And it was morning and evening... the first day.
Today we moved into the tribe. We have been planning and praying and working towards this day for more years than I can count. And today, August, 18, 2014, was the day the Lord chose.
It was a hard day and a good day. And we survived it. :)
Getting off the ground this morning was hard. I had been up in the night with Caleb, who was screaming his feet hurt and he needed to throw up... which translated meant he was nervous and sick. So not a great night’s sleep and when the alarm went off at 5, it was a tad too early for my liking. We were supposed to be at the airport by 7, but trying to pack all the toothbrushes and pajamas and freezer food by myself while making breakfast and dealing with a sick little boy and two groggy ones, and it was 7:30 before we arrived at the airport... for our 8 am departure. I was totally frazzled. When I saw the plane fully loaded - with our teammates’ stuff - ours was still in the storage bins at the hanger - I almost started to cry. The pilot though, bless his heart, was so calm and had the plane unloaded and reloaded and me and my cranky boys onto the plane and in the air by 8 am.
The flight was pretty uneventful until the end when we started to descend and Ezra (who has also been kinda sick-ish the past couple days) started to scream. His ears were hurting. And the pilot, again, bless his heart, headed back up into the sky and circled around and tried the descent again more gradually to ease the pain for poor Ez. There should be a medal in heaven for pilots who fly single moms and kids anywhere. :)
We landed in the tribe about 9:30 and were greeted by Brant and all the village people swarming everywhere. SO good to see Brant. The boys were thru the roof excited to see our house and had a million questions and wanted to be in a million different places at once. We took a walk down to the river and through the village to try to dissipate the crowd.... literally on our front porch it was standing room only - 30 people packed onto a little 10x10 spot. It worked; by the time we were ready to go in the front door, very few people were hanging around.
The house.... was part construction zone (ladders and saw dust and wire bits everywhere); part bachelor pad (no hand towel at the kitchen sink to dry your hands... only an old t-shirt); part regular moving chaos of boxes everywhere (where did I put that knife? where is....?) and part rustic camping lodge (screen and boards and bugs). Literally all I could do was laugh..... there is SO much work to do to get it to be a livable home. But I love it. It’s very bright and open and airy. After months of staring at drawings and floor plans, it was fun to see the reality of our plans.
The view when I first walked in.
The kitchen is almost completely finished and ready for me to move in.... we just need to hook up the stove to the propane (right now just using a single burner camp stove) and move all Brant’s tools and building things off my counters! The bathroom has a functioning toilet and a semi-working shower, but the water is not hooked up to the bathroom sink yet, and the septic system (and shower!) definitely need some work. There isn’t a door on the bathroom yet, or any place to hang towels, and one whole wall is full of building scraps and pipes, so a lot still to do in there. The boys’ bedrooms are storage for our teammates’ building supplies (neither of our teammates have finished roofs yet) so it will be at least a week or two before the boys can move into their rooms. We need shelves built to put stuff and beds built, but our dining room table and chairs and barstools are all set up and so we have a place to eat and sit.
So as the boys explored we started to work. I swept and swept and swept. PILES of stuff everywhere - bent nails, wood chips, pipe shavings, trash. Brant pointed out he was too busy building the house to clean it. :) All day I swept and organized and unpacked and swept some more. We gave the little boys their “welcome to the tribe present” which were imitation leatherman multi-tools we got as a grocery store promotion this spring. They LOVED them. They immediately set to work cutting open boxes. Elijah used his little screw driver and fastened all the handles to my kitchen cabinets (the holes had been pre-drilled). Ezra cut his hand with his knife. Elijah cut his hand with his knife. Caleb found a spare mattress and fell asleep. Brant set up my fridge and worked on the back porch getting the washer set up and doing projects.
I was so thankful for God’s grace and gentleness - it was breezy and slightly overcast most of the day..... warm, but definitely do-able. Everyone had a good attitude and we got a lot done starting to get things set up. By 3 in the afternoon, the breeze had stopped and the heat was intense. Caleb and I sat on the front porch and just watched people. He was feeling pretty miserable. Ezra fell asleep, overwhelmed and feeling slightly miserable himself.
I played frisbee with a couple tribal ladies and Elijah ran around outside for a while. We got the boys’ beds set up - they are sleeping in the living room (our couch hasn’t been shipped in yet!) and so their mattresses and mosquito nets are all lined up neatly. We got a shelf set up for their clothes and library books. I cleaned up the bachelor kitchen and worked on dinner - SO thankful for all the food prep I had done weeks before - dinner was a snap (pesto, with tortillini and canned chicken, both gifts from our work team who came in May.)
We did hit a snag with the shower... It’s a pre-fab insert thing that Brant had hooked up but had not used yet. We went to turn it on this evening to shower the boys and the pipes leaked everywhere (in the wall!) So we ended up doing a bucket/dipper shower system, which worked fine. We are also missing some hardware pieces to fasten the doors on, so we kinda have to be careful (no shower curtain or doors - just the shower floor and back walls.) But the water was cool and refreshing and we got clean, so that was the most important thing. :)
After baths and while we were eating dinner, a tribal guy came to the door saying an old woman in the village had died. Very sobering. So now, Brant is out with the people and trying to see what all is going on.
So tonight, I am totally exhausted and have a headache, but thankful for God’s grace today. I could tell a million people were praying. We have a LOOOOONG way to go to get the house set up and running, but it’s do-able for now and we are clean and fed and have beds and pillows for the night.
Our first day in the tribe
