• 30Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0


    Chiang Mai Sunset from the IGO roof


    Chiang Mai Sunset a few minutes later

    Different qualities (First sunset):
    Medium resolution, high quality (3000×573, 398 KB)
    High resolution, low quality (11,534×2204, 895 KB)
    High resolution, high quality (11,534×2204, 14.4 MB)

    Different qualities (Later sunset):
    Medium resolution, high quality (3000×614, 421 KB)
    High resolution, low quality (11,028×2256, 917 KB)
    High resolution, high quality (11,028×2256, 5.69 MB)

  • 30Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    Shelly hilariously and truthfully wrote:

    You know you’re living in Chiang Mai when………
    – You’re taking a shower and yell, “Hey! Who took all the cold water?”
    – You realize you’ve been dreaming at night about pancakes and french fries.
    – You can’t remember the last time you wore a pair of shoes for more than 15 minutes.
    – You’re totally convinced the “manna from Heaven” in the Bible was pizza.
    – The temperature in the dorms gets down to 80 and you feel like you really need a blanket.

    I’d like to add my own:
    – Most everyone bows politely to you and says “Sawati Krup”
    – When you are down in the kitchen at night getting a drink and you hear a noise and see a shadow flicker past the window and you whirl to look, it is one of your Mooban’s (neighborhood) security men patrolling on his bicycle
    – Your Buddhist neighbor brings tropical fruit to welcome you to the neighborhood
    – Whenever something glass breaks, you yell “5 baht!” (Because that’s how much the Coke bottles cost.)
    – You can never remember which way to motion with your hand for a taxi (song-taew)–one is an appropriate way and the other way means… well, something else
    – When taking change from a clerk, your left hand always comes rushing up to accept the money in addition to your right hand because you forgot yet again that you’re supposed to handle money with two hands, because it has the picture of the king on it
    – There are two times as many fans in the room as lights
    – You are treated to the intriguing sight of a small fan bursting into flames (and subsequent frantic activity) on someone’s bed because they forgot and plugged a 110 fan into a 220 outlet
    – You hear a frog croaking and you look around for a little lady selling stuff and rubbing a stick on a wooden thingamabopper
    – You hear a constant stream of complaints from a certain person who was unfortunate enough to receive his tetanus shot in his posterior, much to his continued discomfort

    A large roach/beetle (a big bug!) started crawling up the wall behind two females. This precipitated about 15 minutes of urgent activity by some noble male rescuers who embarked on a mission to capture the bug in a Coke bottle without touching it or slaying it. Darrell captured some hilarious video of the ensuing endeavor.

    (By the way, if you are at all interested in life in Thailand or in IGO, be sure to be reading the IGO blog aggregator.)

  • 27Apr

    A missionary lady was living in China and she was feeling really down. So she went to the market and did some shopping to cheer up. She came to one shop where she saw a small, cute puppy. She told the people at the shop that she wanted to do some more shopping, but she wanted that puppy. She went and did her shopping and when she came back, they had the puppy ready for her: butchered, on a stick, and in a plastic bag. Needless to say, her objective of lifting her spirits through shopping was not accomplished.

    Nevin told us this story to illustrate to us that it was a bad idea for our stories (which we are writing as practice readings for our TESOL students) to include dogs as pets, as our Asian TESOL students might not empathize too well with that.

  • 27Apr

    Did you know that a simple five word sentence in English has five different meanings based upon tone and stressed words? I’ve always thought of English as a straightforward language without all those silly, confusing tonal distinctions. But I was wrong. Check this out:

    I didn’t tell her that. (…Someone else told her.)
    I didn’t tell her that. (… You said I did. or …But now I will!)
    I didn’t tell her that. (.. I didn’t say it (I might have emailed it); she could have inferred it)
    I didn’t tell her that. (… I told someone else.)
    I didn’t tell her that. (… I told her something else.)

  • 27Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    If you are trying to cross the street at night and there is an approaching car that blinks its lights at you, it doesn’t mean they’re letting you go ahead, like it would in the States. It means they are warning you that if you step out into the street, they will run you over.

    Don’t lick stamps. They have pictures of the king on them.

    (btw, we are getting our Thai cultural lessons from our TESOL teacher. He (Nevin Bowman) has lived in Thailand for a number of years. We are very fortunate to have him. He has a Masters in English and is a former professor of English at Syracuse University.)

  • 25Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 2

    I wrote and (thought I) posted this post on April 20 at 6:53 PM. However, I just saved it as a draft instead of posting it. So here it is.

