Nature and Ignorance

July 29, 2018

Yesterday I saw a story unfold that really affected me.  As I was walking from the chapel to the dining hall I saw something on the sidewalk, as I got closer I saw that it was two baby squirrels.  At first I thought that they were hurt, possibly from falling from a tree.  But as I got closer I saw that they were snuggling and playing, even wrestling with each other!  I stood and watched in wonder for quite a few minutes.  Then I took a few steps closer and made a noise and they stopped and focused on me, and immediately they came hopping my direction.  They climbed on my shoes and hugged my ankles, they were adorable.  I have never encountered wildlife that was so trusting, affectionate and confident.  I thought, and maybe said out loud, “you guys trust people, maybe that’s not such a good idea?” I looked around for a watchful parent, but didn’t see one.  Then I remembered that about 2 days before, I was called to remove a dead squirrel from the craft area, I wonder if it was their mother?  This was in close proximity to the swimming pool, and close to where I encountered the baby squirrels.  About 10 days previous to that the staff was having trouble stabilizing the swimming pool chemistry, they had to ‘shock’ the water to kill off algae and get the water to clear up.  I had seen squirrels drinking from the pool almost every day, and I wondered if that may have caused the death of that one I picked up.  Maybe it was the nursing mother to the two babies that I encountered today. 

People came around and looked in wonder at the cute little guys.  Someone looked up how to care for them and it looked like that would be a 24 hour a day job for someone.  There was also a recommendation to put them back out in the wild and hope that a mother would appear and feed them, so we did.  But, some unsupervised children found them and handled them, and later they were throwing them in the air, maybe hoping that they would cling to a tree?  I couldn’t imagine what they were thinking.

I found these two little creatures this morning, both of them were dead.  It is hard to get out of my head, the tragic absence of their mother, their disastrous trust of people, and their final hours of being handled harshly by unsupervised and un-taught children. 

Smart Dogs and Absent Minded People

We were busy packing yesterday, we were sorting through our books and packing the ones we want to keep.  Stacks of books were all over, boxes strewn up and down the stairway too.  As we are busy with this the workers are working upstairs on the sealed off portion of the house.  All of a sudden Frodo comes halfway down the stairs and looks at us, with his head down and his eyes all sad like “hey I didn’t do it.”  Linda asks me, “what’s wrong with him?” and we continue with the job.  Two minutes later Frodo reappears, this time we can see something is wrong.  He looks the way he looks when he had an infection a few years ago and needed to see the vet.  “What’s wrong Frodo?” Linda said, then we look up and see pretty little waterfalls coming down the stairs.  Yikes!  I run around and climb up the ladder to the construction side of the house to see what’s up.  Someone had opened a valve on a hose and since nothing came out to fill the bucket when the water pressure was down, they just left the valve open and walked away (DUH!).  Well, the water pressure came back on again and it was squirting water all over the place!  Glad we were home!  So thankful we avoided any damage!

A day in winter -Feb 9 2017

Woke up and came down for a cup of coffee.  I started the pellet stove and glanced at the thermometer, 59 deg. F inside.  That's the warmest morning we have had in this house this winter!  The humidity is still pretty high, almost 68% so I will have to run the dehumidifiers some more.  We have had to throw away clothing due to the dampness, it's hard on electronics and anything made of metal too.  The combination of damp air, and cold house means that condensation forms easily on anything made of metal.  We are both completely over the colds we had in January, but Linda is still having some ear problems from the long term congestion and coughing.  This house does not have a single window facing the South, so it does not warm up even with a few warmer days in the winter.  We are planning build our new house so that it takes full advantage of the sun in the winter, and good lighting all year round.  Definitely something to look forward to!

I believe that we have come to a critical point with our health & age, we can no longer tolerate the cold, damp indoors at night from Nov-Feb in these cinder block, un-insulated homes.  To be able to continue to live here and stay healthy we need to build a home that is well insulated and arrange things so that it takes advantage of the sun for heating in the winter.

The sun is out and very bright!  Looking forward to taking a walk and soaking up it's warmth!  Today we will be doing a lot of sorting & packing.  We need to separate stuff we will need to arrange the stuff we pack away in boxes as short term, and long term items.  Our moving date is approaching very quickly, maybe as soon as 10 days.

