I learned a new word in Spanish this week - TERREMOTO.
Earthquake.
Yep.
I've been told it's on the news in the states. We're fine. We felt it big time and considering how far away we are from the epicenter that amazing. Things in our town seem to be fine aside from some time without power and such. Our internet is still knocked out but I'm not calling the office (they're MUCH closer to the epicenter...) just yet.
As you can imagine this is bad for people in the area whose houses and such are either made of mud or are made in a haphazard manner. We'd covet your prayers for those in Honduras who are now without housing and water.
Here is the official report from the American Embassy in Tegucigalpa:
At approximately 2:30 a.m. (4:30 ET), an earthquake measured at 7.1 on
the Richter scale occurred 80 miles northeast of La Ceiba on the north
coast of Honduras, 200 miles north of Tegucigalpa. A tsunami warning
issued immediately following the quake by the Pacific Tsunami Warning
Center (http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/) has been cancelled. The Honduran
disaster response organization, COPECO (www.copeco.gob.hn) has warned of
the possibility of smaller aftershocks in the next 12 to 24 hours.
There are 5 confirmed fatalities and 13 confirmed injured but no reports
that American citizens are among the victims. The Embassy has
confirmed reports that the Puente de la Democracia (bridge) in Progresso
is damaged and unusable at this point in time and that there is some
damage to buildings in the Bay Islands and along the northern coast.
American citizens are urged to monitor media reports and the
aforementioned U.S. and Honduran government websites for updated
information on the earthquake.
I'm just plain thankful today....
Que Dios les bendiga,
Faith
Friday, May 29, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
"The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came up..."
Remember the little song from Sunday School??? Well...for me, they now have a more literal interpretation.
As you've maybe read in the last few posts the rainy season is upon us. Hmmm....yes, UPON us.
Do you remember my roof???? They call it Asbestos here and yes...it's Asbestos.
It also isn't great regarding the sealing factor. With the rains sometimes coming down in TORRENTS not only is it LOUD, but we have seen some puddles. Actually I'm surprised there aren't more as it seems just from looking up that this stuff wouldn't hold out much. A call to the landlord results in a fairly quick resolution for us with silicone and a ladder. This is an ongoing process and just the other day as I was laying down w/ Natty and looking up, I can see where streams of water have come down the walls. Hmmm...those are new...
Alan usually takes care of the small ones but sometimes there are a few that are impossible to reach with our setup and frankly, I don't want him to climb up there and walk around on it because I don't want to have to pick him up off the floor then drive him to some hospital. Picky aren't I?
So that's the 'Rains Came Down" part; here comes the flooding....
Two days ago Alan was wandering around the house in the middle of the night and managed to step in a puddle. Normally, we would grab a bowl and set it down to catch the rest but as we hadn't had rain that day, a few alarms went off in his head. Lights on and a listening ear to the wall revealed a little RIVER running UP from the tiled floor and out a corner of the wall. He got me up (did I mention this was 1:15 AM???) and we started sopping up the lake that was gently reaching into Riley's room and the living room. While I was on 'soak up duty', he went looking for the water main to the house. After a few walk arounds he found it and shut off the water. That helped but it still took about 30 minutes to sop it all up. Off to bed we went with me thinking through Spanish vocabulary to try and explain what had happened. He could've done it but was going to be working somewhere else starting early. A phone call (YES! I did explain it right!) and the plans were in the works for them to come and take a look. I was turning on the water bits at a time to wash dishes and flush toilets and things looked fine 'till about 11am. OH MAN!! Now it was coming out of the walls too!! YIKES. After that the rest of my day consisted of sopping up water, running back and forth to the main for quick turn ons when absolutely necessary, and watching for more places it was trying to soak through. At one point it was running into the living room, Riley's room and mine.
PRAISE GOD nothing was ruined; heck nothing was touched by the water that won't dry and be fine later. We have friends who had a flood a few weeks ago and they had inches throughout their WHOLE HOUSE and of course, were out of town. I shouldn't complain one little bit.
The landlords showed up about 7pm to look at it and thankfully, or not, I had a lake for them to see. Nothing like visual aids in my opinion. :) After Alan talked and showed them where he figured the problem was, the work began. I was figuring they would come back the next day to take care of it all at once but they wanted to get it fixed for us if they could. So hammering, drilling, chiseling, and prying began.
After checking under several tiles, and digging out sand underneath they finally found it and looks like it's been there brewing for a while. One of the landlords kept saying to me over and over again, "mala suerte" (bad luck). At that point, I was sort of laughing about it. He said they've never had this much trouble with the house in all their years of renting it. Oops.
