Focused on Distractions

The time has come and gone quickly for us in El Salvador. We completed our last day of hard core work yesterday and today we will be worshiping with local believers in the Corinto church. I am excited about that...I always enjoy feeling the presence of God in foreign places because when you can't rely on language to be a conduit to God, you get to feel it through the people instead. (Haha, loving my electrical reference)

The plan when we came was to wire the church at a place called Hacienda as well as 3 classrooms and a large storage room. Then to move onto 2 houses up the hill from the church and after that to move onto 2 more houses in Corinto.

The PLAN didn't materialize as expected and so we did everything but the 2 houses in Corinto. When I say 'hard core work" I wasn't joking! The last two days have been almost more than my uncalloused little hands could take! I am not used to physical labor 10 hours a day, no...I'm more used to sitting on my rear end making nice with a computer keyboard, getting up once in awhile to grab a coffee or some printing.

Climbing up and down ladders, pulling large bundles of wire around twisted poly something or other and pounding holes in the lava rock ground for power poles is a little different and definitely more arduous than my normal routine.

The last two days have been especially long, the end was in sight and a certain amount of work had to be finished before we wrapped things up for good. Yesterday we were at the work site at 7:30am and started working immediately. By 9:30am I was thinking we would be able to take a siesta in the afternoon because things were moving along so well. By noon we realized that if we finished with the sun still in the sky it would be a miracle. By 7:30pm we were loading up and pulling out.

One thing that has happened to me is that I MIGHT have conquered my  fear of ladders. I have been afraid of ladders for as long as I can remember. I'm not okay with wobbly, shaking, unstable things that you have to rely on for personal safety...and that includes skates, ski's etc. So in order not to look like the biggest wimp in the universe I had to suck it up and act like I was okay being hundreds of feet in the air. Okay okay, I know I'm exaggerating but when you're afraid of something, that's what it feels like~everything gets distorted in your mind.

Biggest fear on a ladder? Well only one thing of course...that you will fall off. Second biggest fear on a ladder? That someone will see that you are scared on the ladder and you will be relegated to the ranks of "spare wire piece picker-upper from the ground" person. Not me, uh uh. I'm no sissy woman.

That untried confidence was quickly put to the test. There is actually no better motivator in the world than someone talking to you like you CAN do it, so when our fearless leader Maestro Martin asked me to climb up a ladder and help him pull wire I jumped right on that thing. I was able to blame the instantaneous rush of sweat gland action on the heat, but between us...I was in a fear zone that I hadn't entered for awhile. As any of you wonderful people who use ladders for a living know, when your hands are sweaty you can't hold on very well.

Martin is a Master Electrician. All he did was give me directions and I scurried around to do his bidding. We were on the east wall of the church building early in the week and someone had to take his ladder so he was crouched up against the metal frame of the roof and I was along the same wall but farther down. I had a sturdy ladder which gave me a certain level of comfort but we were pulling large bundles of wire through a tough spot and really had to yank hard. We eventually gave up and decided to use a lead wire which the team affectionately called the fish thingy.

A lead wire has a small hook on the end and it gets threaded through the conduit to the outlet you want to the wire to go to. The person at the outlet hooks the wire to the hook in the lead and the person at the other end pulls. Well Martin and I had this song and dance going on with the lead wire. I am at the outlet end and had finished attaching the wire we want pulled and Martin starts to pull. Because it was a tough spot, Martin starting pulling very hard and the lead went so fast that it hooked itself to my bra and started lifting me from the ladder! My frantic screams seemed to attract enough attention that people joined in the screaming and Martin finally stopped pulling. Disaster averted!

By yesterday I was feeling quite good about my high-rise capabilities and was put to the test again. Late in the day we were hot, tired, very dirty and some of us bleeding...I had a small run-in with a barbed wire fence. Anyway, a couple of us set a smaller ladder up outside house #2 to finish up the exterior light. I quickly climbed up and was being passed all the appropriate tools when the earth started to move under my feet.

Suddenly everything slowwwwed downnnnnn. No sound. Only tools flying by my head and a sick feeling in my stomach as I rode the ladder down. My guardian angel was right beside me because I stepped backwards onto the next rung as the ladder was falling and not forward. If I had stepped forward I would have broken my foot for sure when the ladder hit the ground. Sound erupted in an almighty crash as the ladder hit the cement pad. No worse for wear, I am thankful to God for protection!

The interesting thing about all of this is that I chuckled all week to myself about the bra incident and it took my mind off of the fear. Each time I climbed up another ladder I would smile and it kept me from being afraid of the height I was at. It became a good distraction that moved me forward with the work without getting too uptight. It actually allowed me to fall off a ladder and get right back up on it again without flinching. I guess focusing on distractions isn't always a bad thing and wearing quality undergarments is now mandtory.













 

Out of the Mouth of Teenagers~Wisdom

I am sitting in a wonderful house just outside the city of San Salvador in an area called Corinto, El Salvador. The birds are singing and it’s already 30 C outside at 7:30 in the morning…definitely not complaining about that.  My daughter Alana and I are here with a group of people to help with a building project, and anyone that knows me is probably laughing right now because of my serious lack of skill in that area.

There are 11 of us in this group from Canada and we have been billeted out to 3 local families to stay with. What a wonderful experience this is, to eat, sleep and talk with people and absorb their culture. Alana and I are staying with Pastor Damian, Rosita and their daughter Marcella. They know some English and our pidgin Spanish mixed with a comical use of sign language allows us to communicate quite well. Damian loves music and has guitars from all over the world, Rosita is a wonderful woman and fabulous cook. Marcella is a beautiful young lady who is going to university to become a Kindergarten teacher. We are blessed to be here!

