Sunday, April 25, 2010

Hmm. I don't know if I can do this every week. It has been very warm and humid for the last couple of days and we are all exhausted for some reason. However, it has been an eventful week! We have had very full days with kids from the orphanage and missionaries. We haven't been getting home until 6 or 6:30 and again I have been grateful for good leftovers. Our friend Percy from the church office came to help us with our computer problems and hooked us up a different way so that we aren't on the internet and everything is working again. That is a very good thing. The days have been so long that everything is kind of a blur until Thursday.

We had our first volunteers come Thursday morning. Dr. Mark Johnson came with his wife Diane, and dental assistant Monica and dental hygienist, Jayne. Paul took care of a couple of patients Thursday morning and then we had to leave for the airport to pick up the hygienist because her plane came in later than the others. They arrived at the clinic just after we left and and got right to work. We had just had our car repaired once again and as we started towards the airport Paul said, well we have a full tank of gas and the air conditioner works again. Just then he looked down at the temperature gauge and oh, no, the car was overheating once again. So we went all the way to the airport with the windows down and the heater on full blast--misery. (Did I mention that we got lost for awhile on the way?) Things were a little tense in our car since Paul is a stickler for being on time and not letting people down. But then a little miracle happened:

We stopped at a stop sign and while we were stopped a perfect purple blossom floated into my lap, reminding me of my daughter's blog that week. What a paradox life is. There are so many little miracles and beautiful things to be grateful for in the midst of all the other stuff that happens in life--that is really just stuff.

We managed to get to the airport and instead of trying to drive back to the clinic and completely burn up our motor while passing out with the heater on, I suggested we drive to the church office building. There standing outside in the parking garage were Brother Graff one of the senior missionaries in the apartment building and the fleet manager for the church in Central America. (Did I say something about little miracles). Brother Graff said he would be delighted to drive us to the clinic and the fleet manager took our car to a garage he knew about. So the afternoon was salvaged. When we got back to the clinic everyone was working hard and we had 15 boys waiting to be worked on from the Tio Juan Orphanage. So that day we completed 18 patients counting the missionaries in the morning and did 60 procedures. We didn't get home until 6:30 or 7:00 and we were exhausted but we called it a good day. I was even able to pull up a day sheet to show what we had completed that day which is something I had been trying to do all week. I wish we could have volunteers at least once a month. It would be such a big help. They will be here next Monday thru Thursday.

We were so ready for our 3-day week-end. I didn't even get up to exercise and Paul exercised by himself. Wow, I slept in until 7:30. Paul and Wayne went out in the morning to take care of some clinic business. I studied and slept and cooked. Paul picked up the car and hopefully we will be okay except that we do need to get some tires and we are still a little wary of taking the car out of town. It is an absolute necessity that we not be on the road at night. It is very dangerous and can't happen under any circumstances because so many terrible things have happened recently at night with people traveling on the roads at night.

Paul was asked to speak in church so he has been working on his talk and I have been studying. Saturday morning we exercised and then went to the temple but it was so busy we decided to come another day. So, we did a little shopping and came home and ate lunch on the roof overlooking the city. We get a little stir crazy in the apartments sometimes. Then we went for a ride to the Oakland Mall and checked out the movies. We decided to come back later and take our chances on Where are the Morgans.
I had a song practice that afternoon to sing with a GROUP for family home evening. Oh Yeah, when I arrived there were only 3 people. You know, of course, that means I was the only soprano since the only thing I know how to sing is soprano. I don't do singing soprano by myself--I just don't! So, yes, you guessed it, I am singing. Besides the fact that I have never recovered my voice since I was sick for a month before coming on my mission, we are all suffering from allergies and volcano dust inhalation. Besides that we are all 64 and older. You get the picture. If only the picture didn't come with sound. After we sang the songs a couple of times I very wisely suggested maybe it would be better if we sang something like eensy weensy spider but they thought I was joking. I wasn't.

We are instead singing a one verse medley of How Gentle God's Command, How Great Thou Art, and a song that is a men's number called Brightly Beams our Father's Mercy that I had never heard before I came to Guatemala. They love that song here. But this is the zinger. I'm singing the soprano, of course, the notes are all up high and IT ISN''T THE MELODY. So now you know I am in trouble. I have unexplainably come down with laryngitis every time I have been asked to sing in anything less than a choir since I was a senior in high school and had a solo in the Christmas Assembley. I'm very glad none of you will be here to hear it. Just pray for me that I'll at least get back the voice I had before I got sick before tomorrow night. You think I am kidding? I'm not. Just pray!

So, after the practice, we went to the show and we were so pleasantly surprised. It was completely clean!! We didn't have to even think about getting up and leaving and even better, Paul laughed out loud. So that tells you it is slapsticky funny. Go ahead, see it. It is safe.

So here I am Sunday afternoon, blogging. Paul is sleeping. I'm trying to psyche myself up for a very long and busy week at the clinic and singing in a trio when I absolutely only sing in choirs. I'm going to go ahead and post this and try to get some pictures up tomorrow. Write me a message on my blog and tell me what you are doing. I love hearing from you.