Enjoying A Durian Appetizer

Spencer is still not a fan but the rest of us sure are!

Completion!

So the other day, Julia (3) is digging around in the fridge, looking for an orange (she's my fruit and veggie fanatic). She's humming, looking, then finally closes the fridge door, raises her orange above her head, and says victoriously, "COMPLETION!!" I looked at her, "Where did you get THAT word?" She nonchalantly said, "Little Einsteins". Apparently that's what the rocket ship says when they successfully complete their mission at the end of the show... Shocking!

Doing Fine!

Hi! It's been way too long since I updated you all once again! I'm doing much better than the last time I wrote - seems like I turned the corner towards the middle of January. As soon as I started feeling better, I took on some projects that had fallen by the wayside (no, I didn't end up baking all the stuff on my Christmas baking list - saving that for next year!). I sewed Julia an outfit from Strawberry Shortcake fabric my mom sent for Julia's birthday, myself a pair of maternity shorts, and a bedspread and pillows to go with some paintings I did back in September for my bedroom. It was fun to sew again - it had been a long time!

Feb 1 Josh left for meetings. They concluded the 5th so I hopped on a flight and joined him there until Feb 11. We left the kids with friends here in town (and I don't think they missed us until the last day). We hadn't taken specific time away without the kids since 2004 so it was overdue. It was great to have a couple of uninterrupted days with my best friend!

Since we got home a week ago, I've been trying to get to all of the things that have been left somewhat behind during the time I was sick; an email update, some projects for field leadership, some overdue thank you notes, and planning for a conference we will be hosting in about 3 weeks. Lots going on! (And now I can cross "update the blog" off my list!)

Yesterday I tried to go to church for the first time since November when I started feeling sick. I didn't make it. I sat through about an hour, under a fan, by a window and an open door, fanning myself with a hand-held fan, but I ended up having to go to the car and start it up so I could sit in A/C until the service concluded a half hour later. By about 10 AM every day it's too hot for me to be outside or out of A/C, so I'm still holed up in my room from around 10-4. That's where my computer is, though, so I have plenty of work to do there! (I do come out for lunch...) :)

Anyway, just wanted to update you on what's up with us these days. I'm thankful for the return of energy, for what seems to be a healthy baby (feeling more kicking these days) and the ability to hang out with my family much more than before!

Making a cookie birthday cake for a guest with Mitchell and Julia as my helpers!

Have a great day and thanks for praying!

Feeling Better

Opening stockings on Christmas morning!

I'm thankful to let you know I'm doing better than I was the last time I posted. The nausea has receded somewhat, though I'm still pretty tired. I feel like I have a lot more energy than I did. The heat still affects me, so I'm laying low mid-day. I had an ultrasound on the 27th and though it wasn't in-depth, it was still good to see the little one kicking inside me. I've thought I've felt the baby move a time or two but I know it's rather early to feel it, so I'm not completely sure.

Julia's birthday celebration (see the personal size cakes?)

We had a low-key Christmas and New Years, with Julia's 3rd birthday in between. I napped a lot in between family activities. I was glad to be able to attend our tribal church's Christmas/New Years' celebration on January 1 with my family. I did end up sitting outside in the relatively cooler breeze rather than inside where it was much hotter but it had been many weeks since I'd been at church so it was nice to be there.

One of our tribal pastors gave a really clear gospel presentation at the Christmas program.

The guest facility here has been and currently is busy all the time. We're not completely full all the time, but we haven't NOT had guests since mid-September and it doesn't look like there will be a lull in the action in the foreseeable future.

I've posted some pics of our Christmas celebrations. If you've been to my Facebook account, these will be familiar. I "undecorated" this morning, so we're slowly getting back to normal. The boys go back to school on Monday. I think they're ready to go.

Thanks so much for your continued prayers and support of us.

We couldn't be here without you!

Our decorated tree!

Buying a Christmas Tree in Borneo

Last Saturday we decided to go Christmas tree shopping, so we piled the kids in the Kijang (kind of like a Jeep Cherokee style vehicle) and went to the mall. The bookstore was our first stop once at the mall because I'd asked around and someone said that they'd seen trees there. It being Saturday afternoon (and we generally avoid the mall on the weekend cause it's so LOUD and crazy with people) there was some kind of event going on including live music and all sorts of kiosks right in front of the bookstore. (PARENT WARNING FOR THE NEXT SENTENCE:) As I followed Josh and the kids through the crowds of people, one of the kiosk people shoved a small box into my hand - I looked down - it was a box of condoms - OK, not sure what that was about since I'm obviously married and have 3 children - not a promiscuous teenager - but I made sure to drop the box off at the next kiosk I stopped at. We trailed into the bookstore and sure enough - there were a number of trees there. Some were too short, but two had promise. One had pine cones so that didn't really float my boat, but the other one looked really thick, pretty tall and though kind of expensive, my thought was that we're buying it once and will use it for years, so it's worth it in the long run. Josh and I talk about it and agree to pursue getting this tree but we should look at the other stores too. I checked with the clerk to see if they had many in stock, and he said, something about stock but I wasn't sure what so I took it as a positive thing. I said we'd be back in a bit to get the tree.

We went down the hall to one other store, but the trees weren't anything to write home about so we went back, through the crowds, to the bookstore to claim our tree. We talked some more with the clerk and found out that they DID have stock of the tree we wanted - it WAS the stock - they only had THAT ONE. I'm glad we acted right away. So we arranged to come back in 30 minutes while they disassembled the tree for us. We brought the tree home and made plans to put it up the next day!

Julia and Mitchell rockin' around the Christmas tree!


I had looked at the inside part of the tree and THOUGHT I'd seen hinged branches - I was wrong - each branch had to be installed one-by-one. It was a pretty big job, though I thought it was easier than having to fluff the branches one by one after they were already on the tree (less scratched arms that way). I'm pretty pleased that we even found a tree this great here and I must admit, it's helping with the Christmas spirit. We also think it's important to continue some of the traditions that we have at home, at least the ones we CAN - since there are so many we can't continue. We're still evolving as a family in this aspect as the kids are getting older and understanding more.


Speaking of which - Spencer said at supper tonight - "Did you know that Mary didn't have to be married to a boy to have Jesus? She wasn't really married to Joseph." I kinda went, "What? Where'd you hear that?" So not sure when we'll finish that conversation but it will have to be had. Some of this stuff I was hoping he'd click with after I have this last baby! :)

Anyway, I should go hang with my family for a bit before bed. I'm still doing pretty much the same - tired and nauseous, often triggered by heat, so am mostly laying low, though I do hope to bake some cookies sometime this week to participate in a cookie exchange my co-workers are having! (Baking is really not a great activity for me these days since it involves a hot oven and a hot kitchen IN the hot tropics ON the HOT equator!) :) This too shall pass - if nothing else I'll do Christmas cookies next year!


Anyway, hope you're all having a great time doing your Christmas shopping. We're saving most of ours for the next time we're out in another Asian country (no plans yet, though) as a lot of the toys we can purchase here are easily broken, not really great quality. Not to worry, we also have some coming in the mail, if the packages get here before the 25th!

Take care!

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!