Sunday - Wed.

Sorry I haven’t been updating as much lately. I feel that there’s a lot of routine now with English and all, so I’ll try and just hit the highlights of the past couple of days.

Last Sunday was the day that relatives come and visit the kids. It turned out pretty well. The aunt of Gerson, Johnson, Joel, Betsy and Sibilia came and they were extremely excited that she came. She comes about once every other month. It put Gerson in the best mood he’d been in for a couple weeks, but the older brother Johnson was pretty nonchalant about it. It was an answered prayer that Nelson’s father didn’t come to visit him, because now we think that he can be declared abandoned and be easier to adopt. His father hasn’t visited in over 6 months now, and the last time he visited Nelson was terrified and was crying in horror the whole time his father was there because he still remembered the abuse.

Tuesday night will be remembered as the great rat war. Avis was telling me about some car problems after dinner and I went out to go check the air filter in the car(which was completely caked thanks to all the dirt here) and that’s when I found the real problem…rats, Peruvian rats. There were two of them the size kittens with tails about as thick as my pinky finger. They were making a home out of the van. I went back and told Avis and she gave Matt and me some huge knives. We propped the hood open and started the hunt. I found one and made a quick jab at it, but all I came up with was some hair. We then decided to just put rat poison all over the van. The dog Sparky got a hold of one of the rat’s tails and ripped it in half which sent the mouse into a shrieking frenzy, then I went to bed.

Wednesday was another doctor day. I went to Trujillo again with 6 kids 2 house moms, Randy and Vanessa. After the nearly 2 hour ride there we waited outside on rickety wood benches for another 4 hours to see the doctor. The doctor finally prescribed some inhalers and I think the kids are already feeling better. After the doctors visit it was about 2 and we finally got some food. All the kids were starving because the moms made them fast just incase the doctors needed to take blood. After we ate we went to another hospital to visit one of Randy and Vanessa’s friends so I waited in the car with one of the house mothers and all the kids while they went inside. I fell asleep in the front seat because it had a recliner on it, and I was sharing it with Gerson who also fell asleep. I woke up and then out of no where Gerson woke up and started throwing up, good thing I’ve got the fastest puke reaction time south of the equator because I was able to grab a trash bag that was behind us open it up and put it under Gerson’s mouth in about .05 seconds. Thanks to the fast reaction time only my Jeans and his shirt got covered in vomit. We didn’t get back home till about 5:30, it was a pretty long day.