Remember Me?

 
The one cursed by a procrastination fairy at birth. 

This might be a new personal blog record for me. The longest time I've left one post up. Apologies to anyone nice enough to check back that kept having to see that last post for days on end. 

In my defense, November was a blur and December isn't looking too promising either. 



The blurriness began the middle of October when our daughter-in-law Rachel came to visit to run a 10k race with Christina and Kiah.

 

 She took my three youngest girls home with her for the week. The next week, Andrew, Rachel, and two friends came up for a short visit. They were all headed to a friend's wedding two hours northeast of here in Upper Michigan. 

I'd written earlier this fall about our recent rash of birthdays.  We have our four fall birthdays, then two guests, Ruth and Rachel, also had birthdays. 

When Andrew and his carload arrived, I was amazed to find that their friend Megan would turn 25 while at our house. What are the chances?  

Kiah loves to concoct one-of-a-kind decadent birthday treats so she created what I affectionately call, "Death By Birthday Cake." She made a Three Layer Red Velvet Cheesecake, which was heavenly for the first few bites, but sat like lead for the rest of the night in the stomachs of those, myself included, who weren't smart enough to eat a small piece of that rich dessert. 

On November 3rd, Keith, Anna, Amy, Lani, and I flew to Virginia for ten days. 

We spent three days with six others from our Wisconsin church at the headquarters of Advancing Native Missions in Charlottesville, VA. 

Our church is exploring how to become involved with the work ANM does worldwide. ANM supports the work native missionaries do in their own countries. Sending American missionaries to a foreign country is very expensive. Supporting a native missionary who reaches out to his own people can be done at a fraction of the cost.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time with the amazing people at ANM headquarters.  

Our church friends went back to Wisconsin and our family stayed for five more days. We reconnected with old friends in Virginia and also visited Washington DC.

We returned home and a week later drove six hours down to Iowa to Andrew and Rachel's for Thanksgiving. Kiah, Rachel, and Anna cooked most of the Thanksgiving Dinner which tasted wonderful.  

This past weekend, Christina, Amy, Lani, and I went with twelve other people from our church to Minneapolis (four hours away) to volunteer at an Operation Christmas Child Processing Center.  We had a great time and hope to go back next year. 

Then my laptop died and my sweet husband replaced it with an iPad, which took awhile to learn since I'm not a teenager, and is horribly distracting, especially for people cursed by procrastination fairies.  

So now it's the first Tuesday in December and while I'm very thankful for all the visits and trips we've had, things like blogging and cleaning bathrooms has slipped through the cracks. 

If you're still reading this post, you've earned 50 Messy Cars and Muddy Shoes points. These can be redeemed at our house anytime, but maybe not during your birthday unless you're willing to risk eating one of our recklessly decadent birthday treats.   

Christina's Honduras Trip - Pt. 2

 “ I am only one,
But still I am One,
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do
the something that I can do.”

--Everett Hale--

 

Thanks for your interest in Christina's recent trip. (To read Part 1 click here) I asked her to share more specifically what her team did.
 
We flew from 5° weather in Duluth to 85° in Honduras. We stayed at Santa Barbara, a town of 20,000 located in Northern Honduras, and traveled every day outside the city to our clinics.

First we organized supplies. We each brought two STUFFED suitcases and left most the stuff there. 

We assembled bags of basic supplies to pass out at our clinics. The bags contained sugar, salt, lard, soap, clothes, sewing supplies, and personal hygiene items. 

In the areas we visited, children cannot go to school unless they have shoes. We brought down money to buy shoes from a local shoemaker. Eight dollars buys a pair of shoes and the chance for a Honduran child to get an education. We were tickled to purchase 176 pairs of shoes!

We hiked four hours to our first medical clinic in the remote village of La Chorrera which is accessed only by this wooden bridge. There used to be missing boards but the doctors threatened not to return unless the locals repaired the bridge. 

We held four days of clinics, each in a different town. We primarily saw mothers and children and it was not uncommon for each mother to have 4-5 young children with her.  I had trouble guessing the ages of our patients as children appeared younger than they really were and adults appeared a lot older than their current age.  

