Catching Up with the Times

SO, i cheated.......this is actually taken from an email I sent. But hey, internet time here has been seriously limited! We'll call the recipient (ahem, mom) by a false name.....just because it sounds so much more literary and mysterious that way.

Dear Erminrude,

Get this: yesterday i went for a nice long walk, and on the way back i went to move to the side of the road so a car could get through, and i totally slipped in the mud and fell on my right side......in time for the people in the car to see! i was fine, i got up and brushed off some of the dirt, laughed a little, and the people in the car pulled over and were all worried. the lady asked "are you alright??" so i kind of laughed and said yeah, i was fine, but it was slippery back there! they drove off and i walked the rest of the way back with a bloody knee, feeling like an elementary school kid, and laughing at myself for always "getting into scrapes" right when someone comes along to see me look stupid!! but hey, i got a laugh out of jenny who always says she knows "a true softball player by when they get injured and they rub dirt in it so they can still play;" well, i got to inform her that the first thing i did was rub some dirt in it and leave it until i got back to shower. go team.

you asked about worship team; they are doing well! i feel as incompetant as ever, especially since they all know exactly what should be going on (and they do it well), but i don't. they are very gracious about informing me and being patient, though, so i am very thankful. we are going to have a meeting this week to talk about how we want to do sunday morning service (schedule), ministry possibilities, new songs, etc. pray for me that i would have some ideas of how to add some things to it, and that i would learn the structure of how things already work. mrs. petallar had a good system, very structured, and you know how bad i am at coming up with solid structure. i suck. so i want to work within that structure to a good degree, but be willing to branch out and try new things; experiment and explore, of you will, but not just for my own sake. i think it would be good for the girls to have some change, and new ideas; i just don't have any idea what that looks like yet. yikes.

classes are ok; students still doing pretty well, though i trip over words and fumble with ideas; it's like my brain fills with some undefinable murky swamp muck and the thoughts have to wade through slowly so by the time they get to my mouth they're so unidentifiable that i can't spit them out correctly. make sense? or is that more muck? :)

tomorrow jenny and i are going to try our hands at building a fire by ourselves on the beach and cooking over it; that way if taylor and leia (fellow americans who are working in koror) can come up this weekend (and hopefully rob) we can take them out to this great beach location (only good at lowtide) for a cookout and snorkeling! we might even camp out on the beach if we feel like braving the mosquitos (and the dengue fever risk). don't worry, we'll be fine.

did i tell you we built a bamboo raft? it wasn't long enough, but it still floats and is just right for kids! uncle maury (a palauan man who can build or fix pretty much anything; he is a miracle worker) saw it and laughed, saying it should be 16 feet long......... ours was about 5. but hey, it holds one of us at a time, even if it does go slightly under the water when we sit on it. we were still excited, and now we know how to build one when we get long enough bamboo. thus, we are the palauan tom sawyers. pretty spiffy, eh?

great dicovery: frozen berries!!! blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries! we got all but the raspberries and have felt like queens; we even had the students try the blackberries and were surprised at how much they were grossed out by them!! i guess it's like me with durian; i didn't grow up with it so i hate it. but wow, biting into the blackberries was having memories of childhood come rushing back; all those summers of berry picking down the road and at the river, then making ice cream, pie, and just eating them plain. talk about a huge blessing in a small ziploc package!

And thus concludes the email to dearest "Erminrude" (and fellow readers). It really is the simple things that keep us going in life; when i try to make it more complicated i flip. And then life is lame. Island life really has a way of telling you to slow down and stop being so worried all the time; God is in control and He takes us one footprint in the sand at a time (hey, we go barefoot here). I miss you all; give yourself a hug from me. Peace!