By 9pm he had found it, fixed the leak, and found that the sealer worked so promised to come back the next day to fix the holes and put back tiles. He's here now putting the bathroom and part of the hallway back together. I'll be cleaning dust up for a while I think.
Did I mention that they are planning on replacing the floor in the WHOLE HOUSE in a couple of weeks???? This could've been so much worse. Or more complicated. Or expensive. Or lots of things.
Silver linings abound. We are getting really well aquainted with the worker (same on for everything so far) and the local landlords of the house. Plus, deep cleaning seems to be on my regular 'to do' list these days.
I'm thankful for water and people who help us keep it in the right places.
Faith...
As you've maybe read in the last few posts the rainy season is upon us. Hmmm....yes, UPON us.
Do you remember my roof???? They call it Asbestos here and yes...it's Asbestos.
It also isn't great regarding the sealing factor. With the rains sometimes coming down in TORRENTS not only is it LOUD, but we have seen some puddles. Actually I'm surprised there aren't more as it seems just from looking up that this stuff wouldn't hold out much. A call to the landlord results in a fairly quick resolution for us with silicone and a ladder. This is an ongoing process and just the other day as I was laying down w/ Natty and looking up, I can see where streams of water have come down the walls. Hmmm...those are new...Alan usually takes care of the small ones but sometimes there are a few that are impossible to reach with our setup and frankly, I don't want him to climb up there and walk around on it because I don't want to have to pick him up off the floor then drive him to some hospital. Picky aren't I?
So that's the 'Rains Came Down" part; here comes the flooding....
Two days ago Alan was wandering around the house in the middle of the night and managed to step in a puddle. Normally, we would grab a bowl and set it down to catch the rest but as we hadn't had rain that day, a few alarms went off in his head. Lights on and a listening ear to the wall revealed a little RIVER running UP from the tiled floor and out a corner of the wall. He got me up (did I mention this was 1:15 AM???) and we started sopping up the lake that was gently reaching into Riley's room and the living room. While I was on 'soak up duty', he went looking for the water main to the house. After a few walk arounds he found it and shut off the water. That helped but it still took about 30 minutes to sop it all up. Off to bed we went with me thinking through Spanish vocabulary to try and explain what had happened. He could've done it but was going to be working somewhere else starting early. A phone call (YES! I did explain it right!) and the plans were in the works for them to come and take a look. I was turning on the water bits at a time to wash dishes and flush toilets and things looked fine 'till about 11am. OH MAN!! Now it was coming out of the walls too!! YIKES. After that the rest of my day consisted of sopping up water, running back and forth to the main for quick turn ons when absolutely necessary, and watching for more places it was trying to soak through. At one point it was running into the living room, Riley's room and mine.
PRAISE GOD nothing was ruined; heck nothing was touched by the water that won't dry and be fine later. We have friends who had a flood a few weeks ago and they had inches throughout their WHOLE HOUSE and of course, were out of town. I shouldn't complain one little bit.The landlords showed up about 7pm to look at it and thankfully, or not, I had a lake for them to see. Nothing like visual aids in my opinion. :) After Alan talked and showed them where he figured the problem was, the work began. I was figuring they would come back the next day to take care of it all at once but they wanted to get it fixed for us if they could. So hammering, drilling, chiseling, and prying began.
After checking under several tiles, and digging out sand underneath they finally found it and looks like it's been there brewing for a while. One of the landlords kept saying to me over and over again, "mala suerte" (bad luck). At that point, I was sort of laughing about it. He said they've never had this much trouble with the house in all their years of renting it. Oops.By 9pm he had found it, fixed the leak, and found that the sealer worked so promised to come back the next day to fix the holes and put back tiles. He's here now putting the bathroom and part of the hallway back together. I'll be cleaning dust up for a while I think.
Did I mention that they are planning on replacing the floor in the WHOLE HOUSE in a couple of weeks???? This could've been so much worse. Or more complicated. Or expensive. Or lots of things.Silver linings abound. We are getting really well aquainted with the worker (same on for everything so far) and the local landlords of the house. Plus, deep cleaning seems to be on my regular 'to do' list these days.
I'm thankful for water and people who help us keep it in the right places.
Faith...
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
A good read....
and a glimpse at life as an ex pat, missionary, woman, family member, sister in Christ.
If you've ever been a missionary, supported a missionary, prayed for a missionary, want to be a missionary, or are interested at the complicated threads of a life of service; you might want to check it out.
Diving Off the Pedestal...Demystifying the Full-Time Ministry Mystique
by Lila Joy Quezada
I LOVED this book.
I needed to read this book.
I will be re-reading this book.
I think you should read this book.
I am grateful for these complicated threads of my life.
Abrazos...
Faith
If you've ever been a missionary, supported a missionary, prayed for a missionary, want to be a missionary, or are interested at the complicated threads of a life of service; you might want to check it out.
