What is Going on!!!???

August 22nd 2024

I say I want to do this not only to give those of you interested in our lives..updates..but also for me to be able to look back on life and see what was happening and how we handled it because the reality is…my brain is not remembering things. I am not whole. I am very scattered…alot of the time. I dislike this about myself but am unsure as to what to do about it. I know MOST of it was/is trauma and stress…and then having to take on ALL things in life on my own but also its a combination of unbalanced hormones and lifestyle not being consistant and then ADHD symptoms being off the wall…due to …well…hormones. Nice right!?

So—what the heck is going on!?? Let me give you a quick update.

Cora graduated. She is working 2 jobs and a couple other odd jobs (like dance and boutique) here and there to save money while she decides whether to apply to grad school or go right to the mission field. She is leaning toward grad school. She is living at home to help lower the costs of life. Yes, she is dating Jeremiah Vanderwall, in case you were wondering.

Aly decided to not return to Huntington for a few reasons but the main one basically is that their athletic department is trash and even the coach didn’t want to stay. She will finish up her degree online with Indiana Weslyan University and train on her own to run some races…but she has always wanted to run a marathon so I see that coming soon. She is living in Cedar Springs as she felt our house was too full for her to be able to function as she would like to. ( I get it) She is working two jobs as well and also assistant coaching at Algoma Christian for the cross country team. She had to take the team to their first meet on her own as the head coach needed to be with his son who suddenly started to have health issues with his heart. (Pray for them!) She said the meet went well. This is the one thing she has been excited about in a long time.

Hatcher enters his Senior yr in High School and he plans to graduate early. This makes me a little sad. I get it. He has never loved high school…but he is my youngest and I hate to see him go earlier than I expected but he is ready to get on with life and I can only hope that is the reason and not that he just doesn’t want to be here. He plans to enter as a freshman at Moody Bible this January to get an associates degree and some good Bible teaching. After than he is still Aviation Bound. Where? I’m not sure.

Yes, we got an exchange student! This is something we talked about before Hatcher’s Junior yr but it just didn’t pan out and then I shelved it. He brought it back up and wanted to do it…so we inquired and I even let him select the student he thought best jived with him..and now we have Mario from Spain! It was a lot of work to get ready because we are not set up for extra people. I had some projects to finish on the house and I had to renovate to allow his room to fit the needs for 2 vs 1 but I got it done. Mario showed up on the 17th of August and we were thrilled to meet him and he was thrilled to be here. He speaks good English and asks good questions. He is social and talks alot about everything. It was a little bit of a hassle to get him registered and such (not normal actually) and to get him ready to play soccer but we are all set now and he has already played his first soccer game in the USA. He says his school doesn’t have the organized sports and any team he could play on plays when he is gone as they travel as a family to his fathers village every weekend,outside of his town he lives in. We went to a game and he couldn’t believe they announced the players names and the game itself. He was impressed with the scoreboard as well. Kent City has a nice field. We are spoiled. He is a very talented pianist and is willing to try all things. We have drug him all over the place this last week. Poor kid. But really, he is great. We went to church on Sunday and he was really impressed with the instruments and the music and that we use the Bible during sermons. I think he is going to like it as long as he can put up with us, our busy schedules and our lack of ability to sit still well. We like him.

So what else is up…

Well, I went to Brazil

If you went to our presentation night you had the opportunity to hear more about it and I was just impressed with how much Hatcher wanted to share and was willing to share and really how much the guys were involved as far as talking on stage etc but I think that reflected on the trip as well—so lets rehash that trip out and I’ll give you my thoughts on it and hopefully even get a video up HERE for you to watch. Afterward I chatted with Derek Max and he said Hatcher had such a presence up on stage and he was doing the “Mark hands” and everything. It was nice to hear that people thought Hatcher was like Mark…

We drove to Chicago and boarded a plane to Atlanta. It was a bit funny that we had all these plans to make sure we knew who was where. We had buddy systems and were really aware of everyone around us. I mean, as leaders, we had to make sure all these kids to to Brazil in one piece right! The way back was so different! ha!