    Here’s what I’ve been up to:

    After coming in from Costa Rica late Saturday night, I packed for IGO. Tuesday night I slept in a bed. Wednesday night I spent working on the SMBI yearbook. The 2.5 hour drive home Thursday was very interesting. I stopped in Winchester to sleep for 15 minutes because I was weaving all over the road and had horrible reaction times, even though I was blasting music and A/C and hitting myself. I dropped off instantly, despite copious amounts of caffeine in my system. I groggily woke half an hour later to my cell phone ringing. The only time I was more disoriented in my life was when I came out of surgery. I had trouble breathing, I couldn’t think straight, etc. Poor mom on the other end of the phone–she was somewhat at a loss to communicate with my broken phrases and thoughts. I cranked the A/C full blast, which sobered me up and started my brain working again. I was very glad she had called–much more oversleeping would have been ruinous. I only had budgeted an hour to be at home before leaving for the airport. I felt loads better after the nap.

    I got home and finished packing for 8 months at IGO. The whole family took me to the airport. I hopped a short commuter flight to JFK, New York. I sat beside a “secular” naturalized Israeli lady the whole way. She was on her way to Tel Aviv to visit family. We had a long spiritual discussion–she is an ardent post-modernist. I tried to witness to her, but she believed religion was simply a good social/cultural tool to form orderly and moral societies. She was an ardent pacifist, which allowed me to take a page from Paul’s Mars Hill discourse and play up pacifist/non-resistance parallels. However, that was just one more thing in which our “relative, self- & society-determined morals” coincided. I hearkened back to the excellent book The New Tolerance by Josh McDowell and tried to draw out all the egregious post-modernist contradictions, but they were all neatly deflected. Through this time I was praying and I finally appealed to her “God-shaped hole” which she acknowledged. One side of her family were Holocaust survivors and the other half did not survive. That is one of the big reasons she believes there is not a God. I drew from many Cliff Schrock classes to explain to her how God interacts with people and why there is so much pain in world that has an all-powerful, all-loving God.

    When I got to JFK, I had a 4 hour layover which I spent laptop-ing. At 11:45 PM, I boarded a 747 for Taipei, Taiwan with a stop in Anchorage, Alaska. I sat beside a quiet American man in an exit row. The multitude of China Airlines stewardesses, in their skirts and hair up in a bun, were polite and helpful, but their English was somewhat less than ideal–one time I asked for apple juice and got orange juice. They were quite generously going seat to seat handing out glasses of wine. It was 6 hours to Anchorage and then 10 hours to Taipei. The sun finally caught up to us several hours before we made Taiwan landfall. It was a gorgeous, cloud-studded sunrise. I got to Taipei at 6 AM. On the way off the plane I met an American of Philippine (I believe) ethnicity. He was a Christian Realtor who knows a Mennonite home-builder from Anchorage by the name of Dennis (?) Byler. He wished me the Lord’s blessing as I ministered in Thailand. He was on his way to Manila to visit his family.


    Relaxing in my comfy exit row seat from JFK to Taipei.


    A feeble attempt to record the sunrise

    Next I found a small, free internet room which is sponsored by a tech store located in the Chiang Kai-Shek airport. It has two desktops with net access and free wireless. That’s where I am now. Blessings to all! Thanks for those that prayed for me when I was driving home without sleep. I will soon post the rest of the Costa Rica updates.

    I board my flight for Chiang Mai at 9:20.

  • 25Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    Day 20
    Wednesday

    The light continental breakfast provided by the hotel the next morning was a letdown compared to our four star experience. We then headed to the recording studio. It was the longest recording day SMBI has ever had. We recorded our Spanish songs and then re-recorded some of those in English. At the end, we record Heartbeat of God! We had never practiced this song before and we didn’t even have the complete music for it! Kevin did a solo on the second verse. It was funny in the absurdity of the situation. He did an awesome job, of course. After we were all done, I petitioned to let us listen to the hitherto unreleased “Worthy is the Lamb” which we recorded last term (in a single take!). We sat in blissful, restful relaxation, listening to the fruits of our previous labors, after a hard day of recording.

    Then we headed to a restaurant where Jenna joined us for tour banquet! We had a wonderful banquet. We presented with a gift of a framed picture of the group at Volcano Arenal. It was matted with our signatures.