Diving Off the Pedestal...Demystifying the Full-Time Ministry Mystique
by Lila Joy Quezada
I LOVED this book.
I needed to read this book.
I will be re-reading this book.
I think you should read this book.
I am grateful for these complicated threads of my life.
Abrazos...
Faith
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Wingless wonders....
Rainy season.
Just so you know - Honduras apparently has 2 rainy seasons. May - Julyish; October - Decemberish. I'm not sure how I missed this little bit of trivia, but I did.
We've been told that the sure way to know that the rainy season has arrived is by a little exhibit nature puts on for you. Are you ready for my description???
Wingless Wonders we'll call them.
For a bit of history - a couple of weeks ago I noticed something disturbing in my bedroom. I was folding laundry and arranging piles for my littles to put away before bed and as I moved the clothes there was something all over my coverlet. It's lightly colored so I could see well which is saying a lot as the house in general is pretty dark. Something that looked like black specks and wing parts were all over it. Upon closer inspection I'm realizing that those ARE WING PARTS and WORMS paired up crawling all over my bed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To quote a dear friend of mine..."OH MY GROSSNESS!!!!"
The air sucked out of the room, I closed my eyes and whined for a minute that my husband was out of town, then grabbed and cleaned said WING PARTS AND WORMS by smashing then scrubbing my bed. (Did I mention that this was on my BED????????????????)
At this point I was just lamenting the fact that the bugs here are annoying and apparently love my semi-clean laundry. It happened a couple more times and each time I got a little more irritated. Well - after talking to the Sowers, they mentioned that a sure sign that the rainy season is here is that you'll see this little bugs that fly around, land, then have their wings fall off. OH BROTHER. Apparently the rainy season arrived at my house first.
About 3 days later I saw these gross bugs all over my kitchen. Then with increasing quantity I was seeing them in other places. THEN - one late afternoon as I was cooking dinner I gained a new empathy for the Egyptians during the plagues that God sent upon them for Israel's captivity. OH MY GOSH - I have never seen anything like it. I tried to take a picture but it was just a blur. We normally have our table outside but there was no way we could eat with all those things flying and landing around/on us. We hauled all the kids in, shut the doors, and covered everything in sight. We tried having a picnic on the floor for dinner (because some people were actually hungry during all this) but then they were landing all over the place inside the house. Alan, very sweetly reminded me that you can't have a picnic without bugs. I tried to not glare at him. I don't think I was successful.
I did notice something in the chaos of that night. They were bigger than before. And black. I swept repeatedly and the game for that evening was "Stomp the Worms". We may even need to repaint. It hasn't been as bad as that night but I'm still finding worms and wing parts all around.
You can pray for my attitude as having worms and wing parts in my bed does not help my cheerful disposition much.
I'm grateful for......................let me think..............there is something................the fact that there are only two rainy seasons here and not three.
Pollyanna - oh wait, my name is really Faith.
Just so you know - Honduras apparently has 2 rainy seasons. May - Julyish; October - Decemberish. I'm not sure how I missed this little bit of trivia, but I did.
We've been told that the sure way to know that the rainy season has arrived is by a little exhibit nature puts on for you. Are you ready for my description???
Wingless Wonders we'll call them.
For a bit of history - a couple of weeks ago I noticed something disturbing in my bedroom. I was folding laundry and arranging piles for my littles to put away before bed and as I moved the clothes there was something all over my coverlet. It's lightly colored so I could see well which is saying a lot as the house in general is pretty dark. Something that looked like black specks and wing parts were all over it. Upon closer inspection I'm realizing that those ARE WING PARTS and WORMS paired up crawling all over my bed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To quote a dear friend of mine..."OH MY GROSSNESS!!!!"
The air sucked out of the room, I closed my eyes and whined for a minute that my husband was out of town, then grabbed and cleaned said WING PARTS AND WORMS by smashing then scrubbing my bed. (Did I mention that this was on my BED????????????????)
At this point I was just lamenting the fact that the bugs here are annoying and apparently love my semi-clean laundry. It happened a couple more times and each time I got a little more irritated. Well - after talking to the Sowers, they mentioned that a sure sign that the rainy season is here is that you'll see this little bugs that fly around, land, then have their wings fall off. OH BROTHER. Apparently the rainy season arrived at my house first.
