It's been a really great past two days. For one thing, since it's a holiday week, we've had short work days. Only 7 hours, as opposed to my usual 2 10-hour days and 2 8-hour days. Short work days are a good thing, especially when we still get paid for a full work week :).
Also, my friend Keren is visiting the States from Nicaragua and we hung out the past 2 days. After I got out of work yesterday I went and picked her up from the church and we went to the mall. She'd gotten a pair of jeans for Christmas that she needed to exchange so we did that and also did some other shopping. Then we went to the Purple Cow for cheeseburgers and milkshakes and then met our friend Betsy and some Ukrainian orphans at the movies to see The Chronicles of Narnia, which I'd already seen but didn't mind seeing again since I wanted to spend time with my friends.
After the movie Keren and I came back to my house and we started watching The Passion of the Christ but by then it was almost 2 am and we were both really tired so we called it a night.
Today I took Keren to her first North American wedding. The daughter of my good friend Tammy got married today so Keren and I went to the wedding, which was really cool and a lot of fun. Keren said our weddings are pretty similar to weddings in Nica. After the wedding we went to my cousin's apartment for coffee. That was awesome since I hadn't seen Joni in almost a year. It was really great to get caught up and we have plans to get together again after I am back from Nica.
Keren couldn't come with me to the wedding reception since she was going with Vinny and the Ukrainian kids to the indoor water park in Williamsburg so I took her back to Vinny's and then headed over to the reception.
It's only 8:15 now but it feels so late, probably because I am so tired. And I have to work tomorrow. That kinda stinks since it's New Years Eve but oh well, it's only till 3:30 so I can come home and take a nap before Betsy's New Years Eve party.
And there are only 9 days, 16 hours anjd 10 minutes till I will be in Nica!! :)
I can't wait to see everyone again!!
I'll have pictures up soon of Keren and me at Molly's wedding today once my cousin emails them to me.

Christmas Eve Service

I went to the Christmas Eve service at Spring Branch tonight. There was this great song they did, and I loved it. I wanted to post the lyrics here.

Here With Us (Joy Williams)

It's still a mystery to me

That the hands of God could be so small

How tiny fingers reaching in the night

Were the very hands that measured the sky

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Heaven's love reaching down to save the world

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Son of God, Servant King

Here with us, here with us.

Still a mystery to me

How His infant eyes had seen the dawn of time

How His ears had heard an angel's symphony

Still Mary had to rock her Savior to sleep.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Heaven's love reaching down to save the world

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Son of God, Servant King

Here with us, here with us.

Jesus the Christ born in Bethlehem

Baby born to save, to save the souls of men

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Heaven's love reaching down to save the world

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Son of God, Servant King

Here with us, here with us.

I love the words and the meaning they convey. I mean, how amazing is it that God loved us so much that he became one of us so he could save us? I lve the imagery of his tiny eyes having seen the dawn of time and his tiny fingers being the same ones that measured the sky. His love for us is so amazing ...

¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

Today is my Nicaraguan sister and bestest friend in the world Ivonne's birthday! I think she is out celebrating because I have been trying to call her all evening but have just gotten her voicemail. Which either means her cell phone is on the blink again or she is out. Hopefully it's the latter and tomorrow I'll be able to talk with her. If her cell phone is working she'll at least get my voicemail so she'll know I tried calling and hadn't forgotten her birthday :)
And in 3 weeks from now I will be in Nicaragua! Woo hoo!! :) It can't come soon enough!

I am almost done with the candleholders! FINALLY!! It's taking me a lot longer than I'd planned but oh well, should be done soon. I ran out of hot water so decided to write here for a bit to let it come back some and hopefully then I can finish. There are so many of them but I nkow how beautiful it will look for our Christmas Eve service when they're all lit.
So three weeks from tomorrow I will be heading down to Nica!! I can't wait! I still doesn't feel real but it's starting to sink in that I am actually going!
And my friend Keren from Nica is here in the States!!!!! Actually in New York now and then I think she is spending Christmas with a family in Kentucky or Tennessee and then coming to VA Beach for the rest of the time. So hopefully she can stay with me a few days the first week in January. We're actually flying back to Nica on the same day, but she's leaving from NY and I am leaving from Virginia but we'll meet up in Atlanta and fly the rest of the way together.

