Got my goat!

Well, Fall is there where you are and winter is here where we are.  We are in full swing getting our errands list attended to and our houses repaired.  Chris Briles and his son came for a few days and helped us get all the lights in the kitchen changed out.  We now have a brilliantly lit kitchen where the girls can do their homework, even on rainy days and even when the electrical current is extremely low.  We are excited.  He and Aaron did several things, like change out head lights on our car, and worked on some plumbing puzzles at our mission.  One of the things that we did the day after they arrived in Honduras was to drive 5 hours away and picked up some dairy goats in our stock trailer.  They didn't get the memo that this was going to be a road trip a day after their huge travel day from Texas the day before, but they were up for the trip.

I had picked them up at the airport the day before in San Pedro Sula and we got home before supper, which is saying a lot with all the stops we made buying bananas, pineapples and a run to our grocery store Nolascos.  We had a great reunion with the girls.  Chris had been many times, but this is the first time his son Aaron could come with him.   We ate and had all the girls introduce themselves and then we went to bed because we were leaving at 5:15.

I had to get up earlier to take the girls to the bakery, but I woke up at 1:30 a.m.  I know now for certain that the watchman thinks I am nuts.  I had woken up realizing that I that there was not a spare tire in the truck we were taking.  I just woke up remembering that the luggage and bananas and pineapples, and groceries we picked up along the way couldn't have ALL been in the truck.  I got the watchman and he helped me find the spare.  Someone had taken it out. and I didn't check for the spare before the ride to San Pedro Sula, which is a 4 hour trip one way, to see if it was in the back of the truck.  I am thankful God is with me when I do stuff like that.  Then I remembered that our tires to the redesigned trailer were about 15 years old.  I went out at about 2 in the morning, to check on that.  Then I wondered if we had a spare for that stock trailer, and we had a tire, but no rim.  All I could think about is that we would be aside of the road with all those goats and no spare tire.  Then I got back up at about 3 in the morning because I remember we needed ropes for the goats.  Then I got back up at about 3:30 a.m. because I wanted to get a 5 gallon bottle of water in case we needed water for the goats.  I thought we would be traveling in the middle of the day to return home and I didn't want them to get to hot.  So I got the water jug in the back of the wagon. I thought of some other things and called the watchman to call Don Elbin our farm helper to come earlier to help with what we might need.  I then fell asleep for about an hour.

After dropping the girls at the bakery, I got out at about 5:30 a.m. and so I was okay with that.  Our new road was great, but pulling that stock trailer was a little harder than I thought it would be.  The farm helpers decided to put plywood siding on the interior because we were picking up 9 goats, which most were 6 months old, and so I didn't want a problem going down the road.  However the guy who helped with the plywood used the thickest plywood that we had and it make the trailer very heavy.  So I worried about that.  But the first leg of our trip was uneventful, even with all my worrying about the roads, goats, tires, and etc.

We almost arrived at our destination and our trailer bolt came loose without our knowledge, and so the tongue of the trailer slowly slid out as we were following the guy on the motorcycle that was guiding us into the other agricultural ministry called Baptist Rural Life Ministries.  Before we could stop the moving trailer the hitch had come undone but the chains were connecting pulling the bumper with the heavy trailer.  We could have planted corn in the furrows we made in the road with our trailer hitch.  We got to the mission with a quick fix for a bolt.  Who knew where the bolt was and when it fell out?  I hopped out of the truck and in the back seat is a bolt and hinge that connect the back of the seat to the seat of the truck.  My phone was turned around in my back pocket and I heard it go "crack".  My screen broke on my phone.  Rats!! and double Rats!  I thought it probably won't work. But I didn't have time to worry about it.  The motorcycle guy rode up the road and I walked up the road for a while to see if we could find it.   We thankfully were on a dirt road that had no traffic or it would have been a scary ordeal. God protected us.

We had to come back down the mountain and get the hitch repaired.  The bumper was sitting very low and so we went to find a mechanic, in this tiny little town.  We ended up with a guy who had an air gun, a welder, electricity and an idea on how to fix our bumper.  He took it all off and just welded the hitch directly to the frame and the everlasting arms that had held the bumper on in the first place. He had to reinforce with pieces of sheet metal.  I was worried about how much he was going to charge me for all that work.  He only charged me 25 dollars.   He told me I could haul cars if I wanted to.  We left and got the goats.

We were 3 hours off our schedule and so we bought chips and drinks and took off.  I worried about us being in the dark and stormy night.  It has been raining hard here and there were clouds all about , but it didn't start raining until the moment we arrived home.  It is always fun unloading goats in the dark while it is raining, but we didn't care because we had accomplished our mission and were safely home at PTC

I am thankful that we got home with our new dairy goats, but most of all I am thankful that God is patient with me.  With all my worrying, everything worked out.  God protected us all the way down the line.  He had me with three men who knew how to pray and how to help.  He sent me a mechanic we didn't even know we would need, that charge me a super low price. We didn't have to drive in the heat of the day with the goats, and we got home before the storm started. And my phone still works although I have a pretty starburst pattern at the top.  I am so thankful for my screen protecter for holding it together.  We didn't even use the water, or the ropes, or the spares. All that great worrying for nothing.  I was exhausted.   God tell us not to worry, but I did and I do, and there really is no reason to do so.  I am a little on the spiritual learning disorder side.  I wonder if I am ever going to "get it".  I let the enemy "get my goat" one more time .