Last night I gave the study/devotional at prayer meeting on Stewardship, Spiritual gifts.  It went very well.  We had pretty good attendance for a chilly damp evening in Baja.  One of the greatest blessings of our prayer meeting is I always urge the small prayer groups to, "talk to the person on your right in the group, pray for them, we want everyone to leave prayer meeting blessed and encouraged." This one thing has really enriched our prayer time!

9:45AM  The truck just arrived to unload cinder block, the new owner of our current house is beginning the remodeling process.  We are thankful that we are working with believers and together coordinating our move to temporary housing.

Stuff I've Learned

"It is IMPOSSIBLE to make educational advances against the raging currents of willfully ignorant people apart from Gods intervention."

Noise #@!@?!

I am waiting to get my hair cut.  In addition to my nonstop tinnitus, I am submerged in a painful racket of continual noise.  Linda and the stylist are talking, that is not bothersome to me, but outside the open door there is the crackle of a gasoline engine powering a pressure washer, passing traffic of which about half do not have mufflers.   There is an annoyingly loud talk program tuned in on the salons TV set, some bodies nearby  car alarm has been going off at exact 7 minute intervals and does its infernal whooping for about 5 minutes before it resets itself.  Hair clippers and hair dryers make their whirring contribution as well to the total decibel tally.  Quite often, here in Mexico, with its abundant and UNNOTICED BY MOST, noise pollution crisis, I have caught myself wondering what it would be like to own one of those sets of Bose noise canceling headsets.  The reprieve from chronic, obsessive, debilitating, LOUD, nonstop, senseless, inexcusable, noise would probably bring tears to my eyes.

The cockerel cacophony of endless crowing was silenced by the blessed flash of the butchers knife; there was a brief flapping of wings and followed by still, quiet, peace!  Ironically, it was death that had restored 'happily ever after' to our daily exsistence.  Dauntless in her mission, my wife dispatched a few of the noisier protagonists as effortlessly as I step on spiders.

The 2012 Move

The third week of May, 2012...
The last time we moved, it turned into a one day BLAST. The amount of damage and destruction was lamentable. This time we have taken all this week to pack up the delicate stuff and we have moved it ourselves a little at a time. Today, the truck and our help should (may?) arrive. A last minute mens meeting date change diverted most of the hopeful recruits we had lined up for getting help with the big furniture, a truck and a trailer.

Yesterday was a very interesting moving day:
*A person we are counseling called with a big crisis, he HAD to talk to me NOW. So I loaded the van and told him that I could talk with him while we took and unloaded stuff. I don't think that those boxes were put where we wanted to put them, when I am distracted the wierdest things happen.

*People kept calling to tell us why they could not help, Im not sure how many times I had to pull off the road to answer the cell phone. After telling us this most of them wanted to continue with LONG casual conversation. Im sure that I made the "bad missionary" cultural taboo gringo mistake when I said "hey, um... Im idling on the side of the road with stuff in the van and my wife waiting at the house to help me unload it, maybe, could we please chit chat at a less pressing time?"

*I went to buy gas for a van, as I left the street was unusually heavy with traffic so I just left the gates open. When I got back 4 big dogs were clawing and biting at the chicken wire trying to get into our chicken coop. Sahara (our Belgain Shepherd who was chained up- Yes, someone in Ensenada keeps their dog restrained) was going bananas, Linda was getting the garden hose to squirt them, the owner was in the park, sheepishly whistling for his 4 big unleashed killers to please come back. I felt that the scene before me was somewhat symbolic of an invisible diabolical strategy to foil our attempts to transfer our belongings from one residence to another. Does the enemy of our souls have some special thing against moving?

*In the late afternoon someone called from San Diego all frantic because they were bringing a load of building material to Ens. and they did not make it to the border on time, Mexican customs for big items had closed till Monday. He had been told to get there early enough to avoid this dilema, but he said that a trailer broke down on the way. ANYWAY, they needed a place to dump the contents of a 20 foot trailer until they could come back and complete the run. The Mex. brother asked me about a friend of ours from Laurel Bible Chapel who... we impose upon way too much for this kind of favor. Big sigh! By this time I was almost crossed eyed with frustration.

Now, it is 7:05AM, moving day. We will see what joys await.