    Brian addressing us at banquet


    Banquet


    Banquet


    Banquet


    Urie and Delilah


    Urie and Delilah

    We shared tour wrapup stuff on the bus ride back to SMBI. When we got back to SMBI, we gave a short three song program for the 5th termers and they gave a short two song sampler for us. They wrote an extra verse specifically for us in one of their songs, which was really cool.

    That, folks, was the end of the SMBI 4th term, 2007 tour to Costa Rica!

  • 25Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    Day 19
    Tuesday

    Tuesday morning, Urie and the queen were reunited!


    Urie and the Queen!

    Tuesday afternooon, my family brought me up to the Lancaster area and I rejoined choir for a last program at a church. Before the program, we had a wonderful prayer and share time telling about the many miracles God did on tour. There were so many people I knew at that program, it was almost overwhelming. That night we had a rowdy bus ride to the hotel. At one point, we stopped at a gas station and did a Chinese fire drill around the bus, much to the amusement of the customers inside the station. When we got to our hotel, Benji Beiler (a 4th term student that didn’t go on tour) met us as we came off the bus and gave us our choice of a double cheeseburger or a chicken sandwich. He had gone to McDonalds and got 25 double cheeseburgers and 25 fish sandwiches. When he gave his order to the young teen behind the counter, the employee supplied Benji with a few choice words. As we sat in our hotel rooms that night, we watched online streaming video on my laptop about the VT attack.

  • 25Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    Day 18
    Monday

    In the morning, I took Brianna, Lucinda, and Anita to Laurel, MD to the hotel where the rest of the chorus was. Steven took Jenna to Floyd. After greeting various members of the chorus as if it had been years since we had seen them last, rather than days, I went home and finished packing for IGO. The rest of the chorus went to Philly that evening, hung out, and gave a program. The high point of the evening for several of the guys was when someone yelled for them to quick look out the window. They all rushed to the windows and stuck their heads out and looked down into the street. Some mystery people on the roof proceeded to dump buckets of water on this nice, fat target of a row of heads.


    Hanging out at Philly


    Kevin gracing us with guitar playing


    Warming up in Philly



    The two water-dumping culprits–The deans!

  • 25Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    Day 17
    Sunday


    Trina playing the piano at the Miami hotel


    Waiting at the airport–more delayed flights

    As the chorus was ready to board their flight from Miami to Baltimore, the gate agent announced first class was boarding. The entire chorus got up and proceeded to the jetway to board their first class seats (the entire first class was filled by the chorus). A man was heard to mutter at the sight of a horde of Mennonites going into first class, “All that good alcohol going to waste!” They then boarded their flights—which had by then been reduced from three to two—and proceeded to sit on the runway because their flights were delayed by a large storm the was threatening the east. Finally they got the go ahead to go, which they did with much relief. They got to their hotel really late that night.


    We were greeted by a bus that was decked out by our wonderful fellow 4th termers who didn’t go on tour


    We were greeted by a bus that was decked out by our wonderful fellow 4th termers who didn’t go on tour


    We were greeted by a bus that was decked out by our wonderful fellow 4th termers who didn’t go on tour

    In the meantime, Jenna’s little entourage relaxed at our house all day, except I packed for IGO.


    Hanging out at my place

  • 25Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    Day 16
    Saturday

    We got up and had a gorgeous poolside breakfast. Waitresses flowed around us, refilling our water glasses, and serving us coffee.


    Our poolside breakfast


    Our poolside breakfast

    We went to the airport and uneventfully flew to Miami. We went through customs without incident—except we found as we were gathering our luggage that 1-2 members’ luggage had been left in San Jose. The desk agent had forgotten to put the tracking tag on the bags. Then the group split up. Most of the group went to a Miami hotel for the night. They found that ironically the hotel’s staff spoke less English than the staff of the San Jose hotel we stayed at. Our little group continued on to Dulles that night. My brother Benji, along with Steven, my good friend and Jenna’s fiance, picked us up at the airport. We had a relaxing evening at our place, which is built with asthma in mind—my dad has asthma—with all wood floors.


    Our AA plane that took us from San Jose to Miami


    A musician at our gate who was playing classical guitar and selling CDs


    Making a phone call from Miami


    Some of those that spent the most time helping Jenna


    Glad they’re so exact


    The hotel most of the group stayed at in Miami


    The hotel most of the group stayed at in Miami


    The hotel most of the group stayed at in Miami


    What some people do for fun…


    Frosties at Wendy’s!

