I Hope I Look this Good Two Days from Now...

I'm off! Jackie and I will be leaving home to go to the airport in about 40 minutes. He and I will pick up Jan and Jim, and then we'll be on our way.

The trip will last two days. After the first 10-hour flight, one of those days will be a twelve-hour layover in Amsterdam, and we're hoping to see some of the city. It will be cold! And possibly rainy, with the high in the 40's.

After that we'll have another night-long flight with a five-hour layover in Nairobi, then a little hop to Zanzibar, where the weather is slightly different than in Amsterdam. At about five degrees south of the Equator, the island is heading into summer. It's very hot and humid.

I will miss you all, friends and family. If you're wondering if this means you, yes it does. I love you all, and will be excitedly waiting to share new experiences with all of you.

Pray for us -- Rachael, Bob, Jan, and me.

Jan and I will get to our destination on December 2. And we'll probably want a shower and a change of clothes.

Catching up...

Well, how to catch up? It's been more than two months since I've blogged. Hmm, I guess that might mean that I'm not a very good blogger. For me it means that I've thought about blogs and thought about posting them, and then the phone rings and it's a friend calling to catch up (thank You, Lord, for friends), or a student comes over for algebra tutoring, or a client calls with a question, or I'm answering an email. And then Jackie comes home and I want to spend time with him, not on the computer.

Since the last blog, I have delivered one baby and paced the hall of the hospital at the birth of another.

The one I delivered was the first home birth for this couple, a waterbirth. Her previous birth had resulted in cutting, tearing, and her tailbone breaking with a posterior presentation of the baby, aka "sunny side up." This birth had none of those things, a true blessing. Little Eliyah was born and welcomed by his two older brothers. And postpartum was much easier than before, thankfully. No mastitis, either. So much to be grateful for. A phone call to 911 and arrival of the paramedics because of a little too much loss of blood and lowering blood pressure and really faint pulse came to "I'm not going in" statements by mom. And she did really well.

The hospital birth went well, too, although the doctor threw me out of the room, so I was not able to witness the birth of the little one. You know, I think that if the shoe were on the other foot, and an OB/GYN were invited to one of the births that I was caregiver for, I would not throw him/her out of the room. But there! My emotions get in the way. And so does my pride. They both get sort of bruised, and it takes time to recover.

Since the last blog, I've also done some canning. The end of the year produce covered the kitchen counter.

I looked at all that clean, fresh produce and groaned. I knew it would mean doing something. Now I have a wonderful heritage from my mom. I grew up in a household where canning and freezing were just a normal everyday occurrence during the spring and summer. And Mom involved all of us in it. We all had peach/pear/apple/you name it juice running down our arms onto a towel placed on the table as we pared, cored and plopped them into the bowl to await further processing. I never really cared for it. But it is valuable. And so Jackie scoured the internet for recipes for green tomatoes for me. Now I don't like sweet relish. Yuck! Just not good. So I skipped all the recipes with sweeteners and stopped at one that didn't have any. Hmm, this one had possibilities, although it called for 2 pounds of green tomatoes, and I had 11 pounds. Oh, boy.

Well, I chopped all morning, and just used the tomatoes and green peppers that I had on hand. I added onions and garlic to ratio, and then started simmering the stuff with vinegar and cumin and salt. After it had all softened, the canning jars were washed in the dishwasher, and I added the jalapenos that I had. Not to ratio. Just all that I had. The result -- ta daa! -- was a wonderful lovely tangy not-too-hot salsa! Not relish! I was so grateful that I had been obedient to use the harvest and not let it go to waste! One of the goals that I had wanted with a garden was to have salsa. And it didn't happen until the end, when the yield was 11 pints and 1 quart of the wonderful food.

And you can tell that Jackie and I like it, because there's only 8 pints left now. Wow.

Another thing I've been doing is getting ready to go to Zanzibar. I leave in a week. It's incredible, but it's happening. I am so grateful to the people who have contributed money so that Bob and Rachael can have their baby at home. If it weren't for you folks, I wouldn't be going. My ticket is paid for, and I have enough to pay for my visa once I get there. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You are true blessings. I invited my good friend Jan Pack to go with me to help with the birth, and she's going! Her ticket is not yet paid for, so if you'd like to help with her expenses, just drop me a line. We are sure that we will be going to encourage Bob and Rachael, and are really looking forward to times of prayer, worship, and love. Other people have purchased gifts for them, and we will be delivering those. Everyone has something coming, and if I wrote about the gifts, it might not be a surprise for Bob and Rachael, so I will leave the gifts a secret for now...

This is my first international birth, and I'm not real sure about anything, except that God is guiding me. And that's all I need to know. I've sorted through supplies, and I know I will sort through them again this week, but please pray that I will take all the right things, and leave all the unnecessary things behind, and that I won't worry about anything. God is going before me and surrounding me, and I don't need anything else.

Speaking of "first international birth," one of the dreams I had way back as a midwifery student was that I would get to deliver babies for m couples. You all know that. And this Zanzibar trip I consider as a first fruit of that dream. But, I have also been in contact with another m couple about being their midwife as well. So plans are underway for me to go to Lebanon in early February 2009. God is good. I'm very excited about this birth as well. And I will ask all of you to be in prayer about this trip. It looks like I will be leaving February 6, and returning sometime at the end of February (after the baby!!!!).

I was at my mom's house earlier this month. While there, she started looking through some stuff of hers, and found some baby booties. These baby booties were old and stained. She fingered them and said, "All of you wore these booties." I have four sisters, and all of us wore those booties. Wow. I hadn't even known of their existence!

Isn't it sweet? Well, I've been crocheting since I was eight years old, and I started looking at that bootie. I asked Mom if I could bring it home to see if I could replicate it. I made a pair last night. Granted they don't look exactly the same, but they are as close to the original as I could make them. And I have the instructions, too. I just have to type them up.

They don't exactly look the same, I know. Different thread, no embroidery on the tops, ribbon instead of more crochet thread for the ties. I may add the other details later. For now, I feel like some history has been preserved. Who knows, I may keep these booties for my grandchildren! That may be a while, too. Nobody's even contemplating marriage yet.

I will try to blog the picture of the Gwassa's baby from Africa. It all depends on the computer they have, and whether I can link my camera to their computer. I'll try!