Winter Work (and play!)

Not sure if you can actually call it winter down here, but after living here a few years, we can definitely feel a change of seasons...and we are kind of bummed that spring is approaching. I know, I NEVER thought I'd say that! Spring in the Midwest is a beautiful thing, but here it heralds the end of amazing temps and rain, and beckons the hot, sticky days and nights of summer. That's OK! I promise, I'm not complaining! As David recently told someone, you all could come "suffer" down here with us ;). And their answer.. Yeah, you're really suffering Zimmerman!

There's been lots of working going on around here this winter...and a lot of "play" too!

Early this winter, we had a few containers arrive with stuff for solar, etc.  Bob and Mary Honegger from Bluffton have done lots and lots of work with preparing containers for shipping for many, many years.  This was the first time they have ever been able to see one of their containers being opened at it's delivery point!  Thanks Bob and Mary for all your work!!

We were invited to a valentine's dinner hosted by the school kids.  It was a mystery supper, and was pretty entertaining like most mystery suppers :)

This was David's utensil for the meal and he used it like a champ!

Some of the behind the scenes help

A tent!  Such great childhood fun!

Goodfield church sent a work team to help with the renovation of our Medicine Ward...the final ward to renovate!!  So exciting that we are moving from renovation to new construction around here!

Teams usually find time for a little entertainment while they're here.  This team played baseball up at the only flat spot in our area :)  I thought this was a good pic of typical American-ness in the midst of Haiti...not only baseball (isn't that supposed to be a pretty all-american sport?) but the fact that there are SIX baseballs in the game...so that we can keep things moving and not wait for the stray ball to be found. Signs of our culture's concept of time and our abundance :)

Another activity that a lot of teams enjoy is going to visit "Jimmy's bees."  Jimmy is a physical therapy guy who works at the hospital and he's very entrepreneurial.  He has logs and logs full of bees and honeycomb at his home.  We went to visit and got to see how he smoked the bees to make them sleepy, and then let the honey drip out of the honeycomb.  He cut us some off, and we got to eat warm, sticky honeycomb!

We've had several short-term volunteers/interns this winter.  It's been really nice to be able to have people around for longer than a week to work on projects and get to know them better.  Moira and Dr Patty came for 5 weeks and 3 months respectively.  We enjoyed spending a supper with them one evening and getting to know them better.  Moira did a lot of work in our supply areas of the hospital, and Patty is working in surgery, so I get to see her on the mornings that I go work.  

Orrin and Cassia were playing outside one day.  Orrin had his little dirt pile and Cassia of course wanted to play with it too.  Our conversation went like this:

"Mom, I'm not gonna share!"

"There's plenty of dirt out here for both of you."

"NO, there's NOT!"

Another week we had several work teams at once.  We held eye clinics with several eye docs, and also had a cardiology clinic.  They were both very busy and much needed!  David even got to get his eye checked as he happened to have a spot that was bothering him in one of his eyes that week.

One of the docs on the trip was an eye surgeon.  It was his first trip to the hospital, so he wasn't planning on doing any surgeries and hadn't brought any of his equipment along.  But he came across a man that really needed operated on to avoid his eye infection from possibly spreading to a systemic or brain infection.  Kudos to him, he performed the surgery without his precise tools and in a foreign language environment.

Jared spent months working on categorizing our eyeglasses. We received hundreds and hundreds of eyeglasses, and Jared learned how to "read" the lens prescription so they were all ready for when the team came and they could be matched to the right people.

That same weekend, we had a visit from an Awareness Team...people who join a team and tour most of ACHC's missions in Haiti.  We went to Haitian church in Bonne Fin together Sunday morning, had an afternoon service, toured the Hospital, had supper together, and some of us gave our testimonies of how God led us to Haiti.  Also in the day, we gathered our singing group together and sang two songs for the team.  I think that the team enjoyed hearing the songs, and the ladies enjoyed the opportunity to sing to them.

Skype is a great entertainer.  We talk to the Grandma's often, and Orrin can show off his "dancing" or acrobatics, and the grandma's "play" trucks or read books to him.  Here, he wanted to show gma his bedroom.

The kids were sick when we were skyping this time, and it turned out to be a good time to do it...they both sat still, and we could pretend that they weren't dressed because of their fevers....

 The road is getting graded!  Lots of heavy equipment has been showing up around the hospital lately.  The hospital provided some fuel for the trucks, and they helped get the road a little smoother.  Orrin really liked to see all the equipment too!

We went to the beach for the first time in months.  It was relaxing, a lot of fun, warm, and the kids thought it was great!

One day when we were visiting up at the hospital, this lady said that Cassia had been born the same day she gave birth to her son.  She said she remembered that Cassia was born in the evening, and the next morning, I was sitting her up!  Now, this is a big deal around here :)  I didn't know that at the time, but babies are not supposed to be sat up for three months.  Ah well, maybe that's why our kids are crazy and their kids sit still for three hours in church.  Her little guy has been  pretty sick for several weeks, but he's home and better now!

David and I went to town on his birthday, did some errands, ate at a new bistro (so yummy!!) and checked out a "garden" that we have passed so many times but never stopped at.  We want to see what they have for sometime in the future for hospital landscaping, and we were completely blown away by what they had!  They had acres and acres of plots of flowers and plants.  They also had sculpture gardens to walk through.  It was a super relaxing experience, where we could "get away."  We for sure want to go back!!

That trip helped out our little landscaping venture :)  It's not a very blog-worthy picture, but hopefully the plants will bush out a little, and it's an improvement from what was there before :)

Easter! We skipped the sunrise service, and just went to church at the regular time.  Then Platt's invited us up for a brunch...that Toby made all by himself!  It was really great.  Thanks Toby!

It's been a good winter, and we'll see what spring holds for us!!