This baby wasn't wearing a diaper and peed on me while the picture was taken. 

In each village we passed out the basic supplies bags, kids’s clothing, shoes, baby blankets, hats, 

and stuffed animals. 

I especially enjoyed that we took a picture of each family that came through the clinic, printed it with a portable printer we brought down from the States, and then gave them their own family picture. 

Some of the main issues we treated in patients were parasites, ear infections, colds, lung infections, asthma, headaches, stomachaches, and rashes. We saw over 400 patients throughout four different clinics. 

My primary job was to serve as a Spanish translator for one of the doctors. This was my first opportunity to use Spanish in a medical setting so there was a lot of new vocabulary and terminology to learn. It was a big responsibility to have other people rely on me for their communication needs. Overall I felt good about translating but know that I have a lot to improve on for my next trip.

Our team hopes to form a non-profit organization. I plan to return in October and hope to do an even better job now that I know how to prepare. I'm so thankful for this experience that God has given me and hope to grow in my gifts during upcoming trips.

"Nobody can do everything, 

but everyone can do something." 

~Author Unknown~

Best Trip Ever!!!

(I asked my oldest daughter Christina to write a couple blog posts about her recent missions trip to Honduras. She doesn't like writing so these posts are a labor of love.)

As a general policy, I avoid writing or speaking about trips I have gone on.  To me, travel is a deeply personal experience, and while to the individual, travel is something special and unique, to the general public uninteresting and cliche.

  

Talking about my recent trip to Honduras, however, breaks that policy.  I have lived overseas several times and traveled to multiple countries, but those trips were focused on me and what I wanted to do.  This Honduras trip impacted me in many ways because I realized how much I enjoyed focusing on the well being of others instead of myself. 

This trip also combined several of my passions and was a small taste of what I hope to do career wise in the future.   I am currently on the waiting list to start Nursing School and hope to eventually move into the area of Public Health.  I also love the Spanish language so enjoyed a trip that combined traveling, Spanish, and the medical field. 

In mid-January I spent eight days in Honduras working as a Spanish translator for a group of local medical professionals that annually travel to Northern Honduras.   

According to the World Bank, Honduras is the third poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti and Nicaragua and the income disparity is huge between the rich and poor. 

Our main focus was to put on free medical clinics in remote mountain villages surrounding the city of Santa Barbara, Honduras.

The team I went with has been doing these clinics for the past 14 years so they were quite familiar to the people in these villages.  

Many villagers have no access to medical care and our visit will be the only medical attention they receive all year.  

What made the biggest impression was being exposed to the abject poverty that we encountered in the villages.  They have so little, and compared to them, I have so much. They lack so many of the everyday things I take for granted. 

The first village we visited was the most remote and poverty very apparent.   We worked in a field with a few ramshackle tables that served as workbenches.  

Pharmacy - Honduras style

I'll write more about the trip in the next post as this one is getting long. I'll close today by saying that the people of Honduras and their needs touched my heart and I'm thankful for the trip and the opportunity to have a small part in helping to make the world a better place.

Feeling Blessed

Every year our family participates in Operation Christmas Child. Usually Keith or I buy supplies and the girls assemble the Shoeboxes.

I stood in a Wal-Mart check out tonight and watched four daughters buy their own supplies and realized we'd turned a corner. 14-year-old Amy used a birthday gift certificate to buy her gifts.I love seeing my children learn how to give.

We went to Wal-Mart with our youth leader and three friends from youth group. Then back to our house to laugh, shoot rubber bands, pack boxes, and eat Pumpkin Cheesecake.

We took a group picture that Keith and I zipped over to Walgreens to develop. Each box gets a group picture and a short note.

We wish we could see the recipients receive our gifts. Will they like what we chose? Are they like my kids and think underwear isn't a good gift. Will they see the love and goodwill packed in each box? Will they smile? For how long? Eat the candy all at once or dole it out?

Wishing there was more we could do, but hoping the fun of a Christmas shoebox will make a child happy and desire to know the One who made us want to give the gifts in the first place. 

 

The first gift these shoeboxes gave was to bless my heart. Now they are on their way to bless God only knows who.

  May God bless the givers and the gifts

and use them for great good.