I wasn't sure whether I should write about this now or after the fact, but I find myself with a quiet moment, the rest of the girls heading back to the house where they're staying, escorted by the boys. And so I suppose now is as good a time as any.
We're going home.
It's all gotten to be too much. The seventeen-hour bus rides and changes in climate and nights of no sleep and days filled with ministry and pain. I'm not getting any better, and it's to the point where I'm risking doing permanent damage to myself if I push on for the next five weeks.
So tomorrow will be our last day of ministry, a day filled with kids' programs. We've been living above a preschool this week, and one of the things that helped us make the decision to go home was the fact that I haven't been able to actually play with the kids. I can't sit on the ground or crouch down to talk to them at their level. I can't pick them up or push them on the swings, and so I know that something is terribly wrong. We'll finish out the day, go out for dinner with the team, and early Monday morning we'll start the process of heading back up to Iquitos to pick up the rest of our things and then on to New Jersey where I'll see some doctors and hopefully get some answers.
It's hard to know what to say right now. It feels like failing, even though I know that we're making the wise choice. But everything in me wants to push forward, to go on with the team to Bolivia and back to Peru and finish what we started back at the end of February, back when I really had no idea what dengue was.
And yet. (There's always an and yet, isn't there?)
I spoke at a youth service we did this evening in a tiny church up in the mountains. Or rather, I should say, God spoke. Purpose, passion and peace. Draw close to Him, walk in step with Him and He will give you all these. I have always understood the purpose and the passion; it's what gives me such joy working in Africa and traveling around the world and doing crazy dances in the dirt streets of Peru. But it wasn't until I started talking to them about peace that I realized that I've learned about that, too, here.
I've learned what it means to be at peace even when I don't understand, to trust when everything in me is crying out for answers. It's a strange paradox, this. Being filled with questions and yet knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything is okay, that I'm safe under the shelter of His wings and protected in the confines of His hands.
There's room here for my seeking, because I'm surrounded by this peace and I know that nothing can touch me here.
And so that's that. We'll be home Wednesday morning, after which you can expect to see lots and lots of photos, once I'm back on an internet connection that allows for that sort of thing.
Thank you so much for all your love and prayers and encouragement during this time here in Peru. We are still planning to head back to the ship and Sierra Leone in the fall, a big part of the reasoning behind going home and getting things sorted out sooner rather than later. So, although posting is most likely going to drop off for a while here, don't go anywhere, because soon enough I'll be back to my floating home with lots more to share.
Wednesday, June 22. 2011
angel or devil?
Which would you say is more believable? The HoJ as a devil, with an angel by his side? Or the other way around?
And yes, if my family is wondering, we also sometimes wear clown suits. This experience is everything we thought it would be and more.
(And with that, we're headed off to board our second overnight bus in as many days. Thank the Lord for free wireless internet in bus stations!)
And yes, if my family is wondering, we also sometimes wear clown suits. This experience is everything we thought it would be and more.
(And with that, we're headed off to board our second overnight bus in as many days. Thank the Lord for free wireless internet in bus stations!)
Monday, June 20. 2011
week two - chiclayo
Sitting in a tiny internet cafe, I can hear the drone of a fruit seller on the street below, his words punctuated by the sharp honks of taxi horns. I am wearing sweatpants and, despite their name, I am not sweating. Not one little bit. We are far from home, Iquitos being the closest thing I have these days to deserving that name, and this past week has been an adventure. It all started when we arrived at the church, dropped our bags, and were ushered into a small room, handed microphones and told to greet the city of Chiclayo live on the radio. After two nights of flights and bus rides, I´ll be the first to admit that my grammar was less than perfect.
We've been working with the Iglesia Avivamiento here in this city, after that surprise greeting, we learned that the church has both a radio and TV station, and that our main work for the week would be ministering to people through both of these mediums. We were told that we needed to prepare two hours of programming for youth and two for families every morning, along with the usual set of church services and youth meetings that we generally take over when we come to a church.
