What I Miss

Today is Independence Day in Honduras, which means no school!! I stayed up late last night, watching Madagascar and enjoying the thought that I didn't have to wake up at 5:30 the next morning. I slept in until 9:30 when the Chinese kid in the house next to me started screaming. I mean, it wasn't the best way to wake up, but I am sure there could be worse ways. I didn't feel like moving though, so I just laid in my bed and let the coolness of the fan blow on me. When I did get out of bed, it was to shower and then I came right back to bed. I watched Netflix and while I was doing that, I was hit with overwhelming sadness. It is really true. I got very sad.

I miss home. I miss it a lot. Thinking about being there makes me want to cry. I know at some point that everyone needs to grow up and go off and experience the world and be their own person and what not. I think that I needed that, but I also think that I am one of those people who is happier living closer to family than wanting to live miles and miles away from home.

I miss a lot of specific things. They are really bizarre.

I miss pulling into church on Monday nights for 717 and walking through the parking lot into church. I miss 717 of course, but for whatever reason, those few minutes of walking into the church is what I miss most.

I miss my car. I miss her curves and all her edges and all her perfect imperfections. I miss the crayon smell that overpowers you when you open the door. Bubbles is such a great car and we have been through so much together. I miss driving in general to. I think perhaps some of my favorite days last fall were the days when I was driving down to Indiana Wesleyan to see Claire. There is this really eerie looking church that is right outside of Warsaw on the way to IWU. I don't know why but I would always get really happy to see that church. And the drive to IWU is beautiful. There are like a million and a half donut shops, you get to drive through Nappannee and there are pretty fall colors the whole drive there. The same came be said for driving up to Michigan to visit my grandparents. I love that drive too. Man, I miss driving so much!

You know when you are really hungry for chicken and noodles and mashed potatoes?! It happens to the best of us, it really does. And when I am hungry for this, I miss Shipshewana. I miss Essenhaus and their delicious peanut butter pie and whoppie pies. And though it semi drives me insane, I wouldn't really mind getting stuck behind a buggy driving from Middlebury into Shipshewana. I would enjoy it today. I can't wait for Amish food in December!

I am surrounded by Hispanic food, and what do you know, I miss Hacienda. I really wanted a wet burrito last night. You know the giant ones that they serve on the hot plates that burn your hands if you touch them accidentally? That's the one I miss. Plus Chips and Ranch.

Sundays are a difficult day for me here, because even though they are my favorite day of the week, I really miss my family on Sundays. My church family too, not just mom, dad and Claire. I love the people at Rivervalley. I love the support that is coming from my church, financially and in prayer. I am so excited for Christmas Eve service this year.

I miss my bed. I love my bed so much. It is the perfect place to spend all day and all night. Especially when Lucy is curled up in my bed with me. That is one of my favorite things in this whole world. I love those moments.

I miss Mishawaka/South Bend on game day. I don't really like football, mostly because I don't understand it totally and also it makes me nervous when they all start tackling each other and all I see in my mind is broken bones and such. All that to say, I love our area on game day, how hype everyone is, how busy it is and then the game starts and it is just quiet. I have missed that this year.

I miss going to Bethel and calling Kara to come walk me in because I don't want to walk in by myself haha! I miss being at a college, and I miss all the crazy shenanigans and hoodrat things we do together. Like, I don't think anyone could understand the level of missing in which I miss Kara. And my other Bethel friends.

I miss Walmart. Like it is open 24 hours, do you know how incredible that is?! I could always count on Walmart, like when I needed hair dye at 9 in the evening and I didn't want to wait until the next morning to get it. Or if i really just wanted a pineapple.  You can go to Walmart at any time and basically find whatever you need.

I miss my clothes. Yes, I have clothes here, but I feel like my personal style is so restricted. And when I wear what I want, it is usually too hot to be comfortable. If I could wear jeans and a black long sleeve shirt all the time, I would be the happiest person in the world. I love that combo.

