And Then There Were Two......

Sorry that it’s been so long since we wrote. It’s a long story…

What Happened:
We’ve all gotten sick. Over the past two weeks Therese, Bernedette, I, and Brendan each fell sick with dengue fever. At first Therese and Bernedette were sick for a few days, then me too. Brendan was taking care of all of us and juggling school classes until he got sick too.
Our housemates had it pretty bad, especially because they didn’t rest as much as they should and tried to go back to school on the third day. When they came home they were exhausted and it went downhill until they were in the hospital and decided to fly to Darwin to get better medical attention. And now we are two…

What is Dengue Fever?
Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne disease. You can’t get a vaccination for it because there are four distinctly different types, with hemorrhagic dengue fever being the most severe. Luckily, don’t worry, Brendan and I both got one of the less damaging types. Yay God!
Symptoms are a high fever, chills, bad back pain (it’s called “break-bone” fever), a rash that for some people itches like you wouldn’t believe!, headache, etc. Besides the rash it’s difficult to tell the difference between it and the flu, except that it lasts for a full week and fatigue and after effects can continue past that.

Why We Are Staying:
While we were in the midst of the sickness right after Therese and Bernedette left for Australia, we weren’t sure if we were going to be on a plane to America shortly also. It was a frustrating time, wondering why we had gotten sick just as we are finally getting settled and ready to get back into the work full force after their Christmas Break.

We were going into the hospital regularly to get blood tests done so they could track our progress. The big things to watch with dengue are the white blood cell count and platelet count. So we were trying to talk with any doctor who could speak English well so we could ask questions about our options, but it was difficult because most of the doctors there are Cuban and speak Spanish, a little Tetum, and a little English. We’ve been told that there is some kind of agreement between Cuba and East Timor and a significant part of the medical staff here is Cuban.

But we had been praying that a doctor we would meet would give us a definitive answer either way, that we should stay or that we needed to go. Dogmara, one of our Polish friends, had a friend who got us the name of a doctor from Portugal. When we went to visit him, he spoke perfect English and told us a little more about dengue. He said that he had many international patients with dengue fever last year and that none of them left, even parents with an eight-month old girl with dengue. He said that there is only one subtype of dengue each year, so the likelihood of us getting dengue again is low.

Also, the wet season will be getting over soon (in early March) and at that point the mosquito population will decrease dramatically and the likelihood of getting mosquito-borne diseases will go down even more. Thank goodness – mosquitoes are evil! So if we are leaving the country this November, we’ll get out just as the wet season starts again, and hopefully stay mosquito-borne sickness free!

Prayer Requests:
Even though our little battle with dengue fever is over, we still need your prayers. We are still very exhausted and to get back to 100% will take awhile in this hot hot hot climate. Please pray for wisdom of when to go back to working at the school and clinic. We’re anxious to get back to work, but we know that if we go back before our bodies are ready we’ll just get sick again.
Please pray for our friends who are also sick. For Bernedette and Therese, that they will fully recover and that God will lead them either back here or on to something else new and exciting for Him. For Chris and Sali, our housemates in Rome, who got sick in Baucau recently.
Thanks everybody! We’ll try to catch up on e-mails soon and put up these blogs too – we haven’t been able to do much of anything while we’ve been sick. And thank you as always for checking the blog every week or two, it encourages us to know that you haven’t forgotten about us : )

Love always,
Rachel and Brendan

First Day Back at School

We’d spent a few days getting ready, lesson planning, etc. and we were ready to start school gungho again! So we arrived at school Monday morning ready to teach the teachers…but only one of them showed up. Sister Pascuela was there ready to learn… except that she also wanted to help prepare for Sister Teresina’s surprise birthday party (Sr. Teresina is the university principal). So instead of teaching as we had prepared, we hung out waiting for the surprise party, happy that we have our lesson planned for next week.

But because we’re still figuring out the schedule and the fact that things around here never go quite as planned, the day was still a little crazy. Circumstances caused problems with pulling off the surprise birthday party. Sister Teresina left the school because there had been a mouse (a real mouse, not a computer mouse) in her printer and she needed the printer fixed ASAP. So we waited until she got back and then all crowded into the room. When she appeared we all sang Happy Birthday to her in English.

