Parenting 101

I know it's possible to blog without including pictures, people do it all the time, right? I've even done it before, once or twice, but you probably won't remember those 'cause I'm pretty sure no one read them. It just makes me feel all exposed. My poor writing has nothing to hide behind. No cute little kiddos or puppies to distract you from the less than noteworthy event I'm capturing about my pretty normal life.

But I find myself left with no other choice. Well, except for the obvious alternative of not writing, but I prefer to face my fears head on. So, in spite of the fact that my camera broke Friday, and my back-up camera broke Saturday, and just to add insult to injury my Kindle also bit the dust, here I am. Do I have anything profound to say, no not really. Do I just like to hear myself talk, well I didn't think so, but it's looking more likely now isn't it?

So, what do we talk about when we don't have pictures of the recent Talita Cumi birthday party or the fundraiser dinner last Friday?

How 'bout parenting. Have you ever tried it? It's hard! Most of you know, the little Angel and I have had our fair share, plus maybe a few others' fair shares, of issues. She's got quite a history to work through and well, what do I know about parenting?!

A friend told me recently when they had their first little one a year ago, they started to read the books, but then got overwhelmed and decided to just do it by instinct. My instincts aren't so trustworthy. So, I've read Adopted For Life, The New Strong-Willed Child, The Post-Adoption Blues, Loving Your Kids on Purpose, Parenting The Internationally Adopted Child, Bossypants (Tina Fey's book which I found on a parenting website, however turns out to not be about parenting, but totally worth the read), etc. I'm listening to an audio series called the Total Transformation. I'm meeting with a counselor regularly. We have a weekly motivational behavior chart. We moved bedtime up half an hour...

So, what is the outcome of these gazillion ideas and messages (often contradicting each other) bombarding me all at once? That my head explodes, yes. But also that we had a "perfect" week. It was our second almost-tantrumless week in the four and a half months we've been charting. And of course, we're going to the movies!!

Like everyone else you probably want to know what's making the difference. But to really be able to identify the cause we'd only be able to make one change a week to isolate all the variables, and I'm just too impatient for that. So, we'll just be grateful for our great week and try to keep up whatever we're doing right!

Thank you all for your prayers, they're an essential contributing factor that we couldn't do without.

Roommates

I'll admit I've not always been my car's #1 fan. It's probably safe to say that most men are bigger fans of my gigantic, rugged, hardy old Landcruiser than I am. But she's grown on me over the year and a half we've been together toting countless people to countless places. And just this week I was thinking about how well she fits with the verse I try to live by, Proverbs 3:27, "Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it." With a car that supposedly seats 10, but actually seats somewhere around 20, in a country where seat belts are a thing of the past, or maybe the future, I can't remember the last time when we (the Landcruiser and I) have had to turn anyone away for a ride because there wasn't room. This weekend alone she transported 9 people and a dog to our vet student project at Cristo Viene, 15 people home from church, and 9 people and that same silly dog to the sand dunes.

One thing that I'm coming to understand about that verse is that it doesn't work quite the same now that I'm a mother. Whereas, before it basically meant rarely saying "no" to anyone with a request, now I have to weigh the benefit to the person in need over the potential burden it adds to Ange. I've yet to perfect this saying "no" concept, so I often add undue stress to Angie's schedule, but I'm working on it. So, you can likely guess what the outcome was when two of our dear friends from church found themselves between housing for a month or two (a situation we can empathize well with from as recently as April), while their next place is being built; two new roommates of course!

Rosenda and Silda, two sweet sisters from a family of ten kids, moved in with us about a week ago. So far we couldn't have asked for easier tenants. Silda works at Talita Cumi and was one of Angie's beloved tias (aunties) when she lived there. I'm sure Angie also doesn't mind that they're our first house guests whose mother tongue is Spanish. And if I can ever remember what adults do when their little ones aren't around, we'll be ready with a couple of live-in babysitters.

