The Winds of Change

We're back!!!  Me and Kirsty arrived back on our little island the first week of May.   Our arrival was shortly followed by Sonia, our Australian teammate :)

A LOT has happened since we've been gone...for starters look at Daisy and Haley, the two little ones who were my ever present next door neighbors.  They're not so little anymore!  It was SO fun to come back to my old neighborhood and see the kiddos come running for a hug :)

Our role here on the island has changed.  The government agreed to give us a health contract as nurses....so, here we are hair nets and all!  Haha!

Our first order of business was to step up an internship at the main hospital on the island.  Thankfully, we were able to move into one of the houses in the hospital compound.  We could see the Emergency Room from our front door...which enabled us to be hollered for if need be...haha!

The bathroom needed a little work...I tackled the shower...before I started scrubbing, I actually thought that the tiles were a brownish/yellow color.  You can imagine my horror as I scrubbed away the nasty color!  Let's just say, the previous tenants had been men...haha!

Much better, wouldn't you say!  Haha!  It's amazing how much more pleasant it is to shower in a clean shower!  Aww, the simple pleasures! :)

So, our house had a flaw and it wasn't the grubby bathroom.  We discovered that we had rats!!!  There was no time to lose...we got a cat to catch the rat...or rats...  :)  And it worked!  She was a fine cat...a little odd, but we kept her anyway :)

So, my old housemate, Corinna, went home and got married!!!  Here she is on  her special day with her husband!  They are currently living in Australia.

I didn't miss everything while I was gone.  Not long after I returned I found out that one of my island sisters was getting married...in my old house!!!  Haha!  My camera's attendance was requested...haha!  Here is the bride, with her husband on the left and her sister, Nita on the right :)

I was also able to attend an engagement party for my best friend's daughter Hannah.  She is in the middle.  My other island sister, Naomi, is on the left.  Those are breadfruits hanging from the tree behind us.  Breadfruit is a starch that when cooked tastes like baked bread...hence the name :)  I enjoyed eating lots of breadfruit over my first two years!

So, we finished our internship at the main hospital and we've just begun another internship at a rural clinic.  Welcome to our new accommodation...

Well now that you've seen the house...I mean the room...here's the door :)  We are living in the room that up until a week and a half ago housed the overnight nurse.  Consequently, we often have frantic knocks on our door at all hours.  Thankfully, as you can see we don't have far to go to reach the clinic...haha :)

Lastly, with your help we bought a car!  Thank you!  It has already been a great blessing to us!  We've made sure that we can transport a full size person laying down in the back in case of emergencies once we open the new clinic in our final destination village :)

What Do You Do When...

What do you do when a teammate needs to practice henna for a friend's upcoming wedding?  By all means you let her practice...on every limb...haha!

What do you do when one of your English students is having a Grand Marriage?  You put on your fanciest African dress to make a good impression on the village next door...oh life in Africa, it never gets old :)

What do you do when one of your good friends gets married?  You go to her house and take nearly a hundred photos of her and her many new outfits...haha!

What do you do when you have a bunch of bananas...pun intended :)  You have a backyard banana and chicken fry with your neighbors!

What do you do when you have a pile of old, broken flip flops?  You use them to plug a hole in your fence :)

What do you do when you need to pacify a whinny child...you give them a whole soda and a pack of cookies...just for clarification, her mom did this, not me...haha!

What do you do when it's chilly in the mornings?  You find a friend to cuddle with...if your a cat, that is :)  I prefer to put on long pants, socks, and a jacket and make a cup of Nescafe coffee...however, to each his own...haha!

Always an Adventure

What do you do when there's no water in town and it's been raining cats and dogs?  You take your laundry to the river of course :)  One of my teammates captured this action photo...haha...of me as I headed up the hill in search of water :)

The little ones in our neighborhood continue to grow.  Whenever our doors are open they are in our house or backyard and even when the door is not open they are hollering for us to open it :)  We love these precious little ones so much and we are already dreading the day we have to say goodbye in 3 1/2 months :(

Another one of our banana trees produced several bunches!  Our bananas were the talk of the town for about 2 weeks.  One guy offered us $30 for them, but our sisters turned him down because they wanted to save them for a special occasion...ha!