There were lots of people – other Sisters, teachers and students from the university, and us. Sister Teresina cut the cake and started the food line and stayed for awhile, but then she got a few cell phone calls and left. So the rest of us continued hanging out and eating food. It was a funny situation because she missed about half of her surprise party, but she’s a busy woman. And besides staying busy running the university, she told us later that she’s really uncomfortable with attention being on her. It was surprising because she’s one of the best English speakers we know here and seems very comfortable with people from all over. She’s also very smart and hardworking. So to see a shy side of our boss at the university was kind of funny.
That afternoon she even gave us her birthday presents. The Sisters had given her a box of “hairy fruit,” one of her favorite fruits that I think look like alien spores. I’d never seen anything like them! They are green and red and yellow with curled spikes all over them. You dig your thumb through the skin and it falls apart easily. Inside is a whitish oval with a hard seed in the middle. So you eat the whitish oval part. It tastes pretty good, but it’s still weird. Anyway, we went to talk to her and she gave us the box and refused to take them back. We tried probably 10 times… All I can think is that the Sisters understand more than most people I’ve ever met that the greatest thing is giving, not receiving. That could explain their joy. Or they could have been trying to get rid of the alien spores ; )

Also during the day, the senior high school was having their Christmas party and with that a dance…if you could call it a dance. It was cute because there were many students crowded around the dance floor (an open corner of the school building), but everyone was too shy to go out. Berta, our friend who is the student body president, tried valiantly to get people to go out, but they would leave quickly.

Brendan and I were watching and decided to liven it up : ) I jumped out there with Berta and she taught me an East Timorese dance that’s kind of like a line dance with different moves. Then the song ended. A little later there was a slow dance and Brendan and I hit the floor with probably six or seven other couples. But everyone else was doing a close slow dance, so we showed off with some swing dancing and twirls and spins. We got claps and cheers because it was like nothing they’d seen before. And in a last effort I taught six girls the dance to Cotton-Eyed Joe and we stormed the floor doing the dance and spins to a Timorese song. It was great!
We’re not sure what happened to the dance after that because Sister Ervinia (our boss at the senior high school) called us over for the teachers’ Christmas lunch. The Sisters had prepared rice and chilis and chicken. It was nice because we only had cold rice for lunch in our lunch boxes to eat otherwise. We got to meet some more of the high school teachers and got some compliments on our dancing from a teacher who had spied us out on the dance floor. And after the talk they pulled out a “pudding” which is basically Spanish flan. It was delicious! And Sister Ervi said that she’d teach us how to make it if we wanted. Hopefully that will happen, mostly if we make time for it. Then when we come home all of you can benefit from our new skills : )

Before we headed home we made an announcement about the English Club that we’ll be starting after they finish their exams next week. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons right after school we’ll be teaching an English Club which will be like the English classes except more fun because we’re working on finding family movies to show in English and working out field trips to take them on to practice English. It should be great and provide a good opportunity to develop closer relationships than in the university classes.

The cool part about this is that we’re not just teaching English, which is very helpful for the young people. We get to work God into everything – starting classes with different prayers, sharing good songs with them, using Bible verses for dictation material. It’s everything that people need – Christ + human promotion of education and basic needs.

It’s nice to feel like we’re starting to get the hang of things so we can make a difference. There are always highs and lows, but we seem to be on the upswing most of the time. We’ve been for one month officially yesterday (January 7th). Wow, it’s gone fast! It’s challenging, but it’s good work with good people so what’s not to like?

So back to the day, we finally headed home. We hadn’t taught at all, but it was a successful day of connecting with people. K, talk to you soon!

Love always,
Rachel and Brendan

Suai

After we drove home from Baucau we had half a day to shower, wash clothes, and try to recover before going on another, bigger trip. We were already a little tired from traveling to Baucau and back, but while there’s no school we knew we had to take advantage of the opportunity to travel.
So the next morning we headed off with Sister Sonia, our driver Augustino, the driver’s son, and the four of us in the back of a pick-up truck with a load of pillows for the convent and center in Suai.

Brendan got some great pictures on the way of the mountains we were going through.

And some pictures of the road that was sometimes treacherous…

Or non-existent. Similar to our van ride from Kupang to Dili, we had to cross a river on this trip. The wet season rains had flooded the road out, but our driver was from Suai and made the trip all the time, so we went through anyway. But the water was high and fast and we got stuck right at the end.

All the town’s local boys came to our rescue and volunteered to help push the van to shore. There were probably twenty of them, but they couldn’t quite do it. Next the men on shore hooked up a tow rope and tried to haul us out by hand, but no luck.

Finally they called in the reinforcements and some heavy machinery came driving straight up the river. They hooked us up and within a minute we were out and on the move again, waving to everyone who had tried to help us with our predicament. They yelled and waved back – I have a feeling this excitement is one of their favorite parts of the wet season.

And we arrived at the Canossian Sisters Suai convent that is finally being rebuilt after being burned down in 1999. The convent is right next to the infamous church where the Indonesians massacred over two hundred people who were staying in the church for safety. Many were killed and then the church was burned with the remaining people inside. Many women and children, students were killed.

Now the church has been rebuilt and on Sunday and Monday we went to Mass there. You can see that for the new church they have left out half of the wall on two of the sides. That may be because they don’t want a repeat of the burning tragedy.

This little monument covered with plaques and stones for the victims of the massacre in 1999, by their surviving family and friends. The two names and dates that stood out to me were two names on a plaque of a mother and a baby who had only been born a few months before.

