Lake Neuron

While I am in Costa Rica, I have prepared some posts which should, if I have set things up correctly, appear automatically in my absence. I will be back to live posting on July 16.

One of the books which LEAMIS asks team members to read in preparation for a trip is “Rich Thinking About The World’s Poor,” by Peter Meadows.

Chapter 2 of this book has the title “It matters why you think they are poor.” Our preconceptions about what poverty is, and where it comes from, will affect how we respond to poverty. Is poverty due to a lack of education? Systemic problems which prevent social justice? Cultural issues?

Meadows points out that the causes of poverty are often complex, encompassing many different factors.

Which means ignoring any one of them is the first step to failing to address the real issues at the heart of a poor community. More than that, the key to bringing change that lasts is to identify and tackle all the issues — material, medical, social, political, structural and spiritual. And also the complex relationships between them.

Please keep me and my teammates, Frank Schroer and Megan Siegrist, in prayer as we begin our mission trip.

I’m about to shut my computer down. I’m going to my parents’ house. They will take me to Murfreesboro, where we’re going to dinner at Demos’ before meeting Frank Schroer on the Interstate in Murfreesboro. Frank will take me the rest of the way to Nashville, where we’ll spend the night at Megan Siegrist’s parents’ home before heading to the airport very early Saturday morning. Our flight leaves at 7:05 a.m.

I am taking my laptop in my carryon, so it’s conceivable I could blog from the Nashville or Houston airports tomorrow, but if I don’t, this may be my last live message for 12 days. I have some pre-scheduled blog posts ready to show up here in my absence. Some are frivolous; some are mission-related and come with specific prayer requests related to the trip. Be well, and I’ll try to do the same.

I had every intention of sleeping in this Independence Day morning, but as I lay in bed from 6-6:30 a million last-minute tasks for the trip ran through my head. I got up. I decided to go to Wal-Mart for some new sports socks. Not surprisingly, there weren’t many people at Wal-Mart at 7:30 on a holiday morning. I did run into Nadine Hopkins, owner of our local AM radio stations — she’s already been up and working this morning.

After making my purchases, I stopped at the McDonalds inside Wal-Mart for breakfast, and managed to spill a full cup of diet Dr. Pepper all over the place. One of the crew members saw me do it, and she was so sweet and understanding about it.

On my way back home from Wal-Mart, I got a cell phone call from our team leader, Frank Schroer. Frank was on his way — you guessed it — to Wal-Mart. Of course, the Wal-Mart he frequents is right on the Interstate in Kimball, so it might be a little busier on a holiday weekend morning.

This time tomorrow, I’ll be in the air between Nashville and Houston.

My co-workers at the T-G, led by editor John Philleo, held a “bon voyage” chili supper and fund-raiser for my mission trip today. (I told them I was in pretty good shape with the trip finances, but they insisted, and I can always find some good use for the money or apply it to my next trip.)

It’s been a busy week — not only last-minute preparations for the trip, but also I spent part of yesterday and will spend part of tomorrow at the T-G’s sister paper in an adjoining county.

I told my editor this afternoon I have this nagging worry that I’m going to forget something — either something I need to take on the trip, take care of before the trip, or take care of at work.

Tomorrow, by the way, my newsroom co-workers are holding a chili luncheon in my honor, sort of a going-away party and last-minute fund-raiser. It’s a really great gesture on everyone’s part.

Last summer, my sister-in-law served as my guest blogger while I was in Bolivia. That experience led to her starting her own blog. This year, with the latest version of WordPress, I’m going to do something different. I’ve written some posts which (cross your fingers) should appear at regular intervals while I’m gone. The posts I have written so far relate to foreign missions, each one followed by a specific prayer request. I hope to intersperse them with some fun posts as well.

I am taking my Flip Video camera on the Costa Rica trip so that, for the first time, I can bring back video.

My Flip holds up to 60 minutes of video. I have gone back and forth on whether or not to bring my beat-up, second-hand notebook computer on the trip, so that if I want or need to, I can download video from the Flip to create more space. I really don’t know how much raw video I will want to bring back. When it comes to video editing, the more raw video you have, the more options it gives you for assembling the final product. But I don’t know if it’s worth lugging the laptop along — and if so, whether I want to pack it in the middle of my clothes or take it in my backpack. I’ve never taken it on a plane trip before.

I’m making progress towards being ready for the trip — but I’m not there quite yet.

Today, I was happy to get a stainless steel bowl. Depending on how the soap-making workshop is set up, I’ll need to try melting down, or “re-batching,” some soap. You do that in a double boiler. I needed a bowl large enough to rest on top of one of the two stockpots I’m bringing (one enameled, one stainless steel). I couldn’t find one at Wal-Mart the first time I looked. I bought a bowl at Kroger, but it had a non-skid rubber bottom, and I worried that it might serve as an insulator and keep enough heat from getting to the bowl. Today, I checked again at Wal-Mart, and they had some bowls in stock which weren’t there on Wednesday.

I made a batch of soap last month to give to my relatives out west. It’s now cured, and it turned out very nice; I had already started using the one bar which I held back for myself. The only reason I hadn’t sent the soap to them yet was that they’re packing up for their big move to North Carolina and asked me to wait.

When Carolyn had to pull out of the Costa Rica trip, and I became the leader of the soapmaking workshop, I asked my brother and sister-in-law if I could take the soap to Costa Rica with me instead. (I’ll make them a replacement batch soon enough.) They were quite understanding.

I’m not certain right now how the workshop will be scheduled. I may end up grating and melting soap bought in-country, and using the family soap to hand out as samples. Or I may end up grating and melting the family soap.

Originally, I was scheduled to do two devotions for our internal team meetings. I pulled one out of the file which I had written for Bolivia and never got to give. I figured I would write the other one in country, if not before then. Now, with Carolyn gone, we may have to re-draw the schedule for team meeting devotions.

