babies and cockroaches

well, i think yoko and i are the baby nurses here for a while. :-) little tilo (we finally found out his name) is doing well and only needs medicine for a few more days--now we just need to fatten him up. we´re also helping out with two other babies: maria (her teenage mom left, with no sign of returning, and she had no name that we know of, so yoko and i named her), who has malaria and a bad skin infection, and gustavo, who has the beginnings of pneumonia. so we´re getting up at 1:30 am again, braving the cockroaches and other bugs that come out to keep us company....

speaking of cockroaches, i´ve been laughing at ryan´s stories of creatures crawling in bed with him and i finally got my just desserts. i got up to go to the bathroom the other night, and found a cockroach waiting for me on my bed--i practically sat down on it. and then the stupid thing refused to go away, even after i blinded him with my flashlight, so i woke up poor yoko and slept in her bed. i suppose it was only a matter of time, and at least it wasn´t a spider--they have huge wolf spiders and tarantulas here, but thankfully i have yet to see one.

this week a group of 15 people from a church in texas are here; they have supported the house of hope for a while and wanted to come and experience what really goes on here--so this week most of the staff is on vacation, and this group is taking their place. they came on saturday to learn the ropes, and this morning ryan left, so we´re really on our own. needless to say it´s been pretty hectic, but the kids love it and so far no major catastrophes. we´ve got to help a bit more with the cooking, and i learned how to make tortillas...which by the way are incomparably better than store-bought american ones. mmmmmm.....

jose is doing very well. we´re looking into sending him to a deaf camp that is held in la ceiba every july, which would be sooo good for him. he really needs someone fluent in sign to learn from and as a role model/example, and there just isn´t an opportunity for that here in puerto lempira. there is one deaf boy (the 4-year-old that we brought to house of hope for a class a couple weeks ago) that will probably be living here starting in february, so hopefully he´ll be able to learn sign language as well. there is such a huge need here and so little resources, but it´s in God´s hands and at least we are giving jose as much language as we can in this short time. he learns quickly and is getting more expressive, but there are definitely some concepts that we are struggling to teach him; the lack of any language for so long makes it difficult, and our creativity is definitely being stretched. the other workers often laugh at us when they see us acting out a word or concept (the other day it was "obstinado," or "stubborn," and i was doing a full-blown rendition of a stubborn, spoiled little kid...right as roger walked by[he´s one of the main leaders here]), but they are fascinated and love to watch and pick up words. we´ll often be signing away, suddenly to notice that one of the kids or even adult is quietly copying our movements.

prayer requests: continued progress with jose, and also that he would begin to understand God/Jesus/the gospel (i´ve been signing stories from the bible to him, and we´re teaching him what we can, but it´s definitely slow progress because there are some very abstract concepts). strength to take care of all these sick babies. :-) 12-year-old ricardito is very sick, and we find out today if it´s malaria (hopefully not).

kimberly is much better! back to her regular laughing self. :-)

tomorrow, weather permitting, we´re going to a nearby creek to swim--with all the kids, that´ll be an adventure. :-)