But there were bright moments too and the people are so resilient. They work hard and find fun things to do. A few guys were playing basketball and Brendan joined them. You can see that he was a head above the rest. They looked like they loved playing with him and were impressed by his skills. If they ever got it past him (not often), they were really happy.

Brendan, Therese, and I went up in the steeple of the cathedral and got some pictures of the surrounding area. Here you can see an East Timorese-style monument built by U.S.Aid and New Zealand in honor of the people who died here.

And Brendan and me! Brendan was amazing on this trip. I got sick the night we got to Suai and had a fever and stomach problems for quite awhile. He stayed in with me and forced me to rest and try to get better. He was wonderful and I couldn’t ask for a better husband.

It was my first time getting sick here and it wasn’t fun, but not too bad. After getting sick, the next morning I got up for Mass and at Eucharist I asked Jesus, the healer of my soul, to heal my body if He wanted to. After that my stomach got better until a day later it felt normal. Yay God! Since then I’ve just been resting and getting the fever to come down, and now, with the help of God and Brendan, and I’m almost back to full strength just in time for school to start!

Another beach trip to finish off our time in Suai. We went with Sr. Elsa and some of her nephews and a niece. Brendan and Therese worked on teaching the kids to swim. There were no crocodiles this time, but Brendan did get really close to a giant sea turtle! It’s a crazy world over here.

Brendan the explorer on the trip home, overlooking Maubisse.

After another eight hour trip we caught our first sight of our home, Dili. It was very exciting to come home after ten days of traveling all over the island. Now we’re here, celebrating the New Year, and resting up before school starts again on the 5th. We hope things are good at home. Talk to you soon!
Much love,
Rachel and Brendan
P.S. Happy New Year!!!

Baucau Trip

We just got back from Baucau and there is a lot to write about! Baucau is the second biggest city in East Timor (behind Dili, where we live) and we went there to visit our friends Sali, Chris, and Dogmara. Baucau is also like a giant village, but even more so than Dili. It’s a beautiful town and going there gave us a chance to learn a little more about the Timorese people.
Brendan, Bernadette, Therese, and I stayed in the volunteer house with everyone. It was a blessing to get to see them again because they are our closest family here since we were with most of them for three months in Rome.


Journey From Dili to Baucau

After trying to catch a mikrolet to Baucau for a couple of hours, we gave up because each one that pulled up was packed. Many people who work and study in Dili are from Baucau and everyone was going home for Christmas. Luckily a few of the Sisters were in town and needed to go back to Baucau, so we all crowded in for the three hour trip, three people in the back of the pick up truck with boxes of Christmas stuff.


While we were waiting to picked up by the Sisters, Brendan had a go at palm tree-climbing. He was pretty good, but the coconuts weren’t ripe yet so he didn’t bring us down any : )
During the trip I was inside the truck with the Sisters because everyone else wanted to be in the back, but it was good because I got more commentary on stuff that we passed and learned some from the Sisters and Dogmara.

Most of the trip was along the coastline and we were all in awe of the beauty of the ocean. I think that’s one of the greatest resources that the East Timorese have: the raw beauty of their land. We’ll show you pictures, but it’s different when you’re here. In a brochure we saw the best word it used to describe East Timor was “unspoilt.” At first I wasn’t sure it was a word, but they were right either way – the land has not been spoiled or changed very much and the hardcore people who come to visit here will see things that they can’t see many other places in the world I think.

Here in the distance you can see Cristo Rey – the statue of Jesus Christ, the King. He watches over the swimmers at Cristo Rey Beach, the strip of white sand you can see in the distance. It is the second biggest statue of Jesus in the world – right after the statue in Brazil. We’ll get better pictures when we have a chance to hike up there.

Besides the great ocean views, we saw refugee camps along the way. Many people who fled Dili during the fighting have stayed outside the city and set up little communities higher up in the mountains. It’s just shocking that it’s been almost three years since then and they are still there. We also see similar refugee camps around the city of Dili, where many families still reside. To those of us who are new, it’s easy to wonder why they haven’t gone home now that the situation is better, but as you are around the city more you can still see evidence of the conflict – burned out homes and businesses. These people might have lost everything during 2006 (or in the 1999 conflict with Indonesia before) and had no money or way to begin again. It’s all a lot to think about, but I’m sure we’ll keep finding out more about the situation while we’re here.

After we had passed some of the refugee camps and some villages – all with very friendly people and kids yelling “Hello Mister” to us – we went back into the uninhabited hills. We saw the mountains where marble had once been mined with big stones all over the hills and evidence of the process. On a more somber note, we saw the forests on the hills that many of the local people think our haunted. After the vote for independence in 1999, the Indonesian militia pulled out, wreaking havoc as they went. Many Timorese were massacred up in these hills.

On a happier note, we saw the new school that the Canossian Sisters are building in Manatutu, a big village between Dili and Baucau. It won’t be like the Comoro school where we are teaching, but it will be like the schools they have set up in Baucau and Nurobo, West Timor.