There are no Old Navy stores here. I can't adequately get my shopping on without an Old Navy to be honest. That store always spoke to me on a personal level. I love boring Old Navy clothes so much!

That is what I miss, and all my friends and my family. I miss home a majority of the time. But the times that I don't miss home while I am here, are some of the greatest moments ever! I wish I could take everything I love about Honduras and move it to Indiana. That would be awesome!

Delusional Thoughts: The Inner Struggle of a Gringa Who Thought She Might Die in a Foreign Country

I want to preface this post by saying a few things. Number 1, had I been in a right frame of mind, I would have never thought that I was actually dying. Number 2, I find with all types of stomach flu-like sickness there are a few moments when you think to yourself, "Yes, this is it. This is what death feels like, I am ready Lord, take me home." And that is regardless of if you are sick in a foreign country, you feel that way at home also. Number 3, I am typing this while I am mostly laying flat on my back which means that there may be a few typos. I find that if I sit up for too long though, I get really dizzy and it makes me sick. Number 4, I knew that Jesus was with me the entire time and I knew He would sustain me, but again when you aren't in the right frame of mind, it is easy to forget truths. Number 5, I love Honduras and yes it is really difficult and yes the last two weeks I have wanted to come home more than I have wanted to stay, but God's not ready for that yet and for whatever reason, He needs me here.

So now that I have set the stage, please sit back and enjoy that inner thoughts and struggles that I felt while I thought I was dying of a terrible disease in Honduras.

It all started on Monday when I came home from school. Monday was a great day! The kids were good, lunch was pretty tasty, I didn't have much to get ready for Tuesday, so I was feeling pretty great. I came home and went to my room and started to watch Gilmore Girls. Around 5 o'clock though, I got a really bad headache. I kind of brushed it aside, I get headaches a lot here, I thought it would go away. But it didn't and I started to feel worse. Around 7, I finally decided I would just go to bed, and I asked Samira to wake me up at 5:30am if I wasn't up the next morning.

I didn't get much sleep, I was tossing and turning and  5am came really quickly. When I opened my eyes, the whole room was spinning and my body felt like it was being held down by hundreds of weights. My head hurt and I could tell that I was running a fever. So I did what every normal 21 year old living in a foreign country would do and I called my parents. Repeatedly, and I prayed that they would answer. My mom did, she talked to me, and asked all the good mom questions that mom school teaches a mother to ask. She said she would pray for me, told me to do what I could, told me she loved me and we hung up. At that point, I decided to stand up, and I did. I slightly stumbled and wobbled out into the living room and said, "Samira I need a doctor." She told me to go and lay down and sleep and she would call me when we could go see the doctor.

We went to the doctor's office, which is also an ER, which is also a private clinic. And the doctor asked me a bunch of questions in Spanish and Samira translated. She then decided to give me an IV, to hydrate me, and maybe get ahead of this sickness. Let me tell you friends, getting an IV in Honduras is VERY different than getting an IV in America. And as I sat and saw a needle in my hand, and literally had blood spilling out and dropping to the floor, I thought to myself "huh, this seems totally safe and not that terrifying at all... Oh no wait, what is actually happening right now" (For those close enough to me I am sure that you could read that thought in my totally sarcastic voice). After they poked me, and got a blood sample they attached the IV. And I laid there and waited for the bag to empty. The doctor said everything looked okay with my blood test, I had a lot of mosquito bites, and she wanted to be sure I didn't contract something from those, She said it was probably just a virus and sent me home, but told me to come back if I had any new symptoms.

So I watched Gilmore Girls all afternoon and prayed that my headache would go away. Amanda and Samira got home from school, and neither of them was feeling 100% so we really thought, yea, this is just a little virus we just need to wait it out. I walked out to refill my water and Samira and one of our coworkers, Emilson, were sitting at the table and they both looked at me and said that I looked terrible. Which is something you don't ever want to hear, but when you hear it and you are sick, you don't care. I had fever blisters on my lips, my hair was everywhere, my cheeks were red with fever, I was a mess. I looked terrible and I felt terribler. I thought that maybe if I showered I would feel better, but that didn't work. At one point, I was laying under 3 covers, in pants, with no AC on and I was still shivering. This is when I was like "Yea, I could be dying right now." I was sick.