Praise the Lord that we´re in South America, where things don´t always go as planned, because even with unlimited enthusiasm, I´m not sure we could have come up with enough material to fill all those hours. Once of the days the camera people disappeared after the youth block, so we didn't do the "Family Bible Hour," as I couldn't stop calling it. One of the days there was no TV signal, so we spent a good long while chatting it up on the radio. Somehow, inexplicably, that block of time included me translating for everyone else while Sandi, our actual translator, stood in the door, smiling encouragingly at me and throwing me words when I got really stuck. (Sidenote: it´s about a thousand times easier to translate from Spanish to English than to go the other way around, especially when you're on live radio or TV.)
The highlight of the week was probably Saturday morning, when we asked the director of the youth block, Nils, if we could do a show for kids instead, since we have tons of fun stuff for kids. He nonchalantly agreed, which surprised me; I had expected him to have at least a few questions for us. But since go with the flow is something of a theme for us during this outreach, we just went ahead and planned the show.
Imagine our surprise when we turned up on Saturday morning and found an entire Aviva Kids backdrop ready for us, Nils grinning from behind the camera, ready to let us fill the two hours with whatever kind of craziness we wanted to bring.
And bring it we did. Or at least the rest of them did. I had spent far too long at a youth vigil the night before participating in a crazy worship session which included victory spins galore, and was having one of those days where I feel practically crippled. I contented myself with taking videos and shuffling people on and off stage. One of these days, when I’m back in the land of fast internet, the rest of the people in this group are going to have to pay me a handsome sum to refrain from posting the videos online. All I can say is that it was a quality two hours of television, complete with dancing, skits, story time and even a little game show.
We are stars. That’s all there is to it.
It has just been the craziest week, doing things that we never thought we’d be doing when we got on a bus bound for Chiclayo. I sat at the table of one of the brothers of the church who couldn’t eat the dinner of duck and rice in front of him because he was so overwhelmed by having people from so far away in his home. He called us miracles, fully convinced that our presence was from God, and I have never more humbled. In a far less profound moment, we also sat around the table of the pastora, trying to avoid the tiny claws on our lunchtime feast of guinea pig and potatoes. (I also have photos of that, but I refuse to post them online for fear of giving you all nightmares.)
It's been a week full of the Spirit, of the joy of the Lord and of more than a few laughs. There have been dance battles in the park and late nights laughing together reviewing the videos from the day's TV work. And just like that, it's over, and we're off to the next place. We're looking at two overnight bus rides with a little time in Lima tomorrow to rest before reaching our next destination.
Next stop: Arequipa.
We've been working with the Iglesia Avivamiento here in this city, after that surprise greeting, we learned that the church has both a radio and TV station, and that our main work for the week would be ministering to people through both of these mediums. We were told that we needed to prepare two hours of programming for youth and two for families every morning, along with the usual set of church services and youth meetings that we generally take over when we come to a church.
Praise the Lord that we´re in South America, where things don´t always go as planned, because even with unlimited enthusiasm, I´m not sure we could have come up with enough material to fill all those hours. Once of the days the camera people disappeared after the youth block, so we didn't do the "Family Bible Hour," as I couldn't stop calling it. One of the days there was no TV signal, so we spent a good long while chatting it up on the radio. Somehow, inexplicably, that block of time included me translating for everyone else while Sandi, our actual translator, stood in the door, smiling encouragingly at me and throwing me words when I got really stuck. (Sidenote: it´s about a thousand times easier to translate from Spanish to English than to go the other way around, especially when you're on live radio or TV.)
The highlight of the week was probably Saturday morning, when we asked the director of the youth block, Nils, if we could do a show for kids instead, since we have tons of fun stuff for kids. He nonchalantly agreed, which surprised me; I had expected him to have at least a few questions for us. But since go with the flow is something of a theme for us during this outreach, we just went ahead and planned the show.
Imagine our surprise when we turned up on Saturday morning and found an entire Aviva Kids backdrop ready for us, Nils grinning from behind the camera, ready to let us fill the two hours with whatever kind of craziness we wanted to bring.
And bring it we did. Or at least the rest of them did. I had spent far too long at a youth vigil the night before participating in a crazy worship session which included victory spins galore, and was having one of those days where I feel practically crippled. I contented myself with taking videos and shuffling people on and off stage. One of these days, when I’m back in the land of fast internet, the rest of the people in this group are going to have to pay me a handsome sum to refrain from posting the videos online. All I can say is that it was a quality two hours of television, complete with dancing, skits, story time and even a little game show.
