Oops, It Broke!

So far, it's been a pretty crazy week. Pruitt started with Pink Eye, which he must have picked up from Riley, so he was home from school a day and is still on drops. Jensen came home with a migraine one day and a fever the next. Riley has had this strange blister on his leg - reaction to an ant bite? spider bite? or something from the sewer? I don't know but I put tea tree oil on it for several days and it seems to be healing. I love that stuff! Anyway, though they are all still coughing, they seem to be on the mend.

Otherwise, there seems to be a lot of drama going on. Austin was on his way home from Mymensingh last night when we had a couple of things fall apart here. The boys were having a bath and the handle for the faucet broke completely off and there was no way we could turn the water off. I called the office secretary - bless her! and she sent the plumber over. In the meantime, I watched water pouring down the drain and could hardly stand it, especially given the fact that so many have had water shortages here. So I called down to the guard to see if he could turn the water off on the roof. He said it wasn't possible but he was going to change out of his guard boots and see what he could do. By the time he got back, the plumber was here. He had to climb up into the crawl space above the bathroom to turn it off. The plan is to come back this morning and put a new faucet on. By this time it was well past the boys' bedtime. Jensen kept the others entertained by reading to them while I did the last chore before bedtime - hanging out the laundry, which hadn't all been done during the day since I was out most of the day and there was more than usual due to boys being sick and things you don't want to know. But instead of being wrung out nicely, things were dripping. Upon further investigation, I discovered the spin cycle is no longer working on the machine. Sigh. So I squeezed things out by hand and hung them up to dry. By then Austin was home - and was I ever glad to see him! I had felt completely exhausted before all this , so you can imagine how I felt by the end of it all.

It feels as if we are going through a particularly intense time. Still, I feel hope in my soul. Things do not happen without a reason. I may have hunches and feelings about what it all means, but mostly it boils down to knowing that my Heavenly Father is with me and, therefore, it's going to be okay.

The Day Riley Fell Into the Sewer

The boys had off school an extra day this past weekend so we thought it would be a great time to take them to Mymensingh. They haven't been able to spend that much time there since we moved to Dhaka and were very excited about going and visiting all their old favorite spots. So Thursday morning we were out the door by 5:30 a.m. to catch the bus. We got there in time for Jensen's favorite breakfast - baji (fried vegetables), eggs and chapatis, followed by a cup of cha. It was a work day for Austin so I hung out with the boys. They had a blast on the rooftop of the office, pretending to be Indiana Jones. They found bits of bamboo, and old bicycle tire and other odds and ends and had all the equipment they needed. When it got too hot outside, we went inside and played some games. Riley took a motorcycle ride with his Dad and another designer to a nearby project, which made him very happy! The morning passed quickly and we were fed a delicious lunch of rice, lentils, chicken and lots of veggies. We spent the afternoon visiting a couple of projects. While the women sat outside in the courtyard at Sacred Mark and worked on stirring up a small batch of soap and getting fibers ready for packaging (above), the boys played soccer with a beach ball and provided live entertainment.


They were so happy to be outside and run on a small patch of grass and be barefoot! So when it was time to go, they lined up to have their feet washed at the outside faucet.


Riley wasn't convinced that his feet needed to be washed or that anyone should help him do it. I was humbled by the fact that this woman was so willing to wash the dirt off my sons' feet. I simply told them it was time to go and to wash up but she ran over and helped each one of them. In a culture where feet are a "dirty" part of the body and there is a special ritual you go through if you accidentally touch some one's feet and to really shame someone you show them the bottom of your foot etc., it's humbling to have someone wash your feet. Another interesting aspect of feet here is to show respect to elders and to invoke a blessing of another, you stoop down and touch their feet. Living here has helped me understand Peter's horror at having his beloved Teacher stoop down to wash his feet (as told in the Injil Sharif) and the impact of that event, that we are now to wash each other's feet. It makes me want to write another blog about abolishing status and the need to serve those around us instead of expecting them to serve me because of who I am. No, as the Greatest Teacher said, the one who wants to be the greatest needs to be the servant of all. I will leave it at that, for now.


From there we went to the Training Center and had a fun time interacting with a group of women, singing songs, playing with a chubby little baby. The boys were a little shy at first, maybe because they were in front of a room full of women, maybe because the baby didn't have a diaper on but they soon gathered around him and were talking to him. They were grossed out by the fact that he was drooling and slobbering and were amazed when I told them that they had each done the same thing when they were little! All too soon it was time to go. We said our good byes and went down to the vehicle. Riley, being the independent fellow that he is, did not listen to the instructions his father was giving him and ended up falling into an open sewer. We were so thankful it wasn't deep - he only went in up to his waist, if that. His Dad grabbed him out and held him in the air a moment as we recovered from the shock. Poor kid, hanging there, dripping black goo, the hole gurgling a bit as if it was recovering too. We realized his sandals had been sucked off but were just happy to have our boys back, dripping though he was. So I took him upstairs again, dripping black goo the whole way. At the top, one of the women took him from me and hurried into the bathroom to start washing it off. It was a bit frightening for him, to be surrounded by strangers while I went to ask Austin for a bag to put the dirty clothes in. The women wanted to help and scrubbed him down and another one was washing out his clothes, still another one was reaching into the sewer to try to find the lost sandals. We told them its okay, we'll just buy another pair, but they kept trying. She reached in nearly to her armpit and eventually found both of them. Meanwhile Riley was cleaned and wrapped in a towel and given back to me. He wasn't hurt, just shook up a bit and sad that his sandals were missing so he was quite happy to hear they had been found. Back at our "old house" I rubbed disinfectant over his legs and feet and gave him a hot shower and soaked his sandals overnight in disinfectant, just to be sure.

