The Move...

NOTE: I wrote this on Wednesday, November 3, 2010 but then we lost our internet capabilities and am just now getting it posted. So…here’s a quick update even before you read the blog…which is probably a little like putting the cart before the horse…but we now have internet, hot water in the showers and the stove is hooked up. Now…you can step back to last week and what I have just written will make more sense after reading the following blog.

It’s time for me to catch everyone up on what’s been happening here. Life has been very busy for us since our return from the States…it was hectic when we left but it has been crazy since we returned. I’ll try to bring you up to speed.

Tipitapa: The foreman of the construction project at the school in Tipitapa has been down for almost 2 months now with shingles plus some other infirmity and is in a lot of pain. Not only is that a problem for him, but it has been a problem for us. We had waited hoping that Adrian would be well enough to return but it looked like that wasn’t going to happen for some time to come. Danelia and her family knew that we wanted to get back on track so several weeks so she asked her brother Anibal to take over the completion of the project. That was almost one and a half weeks ago but we had a sudden change of plans and didn’t get to go to Tipitapa last weekend, so we don’t know if there’s been any more progress or not. I’ll explain our change of plans later.

Kenneth: Kenneth needs your prayers again. He has been experiencing an increasing amount of pain in his lower back and left leg over the last few weeks and when we were there last, he was unable to walk without assistance. Jim had to almost carry him to his seat in the classroom because he didn’t want to miss out on our English class. His face was etched with pain but he still managed his sweet smile when asked how he was. This is so heartbreaking to see. After class and when most of the children had left, I sat down next to him and asked how he was feeling. He said in a very soft voice so that the other children playing nearby couldn’t hear, that his leg hurt. I thought I was going to cry right then. Those tears came later.

After the remaining group of kids got busy playing, Jim and Arturo sat down and began to talk about the construction project. Since they were right by Kenneth and could attend to him if he needed something, Danelia and I moved our chairs out back of her house where her outdoor kitchen once stood…it is still a mess from the construction, but it was a shady place to sit and it offered us some privacy to be able to talk…although “privacy” as we know it seems to be a foreign concept here. Danelia began telling me that in the past week, Kenneth had lost his appetite and was not wanting to eat and that he was having trouble using the bathroom. She said he would wake up crying at night due to the pain and that it was so hard to see him suffer like that. That’s when my tears joined with Danelia’s. Her fear and frustration were contagious and for a little while, all talking stopped and we simply just sat and cried together. We both agreed that sometimes, that seems to be all we can do.

Once the tears had lessened, we then began to have the same conversation we have had so many times before…that God has a plan, that we have to hold fast to our faith, that He is sovereign over all and that our responsibilities as Christians do not change even though our circumstances might. I don’t know if it was the fact we had cried ourselves out for the time being or if it was the fact that we were putting voice to the truth, but either way, we both began to gradually feel God’s peace coming over us. He is faithful to be our Comforter just as He had promised.

Our time ended with me praying with Danelia. Usually, she asks only for prayers for Kenneth but this time she asked that I would also pray that God would strengthen her faith for the coming days. She said she wanted to be strong and accept with grace everything that God was going to bring to them because she knew that the neighborhood was watching. There is so much superstition about illnesses that still exists here and Danelia has had to suffer accusations of unconfessed sin and even being aligned with Satan. She knows all too well the importance of showing Christ regardless the situation. It’s just that the possibility of losing Kenneth is a situation of far greater magnitude than hurt feelings from thoughtless words thrown by uneducated neighbors. And Danelia knows this is a walk that she cannot make without the hand of her Savior leading her. I think right now that she wants the strength to hold His hand as tightly as He is holding hers.

Kenneth had several more appointments and had additional testing done this week at two different hospitals here in Managua, but it appears that the doctors are still guessing as to what is causing this increased pain in Kenneth. They have given several possibilities…kidney infection, bladder infection, strained muscles and finally, the one we all were dreading to hear…the possibility of a tumor. They gave an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory along with more pain medicine and said that they wanted to wait and see if it was just an infection or inflammation of either the bladder or kidney. If he’s not better next week, they said they want to do more testing. I don’t know what else they really can do.

I struggle so much with the lack of good medical care here for the poor. The doctors do their best but so much of the equipment is old and outdated and often is not working properly. I’m also not so keen on many of their methods for treatment. The words “hope”, “encourage” and “faith” are rarely heard and if someone is to utilize any one of those, they are going to have to do it on their own without assistance from the medical world. So…once again, I am asking you and all your believing friends for prayers for Kenneth. Please help us in carrying this need before our Great Physician. Our flesh desires healing but the Spirit in us reminds us that we are to pray for God’s will to be done. I’m praying they are one and the same.

CINAFE: We came back to lots of challenges at CINAFE. Some of the children had been acting out while we were gone and things had risen to a higher level of chaos than that which normally occurs with 15 children living together. We were bombarded with problems when we drove through the gate and it seems as though life is just now starting to return to normal there. Well, as normal as it can be when we’re also in the middle of trying to put on 3 different quinceañeras at the same time for girls at CINAFE…it’s like trying to put on 3 simultaneous wedding but for girls who will be turning 15 years old! That’s a lot of hormonal activity to deal with, believe me! The grand event is this Saturday afternoon and I’m sure all of the adults at CINAFE are going to join us in one gigantic sigh of relief when Sunday finally comes!

