Long time coming...

Yes, a new post has been a long time coming but worth the wait - I hope! It's actually a little shocking to me to see it's been OVER a month since I posted but I know why so it makes sense to me. It's really hard to blog consistently when you're fighting nausea and fatigue and can't really tell people why yet. "Today I was nauseous. I was also tired." Next day..."Today I slept all day. I was also nauseous." Gets boring after a while.

This morning we were able to chat with Josh's folks for the first time in a few weeks and were able to share with them the news that another grandchild was on the way, and so NOW we can tell all of our friends! I AM PREGNANT with our 4th child. Thus the nausea and exhaustion, thus the lack of posts. Hopefully I will do better in the coming weeks but no guarantees! I'm excited as I've always wanted to have 4 children (nice even number, no middle child)- but I might withhold any demonstrations of that excitement until I can function normally again!

This is by far the worst I've felt in the early weeks of ANY of my pregnancies - possibly because I'm over 30, maybe because I've got 3 little ones, probably because my sickness seems to be triggered by heat and I now live in the tropics! Maybe all 3! It's not just MORNING sickness, it's ALL DAY/ALL NIGHT sickness. I'm clinging to the promise, "This too shall pass!"

If you know me this photo is a dead giveaway - look at my eyes! And look at Julia's t-shirt - backwards and inside out - that would never happen if I felt normal! :)

I haven't been to the Dr. yet but plan to get there after Christmas. I expect to deliver around mid-July, not sure yet exactly where but likely here barring unforeseen problems.

Having fun with the kids and the camera!

The kids are excited - the boys want a brother, Julia did at first too but now is voting for a sister. We'll see what we get - hopefully a healthy baby and an easy labor.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you in on our good news. Will let you know what else is going on as I think of it! Thanks for your prayers- they're especially vital now as Josh is doing both mommy and daddy duties on top of his regular stuff - and he was running a fever the other night so we're not sure what's up with him!

What do you do on a Menno nite?

Tonight as we were eating dinner (leftover night), Spencer had a bowl of local-type soup and Josh had a bowl of Beet Borscht. I asked Spencer which was his favorite - local or Mennonite (food). Julia replied first: "I like Menno nite and Movie nite!" We had a good laugh over that! For those of you who don't know, my roots are Mennonite, as are some of Josh's. :)One thing I love about that is that he appreciates the various Mennonite dishes I love to cook.

Kicking And Screaming

Have you ever dragged yourself somewhere kicking and screaming? I have – last night. Actually the kicking and screaming happened on the inside where “normal” adults do their protesting when it’s something you HAVE to do and CAN’T get out of. It’s quieter that way.

This being the holiday (and visiting) week of Idul Fitri (like the week between Christmas & New Years for us, only Muslim) we have the responsibility (and privilege?!) of visiting our Muslim neighbors’ homes for a short chat to maintain relationships. You basically go in, chat a bit, are handed a plate which you use to load up and nibble on an assortment of finger foods (mostly little cookies, cakes, nuts, that kind of stuff). They also serve you a beverage – a juice or something. You chat a bit, then excuse yourself and go to the next house. (A Muslim person doing the visit they would also ask for forgiveness for any wrongdoings “intentional or unintentional” from the past year.) Well, this year was the first time for us, as last year this time we couldn’t do it- we didn’t know enough language to visit anyone. Our neighborhood is not one where people sit around a lot and just chat (which is usual in villages). We wave when we pass by each others’ homes but everyone is pretty busy and the homes aren’t set too closely together so our lives aren’t as intertwined. I actually haven’t met our RT (neighborhood head) yet, though I will in the next day or two.

You might think: Why the stress? It’s just a chat! The reason for the kicking and screaming was really that I was uncomfortable with going into an neighbor’s home who’s a relative stranger– they are SO formal and I would SO hate to be disrespectful (the ones we know are friends and understand that we didn’t grow up with their traditions so if we mess up we’re ok). On top of that, if they don’t use the care that we do to clean dishes and cook food, we all could get pretty sick but to refuse the food isn’t too polite either! Talk about pins and needles! And then there’s the language thing – we are still learning so often there is conversation that we can’t follow – not too comfortable!