Our little island is apparently known by the French as a good place to come and see sea turtles lay their eggs.  So, "Turtle Day" has been established as a national holiday on which you can: a) Get a t-shirt b) Eat grilled chicken and fried bananas with hot sauce c) Possibly see some turtles.  However, my highlight came on the way home from "Turtle Day," where I had the privilege of sitting too close to the goat in the back of the taxi.  Apparently it was hungry and my hair was going to satisfy it's craving.  I'm having fun...can't you tell :) Haha!

We had the opportunity to host a group of short-termers who came to observe our lives here on the island in order to see if living and working in Africa is something they are being lead to.  Becky, from Nebraska, was our temporary roommate in our little mud hut that's the size of a one car garage :)  We had a blast and we enjoyed getting to share our lives and our friends with her!

Becky, our short-termer, took this photo and gave the caption: "A typical night at Becca and Corinna's"  Haha!  It's so true!  We love every opportunity we get to love on the girls in our village from morning to late evening :)

Our landlord, Easter, had a baby girl named Inan!  She is healthy and looks just like her brother and sisters :)  We are enjoying the new addition to the family!

Lastly, we got to see baby turtles hatch on the beach and we took on the name "Turtle Watch" as we rescued the turtles from the clutches of the crows :)  Haha!

Out of Africa and into The Promise Land

Welcome to the city of Jerusalem.  Me and 6 of my teammates, plus one teammate's parents traveled to Israel to spend a week there.  It truly is a beautiful and yet solemn city full of ancient and new stones, history, churches, mosques, people from all over the world, and vendors lining the streets as well as the famed Via Dolorosa

Despite the commercialism, parts of it were breath taking and in a sense helped history to come alive

I loved the road signs...:)  But sometimes I wanted to say, "Now how am I supposed to pick which direction to go with those kind of options?"  Haha!  These three together made me smile the most :)

Of course I ate a few Falafels for my dad :)  My teammate John is giving his thumbs up on the quality and awesomeness of it :)

Me and my teammates loved the self-inflicted spa treatment at the Dead Sea...haha!  What a blast!

While I was in the area, I decided to pick out my burial plot on the Mt. of Olives...Just kidding :)

Passing through the "eye of the needle," put a new thought into His statement that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven...

Some things never change...money changing stations could be found a few feet inside every gate leading into the city.

Standing on the temple mount

Ending with a splash by walking through Hezekiah's Tunnel in the City of David :)

This is David's Tower located at the Jaffa Gate.  It actually still contains some original stones used by Herod the Great.  It was a good trip...I'm still processing everything I saw and I'm enjoying the pull to dig deeper into the Word for clarity about this ancient and yet modern city.  These are just a few pictures...I took SO many pictures that my camera as taken the last couple of days off :)

A Little Bit of Everything

Me and Haley...again...I just can't get enough of this little one.  She has started talking and more days than most I waken to Haley and Daisy hollering my name as they sit and sing and play on the bench in front of the house.  I'm not a morning person, but it's too adorable to make me grumpy...haha!

One of the many ironies of the simple life...for clarification, there isn't any dry cleaning for hundreds of miles and I wash/scrub everything by hand...also with the humidity here nothing stays dry for long and as for being clean I'll just remind you that I live in a mud hut...haha!  Oh, and I love my life!

So, this is what my sisters next door were cooking one night...It wasn't long before there was  a knock on the door and some of this loveliness was brought over as a gift...:)

This blow fish was caught on the wrong side of the reef...meaning the side I dip my feet into...reason number 176 that swimming in the ocean is not for the faint of heart, or people who desire to keep all limbs intact :)

Welcome to the airport English class picnic.  In celebration of passing their final exam, the airport staff decided to have a picnic on the beach.  They were quite excited to get their official certificates and I was excited to eat the amazing food that they had cooked :)

It's Christmas Time!  Or, I guess it was Christmas time...:)  I took this picture on a rainy day when Haley and Daisy had been left in our care for the morning.  I thought the contrast was great...I have officially introduced the commercialism of Christmas...funny story...I made the Christmas tree out of little strips of ply wood and then I painted it green.  Corinna suggested we hang our Christmas lights on the tree and for the final touch I placed the cookie cutters my mom and friend, Carmen, had sent on the tree for ornaments...sometimes I wonder if I will ever let go of my former life...

