Lessons from My Ear

If you didn't see about our time at International Teams, scroll down to the next post, or click HERE to see some pictures!

The last few days at I.T. were a little rough, due to an ear infection I had coming on.  I'd never had one before, but ended up going to two urgent care clinics, getting a shot for pain (I NEV.ER. request a shot, but the pain won out this time!), and missing out on some of the fun that could have been had during our stay with Justin and Lluvia.  God blessed me with a few hours of good time to spend with them though - we hadn't seen them in over a year, so it was great to catch up and talk about good times!

Word to the wise - NEVER get on an airplane with a perforated ear drum.  Seriously.  Dude.  But that's what we did.  And I think God taught me a lot from that experience.  This may sound exaggerated, but I have never experienced as much pain for such an extended period of time as I did with this infection.  And on the plane from Chicago to Portland, I couldn't think straight.  All I could do was cry out to God that He would make it stop.  I remember that one of my college professors said one time that during a particularly painful child birth she decided to use that time to praise God that she was having a baby, and praise Him for who He is.  And that scenario came to my mind.  And I started to sing (in my head, not out loud!) praises to God.  Sometimes the pain was unbearable, and I cried, and I think JP was close to tears a few times, and the kid sitting in front of us definitely thought I was off my rocker!  But the phrase that kept running through my head was "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord."  I can't find that exact phrase in the Bible, although I'm sure something similar is there.  But I just knew that God was in control - He has the power to heal and the power to not.  It's His to decide, and if He decides not to heal when I want, I will still praise Him. 

Then I kind of hoped that after that revelation God would instantly heal my ear, but He didn't.  The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.  A lesson - or TRUTH - that I will never forget.

We spent uncomfortable two weeks in Salem (I kept telling myself my ear was on the mend even though all signs said it was not) before getting BACK on an airplane to go to Colorado (will post more about that soon!).  I thought I was healed enough to go to Colorado, but apparently not.  The plane ride was a killer again, and our friends Walt and DiAne who hosted us in Colorado Springs changed our plans to go to Breckenridge to take me to the doctor, which ended in a minor surgery to get the *fungus* out of my ear.  The doctor was afraid that it had penetrated into the bones in my ear (I freaked out when I heard that!), so he put me under and cleaned it up, and it wasn't near as bad as he'd thought.  Then the rest of the time in Colorado was quite pleasant, since my ear quit hurting three weeks after it started!

Here's me and the nurse post-op in the hospital.  They gave me a Coke to wake me up!  :)

I T July!

So, considering that it's been like, a LONG time since we've written, and we've had a TON of stuff happen in that vast stretch of time (which is only 3 months, but seems like we had a year's worth of stuff going on), I'll do some pictures of what went on during JULY.

 

We spent the month at International Teams in Elgin Illinois (about 30 minutes north-ish of Chicago).  JP did 3 weeks of training - his "official I.T. training" for being officially a missionary!  And I did kind of a refresher one week course - it's what they offer for new missionaries before coming to the longer training - JP took this in April.

 

So here's our time in pictures!

 

JP and I in downtown Chicago.  You can't spend a month in Elgin and not make the trek to downtown Chi-Town.  hehe

 

 

I was SUPER  happy that Franklin (one of my brothers from Honduras) and his wife Kendra were able to come visit!  Fran had never been to the US before, and Kendra is from Michigan, so they spent a few weeks with her family, and were able to meet me in Chicago for a day (JP had classes and couldn't come).

 

I took a lot of the classes with JP, so I was able to get to know all the other missionaries in training, like Michelle and Chris (with us below) going to Uganda!  We had lots of fun times getting to know the other missionaries and hanging out.

 

We went to "La Villita," which is pretty much Northern Mexico transplanted to Chicago, with Jay, Julianne, and their kids.  They are going to an undecided location in Latin America, and wanted to experience as close to Mexico as possible with some real live mexicans - us.  :)  It was a great day - the busses were problematic, as none of us had any idea how to use them, but we ate at a place that *almost* tasted like home, and found "elotes" (el-OH-tays) (mentioned about 100 times in previous blog posts, and pictured below!)  JP and I were thrilled, and Jay and Julianne and kids have a new favorite food!

 

 

JP with Suzie and Scott at I.T., getting his diploma.  As you can tell, everyone is very serious around I.T. heehee!

 

It was an amazing month!  We topped it off by getting to visit Justin and Lluvia and their baby who served with us in QRO for 6 years (they were there a lot before I came too!). 

It's all about your perspective

You better have at least 10 spare minutes if you're going to read this blog post, because first gotta read THIS.  It's quite possibly my favorite post from my favorite blogger, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary (lives in Costa Rica).  It doesn't matter that she's my favorite blogger because that's the only blog I ever read, right?  hehe

Now that you've read that litte gem from Jamie (what?! you still haven't?! well go read it!), lemme tell you about my situation.  The other day I had had enough.  Just enough.  I'm not exactly sure what specifically I had enough of, but I'd had enough of whatever it was.  It all came to a head when I realized that absolutley ZERO of the bajillion allergy medications I've tried over the past few weeks worked.  I live in Mexico; I don't GET allergies anymore.  Until those little cotton nightmares started floating out of the trees by the Willamette River.  I knew I was in trouble when JP said one day, "What is all that?  It looks like snow."  Yep, piles of the cotton thingies.  AND the signal that my allergies are going to flare up at any given moment.  AND, I'd never lived in Oregon since pseudofedrine became a prescription drug.  I just knew all this was going to make for a miserable time. 