Here is a closer look at the hole he fell into.

I've been thinking about this - that there are some of us who are too proud and independent to accept help from others. Then there are some of us who are too proud and expect people to serve us. I think both are wrong and are as offensive to our Creator as the black goo pictured above. We were meant to be in community, to be willing to put our hands in black goo for each other, not to triumph over another or be better than another.

A lot more happened over the weekend, a lot of things to humble me and make me aware of how much I have... but this concludes the adventures of the day Riley fell into the sewer.

Chop

It's been an intense week.

Jensen caught the virus that has been going around school and was down over the weekend. Then Pruitt got hit hard by it and spent a couple of days in bed with a fever of over 102. He ended up missing a whole week of school. Austin had off work on Sunday, since it was a Buddhist holiday, which was extra special because it was also Mother's Day. He made breakfast at 6 a.m. and had his family over too, so we could eat together before the boys got on the bus ( it ended up being only Riley then, since the others were sick). Then Austin spent the next several days in Mymensingh. I was very thankful for family near by and a father-in-law who was willing to buy a ton of juice for my sick boy and deliver it to my door! In the middle of it all, we had a repair guy here to fix the screen door that Riley broke in his efforts to escape being caught by one of his brothers. Austin got back in time to stay with Pruitt while I took Jensen to the dentist to have a tooth pulled, which he was quite brave about. When I dropped him off at school, the kids were all talking at once, wondering how it went. They thought it was quite cool that he had to have a tooth pulled and he was a bit of a hero.

Needless to say, we were all quite ready for the weekend! We spent time with friends, relaxed and finally got that date in that we had canceled twice the weekend before. I also took some ladies shopping, bought some lovely clothes that don't fit, sat in stifling noisy traffic and felt like I was becoming a human chop. Chop is the Bangla word meaning pressure. To chopan is to squeeze together, like on a bus so that you can get more people on. An aloo chop is a potato patty, the potato has been mashed and fried (often with yummy spices inside). A meat chop is made of meat that has been ground and pounded and mashed with spices and then fried. So if I say that by the end of the week I was feeling like a human chop, I think you will have a picture of what I felt like. Those were my thoughts as I sat in traffic and heard the noise all around me and had hands reaching out to receive from me and I was hot and tired and had a splitting headache. I came home and took a little nap before my guys all came home from their morning outing. As I was taking lunch to the table, I dropped it and it splattered all over the floor and the cupboard. That truly was the last straw. Now I can chuckle about it, but it sure wasn't funny at the moment. So I stood there and cried before picking up the pieces. I am so thankful for a husband that doesn't yell at me and that is full of grace in moments like that. My youngest was a little taken aback when he saw his mother burst into tears and he gave me lots of hugs. Even now I'm laughing and crying at the same time. Being under chop can do strange things to a person. In spite of it all, "hope stands in defiance" to borrow the words of Sara Groves. I've lived long enough to know that when things are extra hard and it feels like everything is going wrong, it is a signal that somewhere, either in my life or in the lives of others that I care very much about, something good, something truly amazing is going on. Life is never all bad. Even though I can't see it at the moment, I've been given precious glimpses of a larger picture. And that picture is beautiful and it has given me hope.

A New Life

I recently had the privilege of taking a day trip to Mymensingh. We hit the road soon after putting the boys on the bus for school and got there in time to stop in at the hospital to see a precious baby girl that was born to one of the producers. We wondered down many corridors, passed probably a thousand people and finally found the mother. Several days after a C-section, she was now on the floor with only a thin mat to lay on. She was quite happy to see us and we chatted a while. The baby had been taken to another floor to be put on an IV, so eventually the Grandmother took us to see her. We finally found her in a room crowded with regular sized beds, 3 infants to a bed on rather grimy mattresses, each hooked up to an IV. Parents or other caregivers and onlookers were everywhere. And when we came, even more people gathered around to see what we were there for. She was tiny - just a bit over 3 lbs. - but gorgeous. The room was sweltering and the fans were off and all the infants seemed to be blanketed. I found myself hoping that she will soon be well enough to stay with her mother.


From there we went on to the training center, where a group of 10 precious women were having a New Life celebration to mark leaving a life of shame, that they had not chosen, to be given a fresh chance at life and dignity again. Each one was presented a garland of flowers and given a rose. There were many speeches from staff and others to encourage them and some from the women as well, sharing their stories with us. It was touching, to say the least. They put on a drama for us, in which the main character acted out her story. She often broke down as she relived her pain and I was amazed at the depth of her courage and strength.


We all sang "Happy Birthday" for them and they cut their cake to further signify the birth of something new.

Words from Sara Grove's song, "I Saw What I Saw" go through my mind often when I think of these women -

I saw what I saw and I can't forget it. I heard what I heard and I can't go back. I know what I know and I can't deny it. Something on the road, cut me to the soul. Your pain has changed me, your dream inspires, your face a memory, your hope a fire, your courage asks me what I'm afraid of and what I know of love...and what I know of God.

What more can I say. Their stories, their faces, their hopes, the dignity they are finding... these things are beautiful to me and I am privileged to be a tiny part of their lives.