The Rain is Back

We had a rainy Saturday today.  We love waking up to rain, especially because the boys tend to sleep a little later.  We have had lots of rain this week.  In fact, the rain caused problems on the roads.  There are two roads between Shell and Quito and this past Tuesday morning, the last day of our Easter break, there were such heavy rains that one of the routes was blocked by mudslides and the other was blocked by flooding.  A good bit of the Shell missionary community was stuck in Banos and Quito that day.  Thankfully, everyone made it back safely the next day.  Just another of many reminders not to take safety in traveling for granted.

It's been a busy week.  Paul has had quite a few cases, especially at dinner time or bed time. One night he was called in for an accident victim who arrived in the back of a pick-up but the young man didn't have a heart beat and didn't make it.  Please pray for his family.  The newest precious Casa de Fe baby is in a hospital in Quito right now with an overwhelming infection and multi-organ failure.  She was at Casa de Fe for less than 24 hours before going to Quito to get a previously undetected heart murmur evaluated.  She ended up in the hospital and the next day was transferred to the ICU.  Her sudden decompensation was extremely unexpected and seems unrelated to her heart murmur.  Her parents are there with her now and she is still in extremely critical condition.  Please pray for her family as well as Patti Sue and the folks at Casa de Fe. 

An Easter Timeline

Yesterday I just had to laugh.  We were not at church a week ago, but were told they were celebrating Easter at a river.  Since Good Friday is the bigger holiday here, culturally, I was happy to have something special on Easter and determined to go by myself with the boys since Paul was due home later that day.  We were told to meet at the church at 9am, 1 1/2 hours earlier than the usual starting time.  I imagined that then we would go to a NEARBY river and by finished by 11 or so.

8:20 - "Boys, everyone get dressed while I take a shower.  We don't want to be late or they'll leave us!"
8:50 - After a quick call to Paul, who is already on the bus and only 2 hours from Shell and several mad dashed back inside for things, we pull out of our driveway, making us ON TIME at the church.
9:05 - Four people other than us are at the church.  All are in jeans.
9:30 - Twenty or so people.  Jeans.  (I am wearing a skirt because it's Easter!)
9:45 - A truck full of people pull-up and a vote is taken on whether to continue as planned or cancel due to threatening rain.  The Ayes have it!  Nos Vamos!
10:05 - We load up in our car - the boys and the pastor's family - and about half the people load into a truck and another car.  We go to buy batteries for the boombox, but no one has size C.  We give up on batteries, but I got a pre-paid card for my cell phone.
10:20 - We stop at a bread store and get bread for after the service.
10:25  - I call Paul and he is about 45 minutes away.  I tell him to call when he gets to the church and I will come get him.  We leave the bread store and go in a direction I've never been before.
10:35 - I ask how much longer to the river.  Five minutes.
10:45 - We arrive at the river.  One truck is there and 2 are right behind us.  The boys play with the other children by the river.  My phone has no cell phone service.
11:00 - We are called to gather on some rocks.
11:07 - We sing a song and hear a Bible passage
11:15 We leave to go get Paul.  Sammy watches the phone to see when we get service again.  We speed along the rocky dirt road.
11:30 - We have service and call Paul who has been waiting and calling for about 15 minutes.
11:37 - Paul is walking towards us!  We decide to go home since by the time we get back to the river church will be over.  Isaac says, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!"

The Home Front

The past two weeks have been long and fun and a bit crazy and tiring.  We are happy for Paul to have the chance to go back to Haiti, but can't wait for him to be home.  The boys have been helpful, grumpy, mischevious and loving by turns. 



























School days go by quickly but we fill the weekends and vacation days with puzzles, art projects, games, and Easter activities.

Of course, I have been working at the hospital and Casa de Fe as well as at home.  My clinic day at the hospital ranges from coughs and colds to things like constipation and ADHD.  Not too different from practicing in inner city Dallas.  Finding the resources to help my patients here is sometimes a little more tricky.  At Casa de Fe, there have been 3 new babies in the past few weeks.  One has already been admitted for pneumonia, one has a cleft lip and palate partially repaired and one little girl turns out to have a previously undiagnosed heart murmur and seizures and is at a hospital in Quito for further evaluation. 

Paul will be back tomorrow and will be able to hear Isaac's dozens of new words and see how long everyone hair has grown.  I suspect haircuts will be on the agenda for next week.  I have figured out the system of plugs in the mysterious zone behind the computer, driven part of the way home from Quito for the first time and tried new recipes like pita bread and caramel sauce.  It will be strange and wonderful to be together as a family again.  Happy Easter to all!  He is risen indeed.

Going Back to Nassau Hall

Well, it was more like Nassau Hall came to me!  Three weeks ago Josiah and I went to Quito to welcome the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship Ecuador Spring Break Mission Trip 2010!  Their flight arrived late Saturday night and our friend Kevin Skillin went with me to pick them up from the airport in his P '96 sweatshirt.  For the first time I regretted leaving my P '92 sweatshirt in Houston away from Shell's mold and humidity. On a side note, we became friends with the Skillins through our son Samuel and their daughter Laura who were best buddies in Kindergarten during out 9 months of language training in Quito and later figured out our Princeton and PEF connection.  Anyway, the bus driver that I hired for the PEF team (who talked to me by phone several times that night) did not actually show up at the airport, so Kevin ended up shuttling the team to the Guesthouse in his mini-van.  Glitches like this are par for the course here in Ecuador, but what a crazy welcome to the team!  The next day we headed  to Shell.  The 10 students and 4 leaders spent their week doing construction at Casa de Fe, the orphanage in Shell.  They also taught PE, art and reading to the orphanage kids as well as led chapel, art and PE at the missionary school.  Five pre-med students spent a day at the hospital and to top it all, they painted our church building in a near-by town inside and out in one day!  For a great slide-show of the trip see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVwAxCWocfI

It's hard to express how much this PEF visit meant to me.  PEF played a significant role in maturing my faith while I was in college and it was incredible to be able to play a small role in the faith of students 20 years behind me.  It also caused me to reflect on my years at Princeton and since graduation in a way that I seldom think about.  Until planning this trip, Princeton occupied little of my life except for several close friends, a few connections made on Facebook and Reunions every 5 years.  I remember sitting in PEF Freshman Bible Study listening to someone tell us possible reasons God may have brought us to Princeton.  Maybe it would open doors in our future careers that would bring God glory.  This reason appealed to me, but as far as I know, it didn't work that way in my life.  Maybe because I didn't tell people where I went to college unless pressured!  Anyway, this week with PEF made me think of the verse in Esther, "And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?"  Maybe part of the reason for Princeton then as well as for Shell now is this mission trip and this generation of Christian students from my alma mater.  Missions wasn't on my radar at Princeton and I was not sure I wanted to be a doctor.  But twenty years later I am able to testify to the clear hand of God's leading in my life, demonstrate the incredible diversity of missions in a small jungle town, and share the great privelege of God's call for all Christians to go, send or facilitate the world-wide spread of the Gospel.