The day to day.

Highlight of the week: Larry's friend Ruth brought us CHAI. Just kidding, not the highlight, but definitely a high point.

So, I'm going to be honest. It is late, and I am tired. I want to tell you all a funny story, but sometimes when I look at the screen for too long I feel like my eyes are going to fall out. Also, we have to use the computer in the kitchen and someone else has to be with us. Erick is here because he's the only one who is around, but he is tired.

I think you all would like to know what we do most of the time. It's different every day, every week, but here we are.

Monday: Larry and I hiked up to La Moriah to cut down weeds to plant corn. It was a good time and I found a huge termite nest! After that I rested, read, ate dinner, and I don't really remember what we did that night besides that I went to sleep.

Tuesday: I moved the stuff I sweeped up in the plant nursery (an old house that was destroyed by Hurricane Mitch) into the compost pile. I planted some cranberry hibiscus seeds in a seed bed and tried to move some wild cilantro, but the neighbor's chicken was in the bed where we wanted to put them, so we decided to wait til we had a better fence. I tried to catch the chicken for a while, but she is really smart.

Wednesday: I planted some more things in the nursery and weeded and put more mulch (bamboo leaves) on the terraces they have built here, getting them ready to plant.

Thursday: I worked with Erick planting corn on the property across the road. We picked a pineapple but it wasn't ready, and found lots of sweet potatoes we missed in the harvest! It took a while because he wasn't feeling well, but we finished. I went to a Bible study with Allison and the other missonary women in the area.

Friday: I planted beans on one of the terraces I mulched. They are an heirloom variety of cow bean from the states, so we will see how that works. I planted some mustard seed and some other beans in the nursery. I made cuttings from katuk plants to to put in the ground because a new tree will grow right out of those little sticks to make a fence to keep the chickens in or out, depending. After lunch, Larry and I went across the road to help him plant something, but I actually ended up charming bees and harvesting beans. So that was fun.

Every day after work is over and I am in the room, Joel comes in to draw a picture. They are beautiful, mostly just circles. Depending on the kind of paper you give him, he will draw different figures. If you give him paper with no lines, he will draw some kind of domino human, if graph paper, just circles. Today he only used the green marker. Interesting. I wish I could get inside his head.

The real fun has been in the stuff God is revealing to me about my life and my past and my heart right now. It's been really rough, but, like I said earlier, this summer is probably going to be more about healing than agriculture, though I am finding that the two don't have to be separate things.

Also, I should let you know that I am going to be staying in the campo (country) for two weeks, with a man named Luis and his wife and kids. Luis works with Larry and Larry likes to send people to stay with him. They are poor farmers, but I we will talk more about that when I get back. All that to say, I don't know if I will get on the the computer next Friday.

I hope everything is going well for you, but if it's not, that's ok too. God can use even the nastiest, thorniest weed to fertilize something beautiful (how's that for an agricultural truism of a metaphor?!)

Alex