Tales from Beneath the Mosquito Net

I have a love hate relationship with my mosquito net. I may lean a little more on the hate side on most days, but I have to still appreciate it ya know? One might think that you just string that bad boy up effortlessly, crawl in, and fall into a bug free sleep! But one would be wrong! #1 A mosquito net is powerless against bed bugs, but that's NOT what this blog is about, as I am unable to share my thoughts and feelings on the bed bug topic (appropriately) at this time.

So back to beneath my net, #1 the typical bug net has four lil eyelet doomaflickies in which to place string in and hang over your bed, sounds good, 4 eyelets, 4 corners, right? Wrong! Because when you hang that bad boy up, the middle sags and as you breathe in netting you feel as though you're in your very own coffin! Not cool!

So let's just say you hang it, you duck tape that middle part up and then you crawl in ... you're set right? X (please make the family feud sound here!) One also needs to know that you must tuck in all ends of the net underneath your mattress as some mosquitos appear to have the intelligence level to come in the floor route!

One might think that at THIS point you're set! (I sure hope your remember you're tucked in before you try to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night because if by chance you don't you could rip down your net entirely and teach your roommates new words in the middle of the night!)

So... after a few uncomfortable nights, you figure out how to properly duck tape, tuck, and to stop all liquid intake around 5pm, you're set, RIGHT?! Well, NO!

Evidently the mosquitos in Haiti have gone to special ops training! First off, some of them sneak in when you get out of bed in the morning and hide out till bed time, so after all your net tucking, you're actually sleeping with the enemy! When you awake, somewhat light headed as you have very little blood left, you find the mosquito barely able to keep himself afloat as his gluttony has caused him a heaviness! Two days ago, I took my sheet, and killed my freeloading, unwelcomed overnight guest! There was so much blood on the sheet that you would have thought I had killed a person or at least a kitten (which I sometimes dream of doing!) Sounds gross to use your sheet for such doesn't it? Trust me, when you're in Haiti, that's all that sheet is good for, if you're using covers you have already contracted Malaria and have bigger problems to worry about!

Oh so you're not impressed, you don't thinking sneaking in at 6am and hiding out for 12 hours is special opps material, that I should have checked more throughly?! Well, then what do you have to say about this?

Last night, I taped, tucked, tinkled, and throughly checked the sheets before entering! I curled into a lil ball and drifted off into a benedryl induced sleep dreaming of (wouldn't you like to know!) Around 1am I awoke to a severe itching sensation on both knees...I wandered into the bathroom for a better visual, to see about 10 mosquito bites on each knee! What could have happened you ask?! Thanks for your concern! Well, there is a skillful art to sleeping beneath the mosquito net, at NO time can any part of your body be touching your net as the special ops trained mosquitos are awaiting. They waited patiently outside my net as I drew my knees upward and they rested barely grazing my cone of silence (we've established that one cannot be addressed while inside their net, it gives us the illusion of privacy!) and yep, they feasted on my exposed knee caps, like the vultures that they are!

Life beneath the mosquito net, well, it requires, grace and poise, brain and brawn, and the ability to sleep directly in the center of your bunk without shifting throughout the night! I'll let you know how that turns out, till then send benedryl, citronella perfumes, and chocolate (I'm an emotional eater!)

Futbol Haiti Style!

We spent Monday thru Friday of this week visiting a school of about 60 children. The school is nestled half way up a mountain beside a flowing river where people from the community bathe and do their laundry and it also supplies their drinking water. We gave this school 4 new water filters which will purify a liter a minute of that river water. We spend our days teaching about the importance of clean water, washing our hands, explaining to them why we built them latrines (before the latrines were built most people went where ever they were whenever they felt the urge!) Nutrition, Cholera, SIDA (AIDS), etc. it can get a little heavy! So we deemed Friday Fun Day! And after several of the students accepted Christ we decided to celebrate with a lil game of FUTBOL. Haitians LOVE soccer!