There they have a 10-month program for young women to help them learn things that they will need to know either to be a mother or get a job. They have classes on cooking, sewing, hotel and restaurant management, English, computers, and other practical classes. The girls come in from many of the outer villages and board at the school. I’ve heard that it’s been very effective and from the looks of it, I believe it (Dogmara gave us a tour of the school in Baucau).

Pretty nice old school sewing machines, with the manual foot pedal and everything, but we were amazed by the clothing we saw hanging up. It looked store ready!
They also have involved the girls in some business initiatives. At the school they produce and sell soap locally, but even more importantly they’ve developed a vitamin powder for children. The vitamin powder has been picked up by an NGO who have bought tons of it to give out across the island, especially in the rural villages. Just a few people making a big difference!

Everywhere we’ve been we’ve been so impressed by the work of the Canossian Sisters and am so proud to be volunteering with them! They have been in East Timor for 130 years and the people have a deep respect for them. When we introduced ourselves to people in our neighborhood and told them we were volunteering with the Canossians they said they appreciated the Canossians because of their work with the poor and all the young people whose lives they touched through medical work and especially education.

And for those of you who are a little afraid for our safety, with the Sisters we’re about as safe as we can be. The people in our neighborhood see us with the Sisters often, and we’re always in close contact with them or visiting with them at the school or in the convents. It’s quite a blessing.

Exploring Baucau

We made it to Baucau, had a joyful reunion, and eventually got some sleep. The next afternoon we all went for a hike around town (it is like a hike because it’s in the mountains and super hilly).
While we were hiking around, out of nowhere we here a voice, “Mr. Egan, Mr. Egan!!!” It was one of Brendan’s English students from the Canossian university in Dili. He was home in Baucau for Christmas and came running over to say hi. At that moment he had been hanging out with some friends who were artists. So we asked if we could see their work in the one room art exhibition that they had set up and he showed us around. Their work was beautiful – there were carvings and painting and drawings. He showed off his friends’ work proudly. He said he also used to carve, but since he’s at university he hasn’t been able to do it.

Here is Brendan with a local artist and his semester 1 English student (on the right).

Here is one of the paintings in their exhibition. It shows a traditional East Timorese house next to a waterfall.

As we left the art studio we saw some of the other teenage artists across the street working on their nativity.

To explain more, nativities are the only Christmas decorations that we’ve seen in East Timor, but they go “all out” creating them. Families and groups of teens all over the city seem to have a competition on who can make the best nativity. They are made from wood, have roofs of dried grasses, and many have paintings of the Holy Family in them. In Dili, many of them had Christmas lights all over. So Christmas lights weren’t used on individual houses, just on the nativities which were the highlight of each neighborhood.

It’s amazing how focused their Christmas is on the real meaning of Christmas: Jesus’ birthday for goodness sake!!! It was a little bit shocking and soooo refreshing to have no commercialism, no Santa, just Jesus… But we’ll tell you more about how they celebrate Christmas later, but as for the lead up to Christmas, the nativities seemed to be the biggest thing.
In Baucau we saw many nativities as people frantically finished them before Christmas Eve. Here are a few examples.

They even had two-story ones. Here’s a Swiss Family Robinson-style nativity.

Creating nativities from scratch was obviously time-consuming, but beautiful family affair that helped people get ready for Christmas.

We finished the hike by walking up the hills and up some steep stairs to a local grotto/cave where we prayed together before heading back down to work on supper : )
K, talk to you soon!
Love,
Rachel and Brendan

Christmas at Bilide Convent

Before we left for Baucau to have Christmas there with Chris and Sali (our compatriots from Rome) and Sali’s sister Dogmara, we were asked to take part in the Christmas with the Sisters and girls living at the Balide convent of the Canossian Sisters.

We started off the fun by playing basketball with a bunch of the girls. Here Brendan shows off his sweet moves and the girls are in awe of how well he plays and his height (he is almost double a Timorese teenage girl’s size).

On the sidelines we had a game of our own, called try to get the shy girls to be in a picture : ) The girl in the middle is part of a refugee family that still camps out next to the convent after the violence of 2006. They have been integrated into the convent community and came to the basketball game and Christmas party!
Before dinner all the girls and Sisters met in the chapel for evening prayer and we watched the whole movie The Nativity, which we had never seen. It was very good!

Bernadette checking out the Christmas feast! There was white rice and yellow rice and vegetables and because it’s a special occasion…lots of dishes with meat! So we tried a little bit of everything and it was delicious.

Sister Aquelina, who I work with at the clinic, rocking out! She had no idea how to play the donated drum set, but after I helped set it up, she kept coming back to it. They had me play too since I played a bit in high school and I think the girls were impressed, but it was Sister Aquelina who impressed me because she hit things at random and laughed her head off and it sounded good : )

Shall we dance? To represent, I taught them the Cotton-Eyed Joe dance and a little swing dancing with Brendan, and the Australian girls and I taught them the Chicken Dance. In return they taught us some traditional Timorese dances that had some intricate stepping in circles and group coordination. It was great!