On Christmas Day, we had a picnic celebration of our own where we invited our family and immediate neighbors.    At the far end is Corinna holding Daisy, followed by Daisy's mom, Natalie, and lastly this is Naomi.  We held the picnic in our front yard and besides the normal picnic food of chicken wings, green bananas, cassava, and pop, we served Christmas sugar cookies...it's amazing the Truth that can be told when explaining the shape of a Christmas cookie :)

Here is Naomi again frying green bananas.  It's quite a process, but it rivals french fries, especially when you dip it in the local habanero hot sauce...SO good!

Here is Noel and Ritta arranging the chicken wings to be roasted over the hot coals.   Just like holidays back in the states, everyone pitches in and does their part.  And they love it!

Finally, here they are eating local style...all from the same bowl, no silverware needed :)  I love it!  It was a great day!  Ritta found a speaker and we had Christmas carols blasting from the door of our house all day long as we cooked.  After the meal, Corinna and I explained why we give gifts at Christmas and then we were able to give everyone a little something to take home.  It was a first for our family and neighbors to celebrate this day and we hope that we were able to bless them and show them the reason for our Joy.

A Time To Celebrate

Me and Haley, one of our little neighbor girls...we’ve nicknamed her “Pig Pen” though it may be culturally inappropriate to talk about that animal...she loves dirt and sometimes it plumes off her!  Part of the problem is that she is on the verge of walking, but her current mode of transportation is just to scoot across the ground...haha!  Sometimes she just lies in the dirt and goes to sleep making her look like a poster child for World Vision...I assure you she is not.  She has a mommy and daddy who love her very much as well as an australian auntie and an american one who cuddle her every chance we get, no matter how dirty she is :)

Since it’s been a year, I thought it would be fun to show you what our backyard looks like now...it’s really green!  We are growing all kinds of things from bananas, to pumpkin, to corn, to tomatoes, to watermelon!  It’s amazing how fast and how well things grow here...good volcanic soil you know...haha! :)

We called on Ali, our brother who lives next door, to come and chop down our tree...he is better with a machete than me and Corinna combined...haha!

We held a neighborhood block party in our backyard following the felling of our banana tree :)  It was great to get to sit down with our local family on our turf and share a meal that we were able to give thanks for in the local language.  It was such a fun time and gave us the opportunity to play “host” for those neighbors who have been SO hospitable to us!

Our party had a special holiday meal type feel.  It came complete with fried bananas, fried cassava, grilled chicken wings, sodas, and of course the local hot sauce!  Delicious!

Me, Lesley, and Anna took a quick trip to the "big island" to visit the ATM and do a little grocery shopping.  It's 20 miles between our islands...by glorified row boat with two motors it's a 1.5-2 hour ride across the Indian Ocean...haha!  It's like being at Water World for next to nothing...haha!

Here are some of our groceries:  Real Hamburgers with cheddar cheese!!!

Real Hotdogs on homemade buns!

We had a two day team retreat on the south side of the island.  My mom had sent a birthday package which included stuff for smores, so I talked the boys on the team into helping me construct a bonfire on the beach.  We sat by the ocean roasting marshmallows and reminiscing about old campfire stories and teaching the Commonwealth team members what a smore is and how to eat it..:)

I am now a quarter of a century old...for the first time in my life, I feel old...I was graciously told by my older teammates that I should get used to the feeling.  The other three single ladies celebrated with me.  Corinna made a delicious chocolate cake with strawberry jam in the middle! :)  And they agreed to suffer through my movie choice..."The Grinch Who Stole Christmas"  Haha!  It's never too early to get into the Christmas spirit :)

Corinna, my housemate, gave me a beautiful rolling board and pin and two purple coffee cups :)  I love it!  I'm making homemade tortillas tonight!

Continuing on with the birthday celebration, we decided to create an oven on our stove top.  Theoretically, you buy a very large pot and a medium pot to go inside.  You elevate the medium pot with sardine cans, rocks, corral, or whatever is available...Everything was fine until the pot started to smoke aggressively.  As we removed the large pot from the stove we discovered that we had managed to burn our way through the pot...it wasn't a total failure though...

We successfully cooked pizza before we lost the pot :)  All in all it was a great birthday!  It was quite different from any other birthday that I've had, but it is one I will not soon forget! :)