Noncommittal

  Simply put, I'm a fairly noncommittal person. Looking back, I can hardly believe I came to Bolivia for a year. I think I've had a job once that I stayed at for a year, before coming here in 2007, but other than that I've never stuck with anything for that long. During school, I had nine months of work and three months of break/play. Any job I had (other than that one) I've always had for up to nine months, then went to Arrowhead for the summer to work, and then returned. So, really, in some ways I've never really made much of a committment to anything. I think it's for this reason that I'm so nervous about making decisions concerning college in January. I had a friend advise me that due to the competition in Nursing Programs in general, and the different classes that each school is going to list as requirements, the best way to go is to pick a school and stick with it for the entire program. Wow. I don't know exactly how long it will take me to study, but I'm guessing it won't be anything less than four year. FOUR YEARS! of my life, committed to one place. Granted, I'll have my summers free again to do what I want, but if I'm thinking about returning to the missions field (which I am) I'm going to want to graduate with as little debt as possible so I'm not stuck, in a sense. So I'll be working during my summers. Ugh. Yeah, noncommittal indeed. I know four years is not that long in the whole scheme of things, but, from where I'm standing right now, it's a good chunk of time! I know that God is calling me back to school, but that still doesn't make me very excited to go.

My New Baby

Internet is down at my house, so I'm not able to upload pictures, but I wish I could so you could all see my beautiful new baby Mariana! She is a year and a half old and arrived at the home Wednesday afternoon. It's been a couple of interesting days for her, that's for sure. My heart breaks for her, as she spends a fair amount of crying, staring and pointing at the gate, longing to go home, I'm sure. However, in her moments of distractedness she brings me much joy- her smile and laugh are so incredibly adorable!! I can never understand how on earth these parents can just give their kids away. She is slowly adjusting to life at the home. My other little girl, Abigail, loves having another little girl to play with. She's getting used to the schedule and is getting to know each of us workers little by little, but it's still easy to tell it's all a little (or very, really) foreign to her. I'm trying to imagine the thought process a child like that goes through being taken from a family setting, no matter how awful, and being thrown into a completely new environment where she nothing and no one is familiar to him/her. But it does make me happy to know that she is now in a place where she will have people taking good care of her and loving her and playing with her like a little girl her age needs. She is such a sweetheart. We need to take her to the doctor to find out how her health is, but as far as we can tell she doesn't have any outstanding health issues, but is just in need of a home and a little love. I'll have to get a picture up of her soon- she's such a little princess. Please pray for her and us through the adjusting process. It's different for every child, of course, but it reminds me a little bit of Diego's first week, and I know it was pretty rough- some moments were happy, some sad, some screaming wanting to leave, and just hard over all. It's hard to watch a child have to go through.

Recovery

Esperanza's back at the home! Wow, open heart surgery Monday, back at the home Thursday- that's pretty quick! We have her pretty well separated from the other kids, because ideally she would have spent a few more days in the hospital, but for a number of reasons she's back at the home a little early. However, this does speak of how rapidly she is recovering!! She stayed in the ICU until she came back with us, but the fact that she's already healthy enough to come home is incredible to me! Until Monday we will keep her pretty isolated for her own sake. Her lungs have some slime in them at the moment, which is typical after this type of surgery, and already normal for her because of her cleft lip and cleft pallet, but we have a physical therapist coming in each day to do chest compressions to help loosen up the flem, and we have her on a special schedule of moving her around in her crib/just changing her position to try and keep the fluids loose inside in the hopes of getting them out. Also, she's on a pretty rigid medicine intake. However, it's exciting to have her back. She's not quite back to herself completely, but she smiles and kicks around some when she's feeling a little better, which is really encouraging. You can tell she's still in some pain, but she is doing really really good for how recent she had her surgery. Thanks for all who have been praying! Monday she will have an appointment to see how recovery is going and then after that life will be able to go a little bit "back to normal" for her, although I'm sure we'll be keeping an extra good eye on her for more than a few more weeks to make sure she's getting better as she should.

Yay Surgery!

Yesterday was the big day! Esperanza finally got her surgery!! Yaayyyyyy : D  She went in Sunday evening to be prepped for surgery. The operation started around 8am Monday morning and by 11 or so she was all finished. They had thought she may be on a respirator for up to a day but came off in a mere six hours, and she appears to be doing really, really well. Kristin, the director of the home, got to go see her for just two or three minutes, and says she's looking great. Lots of tubes and everything, but she said her color has never been better. She's currently in the ICU and should be there another day or so, and then will be in the hospital up to a week depending on how she is. So, thank you all for praying! I can hardly believe it finally happened. After waiting for nearly nine months it's strange that every thing we waited for happened in just three hours. Couldn't this have happened eight months ago?? But, it's all done and all's going well now, so I suppose I can't complain. I'll be excited to see how she is able to put on weight and grow over this next month and a half (and further down the road of course).

News....

Hello Everyone,
  I just wanted to send out a quick note letting you know a couple things-
1) For those of you who didn't know, the family that is adopting my little boy Lucas finally got custody about a week ago! Hooray! So he's no longer at the home, which has been a little sad for me, but not as hard as I would have expected. The family has contacted us a few times and he seems to be doing really well. They said he was very curious about his new home and just taking it all in. He follows his new mom around the house saying "mama, mama" which is a good sign I guess :)
2) WE SCHEDULED HEART SURGERY FOR ESPERANZA!!! I don't think I'll fully believe it till I see/hear that she is on the table being operated on, but we made an appointment for October 17th, and the doctor says she can't wait, so I'm pretty confindent in the fact that it will finally be happening. Finally! You can pray for us as we try and get things in order, find volunteers to help us cover as we'll have to have people at the hospital, etc. I'm so excited but also a little nervous. But she really needs this surgery, and I know that God is in control, and I can trust in Him.
  Thanks for your continued prayers!
God Bless,
Samantha