We are stars. That’s all there is to it.
It has just been the craziest week, doing things that we never thought we’d be doing when we got on a bus bound for Chiclayo. I sat at the table of one of the brothers of the church who couldn’t eat the dinner of duck and rice in front of him because he was so overwhelmed by having people from so far away in his home. He called us miracles, fully convinced that our presence was from God, and I have never more humbled. In a far less profound moment, we also sat around the table of the pastora, trying to avoid the tiny claws on our lunchtime feast of guinea pig and potatoes. (I also have photos of that, but I refuse to post them online for fear of giving you all nightmares.)
It's been a week full of the Spirit, of the joy of the Lord and of more than a few laughs. There have been dance battles in the park and late nights laughing together reviewing the videos from the day's TV work. And just like that, it's over, and we're off to the next place. We're looking at two overnight bus rides with a little time in Lima tomorrow to rest before reaching our next destination.
Next stop: Arequipa.
Monday, June 13. 2011
week 1 - iquitos
I had hoped that this entry would be full of photos from this past week, but a full internet cafe (the only one with wireless) and an unfortunate rainstorm have put an effective end to that. For now you´re just going to have to imagine it, not a terribly hard job, since it wouldn´t be the first time I´d posted Iquitos photos on this here blog. Just picture dirt streets run through with little streams from the constant rain, kids with huge smiles and a neon green church in the middle of a row of houses.
This was the first full week (number one out of eight) that we were split off into our three outreach groups, and the first time we really got a chance to dig in and take on more responsibilities. This ended up being something of a mixed blessing, as one of my jobs for this outreach is to be on the program planning team. Each time we have an impact in the streets or a church service or a kids´ program or anything like that, we sit down and figure out what exactly we´re going to do. We learned lots of dramas and kids´songs and dances during the school, so we´ve got a pretty big arsenal to choose from, so our job lies more in discerning what to perform where and who should speak afterwards and stuff like that. This week, the job was made near-impossible at times by a wave of sickness that spread through our group like wildfire. Phil and I seem to have systems of iron after so long in Africa, but I don´t think anyone else was spared, except for the leaders, and so practically every time we made a program, we´d end up changing it at the last minute while the most recently sick one went off to lie down.
Unfortunately, this meant that, since I was one whose insides were staying firmly put, I ended up doing quite a bit more than I probably should have, and I´ve paid for it the last couple of days, the pain being bad enough to wake me up at night sometimes.
But I can´t complain, not after what happened a few days ago.
We were visiting in the home of one of the families from the church we were working with, a simple concrete room with barely room to turn around once we were all piled in. We hadn´t planned on this visit, and so when the pastor asked someone to share a short testimony, no one was prepared. I volunteered myself, figuring I´ve had enough go on in the last months to give me something to say, and started talking.
I´m not sure what I was planning to say, but I´m sure it wasn´t what came out. I started talking about dengue, about the miracle of healing and about the weeks of pain that have followed it. For some reason, I just kept saying over and over that God is a God of miracles, but that when we don´t see them, it doesn´t mean that He´s not on the throne. As I spoke, one of the women in the family started to cry quietly, and when I finished, she gave her heart to the Lord, right there in that little concrete room with all of us crammed in like sardines.
I had no way of knowing, but she and her husband have been in a hard situation, and they´ve been praying for a miracle. She hadn´t seen one, and so she had never been able to make that step of faith. But that night, the Lord used me to speak directly into her life, and if that´s why I got dengue in the first place, I´ll take it a hundred more times.
Pray for us as we head out before dawn tomorrow, winging our way to Lima and then folding ourselves into a bus for an overnight journey that promises to be "at least sixteen hours" long, to the city where we´ll spend the next week. Pray for protection for our team from the sickness that´s been hanging over us and for renewed spirits since this was, by any account, a bit of a dicfficult week.
Next stop: Chiclayo, Peru.