Then came the Secret Santa gift exchange. Each of us had brought a small gift and then we drew a name out of a hat. Then as a group we all sang: “I love my bonita yes I do, I love my bonita yes I do, I love my bonita yes I do, I love my bonita, but I won’t tell you who!”
One person started and they gave their present to the person whose name they had gotten, then that person accepted the present and gave their present away. It took quite awhile and we got very good at singing the song, but eventually all the presents were exchanged. Each of us received a tai, the traditional East Timorese cloth. Different patterns represent different parts of the country, so you can tell what area a tai comes from.

Here we show off our tais with Sister Maria on the left and Sister Sonia (our caretaker) on the right. Sister Sonia is from the Philippines and is very respected here. Her English is perfect and she’s been the perfect teacher and hostess since our arrival in East Timor.

Besides the Secret Santa presents the Sisters gave each girl a bag with some games and gifts in it. It was a very special moment and the girls loved it!

The Sisters and us livin’ it up for Jesus’ birthday!
We hope that you did the same! Love you all!
Love,
Rachel and Brendan

Birthdays!

Not only was it Jesus’ birthday recently, but Christmas time is jampacked with other birthdays too. On December 26th, Brendan’s dad, Pat, and my sister Laura were both born (slightly different years of course). And just after New Year’s on January 10th, my brother Tom was born.


Pat

Seniority comes first in this list. So first up is my dad! Happy 53rd Birthday!!

Here is my dad, the man who has been an inspiration for me to be an explorer and to see the world. Ever since hearing about his travels from his native Australia to the distant lands of Europe and America when he was young, I have wanted to go and do the same kind of thing.

My dad has been a dedicated family man who has raised two great kids. I remember the weekend drives our family would go on. Growing up we would always go to different places in and around Minnesota, the old historical farms, pumpkin patches or state parks, where we would go exploring on walks. I remember the great family vacations that he and mom would plan out. They took us to all sorts of places to expand our horizons, places like New York (to visit family and see where my mom grew up), Texas (to see where my parents met), and South Dakota (to see the black hills and Mount Rushmore) to name some of the really memorable destinations.
This is a picture of my dad and me at the wedding in May. As you can see we’re very similar, both good looking, stylish, intelligent gentlemen. Following his example I have learned that the best way to live my life is to be honest and hardworking. He has taught me the virtue of true patience and that not everything in life is worth getting stressed over.

This picture is one of my all time favorites; it’s a showcase of two generations of Egan weddings. The man on the right side is Mark; a native New Zealander, who lives in Iowa. He served as my Dad’s best man at his wedding. The dashing gent on the left is Kurt, my best man. As one of the best friends I will ever have. I couldn’t have asked for a better best man, and I’m sure my dad would say the same about Mark.

So, in conclusion, happy birthday to the best Dad in the world. Thank you for all you've done over the years. I'll be lucky if I turn out like you someday.

Laura

And here is Laura, my beautiful and beautiful-souled sister. The Timorese would say that she is furak and laran diak (physically beautiful and beautiful inside : ) She will be twenty years old!

Laura and I have shared a room for most of our lives. As we’ve grown up, we’ve developed the habit of talking late into the night, usually collapsing into fits of giggling because we are “slap happy” from long days of music and sports practice and lots of studying.

Laura is someone who I can talk to about anything and we can turn conversation deep quickly and talk about God and life and what we’re learning through our experiences. That’s something that I really appreciate, because life isn’t meant to be lived just on the surface.

Laura is my younger sister, but I have learned many things from her. One of the things that I am most grateful for is her example of humility. Laura succeeds at all things, through talent and a lot of hard work, but she is quick to turn the attention away from herself and to others. Whatever vocation she is called to I know that she will thrive in it because she has learned the secret of selfless love (which many people don’t learn until they are much older or sometimes ever).

In her lifestyle and conversation she is always putting her focus on others. She is very friendly, a great listener, and super-pleasant to be around. She involves herself in activities that really make a difference in people’s lives.
Besides her humility, I love Laura’s positive attitude! No matter what happens she can find a bright side in it. And she’s great at making fun things happen. She helps keep the kids in our family together having fun by starting games and cards and talks with the kids. And finally, she’s hilarious! She’s one of the people that can be quiet a lot of the time and then come out with a zinger and make everyone laugh : ) We’ll just say that Laura > Chuck Norris, and leave it at that.