About 3 days later I saw these gross bugs all over my kitchen. Then with increasing quantity I was seeing them in other places. THEN - one late afternoon as I was cooking dinner I gained a new empathy for the Egyptians during the plagues that God sent upon them for Israel's captivity. OH MY GOSH - I have never seen anything like it. I tried to take a picture but it was just a blur. We normally have our table outside but there was no way we could eat with all those things flying and landing around/on us. We hauled all the kids in, shut the doors, and covered everything in sight. We tried having a picnic on the floor for dinner (because some people were actually hungry during all this) but then they were landing all over the place inside the house. Alan, very sweetly reminded me that you can't have a picnic without bugs. I tried to not glare at him. I don't think I was successful.
I did notice something in the chaos of that night. They were bigger than before. And black. I swept repeatedly and the game for that evening was "Stomp the Worms". We may even need to repaint. It hasn't been as bad as that night but I'm still finding worms and wing parts all around.
You can pray for my attitude as having worms and wing parts in my bed does not help my cheerful disposition much.
I'm grateful for......................let me think..............there is something................the fact that there are only two rainy seasons here and not three.
Pollyanna - oh wait, my name is really Faith.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
A little lightning....
So we haven't posted in ages....
Pathetic - especially since blogging is practically the only way to let people know what's going on here. Hmmm...I have an excuse but it is just that. An excuse; two actually.
No power.
No internet.
**Internet: The internet problem was due to lightning striking the tower. They came and fixed it a couple of days ago so we're back up and running. **
Power: The power issue has been an ongoing thing. Actually it's fairly regular to have no power some days. There doesn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason; just no power.
Our case has been a bit extreme though...as we found out a couple of weeks ago. We started to have way more blinking on and off of the power. For example, my fridge is running and I flip on a light - WHOOSH - there goes the power. Hmmm....turn off light...power comes back on for a bit. However, in any given moment it could disappear for a while. As in some times it just wouldn't come back on when I turned the lights off again.
Drat...prairie days again.
Then Alan discovered that by jiggling (yes, I just said jiggling) a few wires he could make the power come back on. THIS is not necessarily a good sign. Alan dropped by the landlord's to mention this little glitch and they said they'd get right on it, because one of them is an Electrician. GREAT! Oh wait, he's out of town for a week. Okie dokie...we sort of managed by jiggling away to pass the week without losing food in our fridge and getting semi-hot showers.
Last weekend they got back into town to work on it. Of course as they are 'setting up shop' the rainstorms begin again. Oh well...they took off the outside meter and low and behold the entire system was black and burned up. This is what we expected due to the large amounts of smoke that would roil out every time we had a large energy load in the house. (like taking a shower for example)
I'm happy to report that the power seems to be up and running at more power than we thought possible. I can actually run the fridge and the washing machine at the same time. I can even run the dryer now!!! (220 was just a bit out of reach before...) I can get a shower with a bit more than a drizzle of water and it's warm enough to actually be a bit hot! The water is on for now so I've been doing lots of laundry and lots of cleaning. Amazing.
So - as you can see - life is never dull here.
What am I thankful for today???? You guessed it - power.
Faith
Pathetic - especially since blogging is practically the only way to let people know what's going on here. Hmmm...I have an excuse but it is just that. An excuse; two actually.
No power.
No internet.
**Internet: The internet problem was due to lightning striking the tower. They came and fixed it a couple of days ago so we're back up and running. **
Power: The power issue has been an ongoing thing. Actually it's fairly regular to have no power some days. There doesn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason; just no power.
Our case has been a bit extreme though...as we found out a couple of weeks ago. We started to have way more blinking on and off of the power. For example, my fridge is running and I flip on a light - WHOOSH - there goes the power. Hmmm....turn off light...power comes back on for a bit. However, in any given moment it could disappear for a while. As in some times it just wouldn't come back on when I turned the lights off again.
Drat...prairie days again.
Then Alan discovered that by jiggling (yes, I just said jiggling) a few wires he could make the power come back on. THIS is not necessarily a good sign. Alan dropped by the landlord's to mention this little glitch and they said they'd get right on it, because one of them is an Electrician. GREAT! Oh wait, he's out of town for a week. Okie dokie...we sort of managed by jiggling away to pass the week without losing food in our fridge and getting semi-hot showers.
Last weekend they got back into town to work on it. Of course as they are 'setting up shop' the rainstorms begin again. Oh well...they took off the outside meter and low and behold the entire system was black and burned up. This is what we expected due to the large amounts of smoke that would roil out every time we had a large energy load in the house. (like taking a shower for example)
I'm happy to report that the power seems to be up and running at more power than we thought possible. I can actually run the fridge and the washing machine at the same time. I can even run the dryer now!!! (220 was just a bit out of reach before...) I can get a shower with a bit more than a drizzle of water and it's warm enough to actually be a bit hot! The water is on for now so I've been doing lots of laundry and lots of cleaning. Amazing.
So - as you can see - life is never dull here.
What am I thankful for today???? You guessed it - power.
Faith
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