Merry Christmas

We left California on Christmas Eve afternoon and landed in Kansas City at 9:45 p.m.  It was 10:30 when we left the airport and we were starving.  A quick call to the Minsky's Pizza on Barry Road confirmed that they were open until 11:00 p.m so we enjoyed a half mushroom/half pepperoni as our late Christmas Eve dinner.  It was almost midnight by the time we reached the mission house in Lee's Summit.

Thanks to Steve and Terisa making a HyVee run for us and stocking the frig, I was able to make Stephen and Jon's favorite breakfast on Christmas morning: bacon, eggs, biscuits and gravy.  

Stephen left for West Plains before lunch; Jon and I joined the McKinney side for lunch at my sister's house.  The spread included ham and smoked turkey, plus side dishes and salads too numerous to mention.    

After lunch we played cards and worked on putting together a 1000-piece puzzle.  

Late afternoon, we finally moved into the living room and exchanged the gifts under the tree.  Jon's gifts had a decided Royals bent.

We finished off the gift exchange and headed back to the game tables!  It took most of the night, but we did finish the puzzle.  My dad even played cards with us until midnight!  

3rd Anniversary Lunch

Saturday was a busy day.  As soon as I returned home from the women's event in Apopa, I got to work making my contribution to our IDEM group's potluck lunch.  We got together to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of meeting together, studying together, maturing together and sharing life.

We had a great lunch with roasted chicken (Costco), mashed potatoes, rice, green salad, fruit salad, tortillas and a "birthday" cake.  Our group is famous for celebrating, usually with food.  For that reason Stephen thinks we should change the name of the group from IDEM, which in English is pronounced like Eden only with an M on the end, to FIDEM (rhymes with Feed'Em.)  

Here's some pictures of the celebration!

On the road to recovery

We are hoping that the Monday night setback will be the last obstacle for Aviah to overcome.  Her x-ray at that time showed a possible bowel obstruction so they placed a NG tube and took her off all food.  

I talked to Daniel yesterday and he said they had decided to hold off on the upper GI as they were hoping her bowel just needed 24 hours of rest to restart itself.  Last night's x-ray revealed a more normal looking bowel so they started giving her Pedialyte (which she loved.)  Daniel said she seems to be a little "ticked off" at everyone that she can't have anything more to eat.  We all took that as a good sign!

Nevertheless she will be in the hospital through Friday in order to get the required 7-8 days of IV antibiotics; she will also have 7 days of oral antibiotics after discharge.  This infection (MSSA) is nothing to mess around with and doctor's want to be sure it is completely eradicated.  

She will still need the surgical (laparoscopic) procedure to remove the cyst, but it will likely be scheduled at the end of April, and, hopefully, can be done on an outpatient basis.  

We are so thankful that we have the opportunity to bring our petitions to the Great Physician and that he is faithful to hear our prayers.  Please continue to pray for complete recovery.

Healthy Eating + Exercise = Results

I've decided that weight gain is one of the most insidious results of poor eating habits combined with an inactive lifestyle.  The only thing that is worse is believing that your eating habits aren't really that poor and/or that your lifestyle isn't really that inactive.  Rewind 10 years:  I remember my weight because in the fall of 2004 I was buying a dress for Daniel/Shannon's wedding.  Fast forward 10 years:  insidious weight gain--a measly 3 pounds per year, but "oh, what a total!"  Maybe I could let myself off the hook if the weight I gained was evenly spread out over the 10 years.  In reality, I probably added 10-12 in the first couple of years and then held steady for awhile.  That was followed by another 10-12 in the first year or so after we moved to El Salvador (I blamed that on eating out weeks at a time while on mission trips out of the country.) The final few pounds came about as a result of visiting the states and having the opportunity to enjoy all the restaurants/food we miss living in Central America.  I admit that I've used that as an excuse to justify my overeating.

