Recent pics

We have been pretty busy around here. Matt got back from Columbia and Iz and I got back from NC the same day. We have been trying to get our place back in order and slow our lives down a bit. Isabella is growing everyday...and getting more hair!!
She now loves to put on hats by herself. She is finally using her sign language a lot more..it seems like it has kicked in. I am trying to teach her mommy and drink; we'll see how that goes.

She is looking more and more like a little girl instead of a baby. It is sad for me. I am getting ready to enroll her into a mothers-day-out program at a local church. I am getting a little nervous about leaving her. But I know it will be very good for her and me. It is just two half days a week. It will be nice to get some time to myself...but at this point I can't imagine leaving her for the whole day. I feel very blessed that I can stay home with her everyday. I am sorry I don't have any pictures from NC; Matt had the digital and I had to use our film SLR.

She didn't seem to happy in this picture..she was just getting upset because I wasn't showing her the previous picture I took fast enough. These kids and technology.

NO SHOES, NO SHIRT, NO PROBLEM ....

well, i still don}t have my suitcase, clothes, medical stuff. and i still don{t know how to use this foreign keyboard. my attitude has been a little bad, and i am sorry about this. i am finding the work hard with people who have a completely different concept of work and time as myself.

we did good work yesterday and i again saw 20 patients. we went to church with the péople in the community today and the entire day has been a great deal of disorganization, which is challenging for me.

i have confirmed that my bags are in this country, but we are not sure what city they are in. please pray for this, although at this rate we might be leaving before i actually get them.


on the bright side - we had an amazing fish dinner at a beach restaurant. tremendous sunset between the mountain and ocean.

Funny Colombia Blog

Well, there actually isnt much funniness to my trip so far. The {funny} of the title is in relation to the fact that i dont have normal keys on the keyboard. some also may find it funny that my luggage is lost and i have been wearing the same clothes for more than 48 hrs, which includes working in the hot colombian weather.

anyway, im having a hard time with a good attitude down here so far. im also having a hard time trying to do medicine with a nurse stethoscope and nothing else. interestingly being on the internet for the first time in 3 days is actually the most normal i have felt, which is a little sad. please pray that they send my luggage. es no bueno que equipaje es no esta en la aeuropuerto.


i do need to report our living arrangement are absolutely amazing, with a small rooftop pool approx 200 or 300 ft directly above the ocean. to the right you see the ocean. and to the left you see one of the higher mountains in colombia, awesome

Plague of Biblical Proportions

The hurricane is long gone but are area is still reeling...... largely due to a mosquito infestation.
Now we have all heard people say "the bugs are bad", and we all have experienced mosquitoes. But imagine trying to mow your lawn and in the first 90 seconds you have a dozen of them buzzing around you, attaching to your long sleeved shirt and trying to bite through your clothes.
These little flying vampires are roughly the size of a dime. It seems they have never eaten before and they will die if they do not bite a human, drawing out some of the host's blood. I learned today that mosquitoes can only fly at 1 km/hr, which makes it sound like you could shake them by walking really fast but that doesn't seem to happen in reality.

I'm reminded of a friend named Clint who I worked with in Virginia. We did grounds keeping at a very upscale golf course. He was a simple guy who loved NASCAR. I tried to wow him with my mosquito knowledge by sharing the following fact: if you allow the mosquito to bite, draw your blood, and detach on its own without any swatting you will not get the bump of a mosquito bite. Clint responded in a way that showed he was smarter than me when he said he would rather have mosquito bites than allow unchecked mosquitoes possibly inflict him with West Nile Virus....... I couldn't argue and we left it at that

Hello Dolly

Well, we have our internet back up and running again. We are very thankful to be home and getting back to normal.

This was a picture of Isabella watching the rain. She was just upset that she couldn't go outside during the rain.

Here is the picture that I took of our front yard and street after a the hurricane was a little over halfway over. It was increadible that we did not get any water into our garage which is to the right.

This is the front of our friends house. They just started the program. Yes, that is a porta potty. The lot across the street was starting to build and this was there...and ended up in the yard. They hope it is gone tomorrow. We all think it is really funny though.

For those of you who know SMI then you might recognize this. It is the dorm that the students stay in. The SMI students were down here during Dolly. They had to get out of the building when this happened because it damaged the wall into the dormrooms....what a crazy night they had. We are very thankful that we did not have much damage done to the house, but there was a lot of damage in Harlingen. There are a couple of communities that might not have power until late this week. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers while we were sitting it out.

Hello Dolly

Well, we are alive and well after the "little" catagory 2 hurricane came through our town. Dolly did a lot more damage than we thought she was going to. We had a very long 24 hours of waiting for her to pass b/c she was only going 7 mph. We had a river of water going down our street and then the water got up 3/4 of the way up our yard..we were blessed that it didn't get into our home. A lot of people got flooding and now are taking out carpet. We still do not have electricity at our house...we are staying with friends who do. We are so thankful for the community of family that we have down here. What a blessing to have people that are glad to open their homes. Anyways..I will post pictures of stuff once we have our computer working. More Dolly pics to come. Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts.

Happy 4th of July!!

I have been wanting to make this cake for four years!! And finally I got to this year. Maybe one day I'll get to make it for my brother's birthday--HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRIAN!!
The cake was a success...it was the first dessert to be finished.

Isabella was just happy that she was able to be outside. It has rained all morning, but then cleared up two hours before our get together. What a fun day to celebrate the indepence of our country. We thank God that he has given us a place that we can worship him freely. We are very thankful for the men and woman who have steped out and defended our country for the last 200 + years.