If this particular tourney had a name I'm pretty sure it would have been The Dust Bowl, as 60 students took the field in a mad frenzy dust flew, kids were trampled, and within 30 seconds the ball was in the river! Eventually however, the younger kids and probably some of the smarter kids went inside to the shade (why did no one tell me that it's ALWAYS 110 degrees in this country?!?) where more than half the interns were playing guitar and swapping English lessons for Creole ones! Eventually, we even broke them into teams (it just seemed like the right thing to do!), the boys all ran to Richard and the girls all ran to me so boys against girls it was! Then it was on like donkey kong!

Did the ball ever end up in the river again? Why yes, yes it did! How did we get it out? Well, funny thing is before I could even jog over to the bank to locate the ball, some lil guy would have already stripped down to his birthday suit jumped in and thrown the wet ball onto our "field" and the game would commence!

Richard and I played goalies and to be honest it was likely the safest position as this particular game of soccer resembled what I imagine MMA / UFC soccer tourneys to look like, the rules were, there are no rules!!!

I shouted in English to my Creole team and they shouted back in Creole as if we full well knew exactly what the other was saying! The boys scored a "few" times....you wouldn't think a barefoot could send a ball flying into your gut so hard the wind gets knocked out of you, but I'm here to tell you it CAN!

You also wouldn't think that lil girls in lil yellow dresses could score on boys with big feet so many times, but we sure did and no worries I taught them how to celebrate humbly! If running a circle around the filed screaming with our hands in the air every time is humble!

I seriously think it may have been the most fun game of soccer I have ever played!!!

The Hardest We've Prayed: The Haiti Goat Story

Ok... so close your eyes and imagine this.... well, I guess you can't very well close your eyes and keep reading so imagine it.... you're in Haiti, the country of voo doo, of chaos, where you have to have multiple armed guards at all times. It's dark. It's 3:30 in the morning. You're asleep in your bunk, beneath your mosquito net. And you hear this noise! Do not watch the video just turn off the lights let the audio play to better understand our degree of terror!

You are sure it is a man screaming help! Images of torture flash through your mind, it's literally right outside your window, he continues to scream, your teammates are awakened... and huddled together in their pajamas. Neither fight nor flight are an option. Welcome to hell... I mean living with goats!

We didn't know for several nights that the screaming was coming from the goats, to say we prayed harder than we've ever prayed before would be a gross understatement! 

Neosporin!

According to my Mama, Neosporin fixes everything!

Me: "Mommmmm! I burned myself in the kitchen!"

Mom: Put some Neosporin on it!

(actually she might just laugh out loud ... my chances of getting burned in the kitchen are pretty low, unless something is just really hot when I pull it out of the microwave!)

Me: "Mommmm! Carrie knocked me off the bed and I have rug burn!"

Mom: Put some Neosporin on it!

(or her more typical response, Carrie would never do anything like that!)

Me: "Mommmm! I fell up the stairs again!"

Mom: Good job Grace Ann! There's some Neosporin in the bathroom!

Me: "Mommmm! Dad sliced is finger off!"

Mom: Find the Neosporin!

(all these are pretty much actual and fairly recent true stories!)

And my most favorite is when I have a visible mark on my face or hand and my sister whips Neosporin out of her purse and lathers me in it without my request! (she's her mother's daughter for sure!)

Even though it doesn't cure all, it's good stuff! Hopefully if you ask my home church they'll be able to tell you about a message about Neosporin that I spoke to them a couple years ago! See, Neosporin has some dang good marketing... You've seen their commercials, a band aid armed w Neosporin goes on the kid's scrape and then when they pull it off... GASP! it's gone!!!

Even their slogan: Neosporin: A Higher Level of Healing! Every cut! Every time!

And they own the 3 C's of proper wound care: Clean it! Coat it! Cover it!

Well, all that to say... we came armed with Neosporin to Haiti... and have been covering this lil guy in it everyday! (Ideally that pic at the top would be right here, but well, this is why I don't blog often because I just don't know how to do certain things!)

His name is Rivaldo! He's adorable! He was in a motorcycle accident (whole families ride motorcycles together here!) I believe in one week I have now seen 3 motorcycle accidents with my own eyes!

