The Tarantula!

I woke up this morning at 3:30am (4:30 WI time).  I'm hoping to stay on Wisconsin time for the most part so that I don't get excessively tired when I get back home.  Actually my days have been going very well & I have not yet had an instance where after a night's sleep, I wake up the next morning still tuckered out.  God is good!

Caroline left her computer out on the kitchen table for me, so I quickly sat down to catch up on my Bible studies and 2 days of blogs.  Although I didn't get all the way caught up because of not being able to do an online study since last Thursday and then generally take 15+ minutes a piece, I believe that by the end of the day tomorrow I'll be completely caught up in my online Bible studies as well as caught up in blogging about my experience down here.

This morning Kimberly video recorded (Is that how you still say it now-days?) the little girls circle.  They always start out with alabanzas (praise singing), followed by a short devotion.  The girl who led the devotion talked about how Jesus died for ALL people without thinking twice...and would we be able to do the same?  I immediately thought of the 3 men on the news who had died protecting the women they were with in that theater out in Colorado a couple of weeks back.  Not all of the women were "techically girlfriends" from the news report.  I believe one of the 3 couples were just friends.  Think about it...would you be willing to die for another?  What if you didn't even know the person?...would you be willing to die to protect them?

We then headed to breakfast where they were serving oatmeal.  I generally can't pass up oatmeal, but I needed to settle my stomach earlier by eating some peanut butter toast before heading to the little girls house, so I actually wasn't very hungry.

After dishes, Kimberly headed with Caroline into town to buy some Zuko (kind of like Kool-aid or Tang, but in tropical flavors) for the kids for lunch, and then a few things in terms of groceries.  While she was away, I used a little bit more time to get caught up in my devotions and blogging.  I'm just about caught up and very excited about it.  Caroline had an extra internet stick for me, so I gave her some money to activate it while in town.  This way I'll no longer have to borrow computers, I can use the one Bob had sent with me and now with this internet stick!

For lunch, they were eating ramen noodles with veggies at the little girls house.  It was pretty good!  The kids generally don't care for the veggies and that tends to get thrown out, but David & Lydia do not waste anything - all uneaten food is food for the pigs that they are raising here at Emmanuel.  Kimberly & I had arrived quite a bit early before lunch to prepare the Zuko for the children and she also bought soda for all of the older girls, the kitchen help and Danis, who is in charge of the entire house.  All of he kids and young women were SO excited and thankful!

So lunch dishes - I didn't think I could ever sweat that much!  The kitchen was extremely hot for 2 reasons: 1) the fire for cooking was hotter than I've ever experience before, and 2) the sun was out in full force.  For those of you who don't know much about the travels of the sun, it's pretty much DIRECTLY over Honduras this time of year, which literally means "right on top of your head".  There wasn't much cloud cover out at this particular hour of the day today, making the kitchen all the more hot to be in.  I was sweating so much that as I was leaning over the sink washing the dishes, the sweat was just dripping (like a leaky faucet) off of the end of my nose!

Both Kimberly & I had to retire to the volunteer house after dishes for some cold water & just to cool down for about 1/2 hour.

Because I ate so many ramen noodles for lunch, I chose to skip supper at the little girls house again.  After supper, we working on bathing the girls once again and I had to find out some more about the treatment the girls are receiving for "something going around the house".  No it's not lice, but I will talk more on that in a later post when I am able to do a little bit more research on the internet.

Zue made homemade spaghetti sauce & spaghetti, and invited Kimberly, Brandy and I to eat supper with her.  By this time it was later in the evening and my stomach was actually beginning to get hungry once again.  I didn't have much spaghetti, but the sauce was really good!

Not long after Kimberly said good night & went in the house, I caught some movement by the back door of the house (we were sitting on the patio out back).  That's when the "blob" spread it's legs and crawled onto the door frame, looking to enter the house.  I got SO excited!!!  It's the first live tarantula I've ever seen down here in my 5 years of ever being here!  I just had to wake Kimberly so she could take a picture (which she did, and will most likely share at church in her presentation)!  Although some of the other girls who have been here longer and have now seen many of them were not as impressed, me, Kimberly, & Zue were just watching it and excited as could be!  We probably looked like a few young boys who were examining an insect or something.  Zue tried to get Kimberly to kill it, saying that we could take video of Kimberly killing it...but Kimberly just wanted to keep her distance.  In the end, Zue killed it! 

Note for the end of the evening:  I did mention to Kimberly that the crack underneath our bedroom door is large enough that a tarantula could crawl under it into our room in the middle of the night.  And with that, BUENAS NOCHES!