Friday...was an interesting day. I started the morning in paperwork, but then went up to the clinic to take care of a few things, and since Elizabeth was without work from Valerie and Dora for a few days...I took the opportunity to give her enough work (besides her milk project duties) for the next several weeks...all stuff that a few years ago I would have done, but just do not have time for anymore...organizing, sorting, using the weed wacker, all very important stuff, just back burner for me for the time being.

Valerie was able to get an appointment with a gastro-intestinal/proctologist specialist downtown at 4:00 through one of our nursing students, who also lives in that general area (the amount of bus time she has every day to get to the clinic....easily over an hour if not more) and she went with us. The appointment went well...although there were no hard answers as to what is wrong with Valerie. He recommended seeing another specialist, and some tests. Now Valerie will have to make the time to get those done. Not cheap, but still cheaper by far that doing it in the US.

(Added side note...I did not notice this when I took the picture, but if you blow up this picture, you will find a poster that talks about infant feeding and nutrition...with scenes that anyone who has been here for any length of time will no doubt recall seeing every day, but I doubt such would make it on such a poster in the US.)

We caught a bite to eat after that because it was about time for supper, and because it would eat time that otherwise would have been spent in traffic anyway, and then went home to change for the wedding that night. We got to the wedding (which was on the invitation to start at 6:00) at 8:00. This is totally normal here, and we were anticipating that we would be fine...and we were, they had not begun yet. Although it turns out they had been waiting for the mother of the groom to start for some time. The odd thing was that other than a handful of people from the Church we knew, almost everyone else was there for the bride. And God would have it that we found a table with a family that had a three year old boy with strabismus...a patient for Valerie on Monday to see if she can help him use glasses.

(here is just a small shot of the decorations they did for the wedding...this took many hours to do no doubt...and people take the baloons down as souvenirs later in the evening...one woman asked me to help her get down a decorative bunch that were hanging over the door. Why she asked me as I hit them with my head walking in the door, who knows right?)

We stayed until they started to serve food at 10:00. Upon leaving (with a full car, giving rides) Valerie discovered her purse was missing. She had gone during the ceremony to get some medicine, and after going to the bathroom heard the alarm going off. She walked outside, turned off the alarm (with everything looking normal) and did not think anything else of it until we discovered the purse gone. It was very hard for her as you can imagine. Lots of little stuff in there, but the big losses were all her car keys (she kept them all in her purse) all her ID, credit card, her cell phone, which we just replaced after the last one fell and was quickly stolen, and her appointment cards and such from her appointment she just had. How we resolve the keys for the vehicles situation could be the hardest thing to fix, I will have to look into it...the ID and such will just take a day or day and a half to resolve...she will have to make time now for that as well.

Today Valerie went to pick the clinic staff up for a morning of prayer and fasting. Everyone came....mind you on their day off, no pay, they just all had wanted to do this for about two months. After that we went to take them all out to lunch at Little Ceasar's, and Valerie took several of them home and then went off to a women's meeting for a conference coming up in October. All of this driving of course without her driver's license. All I had digital copies of to print out for her was her residency card and passport. She was undeterred from driving however, and got back home without incident.

Sounds depressing, but other than the feeling of being violated in a place of trust, and the time that will be invested to get things replaced, really it could have been much worse, and we are grateful that nobody got hurt, and are in prayer for the person that stole her purse. Life will continue, and frankly the health issues Valerie is facing are more concerning that material stuff.

I took this video at the wedding last night...because it was just too funny not to take. I blame the lack of elementary education in music, singing, choir, etc. that most schools in the US still do for scenes such as these, which are fairly common. I could not get everyone into frame, but I think I counted six different clapping rhythms...it was almost hypnotic.

And this picture taken from the hospital where Valerie had her appointment, captures the two of the most important things in Honduran life...Christ (statue on the left), and Coca-Cola (sign on the right. )

Insert your own funny, witty, acerbic, or sarcastic comment here.