Today was better

Me, Ivonne and Lisseth after we'd colored each other's hair (Sept. 2005)
Today things were much better. I feel so incredibly blessed by the church community I get to be a part of. And God provided a few miracles so now I will be able to pay my bills and have a little left over in case of an emergency.
Last night I also got to talk with my best friend Ivonne for over an hour. We hadn't talked in a week so we had lots of catching up to do! I am very excited to get to see her and her family in just a few weeks. They are my Nicaraguan family. I've gotten to be friends with her husband, mom and sister as well, and her 3-year-old daughter Andreita is just the cutest kid EVER! They really welcome me in like family when I am there, cooking special meals for me as well as yummy Nicaraguan sweets. I can't wait to see them again! And of course all the kids! I miss them so much.
Right now my hands and fingers are totally wrinkled from washing about 3 jillion plastic candle holders. At church they asked for volunteers to take a bag or two of the candle holders home and wipe them out to get rid of the old wax. We're going to use them for our Christmas Eve service for the candle lighting part. Well, because I am so grateful for the help they gave me with my situation, I took 4 bags and another huge box of the candle holders. Yikes! I found that even when I wiped them out, it got rid of the big chunks of wax but there was still a yucky film left behind. And Jesus deserves to have clean candle holders for His birthday, so I just decided to go ahead and wash them all out by hand. I've gotten through 3 bags so far but still have another bag and the whole box. I am hoping to have them all done by Sunday but I am not sure how much more I can get through tonight b/c my back is really starting to hurt, and then tomorrow I am babysitting and I don't know how late. Hopefully they won't mind if I get them in by Tuesday.
Had lunch with my boss today at work. When you reach your 5-year milestone with the company you get to pick a gift from the catalog (I am getting a camera) and your manager also treats you to lunch. My 5-year anniversary was actually back in October but today was the lunch day. It was pretty nice. We actually had a very pleasant and enjoyable conversation. My boss can be a very nice person, she just intimidates the heck out of me as a manager. When it comes to non-work stuff she's really very nice.
Speaking of lunch, I just realized I haven't eaten since then, other than a few crackers. I should probably find something for dinner and then get back to work on those candleholders. Good times.

Ugh ...

I am not in a very good place right now. I am a wee bit stressed out. I was supposed to be getting a paycheck tooday, and I am not. I was sick for about a week and a half of work and didn't have enough paid leave to cover it (Thank God I do have FMLA so at least I have the job protection at least, but it was unpaid leave) On top of that, apparently a previous paycheck had been mis-input and didn't reflect sick leave I had taken, so that was also charged against my paycheck, and well, it wiped the whole thing out. This is totally stressful to me because I usually have month left at the end of my money and now it's even double that. when I found out, I didn't know how I was going to pay my bills, refill my prescriptions, renew my car registration and get it inspected (both of which are overdue as it is) and finish buying Christmas presents for my family. I have a little bit of money coming in from my Arbonne business but last month was not a great month so it's not much that will be coming in. This is an especially sucky time to have something like this happen. You know, like "Merry Christmas, we're not paying you"
I am less stressed out than I was last night when I first found out, because I am very blessed to have wonderful friends and an incredible church community who came to the rescue. I will be able to pay the bills now and someone else donated the gifts I wanted to buy for my family, and I found out I don't have an insurance bill due this month, so things are better.
But it's hard for me ... I am not good about asking for help. I hate to do that. I don't think it's really so much of a pride thing, it's more that I feel that there are so many people who have it so much worse than me, so why do I deserve to be helped when they need it more than me. I know that's not a good way to think, because everyone has emergencies come up and situations when they need a little extra help.
I got to talk with Lisseth today and that was awesome! Lisseth is one of the older girls at the orphanage and a really amazing young lady. She's 17 and has lived half her life at the orphanage. Lisseth is responsible for helping take care of the youger boys at the orphanage and she is so great with them. We've gotten to be close friends over my last few visits. She put Isamar on the phone with me and so I got to talk with her too. I told them both I was coming in January so I am sure by now the whole orphanage knows :)
One sad thing I founs out is that Paky, one of the 10-year-old girls from the orphanage, isn't living there anymore. Apparently she went home to visit with her family and decided not to come back (either that or her parents decided not to let her come back, I am nor sure which is the case). :( I am very sad about this, she is such a sweet kid. On my visit in January, Ivonne let me have a sleepover at their home with about 10 of the kids. We all slept in their living room on mattresses on the floor. I ended up being up almost all night with Paky because she had a really bad toothache. She couldn't stop crying because of the pain. She kept apologizing over and over for keeping me up, which was so sweet that she was concerned about that when she was in so much pain. We took her to the dentist the following day and she ended up having to have the tooth pulled. It was just so sad to see her so quiet and sad all day. She is normally a little fireball of energy and all smiles.
It will be sad to not see her anymore at the orphanage when I go back there. I hope she can return someday.