  • 25Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    Day 15
    Friday


    Urie having chapel at Elijah’s Cave

    Friday we got up with the earnest expectation that we would be flying back to the States. But first we had to give our last program at the Heredia plaza. After giving that, we snuck into the beautiful cathedral that headed the plaza and sang several songs. The acoustics were amazing.


    Heredia plaza


    Singing in the plaza


    Singing in the plaza


    Urie directing us in the cathedral


    Hanging out with the street kids


    A strange looking individual who found himself disposed to wade through the fountain


    The group in the plaza


    Our bus boys

    After the program, we got fraps at a local shop—a rare treat. Jenna rejoined us from the Kornelsons and we took some group pictures in the plaza. Then we headed to the airport! Soon after arriving at the airport, we found that our flight had been delayed several hours. Some of us went ahead and checked in and were back at the gate before we found that our entire flight had been canceled. We went back out through customs—they checked our info, but little else—and regathered our luggage from baggage claim. I then spent the next several hours applying everything dad has taught me in the travel industry to help get the best flights out the next day. I also called (after getting a prepaid calling card from a vendor) our hotel in Laurel, MD and canceled. Unfortunately, I was 25 minutes after the canceling deadline, so we didn’t get a refund for the one night. I emailed dad and asked him to try to get a refund, which he did by booking a later night which we needed and applying the non-refundable nights to it. Anyway, Brian and I spent several hours at the counter working out flights. We couldn’t get to Miami until tomorrow and we couldn’t get to Baltimore ’til Sunday (two days later). It was spring break and all the college kids were coming home from Miami. We went through countless iterations of itineraries. We finally settled upon splitting the group into four groups. We then proceeded to our four star hotel in taxis which American Airlines had provided. We also got $20 of meal vouchers per person. We had a very, very nice supper in the fancy hotel dining room.


    Waiting at the airport


    Waiting at the airport


    Making arrangements


    A sample of the multiplicity of extra lanes that San Jose highways provide


    Bored in the hotel lobby, waiting for check in to be finished


    Bored in the hotel lobby, waiting for check in to be finished


    Bored in the hotel lobby, waiting for check in to be finished


    Our beautiful hotel


    Supper

    That night Jenna had to go to the ER again. This time it was via taxi. As soon as the taxi driver heard the destination and heard it was an emergency, he was off. To say it was a wild taxi ride would be to make a gross understatement. He was weaving in and out of traffic on the highway at great speeds. At one point Jenna stopped breathing and Lucinda had to give her multiple Epi injections to reopen her passageway. The taxi driver’s worried brown eyes took in the scene in his rearview mirror and redoubled his speed. They soon got to a traffic jam and the driver muttered, “No good.” and took to the back alleys. At red traffic lights and stop signs, he would hop into the oncoming lane of traffic, flash his lights at oncoming cars, toot his horn, and stick his hand out the window to motion them to the side. The oncoming traffic meekly pulled to the side of the road to let him through. The ride to the ER which normally took half an hour was accomplished in 15 minutes.

    While administering the epi in the taxi, Lucinda spilled the rest and the intransigent ER doc refused to give her any more. So when they got back to the hotel and I heard what happened, I asked the front desk if any farmacias are still open this late at night; the hotelier said that yes there were some open just 2 km away. When I got outside the hotel, the only person that spoke both English and Spanish was this tough looking guy that had tattoos all up and down his arms. I asked him to tell the taxi driver to take me to the nearest open farmacia and then wait while I went in and got something and then bring me back to the hotel. He rattled something in Spanish to the taxi driver, which seemed far too short to have contained the careful three part instructions I had given him to translate. I got in and we were off. After about 30 minutes—I didn’t know the exact conversion of km’s to miles, but I knew 2 km’s probably shouldn’t take 30 minutes—as we began to go through a rough looking section of town with lots of scantily clad women on the street, I could just imagine this tough man who had done my translating playing a cruel little trick on a member of this big Mennonite choir that was at the hotel. I could just imagine him telling the taxi driver that I wanted to engage in other activities than acquiring medication. Finally my fears were allayed as we pulled up to a small farmacia. I got out, went inside, and they had no “epinefrina”. So I went back out and indicated with motions to my taxi driver my lack of success. He motioned my back in the taxi and we drove up the road to another farmacia—this one inside of Clinica Biblica. I went in and asked for epinefrina. They said I had to have a prescription. I argued with them: of course I don’t have to have a prescription! I got it elsewhere without a prescription! The law doesn’t require it! The pharmacist was sympathetic, but refused to budge. I trudged through the halls and finally found the ER. I looked through a number of rooms before I finally found the ER doctor. I explained the situation to him and he wrote out a prescription for me. This time I got two ampules. It was really frustrating to pay 12 times as much for the ER doctor as I did for the medicine—especially when the doctor was so unnecessary—but it was definitely worth the money. I went back out to my patient taxi driver, held up the medicine, and said happily, “Esta bien! Gracias, lo siento…” And then on the way to the car, I muttered, “Doctor loco…”, which he chuckled at. I arrived safely back at the hotel at about 1 AM. I delivered the epi to Jenna’s room. (I later found that Clinica Biblica was the same ER that they had gone to and the doctor that gave me the prescription patient-unseen was the same doctor that refused to give Nurse Lucinda the epi.)

