The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

I think the original line from that poem makes the assertion that even the best plans can sometimes fail. Not to overgeneralize, but in the Ulpan Valley, plans NEVER fail, but they ALWAYS change. We expected that to some extent, but we're certainly being kept on our toes pretty much all the time. There is a great deal going on right now, and with that there are many people who need to know what they need to do when. The people of the Ulpan Valley are accustomed to having meetings - in fact they seem to crave them about as badly as every place I've ever worked. The only difference is that they go into the meetings expecting to accomplish very little and socialize a lot, whereas in the corporate world there's some strange expectation that a meeting is going to actually yield something besides more meetings.

So, over the past few weeks we have gotten into the habit of meeting with team members for things like scheduling and needs and things like that. They seem to enjoy it, and it seems to do some good. The problem is that we try to schedule a week in advance, and most of the time we're lucky if plans don't change for 5 minutes at a time. Case in point - last Sunday we were back in the Valley after being gone for a 4-day weekend in Guatemala City (this was not a vacation - we needed to get some new tires for the truck and get our passports stamped for 90 more days, and maybe in a few months I'll be able to share that experience and still keep this blog "family friendly"). So on Monday morning we met with some of the folks working with us about what needed to happen last week and how in the world we were going to pull it off. Everything worked out on paper pretty nicely: Julio was to go to these villages and set up meetings for what's termed a "baseline study", Roberto was to go to these villages and do other things, construction materials for latrines in Semesche were to be ordered, assistance for the midwife training on Wednesday and Thursday and the 73 participants in it were going to happen, a small water system expansion to the Benitzul School's latrine was going be constructed, and so on. We actually had it all worked out pretty well.

So, it came as no surprise at 6:15 Tuesday morning when a 9-month pregnant woman showed up at our door needing to be rushed to the hospital in Coban. So, all the "shuttle Julio to here" and "take materials there" we had planned for the day went out the window. The trip to Coban is not particularly easy. It can take anywhere from one to two hours on difficult roads, and with all the rains we've been having, those roads are even more difficult, and meeting the occasional truck on a hill makes it even more interesting. We really don't want to become a "taxi service" for the people here, but in this case, there was really no way we could (or should) say no. The trip was straight out of a movie, complete with fog and rain and cows stuck on the road and the obligatory woman screaming in the back seat having contractions. The end of this part of the story is that 30 minutes after we got to the hospital, she had an emergency C-section, so this turned out to be a good trip to make. And while I was helping out in Coban, most of what we hoped to accomplish was actually accomplished up in the Valley.

So we went to bed Tuesday very tired and looking forward to a more normal day on Wednesday. That was a mistake. Shortly after dinner Wednesday it started to rain, which in and of itself isn't unusual, but it got harder and harder over the next couple of hours. We tried to go to bed (our house is better than a tent, but heavy rain on a tin roof can be very loud) but just kind of gave up after a while and we just laid there in the noise staring at the ceiling, which we were glad to have but ceilings should be seen and not heard. Given the recent landslides in the area, we somewhat nervously keep an eye uphill when it's raining, and sure enough, about 11:00 we heard a loud thump against the wall of our house and when we looked outside we saw that a large chunk of the hill to the side of us had slumped off. It sounds more dangerous than it actually was, but it was still a little disconcerting. After a couple more hours, the rain finally slacked off and we all slept great for a few minutes.

On Wednesday morning, I needed to get some maps to the far end of the Valley, so I started the approximate 30-minute drive to the village of Sesalche II. There were, as expected, a few smallish landslides on the way, but when I got to the river it had been above the bridge very recently (I now know that the river is prone to flash flooding). Since a large truck had just passed, I assumed it was OK for my pickup, and that turned out to be the case, but a little further up the road a secondary stream crossing was still completely over the road and I could go no further. Another day, another change in plans.  We survived.  The remainder of the week, a few other everyday things cropped up to keep us hopping, like a dead (really un-jumpable kind of dead) car battery, a smallish snake visitor, and the biweekly festival known as "the latrine cleaning" - fun for the whole family.

And the funny part of it all: we wouldn 't have changed a thing.  We got a lot done, we adapted a lot, and we learned a lot.  To cap it all off, our dear friends Jim, Danna, Zane and Emma Arnett were here to visit and to witness the mayhem.  They totally rolled with all the punches and we had a great time.  Back in June, Jim mentioned to me that they were considering coming for a visit, but he was concerned that October might be "a little too soon" and that we wouldn't be all settled in.  I told him that we'd probably never be settled in (little did I know at the time how true that was) and that by October we and the kids would be very ready to see some friends.  That might have been the best decision we made in our whole planning process.  It's wonderful to see friends who remind you of other friends and remind you of home - I anticipate heaven is a little bit like that, with possibly a few more Cheetos.  Please come for a visit.....but don't get too hung up on making really specific plans for when you're here: God is a better trip planner.

Here are our kids and the Arnett kids playing in the river.  There are lots of really pretty rocks to find here, and even some interesting pieces of pottery.  A few hours later, the water was over the tree in the background.

It's not a great picture quality-wise because there is rain on the camera lens (go figure), but it's a great picture of our kids playing with some of the local kids.  Ben is still in his "I like to dance and sing like Michael Jackson" phase, so please keep him us in your prayers.  Later, we all watched the movie "Babe" in Spanish - see the "screen" on the wall.  Something about farm animals who can talk transcends all cultures....

Just a typical day at the Ulpan II market.  It was a fun time for everyone, except for the cow who was butchered.  As many plans that we had changed for us this past week, I think the cow encountered greater changes.  And there was much rejoicing.  Moo.