Layovers, Uno, Cover Your Assets, Starbucks….before you knew it we were in San Paulo. Part of our team left there earlier and the rest of us suffered with espressos and brazilian cheesy bread. But we were all reunited at Ami in Chapado by nightfall. We had a typical dinner of Rice/Beans, cassava “rice” and some other things before we turned off the lights on our first night in Brazil. I woke the next day with exceedingly itchy palms, hands and feet. Hives blended to form a full on swollen back of hands and the itching continued. I’ve never experienced anything like this as I have no allergies…but we took the trip to town to go ahead and get whatever shot they give to ensure it doesn’t get worse or happen again. When we arrived I felt silly but as we waited….the calves started to hive up….then the forearms…when they subsided, the back of the thighs joined in..so maybe it was good we went. This clinic…ha! It’s so not kosher. If you are in the medical world (which I am not but spent 9months in it with Mark and even doing it in my own home) you would be shaking your head. I just gave my name..well, Will did since he speaks the language, and we wait. Its free. So we meet in a room and they did take pulse and heart rate. I did state I didn’t have allergies that I was aware of. Then you wait. I was called back and we were given a perscription and sent to another room but we went to the wrong room. We were in there a while…I noticed how dirty it was and how the cabinets were open and unorganized etc and then someone came and asked us to leave as they needed the room for a patient. Outside the door a large brazilian man stood with clenched teeth. He was shirtless with his arms out away from his sides. He with seething with pain as he walked into the room and we walked out. I looked at Will with inquiring eyes and he told me that he thought he had some sort of burn due to oil/steam/heat at a restaurant (he could overhear conversation). Anyways, we then learned we were in the wrong place and that we need to be further down the hall and when I got there I was able to get relief right away. The took me aside into a little room and stuck a needle into the area where my lower back meets my buttocks! Yikes. After that I was led to a room filled with chairs with arm rests. There they may have swabbed my vein..I can’t remember but if they did it was with alcohol and not with the idodine and not for 15 seconds to a minute! I sat while this small bag went into me…but I did get immediate relief. Not more hives and not more itching! I did notice when I looked down, a drop of dark brown something on the chair and I wondered if it was blood. When they took the IV out my needle dripped onto the floor….just a the previous person’s blood dripped onto the chair…and you just move on. Not very sanitary if you ask me but that is free health care in Brazil. They gave me a script and sent us on our way. I was told to take it for 2 days. I took it til it ran out….becasue I had hives (in much smaller amounts) everyday that I was there. PLUS…for the first 2 weeks home. I am just now not having them.

So…after that fiasco…we could get to business. Except I was so tired and I was fighting it. They told me I would be tired from the meds but I didn’t want to lay down and sleep because I didn’t come on the trip to be a sleepy pie. I knew I had a great opportunity and didn’t want to be a leader who was lazy. The crazy thing was the next few days I was very lethargic. Very. I tried to hide and and push through but it wasn’t the meds…it was me. I experience this sometimes but usually it only lasts a day (usually after a “big” day such as traveling or an big emotional day) so I didn’t understand why I felt so cruddy! Soon after I had the opportunity to be somewhat creative or at least for my brain to be able to start organizing and making “plans” and that pushed me out of it. I think its an ADHD thing. I joined the screen team and saw how unefficiently it was being done and I was able to make some changes and then just to be able to climb ladders and use some tools…I kind of came to life again. Don’ t get me wrong. It was not lovely…but it allowed me to kind of push out of that funk I fell into.

Let me back up and explain what we were doing Brazil. This is my understanding so I hope I do it right.

We went to a campus called Ami. Its a Bible School for Indigenious people. Our youth pastor grew up here as his parents worked here as missionaries. When we were there the school was on break BUT an organiziation or conference called TIB (chee-bee) was there doing the third part of a three part series to translate Nehemiah 1-7. Missionaries and facilitators come from all over Brazil representing 11 different tribes and laguages to translate the Bible. All day they are in class ( learn how to translate and to help them translate) and then into the evening they continue to work. Most of the missionaries and facilitators have indigenious people with them from the village in which they live and work with. These people who speak the tribal language are vital to the translation as they help to make sure the translation makes sense and is communicating what it is trying to communicate. There were students at Ami as well that were on break but couldn’t go back to their village. There were 2 women who were recording the translations from each tribe and they were from Faith Comes by Hearing. We were there..and then some other staff from Ami and the people that were helping in the kitchen and maybe some other places. Also, there were speakers/teachers there to lead the conference that were not there with a specific tribe.

