Swimming, Thanksgiving, Spiders, and a Box of Goodies
Dear family and friends,
We had a nice Thanksgiving Day, but I must admit I heaved a great sigh of relief when the last guests left. There were a lot of people for the space. Ed thinks our home is about the size of our garage in Syracuse. Thankfully it didn’t rain so the children were ablt to play outside. However, it was around 90 degrees and humid. Having the oven on for almost 5 hours plus the gas burners for boiling the potatoes, etc., made for a sweat-filled day on my part. I just wanted to get off my feet after scurrying around all day. We were able to get a ham and a turkey from La Ceiba, plus the fixings for mashed potatoes and dressing. A cucumber and tomato salad sufficed for a vegetable, and for dessert we had cake and apple crisp. No one left hungry, and it was a pleasant time of fellowship.
The Grigg’s brought a family visiting them from Canada. The wife, Jane, was suffering from an acute attack of diarrhea and spent most of the day scurrying between the bathroom and the water cistern. She mostly lay on the couch and was unable to have even one morsel of food. We laid hands on her and prayed for the Lord to touch her. Laurel also went to the pharmacy and bought a drug that kills amoebas (you don’t need a prescription here for any drug). After she took it she vomited. Believe it or not, she started to feel a bit better after that and they left.
One of the things I love about living here is that there are no expectations of things being “just so”. In the States there is always room for improvement. If you just put forth more time, money and/or effort, there seems to be no end to how something can be made or done better. Here we all live with the same limitations and there is simply no way of getting around it. This is why it didn’t faze me at all to have a Thanksgiving dinner for twenty-one people in a small space. Everyone’s expectations are low and “winging it” is the name of the game. As a result, there’s very little stress involved. In fact, it becomes a kind of enjoyable challenge.
A few hours later Chaela complained of feeling nauseous. She said she ate too much and decided to lie down in her bed. Gabrielle thought she heard her cry out. We went into her room to find that she had vomited up her entire Thanksgiving dinner. She followed that act with diarrhea.
The next day Ed visited the Griggs. Jane’s husband, their four-year-old daughter and the Griggs’ daughter Megan, all had the diarrhea/vomiting bug. They Griggs determined it was something they contracted the day before Thanksgiving. They had all gone to a beach to swim about a 45-minute drive away. They brought Bethany and Michaela with them. They think it has something to do with the water they swam in. Neither Laurel nor Ray swam but everybody else did. Bethany and Zachary were the only ones not affected that swam. Possibly, they were the only ones to not ingest any water. This sickness is violent, but short-lived. I’m SO relieved it’s not due to something they ate at Thanksgiving! If Jane hadn’t arrived already sick, we probably would have thought Thursday’s dinner was the culprit.
Now for a spider update. We had our first visit by a humungous spider one night last week. We believe the rain drove it to squeeze under the front door and then under the couch. It dared to come out and just stand in plain view. Bethany was the first to see it, and initially thought it was a crumpled up piece of paper. When I saw her head turn to look at it, I looked to see what had caught her attention. In a nanosecond, I was out of the chair and standing in the middle of the room. My sudden movement caused it to scurry back under the couch. We were amazed he could fit. He was grapefruit size but flatter than he was round. Of course Ed, our master critter killer, was not at home. We arranged our chairs so we could watch the couch and be assured he stayed put. When Ed arrived home, we put him straight to work. He lifted up the couch and there it sat. Bethany ran to get her camera so we could take a mug shot. Then, Ed pummeled it with a shoe. The rest of us safely watched from the top of the kitchen table. Yuck!
The cockroach that had taken up residency in our bedroom has also met with a shoe. I heard it chewing in the middle of the night on two different occasions, so I knew he was alive and well. One morning last week, as I straightened up some books in our bedroom, I spied him. I asked Ed to please come and kill it. Once he did, the dead roach was evidence that they do indeed fly. Bethany had tried to convince me that they flew as one night we watched a huge beetle fly around church, land on the floor and walls, then run like mad. I hadn’t believed her, thinking the insect was a different sort of beetle. Ed was under the impression that cockroaches couldn’t fly as well. But, this dead one was smushed in such a way that his wings were exposed.
Ed continues to be blessed, especially by the outreach to the prisoners. Four of them have asked to be water baptized and one of them has aspirations to be an evangelist. The group continues to ask many good and thoughtful questions and delight in studying the scriptures. One of them told Ed that they are so grateful to be able to study the pure Word of God without any underlying agenda.
We finally received the box of delights Jamie sent us from Syracuse in September. Thank you, thank you, and thank you, to all of you who contributed to it. We are thoroughly enjoying the spices, salt, crackers, oatmeal and candy. The chocolate (dark with hazelnut filling) was oh-so-good, but left me feeling like a slug for many hours. I think we’ve partially detoxed our systems from processed sugars. The newspapers were a huge hit and we devoured every word even though the news is a couple months old. It’s so hard to imagine a crisp autumn day when you’re surrounded by a blanket of 90-degree humidity. Thank you also, to all those who put in letters. They’re precious.