JP and I have been living "out in the country" at a great little cabin that was made specifically for missionaries to use while in the States.  Cool, huh!  It's a bit far out of town (with gas prices at over $4 a gallon, it seems like it's on the moon!), but it's a great place.  I was starting to get irritated at the distance we had to drive to reach civilization.  Now, I grew up in Salem, but was done with small towns the moment I set eyes on Queretaro, population 1.5 million.  I always thought that if we ever move back to the States permanently, we'd live in Seattle.  It just sounds cool.  It's big, and very Northwesty.  Although I may develop seasonal depression after about 3 days in constant rain...  Anyhow, I SWORE that I would NEVER live in a small town.  Salem is the absolute smallest I could handle.  So I may have been moping around feeling sorry for myself because we live so far outside of the city.

That's when the allergies came on full steam.  I cried.  (yeah, that just made my snotty, sneazy mess even messier)  I hated being "out in the country" where I have to drive a LONG time (like TEN minutes! gasp!) to even get to a pharmacy. 

Then, JP looked out the window and said, "We are SO blessed to actually get to live out here."  What?!  What are you talking about?!  Don't you see?!  My ALLERGIES are KILLING ME!  And YOU aren't the one who has to DRIVE all the time to get us places!  (Drivers' license situation to be fixed soon!)  And he was just so happy, so content to be living where we are living.  Because we get to see Mt. Hood from our house.  Because we have cherry orchards that change colors all the time right outside our window.  Because we can hear frogs outside at night instead of neighbors' disco-club-music.  Because God gave us an almost free place to live where it's just the two of us living in one house. 

So I felt like a moron.  We ARE "SO blessed to actually get to live out here!"  JP had the perspecive on the whole situation that I needed.  God TOTALLY provided everything we needed for our time in the States.  We really couldn't ask for a better place to live.  And I was complaining about it all. 

Well, God's given me a break over the past two days from my allergies, so that's helped my attitude a lot.  But I've also realized that I can't always be the pessimist.  I need to see the GOOD in our situation instead of the BAD.  And there's like a million times more good things in our living situation than there are bad things anyway, so that shouldn't be too hard!  God's good at getting my attention and making changes for the better in my life!

God Provided

We've officially begun the process for JP's residency and citizenship!  So we get to stay here for longer:

We've also been living at this great place in a cherry orchard for the past month!  God pretty much has supplied all we need.  Can't complain about that!

Other People Like Me

It's been hard to be in the States for the past 5 months.  Nothing bad has happened or anything, but I'm just not very gringa-ish anymore.  Like maybe I don't "fit" here.  (<-- definitely requires "finger quotes" with the word "fit") 

Anyhow, another missionary friend, who's been in the States for almost a year, had this excellent idea to get together all the missionaries, former missionaries, and future missionaries from our church, and just... hang.  We've met twice now, and it's bee neat to see what God is doing in everyones' lives.  We have people who are back in the States somewhat permanently, others who are back and going to move to a new country, others who are in the process of becoming missionaries, and some who are called to be missionaries, and JP and I who are just in a weird place.  And everyone has stories of how God is working in their lives.  (Well I suppose we ALL should have those stories!)  But it's been cool to get to know more people like me, who may be just a little out of place, but want to follow what God has next for them!  :)

Rules of Visiting Others

In Queretaro, anytime I make a time/date to go somewhere with someone, if it's more than 24 hours before the event I will contact them to confirm our meeting.  People expect it.  If a friend and I decide on Sunday that we'll meet for coffee on Thursday night, someone must confirm that on either wednesday or thursday or it won't happen.  I usually text a "see you tonite at 7!" on thursday afternoon, and shortly get the reply "Starbucks in Jardines, right?"  That means we'll both be at Starbucks in Jardines at 7ish.  The majority of our outings are sponaneous in Queretaro - 9:30pm on Wednesday night after church, whoever is still there when the church is being locked up may hear "we're going to tacos in Tejeda, see you all there in 15 minutes!" and some people show up.  Or sometime between getting to church on sunday morning and the time the service ends, we're magically set to go to the "Airport Corn and Gorditas" (about a 40 minute drive into the countryside for the best corn on the cob and gorditas EVER).  Sometimes a 8pm phone call for something totally unrelated ends up in us going to friends' house for snacks and a movie immediately after hanging up. 

