the pursuit

All patched up and ready to go!

See you back home!

We went in service, ate weird fruit, got sunburned, saw a horse:

Back at the branch, saw a coffee bush, got caught in a random hailstorm:

Visited a giant mall:

Went to downtown Bogota with friends, had delicious coffee:

Went to museum of Colombian artist who only paints fat people, museum is in beautiful colonial house:

Went up mountain overlooking city at night:

Ate corn on the cob from roadside stand:

Took pictures with table and with Wayuunaiki translation team back in Faca:

Pretended to be secret agents:

Took last picture of branch:

Now in Bogota, leaving Monday. Tomorrow we have one last doctor’s appointment, the English meeting and then a Superbowl party. Then it’s back to New York, back to winter, back to our lives.
It’s gone by really fast. Hard to believe it’s been a month.

Hello! Sorry it’s been a few days, let’s pick up on Sunday morning.

Despite lingering congestion, we made it up and down to breakfast and onto the shuttle in time for our ride to the zone meeting. (The shuttle left exactly on time, too, despite one brother not showing up, so good thing we made it!)

The Assembly Hall is in the suburbs of Bogota, and the area must have gotten some heavy rain recently, because once we turned off the highway the road looked like this:

Some of the friends took public transportation which dropped them off at the end of this little road, so there were sisters in high heels trying to wade through the mud, and cars passing by with an empty seat or two picking them up.

The Assembly Hall is huge! There were over 5,000 there, and other assembly halls around the country were connected for a total attendance of over 18,000. They can use the whole AH for district conventions, or partition it off and have two simultaneous circuit or special assembly days.

Some of the friends had gotten up at 1:30 in the morning so they could drive in for the program! Most of the congregations had rented buses, but there were a few cars and some motorcycles too.

We went around talking to people before the program started, and all the missionaries in the country were in the next section taking a group picture. We pulled out our camera to get a picture of them, but they dragged us into the picture instead! It was chaos! The chairman was trying to settle everyone down, cameras were being passed around. . .

After the program, there were lots more pictures. . .

Then it was back on the shuttle to Faca. One of the couples on the shuttle used to be Bethelites in Spain and were transferred here to work in the printers a few years ago. They were fun to talk to.

Since then, let’s see. Monday we spent all day in Bogota doing appointments.

We hadn’t reserved spots for lunch in Bogota Bethel, so Carlos took us to centro comercial Santa Fe, which we later heard is the third biggest shopping mall in South America. We had fun browsing around, but we didn’t buy anything. We’re still waiting for a good souvenir opportunity.

Tuesday we didn’t do much during the day, but we had two social invitations for the evening. Yesterday we both got some work done, and then more socializing, and today we’re heading back to Bogota, but coming back here tonight for, yes, more socializing. The friends here are really friendly and hospitable. Now that my arm is better the rest of our evenings here are booking up fast!

Tomorrow night we’ll spend the night in Bogota so we can do service with the English congregation on Saturday, and they got Zack to agree to do the talk on Sunday.

The Insight books are coming along slowly. By slowly I mean I’m up to page 620 or so, about halfway through Volume 1. By my calculations I was supposed to be halfway through Volume 2 right now, but self-imposed deadlines were made to be broken, right?

That’s all for now. See you!

We saw the doctor yesterday and she told us that the pathology had come back clear; no more surgery necessary. Yay! She also took off the bandage (rolling her eyes at our scotch-taped efforts to keep the thing on) and let us see my arm for the first time.

It ain’t pretty. Feel free to skip ahead to the pretty pictures if you prefer.

The incision is long and jagged, and the arm is all lumpy and bumpy. “I had to move the fat around,” she said, fingering my other arm. “I tried to make it match.”

The whole area was covered with stitches, some holding the incision together, but most were just little tacks in the skin on either side of the wound, sectioning the arm into little quadrants so if the pathology had been different she would have known where she needed to open it back up. But fortunately that will not be necessary, so she removed all the extra stitches.

She also removed the drainage tube, which was the worst part. I had been picturing it sort of delicately tucked up by the incision, but that was not the case. It was inserted into my arm at least an inch below the incision itself, and it was inserted at least a couple of inches into my arm. Feeling in slide out was very odd and not at all pleasant, but not having it attached to me anymore is wonderful.