Ah the food…both Alana and I were hoping to come back smaller than we left but alas that might not be possible! We are being fed too well! The first night we had paposas which are tortillas with cheese/beans/chicken in the middle, fried and comes with a spicy tomato dipping sauce. WOW! The second night we had tamales. They were beautifully prepared…the tamale is prepared and wrapped up in plantain leaves and baked. When they are served the middle of the plantain leaves are sliced open exposing the tamale inside to scoop out and eat. They were not only tasty but beautiful too! Each night has been a showcase of Rosita’s good cooking, we are happy and unfortunately growing rather than shrinking. 

 We established a routine pretty quickly; usually the missionary Ron Lapka comes to pick us up from our various locations by 8am. We pile into a couple of pickup trucks, the younger crowd riding in the boxes hanging on for dear life. The road up to the project has recently been improved and is no wider than the vehicle and constructed of flat rock embedded in the ground, uneven and torn out in some spots. As we drive we are as close to being vertical in some areas as I care to be in a vehicle, made a little more hazardous by the rocking and rolling over the rutted road.

Each person on the team brings something different to the mix and it has been interesting getting to know new people and working with them. There is one young man named Cody. We met up with him in Edmonton and travelled out together. We were sitting in the Edmonton airport watching him consume 2 Red Bulls and 3 cans of Coke when all of a sudden his head hit the table with a THUD! We were terrified, well I was terrified, that he’d killed himself with caffeine overload. Just as suddenly as his head went down it came back up again and he was laughing…we weren’t. We started asking him some questions and found out that he was carrying 6 epi-pens. Ah ha, WHY? I’m sure you can picture my eyes wide and a shocked/scared expression complete with highly arched eyebrows. So, our friend Cody is allergic to everything…grass, dust, fruit etc. We asked if he’d told anyone…nope was his answer, he was going to, but forgot. Crap…

My motherly instincts kicked in upon arrival and I started watching out for Cody and so did my friend Tina. The issue with watching out for Cody was that he was a moving target. He never stayed still for long and certainly wasn’t always doing what we thought he should be doing.  We were constantly calling is name and finding him up some tree with kids, or playing Frisbee with kids, or trying to communicate with some kids with crazy hand gesturing…you get the picture.  Interestingly enough he would pop up in unusual places and work really hard and be incredibly productive only to race off again with a pack of kids surrounding him. Tina was talking to him the other day and out of the mouth of this 18 year old young man came a profound statement.

One day all you will be is a memory, make sure it’s a good one

I appreciate our Cody Lee for the great job he is doing on site, but more than that I am proud of him for being someone who will have left some great memories behind when he leaves this place. Thanks Cody for reminding me that there’s WAY more to life than just ticking items off my to-do list….even here in El Salvador!

Kicking MR BIG in the can!

Have you ever noticed how much energy we put into "going big"? Everywhere we turn we are bombarded by slogans, motto's, company targets and personal admonishments to reach higher and go harder, work longer, get more, do better. The competitive nature of all of those things seems to become a wedge between people rather than a glue.

Maybe it's the unique time of life I currently find myself in or maybe it's the small little Rhonda voice in my head but one day I decided~ enough.

I am, by nature, a "go big" kind of girl. The very first petit point project I decided to tackle was not some little 4 x 4 square starter...I bought a $120 kit of Blue Boy (back in the mid 80's that was serious dough) and decided I was going to learn how to do this. It was roughly 11 x 15 and it took me a LONG time, mainly because I had no idea how to petit point and had to teach myself how~ before the days of you tube tutorials!

I didn't stop there. A number of years later I decided I was also going to teach myself how to knit and rather than start with a scarf I figured I'd do a sweater. One sweater turned into 2, kind of a his~n~hers combo which hubby hated (never was sure why he didn't like the matchy matchy thing) so I sold them to a specialty shop in Jasper. I had to turn down an offer from them to stock their store because the sweaters sold so fast. I seriously considered buying a knitting machine (yes indeed) and setting up shop as knitter extraordinaire but decided life was way too full of interesting things to get stuck kicking out wool garments for the perpetually chilled.

I've taken a run at canning...that got kind of explosive. I learned a valuable lesson in taking my time, not rushing, not throwing cold jars of beautiful peaches into a canner that had been heated with a blow torch.  Shards of glass, peaches and contorted canners are not so fun to clean up and the sound of things blowing up can be quite upsetting. Yes, upsetting would be the proper word to use...ahem.

Over time my ideas seemed to get more adventurous and climbing mountains became a passion. I loved the thrill of training for the climb, going to exotic locales and doing something physically challenging. I wanted to push myself to see if I could accomplish what I set out to do.

Those are examples of personal pursuits but I have also tried to go big in my professional life and one day I just stopped and wondered what it was all supposed to mean...what is it truly about?

I was mulling over an idea...what if I decided to go small instead of big for awhile. What would that look like? What would my daily choices be if I wanted to make a difference and do meaningful things in a small way? Rather than being eaten up by the frenzy of more, better, bigger, longer, higher...

how about quietly

how about softly

how about slowly

how about with intent

how about so small no one would notice 

 



The fact of the matter is that I can't un-crazy myself, as much as I would like to. I will still try all sorts of wacky things and push myself, all I can hope for is that I don't hurt myself in the process. I guess the great thing about going small is that I can do that every single day without buying a plane ticket, training or learning a new skill.

 

Write a note to someone who needs encouragement, smile, help an elderly person across the street, treat the love of my life with respect, share a laugh with a friend, buy flowers for someone who is having a rough day, act with integrity and honesty even when no one is looking. All of those things (and more) have such incredible value but sometimes we neglect the small because the big things scream for our attention.

 

How about a new catch phrase for 2013...

 



 

 

~go small or go home~

 





I like it.