Thankfully God is so patient with me .  I need to lean on Him more and my projected thoughts on the immediate future a whole lot less.  God always surprises me how He turns my thoughts around.  I pray my thoughts continue to be on how good He is to me and how He always goes before me, and underneath are His everlasting arms.  Blessings,  The Exhausted traveling, Goat hauling, but thankful Honduran MOM


I put some older photos of the girls,  I can't believe how much they have grown!!

Heels or no Heals

So the dog barked all night.  Our sweet little puppy has found his voice.  This is the third night of his barking marathon.  So I am awake at 4 a.m.  I finally dozed back off, but it is time to get up and running.  It is Sunday.  So I drink my cup of tea, and wonder how terrible it would be if I stayed at home, but I hear all my little ones getting ready, so I get up and make my bed and my face and get dressed.  I don't want to miss a blessing.

I had cleaned up my room yesterday after my Guatemala trip and I found a skirt I hadn't worn in a while, so I get the shoes that I also haven't worn in a while.  They were heels. I usually wear boots, that have flat heels, especially this time of year, but opted for the high heels to do something different. Besides, they matched my skirt.  I felt pretty perky around the house, but I knew the trek from the front door to the car was coming.

The dicey thing is getting out my door, in the rocks and the mud and getting to the bus that is parked near the kitchen.  I succeed, and am feeling pretty smart and I hop into the driver's seat on the bus and it won't crank.  So I get back out of the bus and walk cautiously back to the house in my heels and get the Hilux.   I get the truck and park it in front of the bus, open the hood, yank out the jumper cables and start connecting everything.  I remember that the negative black connection is SIN and the positive connector is the BLOOD of Jesus, so I don't blow up the battery.  I made this up so I wouldn't forget.

I get everything connected and wait and wait and write a post of Facebook about my predicament on my Status and ask for prayer.  The bus finally fires off, I fire off my post on FB.   I put down the hoods, and put everything where it belonged and I put it in drive because now we are pretty late.  The girls and the kids of the community were patiently waiting for us to get going.  We got out the gate and got to go over our new bridge on our new road for the first time.  It was fun to ride down the newly paved road.  I get to the intersection and I find that the road we need to take to get to the church is still being worked on, and so I have to make a big loop and park about a quarter mile away from the church.  Again I am walking in the mud.  I am thinking to myself,  "what good is it if your shoes match your skirt if you are walking in the mud and risking a twisted ankle walking through the rocky road material that is strewn all about"?  Ana is helping me get to our destination and I am stomping through the sludge and we get to the gate of the church and we have to go over a huge mound of  rocks that the road scrapers left out in front of the church gates.  I made it up and then over and then down the incline to the church with the help of Ana.  So now I am feeling pretty much like an old lady.

The special speaker was pretty late too.  He got there way after we did.  He was not wearing heels, but had to walk in also from the designated rocky obstacle course that we had gone through.   He gives a great sermon about how we are all Prince and Princesses and about our Christian lineage.  I say goodbye to everybody, shake hands with the special speaker and physc myself up to go through the rocky gauntlet again.

Thankfully I get to the vehicle and hop in and the light panel came on once and then I remembered I didn't put the jumper cables back in the bus, I had our worker put them in the Hilux where they belonged.  We were dead in the Bus.

I get out and open the hood of the bus and wiggle the cables and nothing.  I am pretty upset with myself for not getting the jumper cables.  I call Don Jacobal, who usually helps me with my bus, and there was no answer.   Cars are coming and going and I can't get the girls on the bus because I parked on the far left so that the bus wouldn't be in the way of oncoming traffic leavingYamaranguila.  It was against the wall of mud and rock that the road scraper left.  So they are standing in the road in all of the church going apparel. The girls call to me that Don Acobal is coming.  He said that he called his son and he would get us going.

While everybody is waiting patiently, the police truck comes by going way to fast for all the people in the road and splatters my skirt.  Nobody else gets splattered but me.  I swirl around and through up my hands and call out with a smile, (so not to lose my Christian witness),  "Gracias" to the police.  It wasn't what Jesus would have done, and neither was a lot of the other attitudes  I had today would he have had either.  I went from feeling pretty perky and pretty smart, to pretty late, and pretty upset with myself, even after the motivational sermon about being daughters of the King.

