Life in another land

I feel like I have been so neglectful to the blog lately.  Honestly, I have sat down a million times to write and then ended up not posting it.  There are so many feelings this time of year, the holidays, and being far from home.  There are so many things that it is hard to express in words alone that you experience living far from family and familiarity in this age of constant connect through the internet.

How can any of you possibly understand the pop shots that go off all night long and it sounds like you are in a war zone?  When you really live in a place where there are often gunshots?  It can rattle your nerves.  You know it is just Firecrackers, but is it?

Maybe some of you do understand, but when the neighbors see the holidays as an oppurtunity to get stoned and run up and down your street yelling and singing and their bikes jangle with bottles of more alcohol...  And you have to think about your two older children that are walking to do an errand and warn them.  Its at those times that you realize you are not in the fairly safe suburb you once lived.

Sure, maybe some of you understand those things.  It is just not the life I had before moving here.  I can barely think if I ever saw a real live drunk person...maybe about five times my whole life.  Now, it can be a daily occurrence.  My six year tells of us singing Christmas carols the other night and the drunk guys who stopped us and asked if we would sing to them too?  I am pretty confident that Josh and Tori did not even know what a drunk person was at six years old, let alone could identify them.

I pray that seeing these people making horrible decisions, acting crazy...will be a deterrent to my children.  That seeing the destruction they cause to their families will make my children never ever want to go near that life.  I know it only reiterates it for me and makes me count my blessing that I have a husband who is NOT like that.

Christmas Eve, we had a beautiful service, came home and opened gifts, and were getting ready for bed.  Then Erika came in and showed me a spider bite.  A spider bite with a snake like trail going up her chest.  So, Christmas Eve, we had no choice, but to wrap that baby girl up and take her to the Government Hospital.  Again, how can any of you truly understand what it is like to take your child to a third world hospital?  You just can't.  Even the roughest free clinic in the states does not compare.  So, as we are seeking treatment in the ER, a drunk man, also there with a sick child, welcomes us to Belize.  Because we must be tourists.  It is simply heartbreaking.  His child with the mother, sick and dehydrated, while the father is not even all there.  Again, thankful for my husband who is there, helping our baby girl as she is getting treatment.

I will write a cheerier post, but just had to share some of our reality here on the Mission field.

To end this post with a little humor:

When we were in with the Dr, we literally could not understand anything she was saying.  It was almost like the old Charlie Brown cartoon where you cannot understand the teacher.  Lee and I are looking back and forth and are like, what is going on here?  Funny, but not.  We understood that she was going to give Erika injections, but for what?  Thankfully, we had a wonderful nurse who explained everything to us.

So, Erika heard "medicine" and "cheeks" and thought that is not too bad.  The nurse was just going to rub some medicine on her cheeks (face) and that seemed painless enough.  But then, when the nurse told me to hold her down, reality struck and Erika was so upset to get two shots in her bottom.  Poor girl.  Not the best patient, but the most awesome girl.  And she seems to be doing fine.  We have some prescriptions to be filled today because, again, no Walgreens or Walmart to fill her prescriptions yesterday.  We had to wait until today:)

But our Christmas was very nice and my house shows the effects of a day relaxing with our family and some friends.  Today, we are going to go to the zoo.  Just to get out of the house.  Tomorrow, I will clean:)