Does that make sense?

Each day we took turns helping with coffee and breakfast and those not doing that met for group devos. We were working through the book of Mark. After devotionals we grabbed our “mess kits” (any girl scouts out there from the 80’s?) and went to the dining hall. Breakfast with everyone…and we were all encouraged to sit with someone new daily. That was hard because not many spoke English. The missionaries were national which meant they spoke portuguese but not necessarily English. Breakfast was bread, coffee with sugar, some sort of tea with sugar, regular strong coffee (in my opinion, not enough) and then some days we made eggs and some days there was some sort of spammy ham sliced thin to put on bread. A couple days there was jam for the bread…that was nice but as a gluten intolerate person…it was kind of nightmarish. BUT I also am totally okay with intermittent fasting and not eating was fine but as the days went on..I ate some of the bread. I was hoping it was like Europe and the Gluten wasnt enriched and it wouldn’t hurt my intestines. After the meal, our crew took care of food, wiped down tables and swept floors. If there were dishes to do, we did them. Each person washed their own dishes outside in a designated area. This needs to happen in every home across the world! I remember when my 6 kids were young. I gave them each a plastic cup and wrote their name on it with a sharpie and told them this was the only cup they could use. Use it and set it by the sink when done so you could find it. I no longer was doing a dishwasher load FULL of cups each day. Brilliant. Now, do that with a plate and fork and knive. Your life just go so much easier.

After breakfast we split off to either childcare, food/snack prep, or maintenance and we worked in these areas until lunch. Child care involved…playing with kids. Food prep involved cutting LOADS of meat with dull knives and shredding cabbage with a carrot peeler because they didn’t have proper kitchen appliances and tools. My forefinger still is sore from cutting so many kilbasas. Maintenance involved fixing things with not the right tools or materials! We replaced ALOT of screens on the dining halls and porches of many houses. I was never more thankful for new shiny nails. When I was a kid there was a bucket in the “silver shed” on our property that leftover used nails went into. If any of us kids needed nails, we knew we could go and use anything from this bucket. Most, or all, were rusty and some were bent. You had to hammer the bend out. This was all I could think of as we were reusing small nails to put trim back up over the nails. I guess having a grandma that went through the great depression has its perks. It didn’t surprise me….I just didn’t like it. You do learn to appreciate shiny new nails. We tried to fix a playground….but the wood used was from a tree called “ironwood”. So many nails and screws (new ones even) could not make their way through. I had two or three days on grounds work crew…and I was glad to return to the kitchen. I never ever thought I would say that.

The meals were the same routine for use. Help prep. Clean up dining hall, wash pots, clean floors. The daily routine was the same. Snack served at 10 and 3. The best part was that everyone had down time from lunch til 2. SIESTA! I’m not a napping girl but I think I should be because I took advantage of this time every day but one. It’s lovely. At 5 pm each night the students from Ami came out to play soccer or volleyball (mostly soccer) and we could join them. Sometimes other staff joined but they were busy translating the Bible. This was a fun time to interact with everyone and just chill out. The nights were so cool looking there. It was dark by 6pm and the skies had an orange hue to it and just as our cameras on our phones don’t do justice to what we see, neither can I totally describe it. Eery and beautiful. During the trip many of us took advantage of running or walking a nearby trail that led to a road at 5pm. I found this to be so beautiful and I often realized I was just looking forward to 5pm so I could go on it. It wound down and around a creek and then the road took you past small hobby farms…sugar cane…and vineyards. They watered their crops from holding tanks and so it was so green! (it was the dry season. The campus was NOT green and we were on water restriction) I loved it. There were many colorful flowering bushes along the path and horses. One evening a VW bus passed us and pulled into a drive and then came back full of people. It was just such a cool bus. I loved all of it. One night I even saw a monkey jumping from tree to tree. Another night I was able to see more but not as good as the first time.

We were able to hear from three different missionaries while we were there.

okay so I have so much more to say about this but I have to go to bed. so…lets continue this in a few days.