25 days, 21 hours, 37 minutes, 51 seconds

I am still so very excited about my upcoming trip and yet it doesn't feel real yet that I am actually going. Maybe because of all the stress and busyness of the season. When I am on the plane, it will definitely feel real then.
The only "downside"was that coming back, I have an overnight layover in Atlanta. I get into Atlanta at 6pm on January 23rd but then my flight out of Atlanta isn't till 2:15 the next day. I was just going to see if I could get on standby on an earlier flight so I can be home on the 23rd. But I'd emailed a friend of mine who moved to Atlanta last year and mentioned I might be having an overnight layover and she immediately emailed me back and invited me over to their house to stay over and have dinner with them and then she would bring me back to the airport the next day. So I think I am going to take her up on the offer. I haven't seen Debbie and Mike for over a year so it would be really nice to catch up with them, and I don't have to work the next two days so if it takes me an extra day to get home, I can live with that. So really the layover turned out to be a blessing!
It also looks like one of my best friends from here might be coming with me to Nicaragua. I hope so. She's never been before and it's always great to see how much people are just blown away by their first visit there. So fun! :)
All I want to do right now is take a nap but I can't. I have to leave in about 5 minutes for an Arbonne meeting with my sponsor and my new Buisness Builder I am signing on today, then it's back up to the church to do some volunteer work, then we have our New Community service tonight for Christmas Carols and Communion and finally a mandatory Music Team meeting before I can come home, take a hot shower and fall into bed. I had a bad bout of insomnia last night and so only slept about 3 1/2 hours so I am just a zombie right now. Hopefully that just means I'll sleep like a baby tonight :)

Wheeeee!!!!

I AM GOING TO NICARAGUA!!!!! A friend of mine who is undoubtedly the most generous person in the Northern Hemispehere is buying my ticket in exchange for my helping out on a project he is working on. I am so giddy with excitement right now! :)

Isamar's Birthday

Today I was very sad that I couldn't be in Nicaragua. It's Isamar's 13th Birthday. My sweet little girl is a TEENAGER now! I had really wanted to be there for her birthday and I know she had been hoping for that too, but it didn't work out this year. I am hoping and praynig that this time next year I will be in a financial position to be able to take an extended vacation in Nicaragua and spend Christmas with all the kids and be there for Isamar's birthday and the other kids who have December birthdays. It's looking a little more hopful for me to be able to go for a short time in January (just a week or two but that's okay, it'll be great to go at all!!). I am soooooo praying for that to happen. I miss the kids and my friends so much! Sometimes it physically hurts to think about how much they all mean to me and how much I wish I could spend more time with them.
Things are good, though. Work hasn't been horrible, I saw "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" on Friday night and really liked it and then I even found my Narnia Chronicles that I'd been tearing apart my house looking for and have started reading those again. And the mom of my favorite kid from the Nursery at church called me today and asked me to babysit on Saturday night. So that'll be cool. He is such a good baby. Very happy and esy going and his brother seems like a good kid too. I don't know his brother at all since I just take care of the infants on Sundays at church.
Tomorrow night is the Music Team Girls' party for all the female vocalists (not sure why we didn't include the guys. I think just because there aren't that many of them and they might be doing their own thing anyway). So it's a full and busy week. But tomorrow I get to sleep late because I am off. It's so wonderful to not have to set my alarm and to just wake up when I feel like waking up. I love that!

Carta Para mi Mejor Amiga

I told my best friend about my blog so hopefully this will be a nice suprise in my otherwise all-English blog ...

