Life in this glass house has been rushing on. The first weekend of February, I was sick and heard the days go by while laying in my bed. I felt vulnerable, laying there, feeling like I didn't want to move, talk or look at anything. In a few days I was feeling better but I am still fighting my way to feeling totally well again! Good health is such a wonderful blessing!
Over the past week we have had a lot of guests. We had some work days like canning quarts of salsa, tomato juice cocktail and tomato soup. The next day, we painted the houseparent bedroom and bathroom. It was an all day job but looks so much better. I have the doors and trim to paint yet and Vernon has to fix the floor and then we can get it all set up. We again had a full house over the weekend. Saturdays always seem to go by at high speed, and I have forgotten how it feels to have a Saturday to do my own thing :). Saturday night at 11:00pm, Vernon and I got a call to see if we could take a woman to the hospital. She had been real sick for a few days and had a lot of pain. So we headed out into the city. We made sure we had a spare tire and we prayed for safety. The streets were dark and quite empty. There were groups of people walking and a few loners who were carrying big liquor bottles and I wondered if it was a drink or a weapon. We picked up the woman and her daughters and headed for a hospital in Trebol. It didn't seem like they saw gringos there very often especially at that time of night. I helped the daughter walk her mother to the gate and then went back to the van to wait with Vernon. After the women came back out they said that they had been told she probably had appendicitis, but she would have to wait a long time to get help because they were working on so many gunshot people right then. We decided to try another hospital and headed to zone one. It is one thing to drive down to zone one late at night when you can go to the bus, get passengers and head back home. This time we were parked along a dark street with men wandering back and forth. We sat by the curb for a few hours while the women were in the hospital. One time I woke up to see a man come up to our window and plaster his face against it. We 'slept' on, ignoring him. It was comforting to know that God was there watching over us. The diagnosis was different this time. The examination showed it was her blood sugar and her kidneys were being affected. We got back to the mission at 3:30am. The woman was feeling a bit better by 9:00am and we took the three women back home. I realized all over again how fortunate we are to have a God we can have a relationship with and who we can trust in. As we sat at the hospital a woman came out crying with such a hopeless cry for her 'papa'. Life is hard and yet how desolate and empty it is when we don't know God or turn to him for help.
This week looks interesting. The girls are in Antigua for Spanish school and Sharon is in El Salvador!
We were a small group for supper, total of 10! I am schooling Jared and it will be a challenge to keep up with that and my work. I guess what doesn't get done today will be there tomorrow.......waiting.
