Tim in Caracas

I've been in Caracas for the past few days and am about to head to a Monastery with all the leaders in InnerCHANGE for a week. My time in Caracas has been very good. The first two days I got to experience ministry with the team, play music, visit some families, learn some greetings. Last night was a party to welcome all the InnerCHANGE leaders and several venezuelan families came over. The people here are always ready for a party, laughter, singing and dancing. In other places I've visited, like Cambodia, it has been important to be pretty buttoned up in terms of volume and personality. But here, the louder and more outgoing the better.

Last night I also saw a man being chased by another man who was yelling at him and waving a knife. There is a constant awareness of the presence of violence here. Most families have sons who have died, and sons who have killed. Mostly the violence is related to robbery or vengence, but it's also unpredictable leaving people unsettled. All of the older timers on the team have been heldup at gunpoint.

We visited a family that Jenny had seen when she was here, their lives are hard. They live in a makeshift house and have many children. We visited yesterday because it was the littlest girls birthday. She is turning 3 and was sick, sweating from a fever, and very cautious with anyone who wasn't her father. Birgit, the teamleader here, has faithfully celebrated each childs birthday for years, so Jenny and I both visted the family for a birthday celebration. The poverty of this family is grinding, but their community group is working to move them to a new house. Each neighborhood is divided into small neighborhood groups that make some decisions about resources and programs in thier neighborhood.

I return to San Francsico next thursday, and am looking forward to being back with my family. Jenny's birthday is Sunday the 26th, so pop her an email if you remember: jenandal@mac.com

Here and doing well

After a long trip with American Airlines (which needs it's own blog post) I'm here. Yesterday I went with Cameron and John to visit a family and we stopped to play music with some friends of friends. The culture here is very warm and enviting, wave at everyone, smile always, greet with enthusiasm. After spending so much time on Salesforce Development for the past few months, it has been so refreshing to not be on my computer but to be out and about.

Momma, in real life I don't like the pizza.

Said to jenny at dinner: "Momma, in real life I don't like the pizza".

Jenny's Venezuela trip update (2 months late)

I just read over my entry that I wrote while I was in Venezuela, and I
really didn't get far on it. This much later it's hard to remember
exactly what I thought of everything, but the basic impression I came
away with was that it would be very difficult to live there. I don't
know if I'm starting to romanticize it, but somehow I still feel like
I want to continue pursuing the idea. It would require a lot of major
adjustments to live there (things like boiling water to wash dishes
and takes baths, making a 30 minute outing to get mail, having to get
all of our groceries to the house by public transportation, planning
high water usage things around when the city is pumping in the water,
etc), but I've talked to a couple of people since being in Venezuela
who've helped me to realize that taking 6 months to adjust to a new
culture, language, and way of life is actually very common for
missionaries, and not something to feel guilty about. Probably the
scarier thing, though, is the level of violence. I didn't witness any
violence while I was there, but if we moved there, it would only be a
matter of time.

I think the biggest thing that helped me feel like moving our family
to Venezuela could actually be do-able was Tim's idea that we could
home school the kids for the first 6 months we're there. If we go,
we'd most likely go in the middle of the 2010-2011 school year, and
we'd go on tourist visas. The thought of having to rush down there to
get the kids in school before they give away their spots was really
overwhelming, plus the fact that they might not even be able to get
into school as tourists (even the private schools are partially
government funded). With the idea of home schooling, it takes off the
pressure to rush down, so we can go when we're ready, and we have
until the following school year to sort out visas and school
enrollment. I was also really worried about how our kids would do
with the schools there, but the idea of giving them a semester or so
of home school while they get used to the culture and the neighborhood
and then put them into school seems much more manageable for them (In
other words, I don't feel like I'd be being such a cruel mom.) During
that semester we could also find local tutors who could help ease them
into the culture of the schools there and get them ready to start
school there. (ie They could do things like teaching them standard
penmanship which is very important there. Even high school students
get penmanship homework.)

One thing that the InnerChange team does in Venezuela is what they
call "tarea dirigida" which is a time when they help neighborhood kids
with homework. They also read them stories and sing songs. Every
Tuesday and Thursday afternoon kids show up with their homework. Some
go because they need the help with their homework. Some go because
it's the only place they have books read to them. Others go because
it's a safe place for them to be, unlike their homes. That time was
something that seemed right up my alley. I had lots of ideas of
things I could do during that time. It would also be a great way for
our kids to meet neighborhood kids. (Kids didn't seem to hang out in
the streets much, so we'd have to figure out ways for Alexina and John
David to make friends.) My favorite quote from my trip happened
during that time. I was reading a book to a couple of girls. In the
book a sunflower grows, and the book calls it magic. I asked them if
they thought it was magic. They weren't sure what to think, so I
asked them who they think makes flowers grow. They still seemed
confused, so I asked them who created flowers, and trees, and animals
and me and you. They thought and looked at each other and thought
some more. Then, suddenly one of them figured it out. She lit up and
said, "Simon Bolivar!?"

