Bitter-Sweet Day

This morning I showered and then finished packing.  Kimberly is heading back to the States this morning (the "bitter), but Bob is coming down to Emmanuel this afternoon (the "sweet").  Katja is moving Bob, Andres & I into an apartment here at Emmanuel.  It's a very "cozy" (yep, I'm referring to how a realtor back in the States would call it) apartment with 2 bedrooms, 1 with a double bed and the other with a set of bunks, a "cozy" kitchen, a "cozy" bathroom, and a nice living room area.  It is a quaint place, part of what we'd call a quadraplex, the apartment is much smaller than the duplex that they put Jenny, Andres & I in 4 years ago...but I really like it!

This morning Kimberly invited me to do a morning Bible reading with her while sharing some coffee.  We decided to just "open up the Bible" and read, and then discuss what we've read.  Of course when she did that, she came to Isaiah 53 which is about The Suffering and Glory of the Servant...they're talking about Jesus of course.  What was really neat was that many of the verses we read through, I had memorized throughout my childhood...but the one that stands out as the most memorable was Isaiah 53:5, which says, "But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are heald."  I recommend that you read the entire chapter like we did, and just absorb all that Jesus did for us!  He was the ULTIMATE servant!

Kimberly & I headed our separate ways as we left the house...she went to the little girls house to do circle with them and say her goodbyes, I headed for my 4-hour shift at the clinic to watch over Elena, who is still sick.  Josecito was brought in due to a fever while I was there.  He's a bit younger and has a LOT of energy!  (Please keep them both in your prayers as I type this 24-hours later, they're still in the clinic and still pretty sick, but I'll chat more about that tomorrow.)  Clinic duty entails showering the kids for the morning and making sure they get dressed & brush their teeth, changing all of the bedding that they've used and washing it along with their clothes and putting it away, sweeping and mopping the clinic and washing the dishes if it happens to be mealtime.  When there's only 1-3 children here, it's not too terribly over-bearing, but when I had the chicken pox outbreak 2 years ago and there were 12-15+ kids in there...it was an ALL DAY affair!

When I came back from the clinic to the volunteer house, I had a good chat with Zue.  She wanted to hold a volunteers meeting this evening, to ask everyone to be a little more responsible in the care of the house.  Sometimes keeping it clean can get out of hand, and between Zue & I, we've done a lot of dishes that weren't ours.  For the time being, it's out of love and caring for one another, but you know how that can end up...and she just wanted to make sure that during her year here that everyone's pitching in so she doesn't begin to feel like she's being taken advantage of.

I went to lunch & did dishes once again at the little girls house and came home to do devotions & upload my blog.  When I was finished with that, Andres stopped by to check in on when we would be moving into the apartment, so I told him to meet me there at 3:15ish.  I walked part-way back with him and stopped at the tienda to buy a bunch of juices for our family (especially for Bob), and I bought Andres an 1.25 liter of orange soda.  Here that costs L$20 (20 Lempiras, or the equivalent of 1 U.S. dollar). 

Around 3pm, I began moving my stuff over to the apartment.  As I was unpacking, Andres showed up.  It wasn't long before we heard the bus coming up the road to Emmanuel.  I peeked out the window and saw that we needed to hurry to get over to the team house.  I quickly changed clothes, to pants since the weather was cooling down, and Andres & I headed over to the team house.  Andres saw Bob quite a bit before I did...but when I got there, he gave me a big hug (not as sweaty of a hug as he had promised, lol) and I introduced him to David.  We got his luggage over to the apartment, and as he unpacked I made some pasta and guacamole.  I served Bob & Andres first, since I have my sore throat and really wasn't very hungry.  I did eat what was left over later in the evening, when I gained a little bit of appetite back.

Bob wanted to walk a little bit, so we walked down to the fountain in front of the church.  He was looking for tarantulas!...didn't find any.  When we came back to the road, Doris came up the road with Yasmine (Danny's daughter).  She hugged Bob first (which made Bob really happy), and over the next 1/2 hour to an hour, Yasmine became Bob's good friend!  Bob said that he wasn't sure why I wasn't bringing 2-3 kids home each year just like her...well, the answer is obvious...if I did, Bob wouldn't let me come down so often because we'd run out of room at home!

When we came back to the apartment, we chatted for a bit before Bob fell asleep.  I knew he's be super-tired when he arrived, so I arranged to spend the night in the clinic with Josecito and Elena...so that Bob would have the double bed all to himself, to get a better night's sleep. 

Zue had her meeting at 7pm, and Andres went to the clinic so that the volunteer there could be part of the meeting.  There's actually a new volunteer there as of this afternoon when I moved out - her name is Lauren.  She took Kimberly's & my room, so she'll have a room all to herself.  Zue talked about the importance of keeping the girls volunteer house clean and Emilie mentioned the details of the community fund money, so that all knew how that worked.  It seemed to go really well.

After the meeting, I headed to the clinic so Andres could go back to the apartment and get some sleep.  I closed the windows, washed the supper dishes and I had to make sure that every hour through the night I was waking either Elena or Josecito up to take their medicine.  Some hours were more "trying" than others to get them to take their medicine.  It was an all-nighter for me!  I will have to be sure to find some time to rest tomorrow!