This was the first full week (number one out of eight) that we were split off into our three outreach groups, and the first time we really got a chance to dig in and take on more responsibilities. This ended up being something of a mixed blessing, as one of my jobs for this outreach is to be on the program planning team. Each time we have an impact in the streets or a church service or a kids´ program or anything like that, we sit down and figure out what exactly we´re going to do. We learned lots of dramas and kids´songs and dances during the school, so we´ve got a pretty big arsenal to choose from, so our job lies more in discerning what to perform where and who should speak afterwards and stuff like that. This week, the job was made near-impossible at times by a wave of sickness that spread through our group like wildfire. Phil and I seem to have systems of iron after so long in Africa, but I don´t think anyone else was spared, except for the leaders, and so practically every time we made a program, we´d end up changing it at the last minute while the most recently sick one went off to lie down.
Unfortunately, this meant that, since I was one whose insides were staying firmly put, I ended up doing quite a bit more than I probably should have, and I´ve paid for it the last couple of days, the pain being bad enough to wake me up at night sometimes.
But I can´t complain, not after what happened a few days ago.
We were visiting in the home of one of the families from the church we were working with, a simple concrete room with barely room to turn around once we were all piled in. We hadn´t planned on this visit, and so when the pastor asked someone to share a short testimony, no one was prepared. I volunteered myself, figuring I´ve had enough go on in the last months to give me something to say, and started talking.
I´m not sure what I was planning to say, but I´m sure it wasn´t what came out. I started talking about dengue, about the miracle of healing and about the weeks of pain that have followed it. For some reason, I just kept saying over and over that God is a God of miracles, but that when we don´t see them, it doesn´t mean that He´s not on the throne. As I spoke, one of the women in the family started to cry quietly, and when I finished, she gave her heart to the Lord, right there in that little concrete room with all of us crammed in like sardines.
I had no way of knowing, but she and her husband have been in a hard situation, and they´ve been praying for a miracle. She hadn´t seen one, and so she had never been able to make that step of faith. But that night, the Lord used me to speak directly into her life, and if that´s why I got dengue in the first place, I´ll take it a hundred more times.
Pray for us as we head out before dawn tomorrow, winging our way to Lima and then folding ourselves into a bus for an overnight journey that promises to be "at least sixteen hours" long, to the city where we´ll spend the next week. Pray for protection for our team from the sickness that´s been hanging over us and for renewed spirits since this was, by any account, a bit of a dicfficult week.
Next stop: Chiclayo, Peru.
Wednesday, June 1. 2011
june wallpapers
Here are the June wallpapers! I'll admit it: I'm not crazy about the pink and black zebra-looking one. It was the reflection of a sunset on a lake where we camped in New Zealand, and I guess it works better as a view than a background. However, as I'm actually pre-uploading all these before heading to Peru (I'm talking to you from the past!) and that plane leaves tomorrow, I'm just going to have to admit that I'm out of time.
To make up for it, I think the first one is simply lovely and should count for two.
To make up for it, I think the first one is simply lovely and should count for two.
verdict
Well, the verdict is in, and it all basically amounts to the fact that I'm a bit of a hot mess at the moment.
We were supposed to go back to the clinic laboratory on Sunday morning to have blood drawn for tests, but after spending all of Saturday night with fevers way too high to be ignored, we headed to the emergency side instead. The same doctor who had seen us in his office was on call, and it was more than a little reassuring to see a familiar face. Within a few minutes he'd arranged for me to have an injection of some sort of medication to bring down the fever (administered by a tech with magic hands, I tell you) and I was comfortably installed one the softest stretcher this side of nowhere. They were able to get the lab to come to the ER to draw my blood for me there, which was good because I wasn't really feeling up for much more than laying down at that point.
After a few pokes (since the poor lab tech most definitely did not have magic hands) and another couple hours of waiting, we had results, and I was sent home with the diagnosis of a urinary tract infection and a new baggie of medications clutched in my sweaty little hands. (Unfortunately, one of those medications has landed me with a rash that rivals the Dengue rash for pure itchiness, and as a result I'm living in a bit of a fog from the constant dosing with benadryl I need to keep me from tearing my skin off.)
We headed back during the doctor's office hours the next day and I got the final diagnosis, since tests for things like gout and rheumatoid arthritis had, thankfully, turned up negative. I am the proud bearer of a rather nasty case of what, best as he can figure, is viral arthritis. It's pretty well impossible to determine what virus exactly caused it, but I have my suspicions. (coughdenguecough) I'll be on some pretty heavy-duty pain medications for that for the next couple of weeks, by which time he expects it to have died down.