Ivonne-
Estoy tan agradecida a Dios y a ti porque nunca en mi vida he tenido una mejor amiga. He tenido muy muy muy buenas amigas pero no he tenido una MEJOR amiga como tú. Estoy tan agradeicida a Dios por te llevando en mi vida (y también mi en tuya) y estoy agradecida a ti por me aceptando como tal soy aunque tengo muchos defectos.
Estoy tan afortunada y contenta tener una mejor amiga quien es una persona:
Quien tiene un enorme corazon ...

Que tiene mucho amor para Dios, para su familia y para sus amigas ...

Quien tiene mucha compasión por todos las personas ...

Quien es tan linda en el exterior y más importantemente es tan linda en el interior ...

Quien es muy comprensiva conmigo. Aunque hablamos idiomas diferentes, eres paciente conmigo y me entiendes en todo, mis pensamientos, emociones, sientos y todos ...

Que es una incondicional amiga para mi, aunque tengo tantos defectos ...

Quien me ama incondioncalmente, a pesar de nuestras diferencias ...

En quien puedo confiar en todo, todos mis secretos ...

Con quien puedo contar, no importa que pasa ...

Quien puede me hace reír, incluso cuando me siento como llorando ...

Con quien puedo hablar, cantar, comer helado de coco, reír y también llorar ...

Con quien he compartido muchos lindos momentos y si Dios quiere, vamos a tener muchas más lindas experiencias por compartir ...

Quien amo más profundamente, como una hermana del alma ...

Quien es mi mejor de las mejores amigas y es una amiga que NUNCA voy a olvidar, por el resto de mi vida ...


Estas son algunos razones pero hay miles de razones. Pero, todos la cualidades que tu tienes que te hacen la mejor amiga en mi vida, deseo tener estas cualidades también. La verdad es que quiero ser esta tipa de amiga para ti que sos para mí. :)
Amistad verdadera es rara en este tiempo. Muchas personas dicen que ellas son tus amigas pero entonces, ellas te tracionan. Pero, yo confio en ti y en nuestra amistad y nunca voy a tracionarte, te prometo.

GRACIAS PARA TU AMISTAD. Dios te bendiga y cuidate mucho. Espero que te gustan las fotos de Pinky y las fotos de la hamaca y las preguntas interesantes y las caritas :)
Te extraño y te quiero muchisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisimo
Mando muchos gran saludos a tu familia. Te mando un abrazo enorme. Zoey manda un besito para Pinky :)
Con Gran Cariño,
Meg

My best friend Ivonne (the one who bought the hammock for me) and me in Nicaragua in September

My hammock

I am excited because the hammock stand I ordered arrived today so I was able to put up the hammock my best friend Ivonne bought for me when I was in Nicaragua last time. It's really way too big for my livingroom so I am going to need to move the stand outside but it's too cold and rainy to do it tonight and I am still sick so I am going to leave it for a couple days more. I know I'm weird too but I don't want to leave the hammock outside. I know they're really well made and they're designed to be left outside and withstand rain and weather but I want to preserve it as much as possible so I am just going to leave the stand outside and only bring the hammock itself out when I want to use it. Nicaraguan hammocks are the BEST! They're sooooooo comfy and cool looking too. Mine is especially special because it was a gift from my best friend, who is Nicaraguan. She was working at the orphanage when she bought it for me and I know it wasn't cheap for her, but she really wanted to get it for me. In fact, on my last trip before that, I had bought a hammock but Ivonne told me to give that one away because she wanted to buy me one on my next trip. So I gave that one to some friends who had just bought their first house, as a housewarming present. And then when I went to Nicaragua in September, Ivonne took me to the marketplace and bought this one for me. So many Nicaraguuses are like that, even though they have so little, they are so generous and giving. Like Ivonne, like her mom who cooks special lunches for me when I am in Nicaragua, like Isamar, my "hija" at the orphanage who gave me this really beautiful butterfly pin that I wear every day because it makes me think of her, like Luisa, a 89-year-old woman who lives in the same pueblo as the orphanage in a tiny one-room shack with her granddaughter and two great grandsons with no running water or plumbing, just a pump outside. I met her about a year and a half ago when I was in Nicaragua with a team and she gave us these beautiful flowers she had made herself from dyed cornhusks. She wouldn't take any money from us, nust just wanted to give them to us. And my friend Paula who works at the orphanage. She is a single mom with an adorable 8-year-old son, Saul. She hardly makes any money at the orphanage but before I left, she told me that when I come back next time she is going to make bunelos for me (they're my favorite Nicaraguan dessert) I could go on and on because there are just so many examples of how the Nicaraguans I have met are just so warm and loving and giving. I miss Nicaragua and my friends and the kids sooooooooooooo much. I can't wait to go back, but I don't know when that will be. Maybe, hopefully, in January, but I don't know for sure.
I also found this interesting article: http://www.nicanet.org/Katrina_and_Mitch.php It's a comparison of Hurricane Mitch 7 years ago in Nicaragua and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans this year and the hadling of the hurricanes, especially in how the poorest people were affected. Definitely an interesting read and I agree with a lot of what was said.

