Okay I literally just sat down to write this and someone came over and was holding the baby and the baby, wearing a nightgown, socks, and wrapped up in a blanket with a little sweat on the back of her head from sleeping, started cooing and I asked her, "What are you saying Mary Charis?" and the lady looks at me and says, "She says she is cold."
I must have missed something in my almost 29 years. Something that is so common knowledge. Apparently babies are freezing cold until they are 6 months old. They need to be wearing layers, gloves, socks, boots, toboggans, earmuffs, face mask, and wrapped in three blankets and please, get them close to the fire...and even though they are probably still freezing, at least maybe the air won't make them sick. Because apparently the air that blows on you is absolutely and always the cause of every sickness a baby has. How dare a mother drink a cup of cold water, milk, or anything that has been refridgerated. Then her milk will be cold and the inside of the baby's stomach will be cold too. I missed the health class that taught that the cold, the flu, and all diseases a baby can get come through the wind. And just because she fusses uncomfortably everytime you try to put a blanket over her legs and whines and kicks until she finally manages to kick it completely off and immediately relaxes and goes right to sleep all sprawled out, she is desperately cold and NEEDS that blanket. It doesn't matter that air conditioning doesn't exist here and that the coldest temperature is equivalent to an Alabama September, she is freezing. And how dare a mother allow her baby to lay in her diaper and be unsweaty. How dare she!
So by Guatemala standards, I am afraid to say, I am a bad mother. And the women can NOT believe that my baby has not been sick, because it will surely happen. Oh the whispers I heard when I arrived at someone's home, drenched in sweat mind you from having to climb the little mountain in the sun to get to their house, and they took the baby, who was also sweating, from being covered up by a thin white cloth diaper that we use as a burp rag, not because she was cold, but to prevent her from getting a sunburn. How dare I use a diaper to cover my baby, she must be absolutely freezing to death...
Okay, obviously it can be annoying the cultural differences between here and there and other than acid reflux and bad gas, she is healthy and happy and gaining weight. Having a baby does wonders for your relationship building as a missionary (if she is covered from head to toe and steam is rising out from under the blanket that is). I mean everywhere you go people smile and want to touch her and talk to me. The meanest people act like we've been such good friends. It must also be a cultural thing to kiss the baby here. There have been many many lips touch my baby's arms and hands...men's, women's, children's...dog's...while it is very touching and sweet, thank goodness for antibacterial soap, because I always thought that germs were what caused the cold, the flu, and other illnesses. But what do I know?
But the love and concern, no matter how they might irritate a foreigner, they are there and it is precious to watch the women here love all over her. I have no concerns about her growing up in this poor rural community. She is completely accepted and adored and for that I can not be more grateful.
So July 28th came the baby, August 1st came my mother, August 22 came the good lawyer to legally serve the bad lawyer, and August 29th came my inlaws, and August 30th came the steel structure company to start constructing the children's home. Lot's of good came this past month and we've been rather busy.
Seems we waited all year for all these things and they all came at one time! We are blessed. We are so blessed because we had the full 50% to pay the company to start the construction and we didn't have to personally loan any of our money although we expected we would have to. We are even more blessed that by the end of this month it will be very likely that the Mission will have enough funds to pay the next 20% we owe. The Lord knows what we need and He will provide.
Please don't stop praying for us as we seek to make disciples of the children the world has yet to consider. And don't stop supporting us as we are diving head first, by faith, into the building of this home that will allow us to raise up these children in a Christ-centered environment full of love, hope, and education. There is a mountain of work before us, but Jesus, well, He is worth it!
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