I did what I do every time I am sick and I need sleep and I took Nyquil. And usually that knocks me out and it sends me into a nice coma for about 9 hours. No such luck this time, I was tossing and turning and then 2am hit. I didn't think that I could get much worse and that's exactly when I did. The toilet and I became real close while the trashcan and I were also becoming real close. At the same time. (See I am a lady and therefore I don't want to use the actual terms for what was taking place in the wee hours of the morning, so that is why I am saying that both were being used at the same time.) It was during those moments in the bathroom that I was actually wondering when I was going to see the bright light, and wondering what the angels that guard Heaven's gates look like. I was also wondering what I had gotten myself into and questioning why God had called me to Honduras only for me to be slowly killed by my own body. While all this was going on, my fever was getting higher. And there was a gecko on my wall. And normally I would have gotten up and chased the gecko away, but I thought to myself, even if he bites me, I don't think I could get worse.

I was wrong. because it turns out that when you haven't eaten in 24 hours, your stomach is empty and it has nothing to get rid of... except water. So I started losing a lot of water. At some point on Wednesday afternoon, I felt well enough to walk to my scale and weigh myself. In just over 24 hours, I had lost 7 pounds. And my fever started to spike again and Samira said, lets go back to the doctor/ER/Clinic. So we went. And it was terrible. They poked me 5 times looking for a vein, one time was so painful that I was crying like an actual baby. Big tears and big sobs. Then they said I would stay the night and in my mind I was just like, "no, this is not happening. I am not going to stay in a hospital where no one speaks English and I don't speak Spanish all night." But they made me stay. And it was a rough night. I questioned why I had decided to listen to God in the first place, I wondered why He was leaving me here, I became angry with myself for not becoming fluent in Spanish before I came down here. And it got worse because every time a nurse would come in they would tell me that I should try to learn Spanish, which isn't exactly comforting when you feel like you are dying. And I wanted to cry and scream. I wanted to rip the IV out of  my hand and run out of the hospital. I wanted them to know how painful it was to lay in that little bed, with my tall legs hanging off the sides, and I couldn't tell them any of it. And so I laid there and I just kept praying, and I am sure that my prayers were full of angry questions. I didn't want to be there. But I still knew that God was near to me. I just didn't think I could get through that.

And the next day I had to stay in the hospital all day. I missed Children's Day at school. They told me I could go home when I stopped going to the bathroom as much and so I forced my body to stop, At that point, all I wanted was to be in my own bed, away from the hospital that was so unlike what I was used to in the US. I wanted to stretch out, and take an ibuprofen for my pain. That's what I wanted. My friends all came to visit me in the hospital. They prayed over me, they made me laugh, they talked to the nurses for me. It was nice to see all of them.

Then they brought the bill. And dealing with the doctors in the past, everything here has been pretty cheap and I thought this one would be too. But it wasn't. It was really expensive and I didn't have enough money to cover it. I do have insurance, but you have to pay out of pocket and then be reimbursed. As we were looking over the bill, we realized that they had charged us for more than they should have. All the Hondurans thought it was too high and they tried to bring the price down, but that didn't work out too well. And I was supposed to be going home and feeling better, but all the money talk stressed me out and made me feel terrible. It was really hard not to cry. It was really hard to not become angry. I just wanted to be home, my home, in Indiana, and I was ready to ask for a ticket home. Luckily the school stepped in and lent me the money, and we will send everything to the insurance company to be reimbursed.

I am still not 100% sure what they diagnosed me with.