Randomness

It's after 2am and I can't sleep. I am still sick, actually sicker than I was on Saturday, so I have already called out for work tomorrow. UGH! I hate to miss any more work, but I njeed to rest and sleep off whatever this is. I cam home from church today and slept for a few hours and then went to bed at 9 and slept another 2 hours, which is probably why I can't sleep now, plus my stomach is really upset. So I took two Tyenol Simply Sleep and am drinking a Ginger Ale and I figure I would just write in my blog till I am sleepy again.
I keep meaning to write about this here but have forgotten to until now but I found out some really cool news. *EIGHT* kids from the orphanage are getting adopted!!! One family is taking all 8 of them, which is incredible. The family lives in VA but they're moving to Nica for 2 years to help the adoption process and then will bring the kids back here. So Brenda and Ivania, Vanessa, Manuel, Elizabeth and Eveling and also Kevin and Helena are getting adopted. I am pretty sure all the kids except Helena have parents. She has cerebal palsy and was abandoned so no one really knows anything about her family. And I think Kevin's parents live in the eastern part of Nicaragua (not Puerto Cabezas, but maybe near there?) I know the four Hernandez kids have their Mom in Managua (not sure about their Dad) and Brenda and Ivania have at least one of their parents in Managua. It's so perfect how this os working out for them. Teh adoptive family is really connecting with the birth parents and the kids will still be able to have that connection to their birth parents even when they move back here. The adoptive parents even led the four Hernandez kids' Mom to a relationship with Christ. How awesome is that?!? I can't even imagine what that must be like for those parents to first of all send their kids to live in an orphanage because they can't afford to care for them, and then to allow them to be adopted knowing that in 2 years they'll be leaving the country. It's so hard to fathom and yet that is the reality for too many families in Nicaragua (well, at least the sending their kids to live in an orphanage part, I think adoption is definitely a lot rarer). I'd say probably more than half the kids at Casa Bernabe are social orphans who stil have at least one of their parents still living. And those kids are the "lucky" ones. Too many other kids are working in the marketplace selling gum, cigarettes, bootleg CDs and DVDs, whatever else, or literally working in the middle of the streets at intersections washing people's windows when they're stopped at the traffic lights, or, even worse, are prostituted by their parents. There is one girl who used to live in the orphanage off and on, who doesn't live there anymore, who we are afraid is in that situation. It really makes you stop and realize how good we have it here, and how good most American kids have it. And for those who complain that we have poverty right here and you don't need to go to a third world country to find poverty, well, that's right, we do have poverty here, but it's nothing like having the majority of the country living in poverty. Especially this time of year when we are inundated with ads for toys and gadgets and other "must-have" gifts, it just makes me sick. While so many kids here will be whining and begging to have the latest MP3 player or Xbox or whatever, many, many many kids will be waking up in a home with dirt floors, or literally in a dump, or living on the streets. We are just so materialistic overall as a country that sometimes it really makes me ashamed. I saw on the news the other week how people were literally trampling each other over the new Xbox. I mean, come on people, IT'S A FREAKING VIDEO GAME STATION!!! Is it really worth risking serious injury for?? And for what you would spend to buy one of these video game players, a family could pay for maybe even like 6 months worh of food!!
I know this girl from my church, who is in her first year of college and she is just awesome. For the past 3 years (well, this will be her 3rd year) she has asked not to get any Christmas presents, but just to be able to go to Nicaragua and spend Christmas with the kids at the orphanage. We both got to go the year before last and it was the best Christmas I ever spent. I wasn't able to go last year or this year because of work, but I hope next year I can again. When you get away from all the materialism and glitz that we make Christmas into here, it really reminds you of what Christmas is really all about. And to see the kids just so happy that you're there with them and how they're so grateful for every little thing you do for them, I can't even imagine a better way to spend Christmas. So anyway, I know there are other kids like Summer, who are willing to "give up" Christmas presents and who are all about helping others and being a light like that to other people. And I know there are tons of people aho do su much and give so much of their time, money, talents and other resources to help people in need here and abroad. I guess this time of year I just get disgusted with the materialism of society as a whole, or at least the materialism our society presents. It really makes me wonder how the kids must view North Americans as a whole. A while back, someone had donated a Satelite TV system to the orphanage (how difficult is that to picture: kids whose primary meals are rice and beans, who live in an Oprhanage in a town that has only gotten its first phone lines within the past year who watch Satellite TV??) and when I was there last, a bunch of the kids watched Desperate Housewives. It was actually hilarious how they would "police" themselves and shut the doors to the entertainment center during all the "sex" scenes. But it kind of freaked me out (for one thing because if the orphanage director even knew they were watching that show she would have a heart attack) because if the kids are watching this kind of show, what must they be thinking about our society? It must be confusing for them, because on the one hand they have all these missions teams coming to spend time with them and they know people donate money and stuff to the orphanage but then they see shows that present materialsim and selfishness and a mentality of doing whatever you want as long as it makes you feel good. I know they must think we all have money, and comparitvely we do. I am not rich by US standards but when I am in Nica I am abe to do a lot with the money I do have, like being abke to buy enough food to throw a barbecue for the whole orphanage and feed beef, salad, beans, plantains, dessert and beverages to 77 kids and spend just slightly over $100. But sometimes I wonder if they think the majority of us there in the US live like what they see on TV.

