Jaime and Jackie

Special Prayer Request

In this picture, taken at Christmas of 2003, Jackie and Jaime stand in front of their house. It was in April of 2004 that Jackie became very ill, and the doctors never did find what was wrong with her. There were times during the late spring and early summer of 2004 that she was near death, apparently. During the fall of last year, Jackie began to make some progress and was beginning to return to something of her former routine, but two weeks ago, she began to feel very weak again, and she had to return to the doctor.

The possible ailments that have been mentioned is too long to list here, but none of them seemed to be the principal cause of her condition. She has been diagnosed with a kidney stone, but that is not the cause of her present distress. In the course of her consultation this past week, Jackie was told by her doctor that he thinks she must have a tumor, probably in the small intestine, or possibly the pancreas. She has another appointment this Tuesday (March 1), which may lead to her being hospitalized for further tests. Her doctor said that if there is a tumor in the small intestine, it may be difficult to locate. We appreciate your prayers for this couple, who are pillars in the church here in Funchal. We will keep you posted as we have further news.

Dust to Dust, It's Music to My Ears --- and Sequel

Dust to Dust, It's Music to My Ears

It's been a week since my last posting. By now the painting of the walls downstairs is practically finished. My office has been transferred upstairs, and I've had time to discover that everything is not well with the phone connections after all. The telephone and internet lines are OK, but the fax line is not working. Only discovered that when a client let me know they couldn't fax me a document for translation. I'll have to sort that problem out in a day or two; in the meantime the job was sent by e-mail.

The latest phase of the work is the sanding and revarnishing of the parquet floors. The workmen who put down the floors 15 years ago didn't use the proper sanding equipment, which left sanding marks all over, and they used a cheap varnish that scratches, chips, and turns yellow with age. Since we had furniture stacked and covered due to the plastering and repainting, we figured it was now or never to redo

That was as far as I got on Saturday, Feb. 19...Now another week has passed. The floors have all been sanded and varnished, and everything in the house, no matter how well covered it was, got a good dusting. The music to my ears I was going to refer to last week was the fact that the man operating the sanding machine actually showed up to work and the awful racket was a welcome sound. But he didn't show up Monday, then came on Tuesday, although the last part of the work he did on Tuesday afternoon wasn't well done. He seemed to grow weary in well doing and didn't get all the old layer of varnish off. We figure he has a problem working too many hours at a time and takes off every other day to be on the safe side.

With the dust, the varnish, the painting...what a perfect time for the worst winter storms we've had in years. Driving rains and cold winds. It made working on the built-in closet more difficult. In good weather, I set up my tools and equipment in the yard where there's plenty of room to work.

I quit writing last Saturday because we had to abandon the house. With furniture piled here and there around the house, we had no bed to sleep on, and wouldn't have wanted to sleep on it anyway, with all the dust. So for the last week we "camped out" at the church. The experience gave added meaning to David's words in Psalm 23:6.

Although everything has to be cleaned and put back in order, it's good to be back in the house and have a bed. Now if I could just get there.

Making All the Connections

Today was the day to tackle the tangle of telephone wires. With modems, computers with fax lines, and extensions, there were a lot of wires in the switch boxes. And to confuse matters, there were still old lines that used to connect to other phones that are no longer in use. That's why I made diagrams, one after the other, and on various pieces of paper. I wanted to make sure I could hook up all the lines properly even though the locations of the boxes were all changed.

Having carefully followed my diagrams in connecting the wires, I discovered the phones didn't work. The modem worked on the computer, so I had internet; the fax didn't work. After doublechecking all the wiring and even experimenting all the other possibilities I could think of in the main switch box, I started rehearsing what I would say to the telephone company repairmen whom I would have to ask to come out and fix whatever it was I broke. I was working on several versions, wondering which way the conversation would actually go.

I gave up. I still had to make the connection of the new line to the extension upstairs, so I figured I might as well do that. The new cable, though, used different colors of wires from the original one, so I was making the conversion from black to orange, and white to yellow, and another white to red (had to make sure I got the right white for each). I gave that my best shot, and voilá! The phone upstairs worked! So I went downstairs. It worked, too, now. At least one of those wires was crucial for the whole system to operate, and I still don't know which one it is. I didn't figure that extension line was needed for the other parts to operate, but it is.

There was a lesson in it for me. Although I've done everything from plumbing to cabinetmaking to electrical installations, I never studied telephone wiring configurations. I couldn't install a phone system, but I figured I could put one back the way it was. Had I known the way the circuits work, I would have immediately known where the problem was. As it was, I simply had to follow through ALL THE WAY to get the desired results. I didn't have to understand why those wires were the way they were, I just had to be sure and get all of them back into place.

God's will is like that, too. He doesn't ask us, or expect us, to understand all the wiring and how it works. He gives us the plan and expects us to follow it. If we do, blessings will follow. Sometimes we may stop short of full execution, having theorized that what we have done is sufficient for the purpose. Then we get stressed out because our connections don't work. We try to reason through the process, analyzing the situation in order to understand it, and all the time God is simply waiting for us to obey His word and do what He has plainly told us to do.

I still don't understand how those circuits work, but I'm thankful I can pick up the phone and get a dial tone.

