DanandDalaina.com

Well, the guys made it home alive and exhausted. Dan came in an literally laid on the floor for an hour drinking everything he could get his hands on. It was a good trip for them, tiring though it was. Dan said it was funny to be in the other village because it was a “real estate sale.” They kept showing him how much better their soil was and talking about how much nicer the people there were. He said it is a poorer and less modern place then Tsoroja (wow!). At any rate, a few hours after they got home we all went to the river for a swim since it was a hot, sunny day.
The next day whatever virus I had came back, and I was throwing up again. But now that is gone and we are frantically trying to get the house ready for us to leave tomorrow. We aren't sure if we will be back in it before our Area Leader and his family are out here for a visit, so I am doing some extra packing away so that there is plenty of space for their stuff too.
This morning I had a visit that nearly left me teary eyed. Irma and Dan came to the porch and sat with the boys and I for a long time. It's fun to talk to her because she actually speaks pretty good Spanish too. Then a lady came up for a medical consult for her daughter who had some fungus infection on her head. Irma waited around for at least a half hour until they were gone. Then she asked me if I was in fact leaving tomorrow and if I was sad about going. I told her, “Yeah, actually. I kind of am.” And I am, a little. It's weird to be torn between 3 places, all feeling somewhat like home. Then she jumped up and gave me a huge hug and thanked me for helping her (with Dan). It was the most affection that she has ever showed me, not being a very touchy-feely person, but I have been hugging her and being intentionally physically affectionate as we have dealt with Dan's illness (he seems to be doing much better! Fever is down!). I guess I've been afraid that she didn't think I really cared about what happened with her daughter and wanted to make sure that she knew that wasn't the case. She got the message.
Anyway, I told her that I was taking her digital pictures into town to have the one of Evelyn enlarged and would try to send it back out when Ken and Joy come next week if it could get printed quickly enough. She teared up and gave me another hug. It was sweet and in a lot of ways felt like my first real “breakthrough” as a missionary. My first real Caquinte relationship that is maybe more than just and acquaintance. It was also very timely as we are leaving bright and early tomorrow, assuming the rain stays away. I am anxious to get back in communication with my family and friends back home. Also, we have close friends coming for a visit in 8 days, and I am stoked to be getting ready for that too!

Over the past three days, life has taught me a very clear lesson: single motherhood and jungle missionary are, in fact, mutually exclusive.
My lesson began on Saturday morning when Dan, Scott, and a slew of other people left for the village of Corinto which is about a 5 hour hike away. Dan and Scott were invited to come because the village is working on constructing an airstrip of their own and wanted some help. Nichole and I stayed behind with our passel of kiddos.
Saturday went pretty well. It was rainy, and I had prepared some food ahead of time, so I just hung out with the kids for much of the day. After they went to bed, I went to Nichole's house to enjoy a pixar movie with her and her kids. At that point, I figured I was super-mom. And then reality set in. The Welsh kids ran some ibuprophen to a little boy we have been treating for a couple of abcesses in his mouth. When they came back, they said that his face and one side of his body was very swollen. Nichole and I stayed up until 11pm, trying to figure out what was going on in his little body and what we could and should do about it. We had done a urine test on him earlier and knew that a couple of things were measuring high. He had had high fevers resulting in seizures as well. On top of that, he is the son of Dan and Irma – our friends whose 9 month old died a couple of months ago. We were devastated at the thought of losing their remaining child as well. We debated about going to their house and bringing him to ours to watch him for the night, but weren't sure if that was a good idea either since it was several hours after he had likely gone to bed. Finally, we prayed for awhile and both felt peaceful about letting it go for the night and checking on him in the morning. The reality was that if he were dying, only a miracle would help, and God did not need us there to perform one.
I am unashamedly afraid of the dark, but there is not much one can do about that out here where there is no electricity once the generator is turned off. So I ended up putting Moses in bed with me. It was a stupid idea in retrospect because he is impossible to sleep next to without getting a few bruises in the process. The result was that I got very little sleep.
The next morning, Nichole and I left the little kids with the big kids and went to check on Dan. We were thrilled to find that though his face was swollen (likely due to the infection in his mouth), his body wasn't, nor had been swollen. He seemed to be doing well.
I skipped church, but by the time the Welshes returned, I felt like garbage. I was very dizzy and nauseous. My blood pressure was a little low too. Nichole and another villager complained of similar symptoms. I got worse throughout the day until I started throwing up in the later afternoon. I found myself puking in a pot in my kitchen with the twins screaming, Moses asking why I was “spitting” in the pot, and neighbors knocking on the door. The Welshes were at the river, so I was flying solo as best I could. Luckily, throwing up did seem to make me feel some better, so I was able to go out and visit with my neighbor for awhile.
After dinner I accidentally forgot to flip the switch that controls which generator our electricity comes from (our personal one or the big village one). When I turned on our generator, the whole village got power for a few minutes, and when I went back to fix the problem, I found the generator smoking. I am hoping it was normal exhaust, but I have a feeling Dan is not going to be happy with me when he gets back.
Right after that I sat in the hammock with Ben and Moses, singing to them. And Moses started to puke. I saw it coming, but knew I couldn't get untangled quickly enough, so I managed to get him to barf in his own lap and avoided getting Ben or myself dirty.
Thankfully, after getting Moses cleaned and the hammock outside in the laundry bucket, it was bedtime. All three kids didn't seem to be feeling great, so I put them in bed 10 minutes early. We were all grateful, and they went to sleep without a single spanking (a very, very rare occurrence).
This morning, everyone seems to be feeling better. But I can say that I am very ready for Dan to be home. We are expecting them this afternoon, though it could be as late as tomorrow before they arrive. It sure would be nice to call them on the cell phone, but I doubt that will be a possibility for another 50 years or so.