Last night we did the first of the visitations recommended by the people whose home we’re living in for the time that they’re in the US. It was a lot easier than I expected. We visited a man named Mr. Dodol (or something like that) and his family. We’d never formally met them but we walked up the path, took off our shoes and walked into the house. The kids paved the way – of course Julia got comments that she looked just like a doll (the blond hair always inspires comments like that), we were asked all kinds of questions about our kids (Julia at just under 3 years old is the same height as their 7-year old) and about the things they’re observing going on at the guest home. Then Mitchell took the cake – literally. There were probably 8 different “snacky” things sitting on the coffee table in the sitting room and he kept asking for more – I’d say, “No, you’ve had enough” and the hostess would say, “Silakan ambil” or “Go ahead, take more!”. This happened half a dozen times! (Talk about embarrassing if we’d been at home in the US but here kids –and especially foreign kids- can pretty much get away with whatever!) At one point in the conversation the man of the house asked Josh what his name was! Crazy! Well, it turns out their oldest daughter had lived in Singapore for 3 years and was looking for someone to maintain her English with so I was glad to extend the invitation for her to come and chat sometime. Though it was hard to “get glad” that I had to do this visitation thing, I AM glad I went and will do it more willingly next year. (Of course by this time next year it could be ANOTHER new neighborhood!) :)

Crazy life!

Wow, it’s Friday again. Has it really been over 2 weeks since I posted? Time flies. A few days after my last post, I left for a few days in a nearby Asian country. A co-worker was going for medical reasons and her husband was not joining her on the trip so I volunteered to join her. We hadn’t been there yet but the city we went to is where we would go with more serious medical concerns so we wanted at least one of us to have been there and checked out the “lay of the land”. It was a quick trip but I was able to accomplish a lot in a few days, including finding some sandals that fit (PTL on that one- I can only buy men’s shoes here and in our city the quality is not great so I was thrilled to find a Hush Puppies store. I still bought men’s sandals but the fit was great and they weren’t TOO masculine – and they were LEATHER!). We visited the clinic, a number of the hotels and the Christian bookstore, not to mention the mall. This was the first time I’ve been out of the country since August 3, 2006. I was in a bit of culture shock seeing a city that was still on the same island as ours, but clean, well organized and the people spoke ENGLISH!! Wow!

I got home on a Sunday around 11 and Josh left that same day at 3 in the afternoon for a trip to another region for leadership meetings.

Some starchy stuff that's standard food in the other region.

Checking out the view - Josh on the far right.

He was gone until Thursday, and then Friday we had 2 kids join us for 6 days (their parents had some language checks in the village where they live interior and their house was not big enough for the checkers AND the kids). They left this week Wednesday and we’re just getting back into a normal routine…so that’s why the blog silence. Crazy life!

Hanging out with Julia one morning...

A date, 2 missed photo ops and an adventure!

Josh took me on a date tonight. We went for dinner and then headed home for a movie. On the way home I saw two things I would have loved to have gotten photos of:

First: our rainy season seems to have taken a hiatus and we’re back to dry season again – dry enough to burn. We actually have ash bits floating in the air. As we were driving by the mosque on the way to the restaurant, Josh suddenly said, “It’s like Christmas!” Sure enough, the mosque, which was decorated for Ramadan with what we call Christmas lights, combined with the falling ash flakes illuminated in our headlights, looked like a light snow falling in winter! Go figure! It was probably 80 degrees out!

Second: Since we’ve been having all these problems with power outages, I guess there are problems for the small stores that are everywhere – as they can’t afford a generator to run power for them. Tonight as we were driving past the banana stand (cause we needed to buy some- but it was closed) I actually saw a small store with a girl behind the counter and a guy at the counter shopping with a flash light!!

Then there was another adventure on this date: The boys needed jump ropes for gym class later this week so we stopped at a sporting goods store (which also sells musical instruments including tambourines! Can you see the connection there??). Back at the car, Josh went to my door and was unlocking it for me when the keys slipped out of his hands. Unfortunately, he’d parked over a (ok, this is hard to explain but bear with me) ditch type trench with was part of the parking lot with a cover made of approx 2” wide bars of metal with at least an inch space between them. We were parked at least 6 feet from the edge. The keys easily slipped through the bars into water/mud/who-knows-what-sludge in the ditch below. Some guys who “help with the parking” (for money of course) were sitting around in the parking lot and saw what happened. They gathered around (which worried me a bit because frankly we can’t be mistaken for local people and since we have a vehicle, though old, it’s still better than what they’ve got - not that we had the keys or anything) and we talked about our dilemma. Josh had called our house helper to ask him to come bring the spare set of keys, but we still had to wait till he got there. Suddenly I had the idea that maybe these guys had fished keys out of there before and maybe they’d do it for us if we offered a reward. I whispered the idea to Josh, Josh offered the reward (Rp 50,000) and in a split second one of the 3 guys was taking off his shoes, socks, rolling up their pant legs and with a tiny flashlight, went down into the trench, UNDERNEATH the bridge-type thing, found and returned the keys. Unbelievable! (I think the other two guys were wishing they’d acted more quickly because the offer was quite generous!) We quickly paid the reward money and got out of there!