I started on the Daniel Plan journey to healthy eating and a more active lifestyle after being in the states for 3 weeks at Christmas.  Of course, when in the states we "eat" more and do "less."  That sentence would be more truthful if the pronoun was "I" instead of "we."  Stephen never fails to run wherever he is.  If you'd asked me whether I led a sedentary lifestyle, I would have answered, "no."  However, I received a FitBit in February and have been faithfully wearing it.  The suggested goal is to walk 10,000 steps per day.  Oh my goodness, I didn't realize just how much time I spent sitting.  I assumed that if I went for a 25-30 minute walk, I wouldn't be too far off that 10,000 step goal.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  In fact, my 30-minute walk is only good for about 4000 steps, meaning, unless I want to go on an hour and a half walk, I have to intentionally be more active during the day.  It has proved to be difficult to add more steps into my day when I spend the day at home.  We have a very little condo--10-12 steps from the kitchen to the living room; 30 steps from the living room to the bedroom.  If I find myself on the couch for more than a half hour, I take a walking break and do a quick lap around our little neighborhood.  I look at trips to the grocery store as a way of getting in my steps!  I don't reach my goal everyday, but I'm up and moving so much more now than I was.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about positive results!  I am happy to say that today I am 20 pounds lighter than I was in January.  Of course, I'm not finished yet, but it does feel good to reach this milestone.  At this point, I don't feel comfortable with the before/after picture thing.  Seems like at they show are baggy clothes!  Guess I'd rather surprise you the next time I see you.  

How did I celebrate?  Two eggs for breakfast, half an apple with 12 almonds for a mid-morning snack, chicken salad with grapes and two cantaloupe wedges for lunch.  Dinner (vegetable beef stew) is in the crockpot so I'm good to go!

We leave for Managua this Friday which means a week of eating out.  I'm determined to make better food choices while we're gone . . . . more about that later.  

Sharing at IDEM

Last night was IDEM (small group discipleship) night; we missed the session last week because we were coming back from Guatemala.  The IDEM curriculum has 9 sessions (3 per year.)  We are currently in the middle of the 5th session and have been meeting with this small group for 18 months (and have another 18 months to go.)  The friendship/love/support within this group is amazing as we've shared our lives, our testimony and the things that are most important to us.

The focus of this session is on the development of the Christian as a servant; the excellent material was written by Pastor Julio Contreras.  Studying the material is an interesting process--we receive it electronically in Spanish.  I copy it into Google translate which does average job turning it in to English.  (I'm not bashing Google Translate--without using it as a starting point, I'd never get all the way through the material.) Then, I spend several hours reading the Spanish and making adjustments to the English translation.  Once finished Stephen and I read the English version to be sure we understand the Spanish material.  Yesterday we studied Chapter 4, entitled "Hands to the Work."

Our IDEM groups meets for 2 hours on Tuesday evening.  Since most of the group is coming directly from work, we take turns bringing food.  Last night's main dish was Bean Soup with ham and dessert was "torreja" with sauce made from prunes.  It was more or less french bread with a fruit sauce.  Here's a picture:

Evidently it is a traditional dish from Spain which is usually served during lent.  Unfortunately, my "healthy diet" which doesn't allow bread or sugar, kept me from trying it.  The rest of the group, however, raved about it so I will assume it was quite tasty.

Last night's discussion of Chapter 4 was a little different than our normal routine.  Everyone was given 4 minutes (Ryan Blackstock, a gringo, is our group leader--hence the strict time limit) to share what was most impactful about the chapter.  Of course, hearing this puts fear in the heart of both me and Stephen.  Sharing is Spanish is still difficult!  But, we did it!  I was well under the time limit and Stephen even exceeded it by a bit.  Progress, progress!

Baggies are a girls best friend

I wish I owned stock in Dow Chemical, the owners of the Ziploc brand, or in the Glad company or in the Reynolds Packaging Group who owns both the "baggies" and "hefty" trademarks. 

Why you ask?  Well, sometimes I think it's because I'm only cooking for two (sometimes for one since my diet is different than Stephen's), but I've been doing that since our youngest went off to college in 2000.  Sometimes I think it's because shopping is more time consuming here and requires quite a bit of planning, so I try to buy in bulk when I can and I don't won't to waste anything.  It's just not that easy to "run to the store."  Sometimes I think it's my reaction to the lack of availability of canned foods and convenient sizes.  Whatever the reason, one of the things I absolutely couldn't do without is baggies.  I only have 4 drawers in my kitchen and one of the four is filled with my collection of snack-, sandwich-, quart- and gallon-sized bags.  Some of the sizes are available here, but others I have to bring from the states.

As I said, I buy almost all of my meat in bulk at PriceSmart (our Costco) and once I have it home, I divide it into two-portion sizes in sandwich bags.  