When I got home on Thursday night, I cried a lot. Because here is the truth friends, the truth is that I don't want to be here anymore. Living in  the US is easier. It is comfortable.  I had two weeks back to back with terrible stuff. I knew that Honduras was going to be hard, I knew that it would stretch me and pull me out of my comfort zone. I never expected this though. It is so hard. And I know I posted last week about being a warrior, but there are times when you aren't strong enough to pick up a sword and be one. And I know that you all would say that it isn't my strength, it is Jesus'. And that is true, but sometimes you ask for His strength and it feels like it doesn't come. That is so hard. Its hard to be miles and miles from your home and feel like you are actually dying. Knowing that you aren't, but feeling like you are. It is hard to have to think about lesson plans when you feel like you can't even stand up. It is hard to think about going back to a classroom with 23 kids when you have a headache that won't go away. And I have talked to numerous people about this, and I have cried and said that I want to come home, that I am giving it one more week.

I know that I won't quit. I know that in my head. Even thought I want to leave, I also want to stay. I have come too far to just give up. I am too much of a people pleaser to let down everyone who has supported me. And I know that this is where God wants me, and I can't give up on that. But you have to know, this is the most difficult think I have ever done in my life. And yes, you see all the hard parts because that is what I am going through right now. But there will hopefully be a day when my posts can be about all the good.

And I am not saying that there is only hard parts right now, there have been a lot of good moments here. And I love Honduras and my friends here in a way that I can't explain. I love eating baleadas and riding in the back of pick up trucks, I love walking out of the mall and seeing the glorious mountains standing tall. I love seeing the bats flying around at night. I love to chase the geckos with sticks. I love chicky cookies. I love singing American songs loudly at the mall while our Honduran friends laugh at me. I love hugging my students everyday. I love how cheap professional, expensive hair products are here. There is so much that I love and I am not ready to give up yet.

I need your prayers to keep going. I need to be reminded every minute of everyday why I am here. I need to see that all of this pain that I am going through right now is worth it. I need Jesus to be so real and evident in ways that I haven't seen before. That's what I need!!

And here we are at the end, if you read all of that, I am super impressed. The good news is, I didn't die, I lost seven pounds and I got to see a lot of people who love me in a 24 hour time period! I am still weak and tired, and I know that with every sickness, there is a time of recovery to rebuild and strengthen our bodies. That will all come with time.

Thank you for loving me. Thank you for letting me be real and authentic in my writing. Thank you for not being surprised in my moments of trials. Thank you for not trying to fix me or tell me what I am doing wrong. This is a journey and so many of you are along for the ride.

Bendiciones!

Here is what I declare

                I am typing this post tonight feeling more exhausted than I have felt in a very long time. There are so many factors playing into this exhaustion. I told you this blog would be real. I am on a diet, so I can’t sugar coat things for you. Even when you are in the center of God’s will, there is still a battle being waged. There is an army rising up against you, attacking you in the moments when you are most vulnerable. This enemy waits, he schemes and he plans. He knows exactly when to strike. It is not rainbows and butterflies here. It is a war. I am fighting this constant battle. I am experiencing emotions that I rarely feel. I feel angry. I feel insecure. I feel confused. I feel helpless. I feel beaten down. I feel unqualified.

                I wake up every morning and I speak truth over myself. I surrender my day to the Lord, I lay my plans at His feet. I ask Him to remove the ugliness in my life, and to take away the negative emotions I feel. I speak protection over my body, over my physical health. I speak light into the dark areas. I pray over my classroom. I pray over my students. Last, I declare that I am a child of God, chosen to serve Him.

                And I do this, and every day this week, I have come home feeling beat down and defeated. And every day I tell myself, I can’t do this. I call my parents and I cry and I struggle for words to describe my emotions. And I cry out and I ask God where He is. “I am here Lord! I am living in your will. This is what you wanted, I have given up so much to be here, please, can you meet me halfway! I need you.” And every night the Lord gives me a little something to remind me that He is still in control.

                And the enemy works his plans again. He is crafty. And he throws me curve balls every day. I am still learning to fight, and I am defeated easily. And it is ugly. And it feels like I am a failure. And I tell myself that I can’t keep going. I take my eyes off Jesus for a split second. And when I look up, when I lift up my head, He is standing above me, holding out His hands. With His sword drawn, reminding me that He still has this, reminding me that I am not fighting alone.