Life is never boring here!

Picture this!

OK, wish I'd had Josh take a pic of this one: this afternoon I suddenly had the urge to bake - there I was mixing dough and juicing oranges wearing EAR PLUGS. Here's the story...

As those who know me well fully expect, I chose 4 recipes ('cause why dirty the measuring cups for just one recipe?): My usual artisan bread recipe (someone gave me some walnuts so I wanted to add those), a new cracked wheat raisin bread recipe (got the cracked wheat at an import shop a while ago) and 2 quick breads, a glazed rhubarb-orange loaf (no rhubarb here but I wanted to substitute unripe mango for the rhubarb) and a zucchini orange loaf.

Today was a no-electricity day, so it was HOT. My kitchen was almost 90 degrees BEFORE I started baking. On days there is no power, we run a generator for the 2 houses (our home and the guest house are next door to each other) so that we have running water and can run fans and lights. The generator is located practically underneath the kitchen window and though we recently had the muffler fixed, it's still LOUD!

My first 3 hours in the kitchen I worked with green earplugs sticking into my ears. Every time I wanted to communicate with my kids, I had to yell at them for them to be able to hear me! Thankfully the power came on just before 5 PM. Only here... :) (Here's a shot of the raisin bread and the zucchini loaf - Josh likes to take pictures of food that tastes good!)

And, for the grandmas, great-grandmas and Grandpa Dyck, here's a shot of Spencer at his first piano lesson!

Toddler Language?

The joys of bilingual living! This morning I was tidying up in the kitchen when Julia came out of the bathroom. She looked at me and said, "Mommy, saya pakai celana." It's been a while since I couldn't understand what she's saying, so I said, "What?" She said again, "Saya pakai celana" - I thought for a minute, then realized she wasn't speaking English - that's why I couldn't understand her!! She was saying that she's wearing pants (the local way of expressing that she doesn't wear diapers anymore - obviously picked up from our helpers).

Julia's job? To play and be cute!
It's a good day when we get those smiles!

Josie's Guest Room Schedule Sitting room

The prep/dishwashing area (water filter beside the fridge)
The main dining room

The upstairs dining room

The Library/Family Room

First Day of School!

Thankful (and annoyed)!

This post was written on Thursday in hopes that the internet would work, but it didn't until this morning...(Friday)

Last night we were feeling pretty thankful. (and annoyed, but I’ll get to that later…) Mitchell had a fever when he woke up on Friday morning, 102.6. This persisted until Sunday afternoon when it went down to 99 degrees. What was strange was that he had no other symptoms, we didn’t know WHY he had the fever. Monday he was fever-free again, but he developed a tight cough – ok, so that’s the reason for the fever! Then Tuesday he was fine most of the day, but at bedtime he was back up at 102.6. This could be something serious – a fever cycle.

Yesterday he persisted with the fever, so we decided to take him in to a lab for a blood test. Thankfully we had a veteran tropical medicine doctor passing through (one night only) yesterday afternoon and he gave me advice on which tests to ask for. Another mom here gave me the words (vocabulary) I needed to ask for the tests. I took one of my house helpers along to help explain for me if I couldn’t communicate what I needed – just in case. She’s worked for our org for 8 years and before that she worked for a different org, so while she doesn’t speak much English, she understands a reasonable amount.

We went in to the lab – wish I’d taken pics so you could see this place – you just walk in off a busy dirty street, give them your first name and age (they don’t really operate much with last names here) and then they show you to the back. Mitchell sat down in a chair, they used a dirty (actually had spots of blood on it but also grimy-looking) piece of elastic (like you’d find in your favorite pair of sweat pants, about an inch wide) to tourniquet his skin on his upper arm, and (I forgot to check that it was coming from a sterile wrapper, hope it was OK) they drew the blood. No gloves, no warning, just tied on the elastic, had him make a fist and stuck the needle in. Mitchell was SO brave – I tried to have him look away cause I never can look, but he said, “Mommy, I want to watch” – he was so pale and sick-looking after 6 days and coughing as well. They drew a bit of blood, I would say under 5cc, cause it was a thin syringe and they didn’t fill it very much, and right in front of us they smeared it on a slide and put it into the machine. We were about to leave when they had some of the results for us. Mitchell lay down on the back seat all the way home.