We’ll see the other doctor on Monday and we are promised more details and even pictures of the actual surgery. I’m not sure how deep they had to go. I don’t have much feeling in that area of the arm (missing nerve endings?) which is good-hardly any pain! But also weird. Did they have to take muscle out? I don’t think so, the arm seems to be functioning perfectly normally. But for we are just happy that it seems like they got it all, it’s healing well, and things are getting back to normal.

And now for the pictures:

This is the building the doctor’s office is in. Note the windowcleaner.

This is a nice mall where we got coffee after the appointment. It’s a 19th century hacienda which has been swallowed by the growing city.

Today we took a nice walk around the branch.

The tree in the rock. Note the tiny Katie.

We attempted to take a picture of ourselves by propping the camera on another rock. . . It took a couple of tries.

We had fun with the local flora (roses the size of my head!)

And fauna (watch-geese doing their rounds, ducks with punk-rock hair, a peacock who was indifferent to my waving leaves at him in the vain hope that he would spread his tail)

And dramatic light effects from the clouds over the mountain.

Tomorrow is the special zone meeting, if we make it up and onto the bus in time. Bye!

(We got back to Faca this evening. Tomorrow, more resting, and then the zone visit starts Wednesday! We’re so glad to be here for it.)

Sorry again for the lack of exciting daily play-by-play. I still haven’t quite shaken this cold, so although my arm really hasn’t been very painful, we haven’t done much. Which is as it should be, according to the doctors. But Zack is feeling better, so hopefully I only have another couple days of this.

A few of the highlights from yesterday and today:

• Rigging up a garbage-bag-and-electrical-tape sleeve so I could shower without getting my bandage wet.
• Going to the English meeting at the branch–now we know what it must be like for the Indonesians to sit through the Indo meetings!
• Sleeping late.
• Hanging out with good friends and making new friends.
• Reading. Although I must say those Insightvolumes are an awfully slow read, but very interesting.
• Perfecting my Rosie the Riveter impersonation.

Good night!

Well, the surgery went off fine, or so the doctors say; I was asleep for the exciting parts of it. The last thing I remember is more drawing on my arm with purple marker, then a nurse saying “y ahora vas a descansar bien,” as she pushed some sedative into my left hand.

We got to the hospital at 6:00, the first patients, and I was in recovery by 8:30. My arm is all swaddled and has a little catheter-type drainage tube. They were a little overzealous with the first bandage, and my arm turned an ugly purple-gray color (“oh no!” said the doctor when we called her in, “Es una turniqueta!”) so they had to undo it and wrap more loosely, I suppose so I wouldn’t get gangrene and have to go back for an amputation. Once the bandage was redone my arm went right back to a nice healthy pink color, just a little swollen. They say the scar is about 7cm, but we won’t see it until Friday.

Oh, they also gave me some kind of cold medicine in an inhaler, so I am breathing a lot easier now. The last couple of nights I had been waking up with the cold every hour or so, so even though it was only local anesthesia, I’ve just been sleeping all day, propped up on lots of pillows with my arm elevated. Zack got me some lunch and then joined me in a nap. We woke up around 6:00, so I’ve been trying my best to drive him crazy and make him fetch me things ever since

(No, I’m trying to be a good patient, and he’s being a good nurse and bringing me water and making me take my pills and stuff.)

And that’s about it, now the recuperation begins!

Yesterday

Well, the cold cameth despite my best efforts to fight it off, so yesterday went something like this:
Wake up, blow nose, cough, roll over, try to sleep, repeat. We were able to postpone the second doctor’s appointment until today, so at least we didn’t have to take the shuttle to Bogota, just rested all day.

Today

Today was more resting and draining in the morning, as well as packing for our weekend in Bogota. We left after lunch, along with the other couple from Brooklyn, whose surgery was scheduled for today. So we all headed to the hospital. The anesthesiologist signed off on me to go ahead with the surgery tomorrow despite my cold, so then we went to see the other doctor. Apparently the first doctor is a dermatology cancer specialist, and this lady is a general surgeon, so they work together. She was super nice and friendly and seemed like a really good doctor, so we felt comfortable after meeting her.

Now we’re settled in at the branch, where we’ll stay tonight through Sunday night. Monday after a follow up appointment we’ll head back to Faca.