Anyhow, Don Jacobal's son comes down the road with the wrench we needed, and his secret delight smile knowing that he has the answers to our problems, and unhooked both batteries from each vehicle.  He takes his dad's battery and puts it in our bus and his dad cranks up our bus, then he takes his dad's battery and puts it back into his dad's truck.  (I didn't know you could do that. ) We took off for home with a dead battery.   Something started sounding pretty ragged underneath as we were leaving Yamaranguila,  but when I stopped it went away and I was too mortified to call Don Jacobal again.  We just got home and all the girls pile out of the bus like rats from a sinking ship and looking for food.  I sat writing the other part of this story in my phone.  Both posts disappeared.

So I am writing this again in hopes that I will do better about my attitudes, and my princess-ship.  I am thankful for friends who will stop and help out.  I am thankful for my girls, who didn't make me feel like a nut for leaving my cables, and I am thankful to God for sending exactly what I need when I need it, even when my attitudes are not the best.  Heal me and I will be healed. Save me and I will be saved for thou art my praise

Blessings, from the Heel-less, Humbled, Hungry,  Happy to be Home, Honduran MOM

Pesky Pests

I get up to get a check on my "Squirts", before I leave for Guatemala with Estefania in the morning. They were up and down and all around.  It was Friday night, which means movie night.  They were excited and it was hard for them to focus.  Mr. Joe had come and they were excited about that.  Everytime I have to leave our mission of 33 girls, more than not Mr. Joe Reynolds our board president makes himself available to watch over the mission while I am gone.  He has done this for years and I can't say enough about how much we appreciate his ministry.   

So I decided before I took my shower, I would check and make sure everyone was in bed for the night  so I wouldn't have to get up after I finally got into bed.  So I walked across the kitchen floor in my bare feet and I feel, sugar on the floor.  The older girls had been working, doing the baking, but they forgot to clean up.  I decided I am not going to say anything and just clean it up myself, so I will have the peaceful the night before our missions trip. So I continue to walk.  

Arriving at the first bed check, I notice trash on the floor, so I get a broom, and I come back down the steps. I hear a noise in the laundry room and someone had left the food supply cabinet open, and I opened the door wide and there is big rat looking at me, so I slammed the door in his face twice, when I open it for a third time, he leaps at me and lands on my foot, and I just know I felt a rat toenail on the top of my foot.  I scream, and absolutely nobody comes to check on me. Everyone is asleep. I wonder how they can go to sleep that fast.

I calm down and remember I have some clothes in the wash. So I decided to do some of the never ending laundry. I put on a load and start gathering towels. Some were in the kitchen, some in the bathroom and some in the living room. The girls had been taking baths, drying dishes, and just had towels everywhere. My little velvet co-habitors who had been cooking and left sugar on the floor were either gone to their houses or sound asleep. Before I can sweep, I have to get the towels up and carry them back down the steps. I put them in the pilla and come back up the steps only to realize, I am walking on ANTS!!! I rush to the cabinet under the sink to get the new can of bug spray i bought the day before. Not there. So I run to the bathroom, again not there. I check in my bathroom and the medicine cabinet, under all sinks, and in the linen cabinets. Nothing... I throw Asisten which is a disinfectant household cleaner all over the floor to slow the ants up. They are everywhere. I run back down the steps to get the mop and I start feeling stings on my shirt and down my back and on my hands so I look to the source... one of the towels, covered in tiny ants and big ants. When I had picked up the towels they had gotten in my long hair I had just taken down to get my shower. The ants must have been having a convention, snorting sugar off my kitchen floor. So I race back into the bathroom to look in the linen cabinet and I see lighter fluid... hmm... might cause a secondary problem. I zoom to the medicine cabinet. I see bezocaine spray. I read the directions and see it is for procedures when you have to wrap material around a broken bone, but I found out it's secret other use, not listed on the can, is that it is really a dynamite ant killer. I spray the ants on the towels in the pila and they all die.  Bezoncaine is great stuff.

I am feeling stings still and I am feeling grossed out with the rat connection, so I decided to get my shower, before I go to bed. Did I mention I am going to Guatemala in the morning with Estephania? Crazy night. I am laying here, trying to go to sleep, getting my travel money together and checking my passport and my imagination is in overdrive listening for rats and checking for ants. I begin to laugh at how crazy the night became in a short second.  

I try to be thankful for the pests in life.  I struggle in that area.  We all have those 4 and 6 legged critters, but sometimes we have the 2 footed pests that we can't understand .  They just kind of appear out of nowhere.  I don't understand their motivation, but God commands us to pray for those guys.  I just want to slam the door and run or spray Benzocaine on them and let them be gone, but God has another way of dealing with them and with me.  Apparently it is hard to love your enemies if they never show up.  So God in His wisdom has all sorts of pests to challenge us to come up a bit higher.  We are to pray for our enemies.  Pray for me to be up for the challenge, to excercise wisdom, and praise The Lord through it all.  

Blessings, the Asistin slinging, Benzocaine spraying, but peace loving Honduran MOM