The thing that touched me the most on my trip was my visit to the
family whose son is in the hospital (from the prayer request I posted
yesterday). They're a family of, I believe, 10 (8 kids and 2 parents)
living in extreme poverty. Their house was only barely a house, it
has a wall on each side because it's between two other houses, and
they have some pieces of wood and corrugated metal patched together to
make a front wall and roof. There wasn't really a back wall to the
kitchen - you basically walked outside to get to the sleeping area
which I didn't go into. I found out later that the mother, Marlene,
struggles with mental illness, so this isn't always the case, but when
I went, she was very welcoming and cleared off barrels and benches so
that we could all have a place to sit (while we enjoyed the birthday
cake for the oldest son - Birgit had made it, knowing that the family
would have forgotten the boy's birthday.) John, Birgit's husband, had
brought his guitar, so we sang songs led by John's guitar and Manuel's
(the father's) voice as he cradled and kissed his new born baby girl.
After we left Birgit commented that they may be lacking a lot of
things in their house, but one thing that's not lacking is love. That
was clear even from watching them just for a few minutes.

The last 3 months and the next two (by Jenny)

I apologize for taking so long to finish writing about my Venezuela trip. I don't mean this as a pity party or as an excuse, (Well, maybe I do kind of mean it as an excuse!), but I think a brief over-view of the last 3 months might be helpful to catch you all up on what's been going on in our lives, and why it's been so difficult for me to get time to write.

• January 2nd - Alexina was diagnosed with bronchitis while we were in Montana
• January 5th - we got stuck in Denver for a day when our flight to SF was canceled
• Rest of January - Alexina was in and out of school since she couldn't quite get over her cough after having bronchitis I was working on filling out both the InnerChange application and the school district application to be a sub, both of which are very involved.
• February 7-15th - I was in Venezuela - Tim was home with the kids - Alexina was home all week with stomach flu.
• February 17th - Alexina's teacher was put on bed rest in the hospital at 28 weeks of pregnancy. (40 weeks is full term. She was in the hospital until the baby was born at 32.5 weeks. He's doing fine, but she's out for the rest of the year.) By coincidence??? I was getting my fingerprints done to work as a sub in the same hour she was getting rushed to the hospital.
• February 19th - Alexina's 7th birthday party sleep-over Anne of Green Gables bash. (Yes, we did it on a school night - they stayed home the next day - we didn't have an open week-end night for a month and she really wanted a sleep over.)

• February 24th - my fingerprints cleared and after many hours of phone calls, I got my pin number so I could start subbing in Alexina's class to replace the semi-competent non Spanish speaking sub they'd been having. I subbed 12 of the next 20 school days in Alexina's class while juggling my Tuesday literacy class I've been teaching for years and John David's half-day pre-school schedule.

• February 26th - took JD in for a check-up and shots, but they couldn't give them to him because he had a fever.

• March 23rd - I took JD to urgent care with an eye infection.

• March 25th-29th - We had a wonderful vacation in Napa with the Rundle family (a family from the InnerChange LA team). While we were there, Alexina and the Rundle's daughter Zoe both had terrible allergies, which for Alexina means a cough.

• March 31st - Alexina's cough didn't get any better when we got home, and it was joined by a fever, so I took her to urgent care where they diagnosed her with pneumonia. Her fever's been up and down all week, but finally seems to be gone. Now she just has the cough which they say could last 3-4 weeks!

• April 6th-10th It's Spring break this week! Which is wonderful, but between our Napa trip, Alexina's pneumonia, and Spring break, I'll have had 2 1/2 weeks with out almost any kid-free time. Today Tim's taking the day off work to give me a break.

• April 15th - We found someone for me to job share with, so starting the 15th, I'll be teaching Alexina's class every morning and another teacher will be doing the afternoons. We'll do that for the last 8 weeks of the school year, finishing June 9th.

Ok, enough of the pity party! The wonderful thing is that we have so much help from our church that I've been able to keep subbing and stay sane through most of these illnesses, and none of them have been serious. It's worked out really well to be able to work half days for the end of the school year, and a woman in our church will be taking over my literacy class. Also, my mother-in-law will be coming down for a week and 1/2 to help with the kids while I'm working and Tim's gone to Venezuela. (He'll be in Venezuela April 18th - 30th.)

prayer request

I just found out that the 10 year old son of a family I met in Caracas
is in the hospital. They were by far the poorest family I met there,
and they were also the family that "tugged at my heart strings" (to
use a cheesy phrase) more than anything else there. They were the
family that made me feel like it could make sense for us to move
there. Anyway, they have about 8 kids. The youngest is 3 months old,
and the second oldest, named Francisco, is the 10 year old in the
hospital. They're not sure what's wrong yet, but Birgit, the
InnerChange team leader, suspects that it's advanced pancreatic
cancer. Please pray for Francisco and his parents Manuel and Marlene
and the rest of the kids. Also pray for Birgit who has been watching
the rest of the kids (except for the 3 month old) so that the mom can
be at the hospital and the dad can go to work.

Thanks,

Jenny