    I then got on the phone with Dad. He had found us (Jenna, Lucinda, Brianna, Anita, and I) first class tickets that very same day to Dulles—which is 40 minutes from our house—for the very next day!

  • 25Apr
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0


    Here’s a sweet shot taken by Anita on Day 10

    Day 14
    Thursday

    We got up quite early—sleeping in such beds was somewhat less than relaxing and we were not interested in staying in them any longer than absolutely necessary. I got up and took a shower. I was looking forward to my first warm shower in a very, very long time. I dutifully retrieved Ben’s leatherman and turned the protruding hot water stem. After I turned it on, I waited for at least two minutes before any water came from the pipe that haphazardly stuck out of the wall and whose apparent purpose in life was to serve as econo-showerhead. When I say econo-shower head, I’m not talking 26 different massage settings—pulse, stream, lots of streams, power-washer, sprinkle, etc—just in case you were envisioning the wrong sort of thing. Well, after two minutes of waiting, water arrived. Hallelujah! Except one problem: that was the hot water thingamabopper (it would be unfair to call it a knob since the knob had already been detached and moved on to the great shower in the sky) I had turned and the water coming out was not hot. It wasn’t even warm. It was the same temperature as the cold water, which I proceeded to turn on as well. So I did my normal thing of very gingerly, but quickly, washing one appendage at a time. After emerging from the shower, I felt clean. Stepping on the very grungy tile floor made me feel very unclean. So I carefully dried off and then placed my towel on the floor to stand on.

    I then returned to the little restaurant at which I had eaten lunch the previous day and I ate breakfast. From thence, I joined some ladies that were going fabric shopping because I wanted to go fabric shopping for dresses for my sisters. However, being Beachy, all the pretty stuff was too shekich and all the un-shekich stuff was too ugly. So I didn’t buy any. We gathered back at the hotel, squeezed into the vans, and headed back to the border. We then re-crossed the old bridge and were reunited with our bus driver and the two bus boys in Costa Rica.


    A dog obediently sitting outside the restaurant. It apparently had received some previous lessons on the matter.


    Reunited with our bus boys!


    Are the oranges really that sour?


    Justin’s bus boredom created many sweet photo-ops and interesting situations.


    Hey, it gets hot on the bus.


    Big leaf


    Kevin chillaxing on the luggage

    On the way back to San Jose, we stopped at Las Palmas Pintas—The Painted Palms—and took a group picture. The Painted Palms, as you can see from the pictures, were indeed painted. We were given sober instructions to not get wet there. Certain people interpreted this admonition rather liberally and assumed it meant don’t get wet before the picture. So after we took the picture, they got thoroughly wet.


    Las Palmas Pintas


    The group


    Those liberal interpreters


    The deans


    Urie & Delilah


    Friend shot


    The painted palms


    Our dear dean


    Getting stopped at a police checkpoint–each one had to file past and show their passport

    As we resumed our journey, it began to rain very, very heavily. This presented a unique conundrum: leave the windows open and get drenched, or close the windows and get smothered. For the most part we chose an unhappy medium and left the windows partially open at times it rained only kittens and puppies, resulting in getting wet and being uncomfortably warm. This is in contrast to breaking out the lifejackets (this covered both extremes—either the rainwater or our sweat in either scenario would have required the use of seats as flotation devices). We saw several accidents, but this seemed to faze our driver only a little: he allowed an extra meter or so when passing on double yellow lines. One amusing thing during this time is that it gave me the liberty to spritz others and they assumed it came from the windows. After I would spritz them, the victim would squint and glare at the windows trying to figure out which was open just a bit too far. My gleeful laughter would finally clue them in that the culprit was somewhat more animate than a window and thus much more able to be reviled effectively, which they proceeded to do.


