'Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house, creatures were stirring and none were a mouse. Spiders, scorpions and ants galore. Watch where you step, there's one on the floor. Iguanas and lizards right out the door. Who in their right mind wouldn't ask for more.
They have been putting a second story on a house in our neighborhood. Friday was the day they poured the roof. Almost all houses here are totally bricks, concrete and rebar including the roofs. This particular roof required 87 bags of cement at 50 lbs each (4,350 lbs) plus the aggregate (gravel), sand and the water used to mix it.
Heavy equipment consists of a gas-powered mixer and 5 gallon buckets filled with wet concrete. About 15 men, who form a bucket brigade, carry the filled buckets up a crude wooden ramp to what will be the second floor roof. The bucket is dumped and the man goes back down to get another. This process continues until the house has a roof. It is an interesting illustration of teamwork, hard work and persistence. Each individual bucket is insignificant to the total, but bucket by bucket the work is completed.
I don't like to share much of other peoples' business in the blog. I don't want to use them and their lives for self-promotion. However, this victory I feel led to share because it promotes God. The mother of someone we know was recently hospitalized with an abcessed kidney infection. She is also diabetic. Her blood sugar was way out of wack as well. She had been on intraveneous antibiotics. They decided to discharge her despite the persisting infection and the blood issues. The family was expecting a funeral. I had the opportunity to pray with her just as she was being discharged. She is a Christian and I know that others in her church were praying for her as well. Today, she is well. God healed her against medical reason. She should not have recovered.
As I was writing this, Donna felt something crawling up her leg. As you can imagine, it is a common occurrance because there are so many insects here. Ants of all colors and sizes are the most common. We also have to deal with tiny gnats which are almost too small to see. They love to feed on humans, especially Donna. They leave an itchy welt. This morning however, what she brushed from her leg to the floor was a scorpion about 1/16" long. It quickly met the end of my right index finger. It did not survive. Time to get out the bug spray!
Next week is the run up to Christmas. Neither of us feel the holiday spirit. The weather is Chicago-summer warm. Although some people do decorate a little and Christmas stuff has been in the stores for a month, it is not even a shadow of Christmas in the US. In a way, it is a bit of a blessing. We are missing the festive get togethers and food plus things like my son Jason's fudge, daughter Jessica's cookies and, most of all, spending time with family.
We had two invitations from friends for Christmas. We did not want to have to choose. We were relieved to find out that one was for Christmas Eve. Whew!! We accepted both. Then we discovered that the other was Eve as well. We have since learned that "Christmas" means Christmas Eve. Gaahhhh!!!!!! Christmas Day is for sleeping in and recovering from an over the top medianoche (midnight) dinner. I think we'll go to the beach.
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