Of course, the individual bag is just the first step; the large freezer bag with label is the second step!

The same goes for the things I have to make from scratch.  For example, you can't find canned beans here . . . . so I cook two pounds of black beans in the crockpot and then freeze them in canned-sized servings in sandwich bags.   What else?  My frig is full of individual bags of home made chicken broth (oh, for Swansons in a can), vegetable broth, applesauce, garbanzo beans, white beans, etc.  My most recent use is to move hot dog buns and hamburger buns into individual bags so that I can easily thaw out just one.  

Not all of the bags I use are in the freezer, however.  Since we must co-exist with ants, anything that has been opened has to go inside a sealed bag.  So, my kitchen shelves are also full half-used taco and chili seasoning packets inside bags.  

Well, this is definitely a light-weight post when compared to my last one.  Isn't that just the way life is?  Sometimes it's about weighty words and important truths and sometimes it's about baggies and how they make my life easier!

It's about the talk, not the walk

Before anyone jumps to the conclusion that I typed the title backwards, let me say that the reversal of the words was intentional.  While I agree that the age-old adage to "walk the walk" is more essential and, likely, more important than to "talk the talk," today's post comes from a different point of view. 

****If you just want to know the answer to the riddle, skip to the last paragraph.

If you are interested in the whole story, read on.  While in Kansas City during the holidays, I had my annual physical.  Although nothing was greatly amiss, the numbers were increasing and by numbers I mean weight, cholesterol, including triglycerides, blood pressure, etc.  It could be argued that most of them were not greatly outside the normal range for a woman my age; but, nevertheless, my doctor suggested it was time to halt the increases and, even better, reverse this trend.  Before we left Kansas City, I purchased the book, "The Daniel Plan" written by Pastor Rick Warren from Saddleback Church in California.   One of the things about that particular book that grabbed my attention was that it doesn't identify itself as a "diet"book, but rather a as a multi-faceted "get healthy" book.  In fact, the book suggests that a healthy lifestyle requires all five of the following:  faith, food, fitness, focus and friendship. 

I will admit that the whole concept was very convicting.  Here's a quote from the first chapter:

"Before you can make any healthy changes in your life, you must first believe those changes are possible.  Even more important, if you want God's help you must trust him to give you his power to change.  Jesus said, 'According to your faith let it be done to you' (Matthew 9:29).  If you don't trust God to help you get healthy, all you are left with is willpower--and you know from experience that willpower doesn't usually last very long."

There's so much more in the book on this subject, but a little taste is all I wanted to provide.   As a result, after returning from the states in January, I embarked on a journey to get healthy.  On January 10, I started following the food and fitness recommendations in the book.  I am still working to wrap my head around the concept that this is a new lifestyle, not a diet, and that I need to set more long-term goals than short-term goals.  So far, the food part has been easy, well, except for the extra prep work that is required here.  Two examples come to mind.  First, all fresh vegetables and fruits have to be washed and disinfected (15-20 minutes) before they are ready to be consumed and second, some items have to be "homemade" (almond milk, almond butter, applesauce, vegetable broth) because they are not available here.  

In the chapter on fitness, Pastor Warren suggests that a person is more likely to start (and continue) with a type of exercise they really enjoy, i.e. bike riding, dancing, aerobics, basketball.  That sounded great, but there wasn't anything on his list (and it was comprehensive) that sparked my interest.  As a result, I defaulted to something that everyone can do, that's easy and that costs nothing--walking.  My son and daughter-in-law gave me a Fitbit for Christmas (in February) and it has become a great motivator.  I've now realized that my day does include time to exercise, and I'm trying to make choices to walk instead of sit.

My morning now includes a walk around our safe, gated neighborhood.  I don't have a iPod or other .mp3 player, so I found walking alone relatively boring.  Then I realized that it was the perfect time to "talk" with my creator. Why hadn't I thought of this before?  Why have I struggled with prayer time and been so easily distracted by every single thing going on in my house when all it took to start talking was walking.  Let me tell you that there's nothing better than talking to someone who wants to hear every word, who is infinitely interested in everything you do and say and who loves you more than anyone else.  That's the answer to the riddle--my daily "walk" is about the "talk."  How long do I walk?  So far, at least 30 minutes, but longer if my Father and I have more to discuss.  I think, perhaps, that my higher numbers were God's way of encouraging me to find time to talk to Him.