Josh had to go back after an hour to pick up the malaria test. We went home and our guest the doctor read the results and explained them to me. Basically, Mitchell’s hematocrit (solids in the blood) was in the safe range and though his platelets were on the lower side (154) that basically just confirms that he has a viral infection of some sort. If his hematocrit had been higher and his platelets lower, that would have meant Dengue Fever. The Malaria test came back negative. SO, we’re thankful to know that it’s NOT Dengue or Malaria and while it’s scary to have a kid with a fever for a longer time with cycles, we’ll just keep an eye on him, keep track of his highs and lows and pray! (Thanks for praying with us!)

Last night he didn’t have a fever overnight, and this morning it’s also almost normal so I sent him off to school. (He goes 2 mornings a week for 2 hours and is in a class by himself.)

Now to the annoyed part. Last night after dinner I whipped up a loaf of pumpkin bread as a thanks to the doctor for helping us with the tests –also they were leaving the house at 6 a.m. to catch a flight back to the U.S. and I thought they could use breakfast. I brought a few slices to them and left the rest of it on the counter to cool while I went and exercised. Later Josh went back into the kitchen and then called me into the kitchen as well. Seems some rats have chewed a hole in the screen above my kitchen sink and they decided to sample the leftover pumpkin bread (that was breakfast for my family!). Grrr. They were also in my kitchen the night before and possibly the night before that. Apparently they also sampled the papaya and avocados in the basket on the counter top. That’s strange because they both were not yet ripe, which is why they were there. Usually they like the fruit that’s riper, like the banana they once ate, leaving the peel wide open on the countertop. We recently caught a number of them (they’re really bigger than mice but not actually rats, more like shrews, but regardless, I want them dead) and closed up the holes we found, but I guess they’re motivated cause they chewed another hole. Josh forgot to let his helper know so he could set traps yesterday but he already let him know today so it’ll be taken care of today for sure.

Update: Friday morning one of the rats passed away from unnatural causes. One down, one to go! :)

Please pray for Mitchell

Hello, all you people who keep up with us via our blog - first of all, thanks for stopping by. It's such a blessing to hear from you - and know that you're looking for an update - it keeps me posting!

Second, please be praying for Mitchell, our 5-year old son. He started a fever yesterday in the afternoon - 102.5. Now more than 24 hours later, he's still up there though I've been dosing him with Tylenol at regular intervals (he does go down in temp when the meds are in full swing). He's still cheerful as ever, and when we prayed, he asked Jesus to help him feel better again. He's just not the crabby sort when he's sick so it makes it feel less serious. Thanks for lifting him up to the Lord in prayer. It looks like it might be a sinus thing though he was also kind of croupy last night.

Third, this year the month of fasting has come early for the religious majority here. (They started on Thursday and will go for about 4 weeks, not sure of the exact dates.) It'll probably impact us less this year as last year both of our helpers were of that persuasion so they disappeared whenever we were eating or drinking in our home. (Last year I forgot and offered them a taste of something I was cooking - oops! Thankfully they were gracious - the look of discomfort on their faces was enough to remind me!) We do have to be careful about eating or drinking in public and most restaurants and food stalls have put up tarps to shield the people eating and the food from view. Pray as the Lord leads for the country during this time! Thanks!

Photos from this summer

Ready to hit the pool!We got a kick out of this sign - especially #4!

Driving stick on the right hand side of the car and road

Something they do every day!

Spencer loves building with Lego Peek-a-boo! Let's have some fun!

Naomi took some pics of Julia with her cool camera

Working with Josh in the office

Our living room

My kitchen - which, unlike the 2 before this one, has running HOT water!

A common sight on the way to the grocery store!

Lighting the candles on the boys' birthday cake!

Julia got a gift, too! Playing UNO in the front yard!

These three got along so well! (Naomi was our guest for 3 weeks)

UNO!

Making pasta sauce together - my mom's recipe - yum!

Early morning - playing with GI Joes (birthday gifts from Miss Jeanie)

Julia loves coloring - she's starting to use more than one color per page!

The boys enjoy playing Boggle - another birthday gift

Naomi and Josie enjoying Avocado drinks

Earthquake!

Hey! Have had a number of emails asking if we're OK since the big earthquake. We were actually in the capitol 24 hours before it hit, but we're safely home and are fine. Generally we don't consider ourselves in danger of earthquakes or tsunamis because our location is kind of off the beaten path of those types of disasters. We have islands protecting us from the open seas, no volcanos close by and I don't think the fault lines run too close to where we are. I tried to google our province and Earthquake but came up with nothing. Most of the disasters of that sort seem to happen to other islands. Of course that's just our opinion, it COULD happen. :)

What a Bore - I mean, BOAR!

