Thursday  08/09/12

Oh my gosh, I am so sore!  My knee, my mouth, but most of all my back... I can barely walk upright.  I guess being 51, I don't bounce like I used to, and it takes longer to get back up.  But I am gonna take it easy today, I'll do anything I can to help, but I'm not gonna kill myself.  After breakfast of cornflake I went outside to put my shoes and socks I was listening to the rapid fire Spanish from the workers building the compound. Smelling the wet earth, the ripe mangos alongside the rotting mangos, the whiff of  the trash pile.  Something I learned about the workers here is that a skilled laborer, a cement worker or carpenter makes around $15.00 a day, a manual laborer makes around $10.00 and they are grateful to have a job.  As we left the compound on our way to Armenia Bonita we were in high spirits  and also kind of sad since this would be the last day we would be helping our families and playing with the kids. 

We get to the house where we were working on the septic tank and the homeowner was hard at work already.  We jumped right in and started mixing more cement to build up the foundation for the lid on his septic tank. I took a video of the cement mixing process to show it in action.  My camera ran out of memory just before the end. You will get the idea when you see the video.  We mixed I think 5 batches of cement in the morning.  Since we we going to play with the kids after lunch we knew we would not be seeing this family again this trip so Pastor Kruis (not Phil Kruis, a very different person) said an amazing prayer for the family who will be moving into the home.  We walked back to the location of the house we were building and enjoyed a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sammiches again.  After lunch we loaded up into the 2 trucks and drove back to the compound.  The young energetic athletic members of the team went to play with the kids, while the more refined and gentlemanly members of the team took a more leisurely view of the afternoons activities, and conserved our strength by sitting and conversing with members of the dental team.  Once the dental team finished with their last patient, we packed up their gear for our ride to the restaurant.  A word about the dental team, in the 2 dental clinics they ran in Armenia Bonita they blessed approximately 75 people with dental treatments.  Many of these people had never seen a dentist before, or if they had it had been several years.  The are even leaving behind a " dentist office in a box". It's a suitcase sized portable unit containing a drill, and suction device and the handles and bits and everything needed to conduct dental clinics except the dentist.  It is a huge blessing for the Pettingils.  This will allow more dental missionaries to come down and have the equipment they need for their job.  At the restaurant we had three different dishes from 3 different countries down here.  Honduras, Ecuador and Mexico.  They were a thick deep fried corn tortilla, a flour tortilla filled with beans, cheese and scrambled egg, and a taquito.  Guess which one's from Mexico?  Just to bac ip a little bit, earlier in the day I got a case of Montezuma's revenge, not to bad but bad enough to be a concern to Erin the nurse. And back at the compound when my team mates were playing with the kids I was busy puking up 2 pb&j's, a bag of papas fritas (potato chips) and 56 ounces of Gatorade! What a glorious way to spend the afternoon. Not to mention that my headache was nearing epic proportions by that time and only got worse with my intestinal issues.  The reason  I mentioned this is to tell you that all I had for dinner was the flour tortilla with beans and scrambles eggs. It was very tasty, but I would have enjoyed it better without the eggs.  But I survived....  After dinner both teams went to an indoor soccer arena to play some soccer, I wasn't there, I went back to the dorm to try and heal up for the next days activities, snorkeling!!  As soon as I got back to the dorm I went straight to the shower to cool off.  Let me just say this, I HATE COLD SHOWERS!!  but when that all you got its all you got. It took me 10 minutes to slowly work my way under the shower spray, once there I commenced to shivering and trying to wash up. 30 minutes later I must admit I did feel better and cleaner and almost human, I got out, dried off and went back to my bunk, where I proceeded to wipe hand sanitizer on my cut knees and hands.  OUCH!!! According to Mike pettingil, the lead missionary, an open cut is one of the easiest way to get sick down here and we need to be very careful with scrapes and cuts, thus the sanitizer.  I laid down in my bunk and putting in my ear buds proceeded to fall asleep to the sounds of Allan Jackson, Brad Paisley, and Earth Wind and Fire.  I slept right thru my call time to my love, I jerked awake, called her then went back to sleep... So much for Thursday.......