Someone has commented that there is a lot of discussion of food so far. Well, there hasn’t been much going on, and the food has been really really good. The fruit, especially, is like nothing we get in the states. Today’s mystery fruit was the granadilla. It has a hard orange shell with white speckles, and when you open it up it’s all gray and blobby little seeds, covered with sweet translucent pulp, and attached to the inside of the shell with little fuzzy white fingers. It’s like a Dr. Seuss invention come to life. Jehovah is so creative! This is a picture of the outside.

And here is one from off the interwebs of the inside:

(Yes, this is the fruit Sam referred to as ‘monkey brains,’ which, yuck, but it was really tasty! The seeds are hollow and crunchy, and the pulp is slippery, so it’s kind of fun to eat.)

Tomorrow
So the surgery is tomorrow at 7:00 am. Hopefully it will be all over with before 10:00. Thanks again for all the prayers, calls, emails, etc. Ttyl!

Not much to report today. I was good and stayed inside resting, except lunch. After lunch we took this picture of one of the branch landmarks–a tree growing out of a giant boulder. It’s been there since they bought the property. We also got to meet the Browns, who have been missionaries here since 1958. They just got back from a speaking assignment, so they are doing pretty well!

Zack went to work today for the first time. He was able to catch up on some things from home and answer some questions from the brothers here. He forgot to bring his English/Spanish dictionary, but he says he got by ok.

Tomorrow we go back to Bogota for another appointment, but it’s at 1:30 so hopefully we can take the shuttle back in the afternoon.

Just got in! Even here where the whole point is rest and we haven’t been working, the days have been super long and busy.

Today we took the 10 o’clock shuttle into Bogota with some others who had appointments, and had lunch at the old branch/missionary home. We met a nice young missionary couple who work with the Chinese group here but are soon transferring to Panama. In fact, they leave February first, so we may be here longer than them!

We also saw the incoming patients, one couple we already know from Bethel and one missionary couple that we just met today. They have been in Spanish for years but are now learning Quichua. Talking to them about learning a foreign language was definitely encouraging.

The rest of the afternoon we spent in and around Reina Sofia hospital. We met the surgeon and the anesthesiologist. The arrangement is nice, you go to a waiting area where you have a case nurse who coordinates all your appointments. One of the appointments was in a different building so she actually walked us over there and stayed while we were there. In between appointments we had some time to spare so our “bodyguard” Carlos took us across the street to a McCafe for a snack. The McDonalds here are much more upscale than at home, the McCafe was nicer than your average Starbucks.

Thursday we go back to meet the final doctor on the team, and then Saturday morning is the MOHs surgery. Friday through Sunday night we’ll stay in Bogota and then after a follow up appointment on Monday come back to Faca.

After all the appointments we went with Carlos to his meeting. They had the visit of their Circuit overseer. The worldwide organization is really an amazing thing. We are very excited because the branch is having a zone visit in a couple of weeks so there is a lot of buzz in the air and we will enjoy being here for that.

Tomorrow I am going to rest up because we have been running around and I am starting to get a little congested and the last thing I need is to get sick. Since I’m not allowed to take vitamins I’m eating as many fruits and veggies as possible!

Ok, time to go to sleep,

Bye!

We made a fruit salad with some of the yummy fresh fruit that was in our room, most of it was pretty familiar, but has anyone seen this before? It’s called a lulo, or in English a naranjilla, and it looks like a persimmon on the outside and a kiwi or tomato on the inside and tastes sort of sweet and sour and a little musky. Wikipedia describes the flavor as a cross between rhubarb and lime. Very good.

Yesterday we went to a Spanish meeting in the morning, then service for an hour, (Zack went on a study and I went on return visits), then we drove into Bogota to a sister’s apartment and ate delicious homemade stew called ajiaco, then to the old Bethel in Bogota where the English congregation meets and met the shuttle for the ride back here.

Bogota is a beautiful city, and we drove past all the hospitals and clinics that the brothers use and they look very nice.

Today we spent the morning and part of the afternoon touring, and then we were exhausted so we took a nap. You don’t notice the high altitude at first but it definitely takes its toll. Tonight after WT we’re invited to a brother’s room, and tomorrow we’ll be going to Bogota for our first appointment with the doctor and then going to a meeting there.

We’ve been taking pictures with the camera, so we’ll post them later. Ciao!