I’m still trying to finish reading a book which my pastor’s wife has loaned me about the struggles faced by pastoral families, which was a topic our hosts asked us to address.

Our flight will leave at 7:05 a.m. on the 5th. Rather than drive up from Shelbyville (me), Monteagle (Megan) and Sewanee (Frank) that morning, the three of us will go to Nashville on the evening of the Fourth and spend the night at Megan’s parents’ house.

I am taking one large suitcase of my own and one duffel bag which I will borrow from my parents. I didn’t pick that up this week because I thought they might need it for a weekend trip to Louisville. I’ll get it from them tomorrow night or Monday so that I can do some packing during the week. I always use my backpack as a carry-on, and stow it under the seat instead of in the overhead compartment.

The weekend will be here before I know it.

I had some time off from work this afternoon, and one thing I did was go shopping. Mostly, I was looking for things to take for the soapmaking workshop, but I picked up a few other mission trip essentials en route.

One, and I think I’ve blogged about it before, was travel toilet paper. They used to sell this as “Charmin TO GO” in the sample-size product aisle at Wal-Mart; I haven’t seen it there lately, but they sell pretty much the exact same product, sans the familiar brand name, in the outdoors department with the camping supplies. It’s a roll of toilet paper about 1″ in diameter — wound all the way to the center, with no inner core or spindle — which comes with a little clamshell plastic dispenser. When you travel to the developing world, in places where indoor plumbing is not a given, TP is also not a given, and it’s a great idea to have one of these travel rolls handy. I carry a backpack on trips, and so it’s always in my backpack.

I also looked in the sample size aisle for Tide sink packets — which I know I’ve blogged about before. These are little packets, about 1 1/2″ square, containing just enough of a liquid detergent for hand-washing clothes in a sink or large bucket. On a mission trip, you have to pack light. Sometimes your hosts will offer to do laundry for you or there will be someone in the community to pay to wash your clothes. Often, however, you’re on your own, and if you want clean clothes after the first day or two, these packets are a godsend.

The shelf location which was supposed to have the Tide sink packets had a completely different product — larger packets containing enough liquid detergent for one load in the washing machine. (And that’s a completely different product — the tiny packets are specifically formulated for hand-washing, while the large packets are the same stuff you would find in a jug on the laundry aisle.) Buried underneath the large packets were two small three-packs, one of them damaged, of the sink product for which I was looking.

I didn’t bother buying the one intact three-pack. Instead, I came home and found the sink packets online, at the Walgreens web site. I ordered enough for myself and some extras to share with my teammates if necessary.

I highly recommend these. They’re probably a good idea even for an extended vacation here in the U.S.

Carolyn Schussler, one of four members of the Costa Rica team, has had a family medical emergency and is going to be unable to make the trip. Please keep Carolyn and her mother in your prayers.

I am going to have to take over teaching the soap-making workshop. I know it, I’ve done it before, but I wasn’t preparing to lead it this time, and so I’m going to have to put together the equipment and supplies I need to take.

If I’m taking my first chloroquine tablet — and I am — it must mean that the Costa Rica trip is two weeks away. Two weeks!

Chloroquine, by the way, is an anti-malaria drug. You take it once a week for two weeks before your trip, once a week during the trip, and once a week for a month after the trip. Chloroquine can be used for trips to Central and South America; if I were going to Africa this year, I’d be taking a different and stronger medication, because the malaria there has become resistant to chloroquine.

I have never had any side effects or problems from any of the malaria drugs I’ve taken on trips, and hope this year will be the same.

If you plan to take a mission trip, or any kind of foreign travel to an undeveloped area, make sure you go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention travel web site. It’s got lots of good information about vaccinations, malaria drugs and what have you. Print out the pages about the country you will be visiting and take them with you when you see your doctor.

Well, today I picked up some Spanish-language Bibles, thanks to a gracious in-kind donation by a local Christian printer-publisher. We’ll give them to our host church or others we meet in Costa Rica. I have so many that I may have to split them up with my teammates in order to get all of them packed.

I also checked with my bank today to make sure I can use my ATM card in Costa Rica. I normally don’t have much cause to use an ATM card on trips — we bring cash and change it in for the local currency at someplace recommended by our in-country hosts. But last year, during our odyssey of going to and from the airport in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, for 32 hours, I tried to use my card at the airport and it didn’t work. That’s because many credit card issuers assume that foreign charges are some form of fraud or identity theft — unless you notify them in advance that you will be traveling and using your card abroad.

It won’t be long now. I have a million little things like this to worry about between now and then, and I hope I can get them all taken care of.

Today is one month from my Costa Rica trip.

It is also five days away from my sermon at Annual Conference. I am humbled, and a little surprised, by how many of my friends, family and fellow church members are making the effort to come and hear me that night. The church is planning a carpool. They announced it a week ago and then moved up the time this week after deciding that seating would be at a premium.

I bought a new shirt and tie today to wear that night.

During our team preparation on Saturday, Gail Drake, who co-founded LEAMIS with Debra Snellen, talked a little bit about the organization — not new information for any of us, since we’d all been on trips before — but a good reminder. I had my Flip Video Camera handy and started taping her, in part so that Carolyn Schussler could use some excerpts for a project she’s working on. In the meantime, I though I’d share some of the footage with you:

Team Costa Rica, originally uploaded by jicarney.

From left: Frank Schroer, Carolyn Schussler, me, Megan Siegrist

Well, it was a great day of planning. Some of the things I have told you about the trip turned out to be out-of-date. We will be in one location after all — Heredia.

I’ll have some video to show you, but probably not until tomorrow.

I’m looking forward to the trip even more.