Try. Trip. Rinse. Repeat.

Weekly Update               

After a week in the house, then a week in Belize to renew our visas, we’ve been back in the house on the hill for another week. And, as suspected, life here is going to be interesting.  We’ve continued working on the house to get it in usable condition. The priorities right now are threefold:

1.       A pila – Important for washing clothes and filling with water to hold you over for the 165 hours a week that you don’t have running water.

2.       Covering the septic pit – Important because it’s a 16 foot deep hole that is currently filling with filth. Enough said.

3.       Rainwater cistern – Important for the 165 hours a week that you don’t have running water and because the rain will start within a month.  Also, it’s currently a massive hole that continually fills with toads and children.

Speaking of toads and children, one of the funniest things I’ve seen was 10 kids in the cistern hole finding a toad, then throwing it like a snowball at each other. I’m not sure that the toad was amused, but he somehow survived. It would also be a mistake for you to think that the toad stayed in the hole. It was slung on numerous occasions a considerable distance from the hole.  In fact, the first time I saw it was immediately after the yelping began as it shot out of the hole and past my head. 

 Abused amphibians aside, it has been a hot week full of work and getting to know folks. People continue to show us incredible hospitality, demonstrated by the mountain of bananas that is in the kitchen.  People are always stopping by to chat and drop off some sort of food, to make sure their white people don’t starve. They must be convinced we need our own weight in food daily.

We’ve been able to reciprocate by making banana bread for them out of the bananas they give us or helping a couple of them out. EMT experience came in useful with a delightful machete wound to the knee. Very sobering helping out this 16 year-old kid that walked two miles from his job, uphill, with a rubber boot squishing blood out the top. His family came for help a few hours later, when it started bleeding again and wouldn’t stop. I walked into the house to find him grimacing in pain, leg hanging over a puddle of blood on the dirt floor. Fifteen minutes later, by candle light, it stopped. It struck me how miserable I was with a sore stomach at home in Dayton, in my nice bed, A/C or heat, a clean home, less than a mile from a hospital or a 5 second phone call to EMS. I decided to try to not gripe too much with a sore stomach in the States again.

We had our own little “medical experience” as well when Kaleb needed to lay down on the ground to work and instead found hundreds of biting, stinging ants. After a couple hundred stings, my body decided that was quite enough venom for one day and reacted. Imagine that, my very first allergic reaction, right here in Honduras! How charming. A quick wash off, several Benadryl, and a quick visit to a nurse later, my swelling face and ears calmed down and I fell deep into a heavily medicated sleep. We’re constantly stung by these things, but apparently there’s a threshold for how many your bodies willing to accommodate at once. Now we know.

Stacey also had her own little insect encounter. As the story was told, she was in the kitchen and reached for a spoon, only to find something else curled up in her hand. Wisely, she decided to throw her new pet scorpion somewhere else. Wisely, it decided to scurry into our pantry to hide in the piles of cans and bags there and wait to sting us later. After she couldn’t find it, we hunted it down with leather gloves, only to cut its stinger off and lose it again for good. As I was driving down the road a little later, I got a call from her informing me that she finished him off. Man, what a wife.

We’ve been able to start cooking breakfast and reading the Word together in the mornings, and that has been excellent for our relationship both with God and each other. It always amazes me how much I love reading Titus. It’s solid advice for how to live an effective life and recognize the love we’ve been given in simple terms. Chapter 3 is one of my very favorite in the entire Bible. If you’re looking for something good to check out for 5 minutes. Give it a look.

We’re acclimating well to the lack of water and electricity. The lack of electricity we hardly notice, except for the lack of refrigerator and lights in the evening. The lack of water on the other hand, is a huge pain. We get about 25 gallons of water, 3 times a week. If that sounds like a lot, you are very wrong. It’s enough to get by, but not real wonderful. Right now, we’re filling a barrel, then hauling it by buckets into two big buckets in the shower.  To make concrete, we still have to make the drive to the creek to fill the barrel with water. A true joy.  As a result, a few minnows have made the ultimate sacrifice and are forever entombed in our concrete around the house. Thanks guys.

Sorry this was a long one, but they’re likely going to be a little longer when we have a whole week to update. Just let us know if you have questions, we’d love to share with you what we’re learning.  We’ll be sure to share all the sans water/electricity tips with you guys as we figure them out. Until then, we’re just two gringos in the dark. Grace and peace to all.

Damos gracias a Dios por: el monton de hospitalidad que recibimos de nuestros vecinos  aqui en Las Lomitas (all of the hospitality that our community shows us here).