Sick

Well, I am home sick again from work. Ugh. I was out all week because of my back and was planning to go back today but woke up with a killer cold so I have been sleeeping and drinking lots of OJ. I am starting to feel a little better now. I need to go go back to work on Monday, I can't afford to miss any more since I have used up all my paid time off.
I do have my next round of MRIs scheduled for this week. I went ahead and scheduled all three for the same date. Which means 2 1/2 hours in the tube. Not fun but at least I'll get it over with. Then I have my appointment with Dr. Vincent the following week so hopefully I can talk with him about getting short-term leave. I know all the stress from work is not doing anything to help my back so if I can take 2 or 3 weeks and just rest, hopefully I will feel better.
I think this is also my last 6-month MRI. As long as my tumors haven't grown, we can just monitor them once a year, which would be great. That's what I am praying for. I am still hoping to hear if there will be clinical trials sometime soon for this drug that is supposed to be able to stop the growth of current tumors and prevent new ones from forming. They already know the drug works for cancer patients but now they're thinking it can help with neurofibromatosis too. I'll have to remember to ask Dr. Vincent next week to see if he knows anything about that. He might not, since I think he only has one other NF patient besides me.

Candida and Mykaling, pretending to be butterflies and taking time out for a photo; Casa Bernabe Orphanage; Veracruz, Masaya, Nicaragua

Me and Jonathan; Casa Bernabe Orphanage; Veracruz, Masaya, Nicaragua

Me and Socorro; Casa Bernabe Orphanage; Veracruz, Masaya, Nicaragua

This is Weird

I don't know if there is something wrong with my blog. I just left a comment on another blog and when I clicked on the link to take me back to my blog, it brought up an older version of my blog, one that did not include my most 2 or 3 recent posts. When I went to the edit posts link, they showed up there, but the main page is all wrong, it's the old template I had been using and my recent posts aren't there. This is so weird.
Anyway, I was going to write a real post but now I have to figure out this problem instead. Then it's off to California Pizza Kitchen and to see "Rent" with Vinny, Mark and Clyde.
I think I am going to have a Raspberry Mojito with dinner tonight because they are just so yummy!