So, because I know that pretty much everyone who isn't a college student in the USA plans outings in advance, we've been calling people maybe 3 to 10 days in advance of meeting with them.  Then I call them the day before the event.  And most of the time I get, "Oh, can you guys not make it?" or "Did something come up for you?"  Maybe the fact that I call to confirm raises questions in their minds about our availabilty?  I'm confused...  So then we quit confirming and just showed up at peoples' homes when we hadn't spoken with them for a week.  And they were expecting us!  Amazing!  If I asked someone in Queretaro to come over a week from now, and I didn't hear from them and I didn't call them, I wouldn't expect them be there. 

I guess I'm just in the process learning my own culture all over again, this time as an adult, as I'd never been an adult in the United States before! 

Hey There!

I don't think I'd ever hit the mark of not having blogged for two months.  Well, two months of no blog flew by in February, so I think I owe a post. 

As you (should!) know, we're in USA now.  We have lots to accomplish before moving back to Queretaro - hopefully sometime the beginning of 2013, like, less than 12 months from now... we hope!  But we'll just let God be in control of that one!

So SUPER quick, here's what we've done since coming to the USA!

Celebrated our first Christmas in the USA!

Went to Disneyland!

JP saw snow for the first time!

Went to visit friends in Atlanta and Nashville!

Spent an entire day in the snow in the Cascade Mountains!

God provided all we needed to do all we've needed to do so far.  We've stayed in 7 different housed since leaving our house in Queretaro, and have had the needed transportation to visit the people we needed to visit and go the places we've needed to go. 

What's in the future for us?

JP will be applying for US citizenship, and starting English classes at the local community college.  We'll both be going to International Teams' training in July, and another ministry training in August!

We're also trying to get our financial support up to 100% during this time so we can be fully funded and move back to Mexico once our other tasks are complete!

Our Last Week in Queretaro

Our last week in Queretaro was a busy one!  We are very grateful to Walt and DiAne who took us in for THREE weeks while we packed up our house and turned it back in to its owners.  We had some unexpected events during our last week - like a minor operation for me which had us staying about 5 days longer than anticipated (everything went excellent!).

During our last week...

We had nightly prayer services for "Week of Prayer" at Horizonte Church

(and it was COLD!)

Me, JP, and Angie:

We went to the community of Pilares in the State of Mexico (about 2 hours from QRO) with Walt and DiAne, where there is a Compassion International project, and where they are beginning micro-finance courses.

JP, a chicken, and DiAne:

We had our goodbye party at RenovArte Cafe (hosted by our friends Phil and Sandy in their place of ministry!) one Saturday night, and TONS of friends came to hang out with us!

Us with my good friends Karen and Pam!

Alex, JP, me, Job, and Cristina at the cafe!

Some of the people who came to our goodbye party!

Part of my womens' group at Horizonte Church (Angie, Moni, me, Brenda, and Silvia)

And JP got his official diploma from college - he's now a "professional" in International Business.  :)

We had an excellent time hanging out with friends and family in Queretaro.  We'll miss living there for several months, but we'll be back!  

Bienvenidos al USA!

We are here!  After an exciting weekend of a minor operation for me, a good-sized earthquake (6.4!)experienced from JP's dad's 4th floor apartment of in Mexico City, our favorite fried quesadillas in Coyoacan, an all day travel day on Monday, and an immigration official that didn't want to let ME into the USA (I'm still a US citizen!!), we're settling down for a few weeks at my parents house in Salem Oregon! 

We're thankful for God's provision through the past two weeks of craziness, for parents in two countries who let us stay in their  homes at a moment's notice, for Walt and Diane in Queretaro who took us in to their house for three weeks, and for indoor heating! 

No pictures this time, but soon!  :)

A note about the earthquake:
I'd been in 5 good-sized earthquakes in Oregon, California, and El Salvador, but this one beat all.  I'm pretty sure the thing lasted about a minute, and it was the wavy kind, not the bouncy kind.  We (JP, his dad, and I) were in the tv room of the apartment and we got to the door, got the door unlocked (there are three deadbolts on it, all of which open from the inside with a key!) and got to the stair well, at which point the power went out, and being 8pm it was dark.  All the neighbors came out of their apartments too, some of the ladies were screaming and others were calling for their pets.  We made it down to ground level, bumping into lots of neighbors, by the time the quake stopped and the lights came on.  In general, people seemed calm, and thankfully, no one was hurt, and in all Mexico City no one died!

Sooo...

SOOO much has happened in the past two weeks, it's crazy!  BUT, we're on our last day of continuous internet access until we figure something out in Oregon, and it's midnight, and we have to be up at like 5am... SO - we stayed longer in Queretaro than we'd planned, going to Mexico City Saturday morning, in Oregon Monday night, JP had his "titualacion" (like graduation for when you're a professional) tonight, said goodbye to everyone and their pet rock TWICE so far this week, tired, looking forward to Paddingtons Pizza, don't have a date to come back to Queretaro yet, going to bed. 
That sums me up for this week!
And here's a picture! 

(Us with Luis, Sandy, and girls)

And this is yummy:

(and big)

At some point in the not too distant future, we'll get a good update on this blog.  Some day!  I promise!