Nearly 9 years ago (wow, how did I get so old?), I started college with the intention to go on to medical school. Somewhere along the way I decided to forgo medical school and go to the mission field. What I didn't realize then was that I wasn't so much not giving up the dream of a medical practice as just skipping the nuisance of medical school. Daily, we have had people come to our houses looking for medical help. A lot of it in the form of kids with fevers and diarrhea, but some a little more serious – febrile seizures, hernias, preeclampsia. Yesterday, we performed our first “surgery.” Well, stitches anyway. One of the guys in the village feel against a sharp point of a rock and split his knee open. It was a deep enough gash that it needed some attention, so we brought him to the empty house and numbed him up. Dan performed the actual procedure with Nichole and I getting supplies, setting up sterile fields, and bossing, I mean reminding Dan about the steps we learned in the suturing class we took from his dad in August (okay, that was me not her). An hour and 6 or 7 stitches later, the guy was on his way home.
This afternoon, Nichole called for me to come over for an interesting case. A man with his young wife had come over because they were concerned that she was having a miscarriage with their first child. Again we took them to the empty house for privacy, and that is where we got the full story. Apparently, he had been out of town during the early part of her pregnancy and came home to find that his mother in law had been beating his wife with the express purpose of forcing a miscarriage. From what we could understand the misguided mom wanted her daughter to go to a town nearby for high school instead of remaining in the village to be a mom and a wife. The man took his wife to his own mother's house, but she began having pain in her lower belly. We checked her out and found that she was about 5 months along, and the baby was very active inside of her. She had no other symptoms other than the pain which sounded very much like it might have been ligament pain. We explained to them that they baby looked great as far as we could tell and that the pain was probably one of the normal pains of pregnancy. The relief on their faces was precious and made the visit quite enjoyable for me. The husband expressed the desire to keep his wife away from her mother, and hopefully he will follow through with that and there will be another little munchkin running around in a few months.

I am in the middle of Beth Moore's Bible study, Believing God. As always, she is so challenging and real. After looking at the subject of not being offended by a God who I know is able to do anything but often chooses not to relieve suffering, I spent some time praying.
It is interesting to me how this very subject has cropped up over and over again in my adult life. When I was at Biola, I wrote a 30 page thesis about the Dark Night of the Soul in a believer's life – when God seems to be silent. In my personal life, I experienced it for myself for a season that lasted far too long. A little over a year ago, I watched a young couple bound for the mission field grieve over their 18 month old son who was killed in a car accident. Battling depression has brought up so many dark thoughts and doubts of God's kindness and sovereignty. There have been times when my heart has screamed, “Where are You? Can't you see what is happening?” And this morning I realized that the book that I am writing actually carries this same theme - What conclusion do we come to when our mighty God chooses our pain for His own good? Will we honestly ever be able to say, “It was worth it for His glory.”? Or will we slip into incurable doubt that either God is not good or He is not in control.
Colossians 1:16 says that all things were created through Christ and also FOR Christ. Can I accept that that means my life and the lives of my boys, my husband, and everyone I love? I believe that God has a plan, a task if you will, for each of His children, and I doubt anyone knows the entirety of his mission until his life is over. Somehow 18 month old Isaac's life's task was over before he was out of diapers. If he was created for God, then, despite the devastating effect on those who loved him, God was entirely entitled to bring him home whenever He wanted to.
I feel that my own pain is so minuscule to the pain of others that I have witnessed, but I do confess to having given up certain things and enduring others to be in the ministry here in Peru. When people ask me how I do it, I never quite know what to say. I guess the real answer, that perhaps I avoid for the sake of sounding self-righteous, is that when my faith gives way to sight and the silence of this life gives way to my Lord's voice, what I want to hear is, “Well done, daughter. You've completed your task. Now enter your rest and enjoy your reward.”

On Wednesday a woman came to Nichole's house for medical help for her daughter in law who was coughing up blood. We went to see her and spent a long time trying to figure out what was wrong. It was complicated by the fact that neither woman spoke Spanish and the son/husband was out of town. After consulting with the medical textbooks to try to discern if she had a lung infection, pneumonia, TB, or advanced roundworm (which eventually caused pneumonia), we figured it was probably a lung infection since she had had it such a short time. We started her on Erythromycin since she is pregnant, tylenol for the pain, and recommended she drink tons of water and do some steam treatments. The next day she was a little worse, but by Friday she seemed to be doing some better. Then last night, Saturday, the mother in law returned because she started to cough up blood again. Today I called Dr. Dad and gave him the story to see if we were overlooking something. He said it sounded like pneumonia, but we were giving her the exact treatment we should.
Nichole and I were glad to hear that we had guessed correctly. Sometimes it seems like we are really shooting in the dark with a prayer that we don't kill someone in the process. Though I think we are both improving rapidly in our medical skills. We make a nice team since my medical knowledge is pretty general and Nichole knows a lot about the stuff specific to this area.
In other village news, the water project is continuing. The topographer was hired by the oil company so they are paying to fix the problem. They will be putting in another reservoir, and this one will be very close to our house. This is good news for us because it means that we will have the best water pressure. Now we are fantasizing about an indoor toilet...