Or not.
But at this point, honestly, I'm just happy to have any answers to hold instead of the vague fear that something was very wrong. It's almost nice to know that it's a few different things, because it means I haven't been crazy to feel this bad for this long.
So with that, here's to feeling better, to taking the meds and not scratching off my skin.
And here's to resting in the truth that, through it all, God has not changed. It's something He's been speaking to my heart over and over, whenever I can keep my eyes open long enough to focus on the pages of my Bible. And when I start to panic, realizing that I'm in a far country, trying to navigate my way through a medical crisis in a foreign language I only started learning a few months ago and wondering whether I'll ever be able to pick up a knife and fork without pain again?
In the face of all that the only thing that is not uncertain is Him.
He has not changed, and so I find myself fleeing back to His side every time the ground starts to shake, tucking myself back under the shelter of His wings. I lose myself in the warmth and comfort of that place, close to His heart, where I can hear how it beats out nothing but love, love, love for me.
And the joy of it is that He lets me stay as long as I need to. Every time I have to strike up my courage to step out, I find that I am ready. In the places that seem the darkest, as Charles Spurgeon once said, I find His footprints on the floor of the valley of shadows, and I am comforted because He has been there before me.
This is not a new path I walk, and it's certainly not a new God who walks it with me. It's the same One who was and is and will be, and suddenly the way doesn't seem so far.
We were supposed to go back to the clinic laboratory on Sunday morning to have blood drawn for tests, but after spending all of Saturday night with fevers way too high to be ignored, we headed to the emergency side instead. The same doctor who had seen us in his office was on call, and it was more than a little reassuring to see a familiar face. Within a few minutes he'd arranged for me to have an injection of some sort of medication to bring down the fever (administered by a tech with magic hands, I tell you) and I was comfortably installed one the softest stretcher this side of nowhere. They were able to get the lab to come to the ER to draw my blood for me there, which was good because I wasn't really feeling up for much more than laying down at that point.
After a few pokes (since the poor lab tech most definitely did not have magic hands) and another couple hours of waiting, we had results, and I was sent home with the diagnosis of a urinary tract infection and a new baggie of medications clutched in my sweaty little hands. (Unfortunately, one of those medications has landed me with a rash that rivals the Dengue rash for pure itchiness, and as a result I'm living in a bit of a fog from the constant dosing with benadryl I need to keep me from tearing my skin off.)
We headed back during the doctor's office hours the next day and I got the final diagnosis, since tests for things like gout and rheumatoid arthritis had, thankfully, turned up negative. I am the proud bearer of a rather nasty case of what, best as he can figure, is viral arthritis. It's pretty well impossible to determine what virus exactly caused it, but I have my suspicions. (coughdenguecough) I'll be on some pretty heavy-duty pain medications for that for the next couple of weeks, by which time he expects it to have died down.
Or not.
But at this point, honestly, I'm just happy to have any answers to hold instead of the vague fear that something was very wrong. It's almost nice to know that it's a few different things, because it means I haven't been crazy to feel this bad for this long.
So with that, here's to feeling better, to taking the meds and not scratching off my skin.
And here's to resting in the truth that, through it all, God has not changed. It's something He's been speaking to my heart over and over, whenever I can keep my eyes open long enough to focus on the pages of my Bible. And when I start to panic, realizing that I'm in a far country, trying to navigate my way through a medical crisis in a foreign language I only started learning a few months ago and wondering whether I'll ever be able to pick up a knife and fork without pain again?
In the face of all that the only thing that is not uncertain is Him.
He has not changed, and so I find myself fleeing back to His side every time the ground starts to shake, tucking myself back under the shelter of His wings. I lose myself in the warmth and comfort of that place, close to His heart, where I can hear how it beats out nothing but love, love, love for me.
And the joy of it is that He lets me stay as long as I need to. Every time I have to strike up my courage to step out, I find that I am ready. In the places that seem the darkest, as Charles Spurgeon once said, I find His footprints on the floor of the valley of shadows, and I am comforted because He has been there before me.
This is not a new path I walk, and it's certainly not a new God who walks it with me. It's the same One who was and is and will be, and suddenly the way doesn't seem so far.
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