Laura modeling a Mongolian scarf our friend Jian gave us from China. This pose is part of a dance that she does. When we used to go bowling (when we got free passes from school) and she got a strike, she would always do a little ballerina twirl and ends up in this pose. It’s one of her signatures now : ) It’s so cool that others even try to copy it (cough, cough…Tom : )



Laura swing dancing like crazy with Maria! Laura and I learned to swing dance when we got how-to-dance movies from the library. The we would watch them over and over and practice, taking turns doing the girls and guys parts : )

Laura was my maid of honor at my wedding and she is one of my favorite people in the whole world, as are all of my siblings. But Laura, thank you for your example and all the great memories! Happy 20th birthday!!!

Tom

My brother Tom is turning 21 years old! Here Tom shows how mature he is, smiling with Mom by the Gold Nugget Restaurant at Buckskin Joe’s in Colorado. This is Tom’s classic smile. After a smart alec comment he’ll smile like this and you can’t do anything but laugh : )

Tom has the gift of a great sense of humor. When we have dinner as a family he often takes conversation for random twists and turns that are entertaining and unforgettable. He’s also very fun to be around and can be exceedingly generous. He often surprises me with his random acts of kindness toward other people.

Besides these talents, Tom is very musically gifted. Right now he is in the Music Education at Benedictine College and is loving it. Singing and tuba-playing our Tom’s fortes. He even volunteered to sing at our wedding. Here he is practicing with our friend, Katy, and my Godmother, Barb (not that Tom needs practice : )

This picture was taken in New Orleans, Louisiana, when we went down to with a group of college kids from St. Thomas Aquinas (ISU) to help gut houses after Hurricane Katrina. I have many favorite memories with Tom, but this week was one of the best. Any time you spend all day with people swinging sledge hammers and getting dirtier than you could have imagined, you bond in a special way : )

Throughout the week Tom gradually opened up more about deeper thoughts and feelings until one night after he’d had a Turkish coffee he said something during reflection and it actually made me cry. Watching Tom grow in his faith and be able to open up about deeper things has been one of the pleasures God is constantly blessing me with.

Tom, keep up the great work! And happy 21st birthday! I’m so proud to be your sister and I expect great things from you!



Happy unbirthday to everyone else and we’ll talk to you soon!

Always,

Rachel and Brendan

Our Christmas Celebration

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve we woke up early and got to work. We had to prepare the house for a fifteen-person Christmas party! There was a great sense of community during the day – if there was something that needed done, someone would find it and do it right away. It was one of the first days here where it started to feel like all of the volunteers were a family. And it was just in time for Christmas, so it helped ease the homesickness as much as it could.

There was so much cooking to do! Much like at home, the Polish spend all day in the kitchen before a holiday because there are many traditional foods. So in between deep cleaning the party area and outside their house we pitched in a lot.

It was the first Christmas either of us has had such a big part of the Christmas cooking. As I learn more and more about cooking (especially through this mission crash course), I realize how time-consuming it is and what a skill it is. So Mom, especially on holidays, thank you for all the cooking you do so selflessly. Wow, it’s a lot of work, but it all pays off in the end! When I get home I will definitely help you more with my newly developed skills.

Along with cooking in the kitchen there was a fire pit to be dug and Brendan and Therese volunteered immediately! They used a shovel to dig a decent sized hole and found grasses, wood, and coconut pieces to start a fire with. Then they cooked fresh fish in tin foil and it came out perfect! The whole time there were kids along the fence and even in the trees trying to see what was going on.

Brendan and Therese starting a fire.

And besides the cooking and cleaning, there was decorating to do. We were pretty proud of how it turned out. My job was cutting out paper stars so we could put them on the ceiling. When Brendan and Therese were done with the fish they came in to help with the stars – Therese made a big 3-D one we hung in the middle of the room and Brendan helped put the stars on the ceiling : )

The final product! No big lights or flashy decorations, but we were pretty proud. And when there was food on the tables, candles strategically placed along the walls, and people filling the chairs, it was everything we’d hoped for.

Around 6:30 people starting showing up and we drank strawberry Fanta and walked around to meet everybody. There were people from all over the world and all ages volunteering with different organizations. So the meeting and greeting was pretty interesting. The common thread for everyone was that they knew either Dogmara or Cass, the twenty-two year old Australian girl who was working with the Catholic churches in the area doing street ministry.

When everyone had come in, we started it off with the Christmas story. First Bernadette read it in English and then Chris in Polish. And we all prayed together for Christmas and for the people of East Timor. It was a little funny, because I think we shocked some of the other volunteers, some of whom were with the UN and non-religious NGOs. I hope we helped them remember what Christmas really is (Jesus’ birthday)!

Before we ate we did something very special that Brendan and I had never heard of. Poland is a very Catholic country and has many beautiful and deep traditions dealing with Christmas. In Poland, before the meal, each person gets a thin piece of bread that resembles Communion host. Then you go around to each person and if there’s anything to say sorry for they make up and then everyone makes wishes for the other person’s Christmas and coming year. After both people have made their wishes, they each rip a piece off the other person’s bread and eat it. It was one of my favorite things about Christmas Eve.

