A Different Sort of Blog

I'm in El Salvador right now, and I wanted to update this blog to let anyone reading it know what is going on. I promise to get back to funny-ish posts when I get back, but today was a pretty rough day for us. The orphanage we love and the kids who are our family are facing some big troubles. Read on to learn more, and, if you want to help, please pray. If you want to help monetarily, please give. The link at the end of the blog will take you to the Shelter the Homeless website, and we have link to on-line giving.



We love these kids. We love every single one of them. We’ve seen them grow up over the years, start school, graduate, go to college. We’ve seen them fall in love with those of you who’ve gone to El Salvador. We’ve seen their faces light up when they get their Christmas gifts from those who’ve sent them. We’ve seen the love they show each other and us, and we’ve known that in them we see Christ.

They are a family. They are our family. But, our family is in trouble.

Today we visited the orphanage and learned that the orphanage is in danger of being shut down. The government agency in charge of child welfare (CONNA) thinks there are too many problems with the orphanage. The building needs to be bigger; repairs need to be made; they need more people on staff. We have until October 15 to make that happen.

Even if all repairs are made and staff added, CONNA still believes that the building is only big enough for 15 children. There are 34 children in our family.This means that 19 of our kids will be taken from the only loving home they’ve known and placed in an impersonal, government-run orphanage.

These are children who have known physical and sexual abuse, abandonment, neglect. Many of our children have been through the government system before; some of them still carry the scars of it. We can’t let our children go back to that. We can’t look at the faces in that picture and choose who we could part with.

We need the new orphanage now—sooner than now if possible. We need $130,000 to complete construction. We need your prayers. We need to keep our family together.

http://shipinternational.org/

Summer Days Make Me Feel Fine

Do ever have one of those days where you just want to hang out on your back porch, sitting on a towel next to your box fan and a giant watermelon?

Uh, you don't?

Yeah, me neither.

There are a lot of things about this picture that make me stop and think--a lot of unanswered questions, the first of which being, "Why do fat kids love purple?" I don't have an answer to that one, and believe me I've given it a lot of thought. The thing I can tell you about this picture is that it was taken at some sort of church function at our house. And, because it was a 1980s church function at our house, I can tell you exactly what the rest of the scene is. If you were to pan around the rest of the backyard, you'd see a group of people sitting on metal folding chairs, all placed in a giant circle. My dad had one deeply held conviction about get-togethers:

"A chair for every person, and a person for every chair." Preferably, each person would be seated in his chair.

You see, if you set the chairs up in a circle, then you can see everyone at the party. If it's a large party, it might make conversation a little difficult or produce a lot of shouting over each other, but a least you won't have your back to any of those church people. Which is really the best way to go, because who knows when you might get shanked by someone at your church watermelon party.

Only joking, of course! The only knifing done was to that watermelon, and what a watermelon it was.

The funny thing is, I have no idea the girl on the other side of the watermelon is. She looks sweet though, like the kind of girl who knows how to smile demurely in pictures and point her fork toward the ridiculously over sized watermelon as if to say, "I'm going to take one tiny bite out of this big watermelon."

All that to say that, if I had an exact opposite, that sweet girl would surely be it. There I sit--looking straight at the camera, two forks pointed at a mouth so wide open you can nearly see the back of my throat. This is the only child in her natural state, and what a beautiful state it is.

Athletic Only Child

I've never been what you might call "athletic." I mean, I've played sports. I've tried sports. I've even short bouts where I actually liked running or swimming, but, generally speaking, I've never been someone who regularly seeks physical exertion.

Even as a kid, I didn't really like playing outside, and I never wanted to join any sports teams. In high school, I joined the tennis team, a surprising occurrence considering my rather inauspicious intro to the world of tennis. My first lesson, at the age of thirteen, began with a sprained ankle. I fell. I fell while learning the forehand.

Take a moment to really let that lack of athleticism sink in. It's baffling.

So, why on earth did I join the tennis team? I think it might have been the cute skirts, or it might have been that one of my teachers told me I should. I wasn't any stinkin' good at it, and I never knew when our matches were, which led to forgetting my racket and the aforementioned cute skirt.

Whatever the case, that foray into the sports world was not the only time I attempted to be athletic. No, the one huge (almost incomprehensible) deviation from my normal unathletic being is that for three summers I went to a sports camp.

Shocking, right? I went, and I loved it. And, let me tell you, this wasn't any old wimpy camp. We're not talking about a day camp where kids play sports and are told that "It doesn't matter if you win or lose" and where nobody keeps score anyways or where everyone gets a ribbon. No, folks, we're talking about an almost month-long stay at a sports camp where we played sports and sang chants spelling out the word "competition." A camp where I learned my most beloved phrase, "Sacrifice your body for the good of the team." A camp where, after a soccer match, I actually had a bruise that showed the cleat marks of my opponent.

But, despite all my "Rah Rah" love of hardcore competition, there were a few areas that my wimpy self showed through. Namely, anything involving a ropes course or rock climbing or rappelling.

First, let me say that I don't even know how these things have grown in popularity. Let's get real, people. A ropes course is basically an obstacle course in the air. Obstacle courses are terrible on the ground, so what on earth inspired people to move it up in the air where there's the added danger of fall to one's death while participating in an obstacle course? Which, please remember, obstacle courses are not fun. They just aren't.

I guess I somewhat understand rock climbing. There's that whole "Man vs. Nature" thing that drives our desire to dominate the indomitable. I read Call of the Wild. I get it. But, rappelling? It occurs under two circumstances:

1. Someone has just climbed up the rock face and rappels to get back down. Fine. This one kind of makes sense. Sometimes, there's just no other way to get back to earth, and, for the love of all that is good, back to earth is exactly where we want to be.

2. Someone hikes to a spot that has a jumping off spot and rappels from there. This makes no sense. You have safely hiked to a lovely spot, and then you think the best thing to do is jump off.

Rappelling as it occurs in the second circumstance is not a sport. It is a cry for help.

However, despite the obvious reasons that a young person with a total lack of athleticism (and poor depth perception) should never be permitted on ropes courses or to go rock climbing or rappelling, I did all three of those things. Unfortunately for our purposes here, there remains only one extant photo. Fortunately, it's a good one. Here it is:

I am looking at the ground because that is where I want to be. I say that just in case you thought I was posing for this shot. No, not at all. It will probably not surprise you to know that I made it no further up that rock. I tried, but I was too wimpy. It probably also will not surprise you to see that I--the least athletic kid at sports camp--thought it was a god idea to go rock climbing while wearing Ralph Lauren deck shoes. Deck shoes.

The one thing you can't see, perhaps the most embarrassing part of the whole thing, is that when I got back down my cabin mates informed me that I had a hole in the back of my shorts.

Great. Deck shoes and and hole in my pants. That was my last rock climbing trip. Maybe the last one for my whole life.