or so).

Here are some sample images of all the above:

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