That Exciting Angie Episode I Promised

Here's that latest installment for the Angelica Addicts, i.e. Mom and Dad. Her second grade class participated in an English Festival, where they put on a production of Kung Fu Panda, in which Ange played the leading role in the dance number, leading role meaning she's in the middle, since the footage leaves something to be desired.

The estrellita (little star).

Writer's Block

So, I know no one, except maybe Mom, is waiting for my next blog post, but I do feel bad when I'm way overdue. It's not that nothing's been happening, it's more that a lot's been happening. The president of Compassion International was a missionary kid and he said the best missionaries always have the hardest time getting their prayer letters turned in. Which might subconsciously make me a bit hesitant about trying to write well, or regularly. Plus, I know as a reading audience, you really just want more stories about sweet little Ange, and there just hasn't been anything to tell except that she won a little race in school, and her grades went up enough in the second trimester to warrant a trip to the movies. We went to see Los Pitufos, anyone wanna guess what that translates to in English?

In between exciting Angie episodes I thought I'd tide you over with a few photo-stories of a project we're working on with the vet students. I think I'd rather tell you the whole story when we're finished, but this should whet your appetites.

Let's just say it's a project where they're letting me lay bricks,

Angie mix cement,

and our VetRed students are pretty much in charge.

Scary, huh?

Can't wait to tell you all about it, but in the meantime, better get back to working instead of just talking about working. ;)

Is it Weird to Love Your Office?

This morning, I said goodbye to two of the first fruits of our new office. For the past month I've been tutoring two cousins of one of the doctors that works in the veterinary hospital where our campus ministry office is located. They've been visiting from Spain on their summer break, and asked if I could help them with some English. They were sweet sweet kids, and I really enjoyed our hour together every day, where I tried to remember my British English and Spain Spanish. Sometimes just before I would correct them for some English error, I would realize,"ah, maybe that is how they say it in England." Today, as we enjoyed the Coke and salteñas they brought to thank me one asked, which is better English from the US or from Britain? I'll leave my answer to your imaginations.

Everyday, as I sit in the office between classes grading papers or planning lessons, random students and professors drop in. Sometimes to ask about our ministry, to find out when our Bible studies will be, to ask about the English class schedule, to fill time between classes reading The Daily Bread in Spanish, or my favorite -- two professors stopped in to ask for a couple Spanish New Testaments because they'd seen someone on campus reading one and asked where she'd gotten it.

And sometimes just to hangout. I met a student who's husband is a youth pastor at their church and she has a 6 year old daughter who I hope will someday be friends with Angie. My three lovely Bible study girls come by to visit and relax on the couch when they have breaks between classes. This afternoon Paola, my good friend and colleague at the university, stopped in to chat about our families on her way home to hers.

This Friday we hope to bring them all together to decide what material we'll dig into this semester, what hours work best for everyone, and start planning our chicken coop service project. I love the excitement of the beginning of the semester. And I love this new office!

VetRed Open House (does not translate well)

So VetRed's got this lovely new office on the veterinary campus, and we wanted to share it with everyone, so I thought we should have an open house. The new semester just began last week, so there were lots of fresh faces and the always reliable new-semester-enthusiasm, so all we needed to add was food.

One of the women in my church small group makes wonderful cuñape, empanadas and other such treats, so I thought I'd hire her to bake for our little inauguration. Turns out she'd had a cancellation just that day so not only was she available, but she'd been praying for God to replace that needed income. God's pretty cool that way. And as you can see above, David didn't mind a bit that we used his desk for all the delicious-ness.

We had quite a few old friends and new visitors stop by to see our new digs and learn about what we've got coming up. Such as Bible studies, English classes, surgical and practical training, visitors (like our veterinary guest, Mike Joyce, down from Iowa who taught orthopedics here last week and left for a few days with VetRed in Paraguay this afternoon), and chicken service projects (more details surely to follow in future posts.)