With love and peace in Christ Jesus,
Karen
We had a nice Thanksgiving Day, but I must admit I heaved a great sigh of relief when the last guests left. There were a lot of people for the space. Ed thinks our home is about the size of our garage in Syracuse. Thankfully it didn’t rain so the children were ablt to play outside. However, it was around 90 degrees and humid. Having the oven on for almost 5 hours plus the gas burners for boiling the potatoes, etc., made for a sweat-filled day on my part. I just wanted to get off my feet after scurrying around all day. We were able to get a ham and a turkey from La Ceiba, plus the fixings for mashed potatoes and dressing. A cucumber and tomato salad sufficed for a vegetable, and for dessert we had cake and apple crisp. No one left hungry, and it was a pleasant time of fellowship.
The Grigg’s brought a family visiting them from Canada. The wife, Jane, was suffering from an acute attack of diarrhea and spent most of the day scurrying between the bathroom and the water cistern. She mostly lay on the couch and was unable to have even one morsel of food. We laid hands on her and prayed for the Lord to touch her. Laurel also went to the pharmacy and bought a drug that kills amoebas (you don’t need a prescription here for any drug). After she took it she vomited. Believe it or not, she started to feel a bit better after that and they left.
One of the things I love about living here is that there are no expectations of things being “just so”. In the States there is always room for improvement. If you just put forth more time, money and/or effort, there seems to be no end to how something can be made or done better. Here we all live with the same limitations and there is simply no way of getting around it. This is why it didn’t faze me at all to have a Thanksgiving dinner for twenty-one people in a small space. Everyone’s expectations are low and “winging it” is the name of the game. As a result, there’s very little stress involved. In fact, it becomes a kind of enjoyable challenge.
A few hours later Chaela complained of feeling nauseous. She said she ate too much and decided to lie down in her bed. Gabrielle thought she heard her cry out. We went into her room to find that she had vomited up her entire Thanksgiving dinner. She followed that act with diarrhea.
The next day Ed visited the Griggs. Jane’s husband, their four-year-old daughter and the Griggs’ daughter Megan, all had the diarrhea/vomiting bug. They Griggs determined it was something they contracted the day before Thanksgiving. They had all gone to a beach to swim about a 45-minute drive away. They brought Bethany and Michaela with them. They think it has something to do with the water they swam in. Neither Laurel nor Ray swam but everybody else did. Bethany and Zachary were the only ones not affected that swam. Possibly, they were the only ones to not ingest any water. This sickness is violent, but short-lived. I’m SO relieved it’s not due to something they ate at Thanksgiving! If Jane hadn’t arrived already sick, we probably would have thought Thursday’s dinner was the culprit.
Now for a spider update. We had our first visit by a humungous spider one night last week. We believe the rain drove it to squeeze under the front door and then under the couch. It dared to come out and just stand in plain view. Bethany was the first to see it, and initially thought it was a crumpled up piece of paper. When I saw her head turn to look at it, I looked to see what had caught her attention. In a nanosecond, I was out of the chair and standing in the middle of the room. My sudden movement caused it to scurry back under the couch. We were amazed he could fit. He was grapefruit size but flatter than he was round. Of course Ed, our master critter killer, was not at home. We arranged our chairs so we could watch the couch and be assured he stayed put. When Ed arrived home, we put him straight to work. He lifted up the couch and there it sat. Bethany ran to get her camera so we could take a mug shot. Then, Ed pummeled it with a shoe. The rest of us safely watched from the top of the kitchen table. Yuck!
The cockroach that had taken up residency in our bedroom has also met with a shoe. I heard it chewing in the middle of the night on two different occasions, so I knew he was alive and well. One morning last week, as I straightened up some books in our bedroom, I spied him. I asked Ed to please come and kill it. Once he did, the dead roach was evidence that they do indeed fly. Bethany had tried to convince me that they flew as one night we watched a huge beetle fly around church, land on the floor and walls, then run like mad. I hadn’t believed her, thinking the insect was a different sort of beetle. Ed was under the impression that cockroaches couldn’t fly as well. But, this dead one was smushed in such a way that his wings were exposed.
Ed continues to be blessed, especially by the outreach to the prisoners. Four of them have asked to be water baptized and one of them has aspirations to be an evangelist. The group continues to ask many good and thoughtful questions and delight in studying the scriptures. One of them told Ed that they are so grateful to be able to study the pure Word of God without any underlying agenda.
We finally received the box of delights Jamie sent us from Syracuse in September. Thank you, thank you, and thank you, to all of you who contributed to it. We are thoroughly enjoying the spices, salt, crackers, oatmeal and candy. The chocolate (dark with hazelnut filling) was oh-so-good, but left me feeling like a slug for many hours. I think we’ve partially detoxed our systems from processed sugars. The newspapers were a huge hit and we devoured every word even though the news is a couple months old. It’s so hard to imagine a crisp autumn day when you’re surrounded by a blanket of 90-degree humidity. Thank you also, to all those who put in letters. They’re precious.
With love and peace in Christ Jesus,
Karen
posted by Eric Stephens at 20:22
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