Brendan caught Sali and I trading good wishes for our year in East Timor.
By then everybody was hungry so we dug into the meal. The foods that were different for us were the traditional Polish foods. There have to be at least twelve dishes in the Christmas meal – for the twelve apostles. And it’s tradition that you don’t eat meat on Christmas Eve, just fish. Besides fish, some of the other things we had were borscht (beet soup), crockets (folded pastries with vegetables and noodles inside), and kopitka (pastries with potato inside). All these foods took a long time to make, but were delicious

So we all ate and shared stories about our experiences in East Timor. There was a lot of laughing and fun, and, before we knew it, it was time to head down the street to Christmas Eve Mass. Mass started at 9pm and we were already unofficially late because it was 8:30 and the church was already overflowing with people (literally – there were hundreds of people inside, people standing on sides, and hundreds of people standing and sitting outside the church). Luckily Dogmara had explained the situation to us, so we had brought our own plastic chairs from the house.

We made it just in time to see the nativity play by some of the youth. There were Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus, the shepherds, adorable angels in pink tutus with wands that swayed their wands with the songs, and the three wisemen dressed at Timorese kings. Everything was the same as at home, but with the Timorese twist that always keeps things interesting.

The Mass was special so it went for more than two hours with lots of beautiful singing and readings from Scripture. Unfortunately, I was so tired from running around all day that I had to fight off falling asleep! After Mass, Brendan and I were exhausted and fell asleep immediately.

Christmas!

We woke early and refreshed and surprised each other with gifts – Then we got ready quick to go to Mass again. In East Timor, what we heard and saw was that the people all go to Christmas Eve Mass, stay up after and have big family get togethers, and then about half of them come back again for Mass at 7:30 in the morning. So we went back and got there early enough to get real seats (the other volunteers were not as ambitious and forgot their chairs, so they ended up standing for two hours again).

Mass was beautiful…again. It was nice to have a second chance to enjoy it while we were more awake. Christmas Mass is all about Jesus and there is so much joy! And at the end of Mass on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day they did something very special. It was similar to what we do on Good Friday (the day that Jesus died), when we all go up and put a hand on the cross or kiss the cross to say thank you to Jesus. Here in East Timor, everyone at Mass lined up to kiss baby Jesus! We all came up to the front and kissed a little statue of baby Jesus.

We feel so honored to be here. It’s difficult to think of ourselves as missionaries, because here we are the ones being inspired and encouraged by the faith of the people themselves. Hopefully we can encourage them in their faith in some small way by our witness of being here and by having the same love that they have for Jesus.

But that was only the beginning of the day. We ate leftovers for breakfast and then worked on wrapping pens and pencils in tissue paper for Christmas presents for the kids at the Baucau hospital. Cass and a friend came over to help with the process, and her and I were able to talk.

Cass is 22 also, but is already an occupational therapist (in Australia you only need a Bachelor’s Degree for it). As soon as she finished she started volunteering with VOICA and went to East Timor. After she finished her time she was asked to stay by the local parishes to continue her outreach with the street kids in Baucau and the surrounding villages. She is hardcore and I have a great respect for her.

Once the presents were ready we walked to the Baucau Hospital. It was a very interesting experience from having volunteered in three different American hospitals and comparing them to this hospital.

The first big difference was that there was almost no staff at the hospital. We saw maybe two staff the whole time we were there. It was Christmas, so many of them were probably at home, but the ratio of staff to patients seemed very different from the U.S.

The facilities were also very different. There were three or four different buildings with long walkways connecting them. We walked down the hallways and saw rooms labeled for malaria cases, respiratory problems, intensive care, etc. Each room had four to six beds in a small space, but there would be twenty or twenty-five people in the room.

This is probably the biggest cultural difference between our hospitals and their hospitals. The families of the patients come to live with them at the hospital, to make sure that they are fed and cared for! They become the volunteer hospital staff. Dogmara was telling us about children who lived with their mom in the hospital for two years while she was sick. They’d eat there, leave for school, and come back to take care of their mom.

Initially, it was difficult for me to see how dirty the facilities were and thinking about the nightmare of trying to control the spread of disease with people always coming in and out and living there. But those are just the academic worries.

On the other side, I’m sure that the comfort of having your family around and caring for you may balance the disadvantage of controlling contagions. I’m not sick often, but when I am, even a few days of bedrest is enough to leave you feeling isolated and sometimes depressed. It really challenges what you think about human dignity – do I have innate, God-given worth or am I only worth something if I’m productive? Hopefully everyone knows they have a ton of God-given worth, but when you’re sick, it’s easy to have doubts. Having your family stay with you probably eases those worries because even if you can’t “do” much, you’re still an important part of a community. Who knows, if they had better medical resources, their family-style hospital stays might be more effective than ours for healing long term illness.