The only problem with our little open house, was that it was possibly Bolivia's first open house ever, thus no one quite understood the concept of stopping by for a tour, a snack, and a few pleasantries. Instead they settled into our cozy couch and waited for the formal program to begin, uh... So, we took advantage of our captive audience and got to know them a bit better, learn about their class schedules this season, their interests, and shared the ever-entertaining Evangecubes. Someday I'll have all these cultural differences figured out. Who'm I kidding, that'll never happen!

Mosaic Reunites with Bolivia

Mosaic Christian Church has come and gone and left their mark on Bolivia once again. The team was about the same size as last year and we worked equally as hard, filling each day with various activities, energetic kids, and construction/painting projects. So how did I find time to post you all a blog update halfway through their trip last year and this year I barely checked my email you may ask; this time I had a little Angie who also needed my help even more than the gringos.

I don't even really know how to start catching you up on all the adventures we had and great things they accomplished, but I'll try. We thought it would be fun to take the kids from Talita Cumi out for an afternoon of chaos so Saturday and Sunday we took the girls and boys, respectively, bowling and out to dinner. It was somehow less chaotic than the madness of Angie's bowling birthday party, and it was a serendipitously great way for the team to learn the kids names since every round each child's name appeared on the monitor as they went up to give those bumpers a run for their money. Monday and Tuesday we also worked with the TC kids painting some of their building, protecting them from mosquitoes with new screens for their doors and windows, and a little VBS action in the afternoons.

Sunday, we worked with another of Mosaic's adopted "partnerships" my church, La Viña. Since we moved in last December to our great little facility, we've not really added any color or life to our white walled sterile facility. So Sunday, before having fun with the niños in class, we "planted" some flowers to the 5 random flower beds that adorn the building and made some other small updates.

A sister project of La Viña is the home for sick babies, Judah Quy. The team and its financial supporters very generously contributed some new cabinets to the baby home, a bunch of little supplies like diapers and baby monitors, and a new storage shed. I'll let the guys on the team tell you about that silly door that didn't want to hang where it was supposed to, because I'm sure I couldn't have done much better against that beast.

On Wednesday, we loaded some pretty tired (partially Dramamine induced) people into a pretty crowded Landcruiser for a trip to Postrervalle's children's home. By trip, I mean 6 hours of bumps and turns that nearly made me, the driver, car-sick. But most of the team did a good job of fighting off car sickness by snoozing. Here you see my fearless co-pilots/navigators hard at work.

When we arrived we went straight to preparing a feast for the kiddos of homemade french fries, hotdogs and

hamburgers. We soon learned that someone had been harassing the home for the past few nights. So, we felt God's hand at work bringing us to be a presence of 8 adults to guard the home for two nights and give the 22 year-old girl in charge of 36 kids a couple nights of rest and peace of mind. Please help us continue to pray for the safety of the home. The following day the kids went to school with little invitations we'd made for them to pass out about the VBS that afternoon. We had no idea how many to expect... At the beginning we tried to get a count of the little wiggly ones while they watched our skit, we came up with 98. But word of the actors' prowess must have traveled fast because between the drama and the craft the number multiplied to somewhere between 100 and 1 million munchkins. A good problem to have. A better problem to have if you have a microphone or even megaphone. But we can't complain, a lot of little ears heard the gospel that day.

Saturday, we may have overcommitted our last few hours before their return flight that night. Our finale of a project was to paint the inside of the church. With the help of a couple church members and an "interminable" (36 slice pizza) we managed to brighten that place up very well if I must say so myself. And this morning the rest of the church was pretty excited with the results as well. By the time I let them stop working to board that plane I think they were pretty ready to sleep even sitting up in turbulence.

Thank you Mosaic, you impacted SO many people here, I hope they impacted you too. It was a pleasure serving with you, let's do it again soon!

"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve..." -Mark 10:45