                So here I am tonight, after a long battle today, writing in the best way that I know how. I realize that it is okay to cry. It is okay to have meltdowns and wonder what I am doing here. That is all okay. It is okay to feel emotions that I don’t want or that I don’t understand. But it isn’t okay that I forget that Jesus is still King. He is still on His thrown, He is still calling the shots in my life. It isn’t okay to forget that.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the… powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” Eph. 6:12. I am not struggling against Honduras. I am not angry at the culture, I am not overwhelmed by sickness. I am fighting this battle against the enemy. And though there is a struggle now, I know how it will end. I know that through Christ. I will be victorious. I will be triumphant. I will look back on this year and I will see that God took a tiny, frightened, exhausted girl and turned her into a warrior. And that is my prayer. My prayer is that I would become a warrior. That I would fight for justice. That I would fight for God’s glory to be seen. And I pray that I will fight against the powers of this dark world and I will be triumphant because God has made me a warrior.

                So tomorrow I am picking up my sword. And I am riding into battle again, remembering that I am a conqueror and I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.  

                For those of you who are praying for me, here is what you can pray for: hair growth (and yes I am serious. I have lost so much hair since I have been here. It is super discouraging for me), my students (I have a very difficult class and when there is a language barrier in a preschool class, it is even more difficult), SLEEP (and not just sleep, but peaceful, life giving sleep. I am not sleeping well), my well-being (I just need strong emotional and physical health), continued healing in my knees (mostly my alignment and arthritis. The constant, terrible pain is gone, and I am so blessed by that, but there is a lot of healing that needs to take place in my legs. And also my heart), a break from the heat (my AC is broken and with the heat index, it has been around 109 here. It’s really difficult for a girl from Indiana to cope with).
 

                God is good, all the time. There is a plan and purpose for my struggles. This is where God wants me, I just need to be down for whatever He is doing right now. 

The Start Of School

Here is the update I am sure that you have been expecting.

I started school this week, which is a big deal.

But before I get to that, I want to talk about the show Gilmore Girls, and I don't really have a point in talking about Gilmore Girls. When I was in middle/high school, my sister played volleyball and I didn't like to go to her games...seriously middle school volleyball. Anyways, I would watch Gilmore Girls when I was home alone, it was always on ABC Family at like 3:30 and I enjoyed watching the opening sequence with all of the fall colors. Gilmore Girls makes me think of fall. Fall is my favorite season and that is why I have been watching Gilmore Girls this week. I miss fall weather. And I have heard that Indiana is getting cooler. I love fall weather.

But anyways, I started school. I wore a pant suit (which yes is just as hot as it sounds). It went as well as I expected that it might. Because I am a fan of being the most honest writing I am going to be honest with you my readers. It was really difficult. I can teach preschoolers in the US, and it is kind of the same thing...except that it is totally different. It is semi like trying to baptize a cat, which I have never done because why does a cat need baptized, but I just imagine that it would be about the same level of difficulty. I am not saying it was bad, it is just really hard. I don't speak the same language as the students, and I am trying to teach them a new language while I am still teaching them their academics. It was difficult.

But God calls us to do difficult things. He wouldn't have called me here if He knew that I couldn't handle it. Its just the beginning and I am praying that it gets easier. I have to keep reminding myself that I am not here in Honduras for myself. I am here because I am serving the Lord, and in serving Him, I am serving others. In the difficult moments, I probably wouldn't think this, but in the good moments, I realize that this year will help me grow in incredible ways. And it is hard, and I cry a lot, but hopefully this will make me a stronger person. God isn't finished with me yet, this is a building process. I am excited for the outcome, and nervous about the hard work in between now and then.

So all in all, school is school. The kids are cute, I feel way in over my head and that is causing a lot of stress. But I am living in Honduras! Which has been my dream for four years! And that is still so exciting!

I know this post is all over the place, I am exhausted and I'm not wearing my glasses ;)

I will try to write more when I have the time and the correct amount of sleep :)

Bendiciones!