Progress Is in the Eye of the Beholder

This is now the end of the fourth day of the work in the house. Not just "on" the house, but "in" it. The pictures posted three days ago give you something of an idea of what's going on (or coming off), and one should expect there would have been progress after four days of work. Yes, there has been. By now every room in the house (except the kitchen and the two bathrooms) has had plaster knocked off the walls; a fine layer of grit covers everything. I covered my desk with sheets to protect my computer and printer from flying debris. That worked; it also means that what is underneath the sheet is covered with "filtered" debris. A large piece of plastic would have been better, but I didn't have one. We already look forward to cleaning the house, which may be progress, in a sense, for me. I admit that housecleaning is not one of those activities I really go for; even I have my limits, however. Walking over little pieces of plaster, and wiping dust off everything exceeds my limits.

The experience that comes to mind that most reminds me of this (except when we did all this sort of work in previous phases of the remodelling) is the time when I was about 7 or 8, and our house in Colorado got filled with sand from a dust storm. Mom made us go to the back bedroom and eat our sandwiches (no pun intended) and keep our glasses of milk covered with a napkin to keep the dirt out.

Progress? I look up and see wires dangling from outlets and boxes in the walls. At least the wires have been run through the conduits, but I haven't got the phone lines reconnected. What with extensions upstairs and lines to the computer and the fax, I find myself staring at the tangled balls of little colored wires left by the phone company inside the connector boxes. I study the tangled webs carefully before I cut the lines, so when I move the outlets and switch box, I can put the lines back into an order that works. Tomorrow I will do that. Today we have no phone. That, too, may progress. If not progress, it's a freedom of sorts.

Visually, our present surroundings are dreary and discouraging. But we look at the situation with other eyes: we see what has been done, and more importantly, we see by the eyes of faith what the freshly painted rooms will look like, free of exposed wires running around the baseboards and doorframes . That's what living the Christian life by faith is all about, too. The Apostle Paul wrote about his experiences that were on the whole a trouble to him. He said he was often perplexed, persecuted and cast down, but in the end it was a light affliction to him. He could say that because he set his sights on the things that are unseen, rather than seen; on the eternal, rather than the temporal; on what will be, rather than what is. (2 Cor. 4:8-18) When my life looks like a mess, I remember who the Master Builder is, and I take courage. Progress is in the eye of the beholder.

Been There, Done That...And Doing It Again

We've lived in the same house (off and on) ever since we came to Madeira in 1976. The house was big, but little more than a shell, and over the years we've had to redo everything in it and on it (including the entire roof, tiles and roof joists). I've lost count of how many different projects we've had for it, the number of different builders and contractors that have helped relieve us of any money we had available. The problem is that we have often had to go back and do work over again, and again.

Today marks the official start of a new phase. Abbie---who is very good at keeping me on my toes, because I never know when I get home from work if the sofa is going to be in the same place it was when I left---has decided to not only move our bed, but to move it downstairs to where my office currently is. I am being sent upstairs to the attic. I agree with the move, but the consequences are many. Wiring for telephone and internet has to be redone; electrical outlets have to be moved. Closets have to be built. Hopefully this will be the final phase of remodelling that has been going on sporadically over a period of 28 years.

Izaías and his son, Junior, are currently out of work, so we asked them to come and start. And since the cable and phone connections come into the house on the wall that the plaster was falling from, they will have to knock off all the loose plaster before running conduits for the wiring. As we imagined, there's a lot they're going to have to redo, as you can see from these first pictures. All this dust and mess bring back memories of the good old days, when we ate, breathed and thrived on concrete and rubble in the house. As with most "good old days", we'll find these days better once they're old.

Blocking the Pope's View

I walk through Funchal's central square so often that I rarely ever pay attention to the statue standing there facing the avenue running along the city's shoreline, and looking beyond that to the docks and the open Atlantic itself. The statue commemorates Pope John Paul II's visit to Funchal in May 1991 .

Yesterday, however, as I looked towards the sea from the square, the scene was changed. Temporary grandstands had been set up along the avenue for this weekend's Carnival parade. While thousands of residents and tourists have to stand for hours along the parade route, arriving early to ensure getting a good spot, then watching the parade itself, dignitaries are provided with special seating. It was this seating that caught my eye as I came across the square. It was right between the Pope and the spot where the Carnival parade would pass. They had blocked his view!

Looked at from another angle, it would appear the Pope is promoting the local casino. That advertising is actually across the avenue on a tethered balloon that takes tourists up about 500 ft (150m) to get a bird's-eye view of the city.

The whole scene struck me as odd. It was as if they were wanting to keep the Pope from watching the parade. (That has nothing to do with it, of course, but it was the first impression I had when I came upon the scene.) Carnival has been heavily advertized and promoted by the local tourist board for many years. Some of the Carnival traditions of the Madeirans have given way to the influences of the Brazilian-style Carnival in an attempt to attract tourists. Even so, the philosophy surrounding this coming weekend, through Tuesday, is that "because it's Carnival, you can do whatever you want, and no one will point a finger at you." Anything goes.

Several versions are given for the origin of this period of complete "do-whatever-comes-into-your-head" season, but one thing is certain: Carnival represents the very opposite of what the Bible teaches us to do and be. In that the Pope is understood by the majority of the world to represent Christianity, blocking his vision of the parade would seem to be the appropriate thing to do, after all. But the incongruity of it all rests in the fact that Carnival is strongest where the Catholic Church dominates the culture, and that includes Madeira.