The meat on the platter, not the thoughts of the people in the picture!!
I finally cooked that wild boar meat Josh picked up for me at the market. It was not my intention to necessarily cook it today but our freezer malfunctioned and some of the meat inside thawed, so I had to cook it up. I called my co-worker, Jenny, to find out how she cooked it the time we had it at her place, tweaked the recipe a bit and this is what I did: I seared the meat, seasoned it with salt and fresh ground pepper, then put it in a pressure cooker with potatoes, carrots, onions and about 4 cups of coffee. I brought it to pressure, cooked it for 45 minutes (oh, the aroma!) and when it was done, thickened the liquid left in the pot with cornstarch, and voila! It tasted just like roast beef and gravy. Josh sliced it up, we invited some friends to join us and what a yummy meal! Reminded me of a Sunday noon meal back at home in Manitoba! I highly recommend it - and it took so very little prep time! :)

"Mommy, the cockroach is looking at me..."

That's what Julia said to me this afternoon as I was helping her get ready for her afternoon nap! There was a roach on the floor, upside down and not moving, thanks to the roach motels we have in various locations. Thankfully we haven't had any in the kitchen yet (here in this region - we HAVE had them in the kitchen when we lived in another region, you may have read that post from late 2006) - they seem to prefer our private living quarters (bedrooms and bathrooms), which is gross enough but at least I'm not finding them by our food. I just thought I'd share that with you - it made me laugh, plus that is not something I'd probably ever have heard had we not moved here!! :)

We had to take a "couple" picture for something else

so I thought I'd post one of them.

In general, we're all doing well. Josh is extra busy right now, but we're exploring ways that I can help him out more when he's in his extra busy time. Thankfully we're all healthy right now, Julia and Mitchell having kicked a bug they caught just after we came back from interior. The fever was a bit scary and since Julia wasn't able to communicate about her sore throat, we didn't catch it until late in the week. We don't know if it was strep or just a sore throat as it was hard to get her to let us look in, but we're thankful for no complications! (I'm also thankful as my "good/fast" digital thermometer's battery died months ago and we couldn't get the cover open to replace the battery but a co-worker figured it out for us and now we're back in business should we need it again!!)

The boys drinking the water from inside a young coconut from a tree on our yard!

I'm doing a lot of home schooling. Mitchell is officially putting together sounds and should be reading simple words by the end of the week. Spencer is doing well in school and looking forward to time off next week - not only for Labor Day, but his teacher has some visa work to do and will be in another Asian country for a week, so they get a whole week off! I'm looking forward to using that time to do more home schooling with them (he's probably looking forward to spending more time playing with his Lego!).

Spencer with his classmates in his one-room school.

Things are looking slower for the mission home next month, and as it looks right now will be the slowest month for me since I started this ministry. The month of August was the busiest month here (billing wise) in over a year! We had guests from the tribe we visited leave this morning to go back interior after a week or so in town. It's been great to see how visiting them in the tribe bonded not only our kids to theirs kids we visited, but my friendship with the mom is also deeper. It's so helpful to visit people on their own turf - helps you understand where they're coming from and helps you appreciate them more. Spencer & Mitchell had Yohan over for a sleepover Saturday night. It was the first time they hosted someone and they had a great time!! It feels empty without them here.


Julia has been developing verbally in leaps and bounds. She makes us LAUGH with the things she says. This morning when I asked her if she was a girl, she said, "No, I'm an octopus." Very casually but matter of fact. For a while everything was "a volcano", and if her video is over and the credits are rolling, she says, "Mommy, it's not working!" She's doing really well with her potty training, only needing a diaper or pull-up at night or nap times. She also LOVES to "read" and will sit for long periods of time with books on her lap, poring over the pictures. I'm looking forward to seeing how this girl develops. I sure hope she turns into a bookworm (like her mommy and her brother Spencer!) because books open your world up SO much.


Wild boar meat - looks a lot more like beef than pork.
Josh brought wild boar home from the market last week so I'm looking forward to cooking that up. I've had it once here and it was SO good. They marinade the boar in coffee for a day or so and then roast it - it tastes like roast beef! I also had another first that day - I got out the Mission Home's meat grinder and ground pork. Since pork is such a touchy thing here with the need for things to be "halal" you can't get it ground like you can get beef. I like to mix ground beef and ground pork for lasagna and other Italian dishes so it's nice to have some here. I also want to try to make some sausage with the ground pork. The only sausage we can get here is SWEET.

Anyway, that's the current state of our family. Sorry, got a little long-winded! Thanks for praying for us, for the encouraging emails and your continued support of us being here!