    A somewhat less than ideal parking job

    Brianna, as she is wont to do, declared a “Bless the Deans Day” and this was the day. (Flashback: Last night, Brianna, Krista, Myrna, and I roamed town searching for gifts for the deans. At one store where we had finally found some decent gifts after much searching, Kevin (one of the deans!) and Carolyn (another dean!) and whole humongous horde of girls entered the store. We quickly and slyly concealed the gifts and tried to converse in normal ways with the intruders. We had the added complication of Kevin trying to get rid of some of the girls that comprised his surrounding horde. The ladies weren’t allowed on the streets without a guy because of the condition of the town and there was an acute shortage of guys. Kevin was not endowed with the unique skill of shopping in 5 different stores at once, as this horde of girls wished to do. So he was trying to offload them on to me. Given our secret mission, this was somewhat of a delicate proposition.) One of our choir members gave Brian (tour director/head dean) a mask of a colorful and unknown creature. He had some difficulty speaking through the non-existent mouth hole, but he went right to work growling out orders and announcements in a manner somewhat more ferocious than was his normal meek manner. Shortly thereafter, we stopped at, horror of culturally unadventurous horrors, a Burger King! To our credit, it was our first such stop of the trip, and was thus a permissible, saturated fat compromise based upon a built-up calorie deficit of rice and beans for days upon end.


    Our fierce and scary dean

    When we got back to the twisty mountain streets of Heredia, we eventually found ourselves nearly removing the bus mirrors as we squeezed through a narrow gate into the Mennonite compound. Rolling green lawns and mansions greeted our eyes as we rolled through this mecca of rich Mennonitedom. We stopped at the Kornelsons and picked Jenna and Lucinda up, who were greeted with enthusiastic cheering as they boarded the bus.

    After that we went back to Elijah’s cave for the evening. We had dorm meetings that night and the first thing on the agenda was to pray for Jenna. She had got worse and they had to rush her to the ER. Now, it’s time for another flashback.

    Remember Day 10? We were in the small town of Pital giving a program on a Sunday morning. Mom had been reading my updates and read about Jenna. She had dropped me an email suggesting we get an EpiPen because it might save Jenna’s life. I had no idea what an EpiPen was, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. I found it was an auto-injector of epinephrine—synthetic adrenaline. I asked Nurse Lucinda if we should get an EpiPen. She said, “Nah, it’s probably not necessary. We have an EpInhaler and I’ve never seen Jenna get bad fast enough that she couldn’t just take an EpInhaler.” I had this strange, strange compulsion to ignore her and get an EpiPen anyway. So in Pital that Sunday morning, I corralled my first cousin once removed in law, and we went to both of Pital’s farmacias—neither of them had an EpiPen. It was somewhat difficult for my cousin to translate the medical terms, but we managed. The next day, Day 11 in Heredia, I struck off on my own and spent and hour or two going to 6-7 different farmacias. It was most difficult trying to communicate with my feeble Spanish and their non-existent or miniscule English. Finally I linked up with Leo—our tour coordinator for the second half of tour—and we found a farmacia that had an older pharmacist who knew what he was talking about. He told Leo that they didn’t have epinephrine auto-injectors, but they did have epinephrine in little glass capsules and could sell me a syringe. I bought the epi and the syringe for $3. When we got back to Elijah’s cave, I gave them to Lucinda. Through a misunderstanding, the epi went into someone’s backpack down to Panama and back. This current day’s night was the first time Lucinda had the epi back in her possession.

    On the way to the ER, Jenna’s throat closed entirely and she totally stopped breathing. There was no way, in that condition she could take an EpInhaler, so Lucinda administered her first intramuscular injection of her life. This reopened Jenna’s throat and saved her life. When they were done at the ER, she returned to the Kornelsons instead of Elijah’s cave for the night. It was so clearly God stringing all these improbable things together to save Jenna’s life:

    1. Prompting me to write the Costa Rica updates (despite it taking time from tour)
    2. Mom suggesting the EpiPen
    3. God prompting me to do the non-logical thing, ignore the sound medical opinion of the nurse, and get the epi
    4. The epi going all the way down to Panama, and Jenna not needing it ’til we got back

    More flower pictures below the fold.

    Read more »

  • 24Apr
    Categories: General Comments: 0

  • 24Apr


    Row of sandals… Incarnational living… No shoes inside…

    No A/C is the uncomfortable side of incarnational living, but no shoes inside is the comfortable side.