Please believe we didn't just depend on Neosporin's higher level of healing, but are confident in THE HIGHEST level of healing! By His stripes!

Who called for the ambulance?! HE did!

Looks like any old ambulance you may pull over for in the US right? Well, that it IS! Months before the earthquake this was shipped over and NEVER used. It's too big to go down the small streets. It was an eyesore & scheduled to be shipped back when the earthquake occurred. 1,ooo's of transports later... this ambulance is now known throughout Haiti and will NOT be shipped back to the US anytime soon! Just one of the many miracle stories... did you know our convoy of hope warehouse had just been filled with meals days before the quake? did you know the US army had come to Mission of Hope our partners in Haiti and said you can have these two huge army bunkers if you'll take all the medical supplies in them just weeks before the quake? Thousands of patients were cared for there. There was an entire ward of amputees! There is a guy named Nyoke from Korea who is a doctor who does prosthetics and is living at mission of hope with us still fitting amputees with new limbs! Oh... and upon his arrival to Haiti to help, he didn't know Jesus... he does now!!!!

Poor St. Peter!

I've been meaning to write this specific blog post for sometime. It seems I can't escape it. I've seen it with my own eyes first in India, then in Unionville, TN, every month at my nail salon in Springfield, MO, and at San Pedro Hospital in the Philippines.

You see, this spring in the Philippines, in typical Mary Beth fashion I got sick, and if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it BIG so double pneumonia in Davao City, Philippines it was. The double pneumonia has come and gone and the Philippine health care system was surprisingly just fine, but I can't forget this; the statue to the left of these words.

This statue of St. Peter & his rooster stand tall in the

lobby of San Pedro hospital. I'm sure poor St. Peter enjoys

not being able to get rid of that stinking rooster! I mean we

all like to be known by our biggest failure don't we!? I'm not

offended by the statue. We owe a lot to St. Peter as Christians!

Here's the deal. In India, I watched a father pick up a baby who was literally just skin & bones,

worse than any child I've ever seen on any infomercial or in any other nation. He picked up this

baby, it's eyes were empty and bore into mine as he walked in front of me. I saw that he had coins

in his hand, I thought, good! he must be going to get something for the baby to eat. We

followed him and I watched him throw the coins into a cage holding a tree & kneel and ask the tree

for blessing. Horrified I watched him return with the baby to the street. A father looking for hope.

I worked with families in Unionville, TN for a short time, one day a child had several viles. I asked her

about them and she said they were part of her religion. Curiously I asked further. These viles were

part of a wiccan ceremony ritual. Her family needed money and happiness she said so tonight they

were going to have a prayer meeting. A child looking for hope.

Every month I'm in country, I go to a cheap nail salon on Glenstone. That and McDonald's cokes

are my treats! I am greeted by a dusty plastic Buddah idol. It's no wonder Buddah is fat, every time I

see him he has donuts, some sort of meat, or other food offering in front of him. He never seems

to eat very much of it though. The same person who puts those out in the morning has to throw

them away at night. It makes me sad, and not just the wasted donuts! A people looking for hope.

And now this leads me to San Pedro Hospital in Davao City! Short of breath I leaned against St. Peter

one day while visiting my pneumonia doc! Although the lobby is quite large I noticed everyone who

came through the doors insisted on getting really close to me. Don't they know we Americans have

space issues? Later I saw that they were all coming in to touch St. Peter, poor guy, his paint was

tarnished because of the excessive touching. I wanted to tell them that I got up close and personal

with St. Peter each visit & he didn't seem to be helping my double pneumonia. A people looking for

healing!

My mind wanders back to the temple in scripture where they found all the idols and the altar to

the unknown god. People have been looking for hope in all the wrong places for some time it

seems. Please take THE HOPE to as many people as you can, you may think they don't want to

hear about Jesus, but they're throwing coins at trees for blessings, trying to find happiness in viles &

wiccan rituals, feeding plastic idols, & rubbing the paint off poor st. peter for healing! It's no

time to be quiet & tolerant, it's time to give people the hope they're looking for!