The most recent “big news” for us personally has been our unplanned move to a temporary place this past weekend. Without a doubt, this is a story of God’s Hand of provision and protection. You know we’ve been tossing around the idea of moving for awhile now and we had come to the decision we would do so at the end of November, when things had calmed down some for us at CINAFE and in Tipitapa. But God’s timeframe proved to be different than ours. I hope I don’t confuse you with all the different names in the following. If you have followed our time here, most of them will already be familiar to you.

On Wednesday (the day before we had planned to give our 30 days notice to our landlady), when we came to work at CINAFE, Felix (our old day guard who now works at CINAFE) asked if he could speak with Jim and me. I asked him to wait just a few minutes while we got settled in and then honestly, I got busy and totally forgot all about talking with him. Sometime later, Felix appeared at the screen door to our office, acting very nervous and he had a very serious look on his face. I invited him in and apologized for not speaking with him sooner. He said he had something important to tell us. At the time, I wondered if he was not happy at CINAFE and was going to quit. But, his news had nothing to do with CINAFE.

Felix said that the day before, he had gone to a neighborhood right next to ours to pick up his wife’s pay for the ironing she had done that week. He always goes to picks it up or goes to meet Blanca so that she does not have to ride the bus by herself with a “large amount” of money. While in that neighborhood, Felix was talking with one of the security guards who knew he used to work for “gringos”. That guard warned Felix that Eddie, one of our former night guards who has been implicated in several prior robberies in our neighborhood, and a friend of Eddie’s, were planning on committing an armed robbery of our place that next Saturday…just a few days away. The guard said that Eddie would often come by and talk to him and that he probably didn’t realize that this guard also knew Felix.

The guard said that Eddie knew that we are gone every Saturday to Tipitapa and that he and his friend would have only our new day guard (Miguel, our friend from Tipitapa) with whom to contend. Eddie had told the guard he was talking with exactly where on the wall they were going to get in and that they would have the gun with them in case they had any trouble. The guard knew that Eddie was thought to be the one who had committed the other armed robberies in our neighborhood but didn’t want to call the police because he thinks Eddie is too dangerous. After all, Eddie carries a gun and most of the police don’t. Actually, sad as it is, that’s pretty good reasoning. The police are generally only effective if you cross a solid line while driving or if you don’t stop before crossing a line…of which neither apparently need to be visible to the naked eye. But I digress.

Felix took the news from the guard very seriously as he also knows Eddie. When he was sharing all of this with us, his hands were shaking. He said that three other security guards in our neighborhood were friends with Eddie and that they had covered for him when the police would come looking for him. He was fearful that if Eddie tried to do something that no one would do anything to stop him. He also asked us not to say anything about him warning us as he did not want Eddie coming after his family as retribution.

Jim and I just sat there stunned at the news. Felix said we needed more guards and maybe even guards with their own guns. At that, I snapped to and immediately said, “No! No guns!” Felix normally will be quiet if I contradict him in some way, but not this time. He then said that he had an uncle who was a police man and he would call him and see if he or some of his police friends could help us. I smiled at Felix and told him that I didn’t want to involve his family and thanked him for the offer. But honestly, I didn’t want to take a chance on bringing a fox in to the hen house, so to speak. Felix then said that he would come back to work for us on his days off from CINAFE until we could move at the end of November. Another offer that was appreciated but not at all practical – for him or us. In between his various offers of solutions, he kept saying very emphatically, “Doña Lynne, it is dangerous for you and Don Jim to stay there anymore.”

I looked at him long and hard and knew that he was right although I didn’t want to admit it. Even if we were able to defer Eddie this time, the neighborhood has changed so much this past year with so many negative things happening that it would just be a matter of time until someone, if not Eddie, would break in and we would once again lose our electronics or worse, someone might get hurt. I couldn’t bear the thought of that. But neither could I bear thinking about the fact that our only good option was to move up our moving date to the next few days. I wasn’t emotionally prepared for that and all that I knew it would entail and I could feel my eyes filling up with tears.

I looked at Jim and asked, “What are we going to do?” I wanted him to tell me it was going to be all right and that Felix was over-reacting. Instead, he said, “I think we need to leave.” That’s all it took for the dam of tears to break. Jim immediately said, “We’re going to be okay,” and Felix said, “I am sorry, Doña Lynne but you need to be safe.” Both of them thought it was the threat of a possible armed robbery facing us that brought those tears. But it was more than that. It was the fact that I wasn’t ready yet to move. I wanted to pack on my terms, I wanted to leave on my terms and I wanted to love on my animals for another month…on my terms. Sitting very still and listening to Jim and Felix tell me again for the umpteenth time that it was the best thing for us to do, I realized I had no terms. 

I know this is long. So to keep it from becoming even longer, I’ve divided it up in to 2 blogs. Obviously, you know we are okay or you wouldn’t be reading this, right? So, that may be enough for you. If you want to follow the next few emotion-packed and exhausting days after we had that bombshell dropped on us, you can read it in the blog above.