But honestly, spending Christmas giving presents to the kids at the hospital floored me. I was still a little homesick, but I can’t imagine a better way to spend Christmas than doing that with Brendan.

We entered the rooms, said our “Boas Festa Natal” to everyone, and passed out school supplies, chocolate, and lollipops to the kids, especially the kids that were patients. The first hallway we went down there were many infants (who probably would just try to eat the pens and pencils), but we were able to give presents to the tired-looking moms. It was difficult in the malaria room because many of the children were very young and looked like they were in a lot of pain. Another painful part was hearing that the Last Rites were being done for a child in the intensive care unit.

The best part of the trip was the surprised looks on the faces that we got when we came in. None of the patients were expecting us or that they would get anything for Christmas. Many of them were very shy when we showered them with little gifts, but you could tell they were very happy. But we didn’t get to surprise everyone. Soon word spread among the kids that there was candy to be had and we got to throw lollipops to the four and five-year-olds crowded in the hallway : )

But the part that touched me the most and almost brought me to tears, was meeting a dad who had been in the hospital for four months with his two little daughters. The three of them were sitting on a bench and I sat down to say hi and try to talk. Through the conversation he explained that their family had been in the hospital because his youngest daughter, who was sitting on his lap smiling, had her lower right leg blown off in an explosion. He said it was a bomb in the ground, so I’m thinking like some type of land mine. And I was speechless…

But these kind of Christmas experiences make me think of Christmas in a deeper way than before. Thank goodness that Jesus came to give hope to the suffering. He is everything we need. Please pray for that little girl and her family, and for all the people who spend their Christmas in the hospital.

Our time at the hospital was all too short, but you could tell that the people and especially the kids appreciated our visit. We walked back across town still processing what we had seen.

But there wasn’t much time to process because we were still going to try to make it to the beach for Christmas! We had heard that the Baucau beach was especially beautiful, so we wanted to see it before heading back the next day. So we packed a picnic lunch and Therese, Dogmara, Chris, Brendan, and I started the hour long hike to the beach.

On the way we saw lots of kids just hanging out with their families and friends for Christmas. Most of them just shouted “Malae, malae” (foreigner, foreigner) at us and waved and smiled, but these kids had a slight variation. When they saw us coming they shouted “Foto? Foto?” and Brendan was glad to oblige

We finally made it to the beach and the view was worth every bit of the walk. The sand was soft, and the water warm and inviting.

We were playing around in the water when the cry when up from the local kids “Lafaek, lafaek!” A crocodile! We were out of the water in a flash, deciding it was a perfect time for our picnic. We were a little skeptical until we saw the nose of a crocodile rise out of the water. We hung out on the beach with the locals, watching the crocodile get slowly nearer. Every ten minutes or so it would poke its nose out of the water and be in a new spot a few meters closer.

Every time the nose poked out of the water it sent a shiver through us and a healthy dose of fear as you can see. Ok, this picture was posed, but it was a little scary to see a crocodile in the wild for the first time.

We saw this sign after we got in. It says be careful when you swim here and has the picture of the crocodile.

The Timorese have an interesting relationship with crocodiles and respect them a lot because of a legend. There was a boy who was walking along and saw a baby crocodile who was dying because he could not make it to the ocean. So the boy took pity on the crocodile and carried him to the ocean, where he recovered. Later the boy was near the beach when he saw his friend the crocodile, who had grown up. The crocodile offered to take the boy on his back wherever he wanted to go to repay him for saving his life.

Over time they became great friends and when the crocodile was dying from old age he said that he would always carry the boy and his descendents on his back. When the crocodile died the island of Timor rose out of the sea (Timor is shaped like a crocodile) and boy’s descendents (the Timorese) have lived there ever since.

The Timorese call the crocodile, avo, or grandfather, and when crossing a river some will call out, “Don’t eat me avo, I am your grandchild!” It’s said that when you come across a crocodile if you think good thoughts, he won’t eat you. It’s not an experiment that we’re going to try though, we promise. So…I’d bet five dollars that none of you had a Christmas experience like this : )

After a couple of hours at the beach we were lucky enough to get a ride home with some friends we had met at the Christmas party the night before. We got home just in time to change and head out to the Baucau convent where we had been invited for Christmas dinner.

We made it to the convent where there was a small, Asian-Christmas feast of rice, noodles, and even some meat. The meat was especially nice, because it’s expensive here, so we don’t get too much of it. Here we are ready to dig in!

After dinner Brendan and I started off a singing fest. We wowed them with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (with the kids’ part) and then sang O Holy Night with Therese and Bernedette.

We also played a game where you pass around a holly branch as fast as you can while the music is on and when the music stops, whoever has the branch has to stand up and tell the story of their favorite Christmas.

Group picture before we headed home to pack for the trip home the next morning and get some sleep. This was probably the craziest Christmas we’ve ever had : )
We hope your Christmas was great too!


Love always,

Rachel and Brendan