Friday, June 20, 2014

Step by Step Guide on How to Pack Like a Rockstar


We've been packing up the apartment to head on our ridiculously long-term fund-raising trip. This isn't the first time either of us has packed up our lives so we're kinda experts now. So allow me to give you a fantastic and amazing step by step guide on how to pack your home and maintain a suitable level of sanity and emotional stability at the same time!
  1. Figure out what your specific packing needs are and get really specific with it.
    We needed to pack our entire home and have it split three major ways: storage, PNG, with us. But this needs to be really specific. What all piles will we actually need to have? See below:
    Going to PNG
    Going on the PD roadtrip
    Going in storage
    Going on Sale
    Going in the trash
    Baby stuff
    Clothes that can't handle the baby bump but I still want
    Clothes going to the Boutique
    Winter clothes going on the PD trip
    Clothes going on the PD trip that I won't wear before then
    Clothes I probably won't wear before going to PNG that I love too much to give away
    Clothes going to PNG
    Crafting in progress
    To be crafted before departure
    Things that aren't mine
    gifts
  2. Examine this list. Decide how much time you will need and how much space you will need to masterfully rock this list like a champion. Double it.
    Even if double the time/space is more than needed, that's a lot better than having less time/space. Trust me on this one. 
  3. Get your materials together.
    You're probably going to need some boxes. Maybe some bags. But you will definitely definitely definitely need the following:- Materials Bag - It seemed like the only time we could find the duct tape was 20 minutes after we had needed it and found another solution. Keep all your tape, scissors, Sharpies, bubble wrap, sanity, etc in one nifty bag and you'll be good to go!
    - An accordion folder. Or the likes to put documents and small important things in that you will need handy when you can give it a moment of your time but really need to put away right now. (Travel documents, bills, cancellation forms, etc) 
    - An Oops Bag. This is the bag that you put that bottle of Tylenol in after you've already whisked the medicine bag out of your home. Where the straight pins go after the sewing box is packed and gone.
    In each of the following steps, the accordion folder and Oops Bag should be used to the fullest extent. 
  4. Cover major sections.
    Pick a genre of items and go for it. Go all the way for it. Get ALL the books taken care of. Pack ALL the picture frames. Sort through ALL the clothes. Then, when you stop and look around, you can be like, "dude, check out my hard work! Look at all those books taken care of! Bam! Imma rockstar!" And you are!
  5. Pick a corner.
    Eventually you will get to a point where the packing has morphed into chaos and all the major types of things are taken care of and you just have stuff. At this point, take a deep breath. And pick a corner. You pack that corner. And you pack it good! And then step back and look at that packed corner and remind yourself that you are a rockstar. 
  6. Pick the smallest space you can find. 
    Eventually corners will have too much junk (see, we've gone from stuff to junk) that you can't really just pack it up in any coherent way. Walk away from those corners that bring you down! Move to the drawers! The cupboards! The closets! The bathrooms! These smaller spaces will (usually) have like items that you can sort through quickly and pack and be done with. Whoa! Look at that empty cabinet! That was all you! Way to go, rockstar!
  7. Find another set of eyes.
    Once you've done all that you are emotionally capable of doing. And have even tried to come back to the same spot the next day to take a fresh look and still cannot do a single thing more with what remains, find someone else to manage it. When I am at my wits end with a junk drawer or the likes, I send my husband in, who is not so emotional drained by packing that he can think of what to do with a handful of pens, a box of tacks, and some random beads. 
  8. Toss it.
    When all is said and done, you don't need this kind of negativity in your life! When you have odds and ends littering the floor, throw them away. Will you need that screw in the future some day? Maybe. But you can spend a dollar for a bag of them at the hardware store and not have an emotional breakdown. That seems worth it for a maybe. 
Tips:
  • Know when to take a break. You don't need to go until the brink of an emotional breakdown. Know when you're tired and done for the day and allow yourself to stop then. If you've doubled your time then you have time to rest. Take advantage of that time. 
  • When packing books. Lay them on the shelf spine up and organize them by height. Then when you pack them in boxes, you won't have that irritating irregularity that makes it impossible to make the most out of your box's space.  

Saturday, June 14, 2014

not-PMI: 2014

The event formerly known as Pioneer Missions Institute, which will be known as Resource, and is presently not known as anything, has just ended!
It's been a fantastically good time, the kind of fun that leaves you totally 100% exhausted afterwards (no, we're not finished packing...).
This year I was the Games and Activities Coordinator for the Children's Program. After designing most of the games and activities, I was on call all day in the event that one of the four classrooms needed me. In the afternoon, I orchestrated the larger games that brought all the ages together.
(The pinnacle of my efforts was the Paul's Missionary Journey Game which I will be posting about soon. Considering how much effort I put into designing that game, I figured I should share that with the world via the world wide web.) 
Jacob taught 3 short lectures for the Literacy continuing education course. The people in charge of the course said he did a great job. Unfortunately, this was right during the time of my afternoon games, so I missed them.


On Tuesday of this week, I coordinated the annual PNG Braum's Night (Braum's is an ice cream place found in this area), which really involved putting it on the schedule and making sure everyone had a ride from the rendezvous point to Braum's. (They did.) Hopefully the entire event won't collapse next year in my absence. (-sarcasm)

At 6:30 we met and then headed off for ice cream. I found myself sitting with a missionary who was on her way back to PNG after a stint off the field. Jacob was at another table with her husband. After we stood up to leave, we were invited to come back to campus and continue talking with them. We left their room at 2 am. While it was an amazing conversation that we absolutely do not regret taking the time for, we never actually recovered from getting only 5 hours of sleep...

The next morning involved me very frustrated from lack of sleep compounded with the cats having gnawed on our brand-new coffee tumblers in the night and me pouring boiling water over my hand as I tried to get coffee. (Luckily, Wednesday was a low-key game day...)

But at the end of all of it, the kids were raving about the amazing time they had had and how fun the games were, especially the Roman Soldier Game, which ironically had 3 emotional breakdowns during gameplay.

I'm almost sorry we'll miss it next year.





Sunday, June 8, 2014

What's the Plan?

We have found more meat for our bare bones of a plan! Originally it was: We're going to raise money, go to Papua New Guinea some time in 2015, go to POC (How to live in the Jungle 101), and go from there. Lots of motion.

Now! The plan is:
  • Our personal profiles will soon be submitted to the PNG branch. If they decide they want us (and we anticipate no problems there), they will send us our Letter of Assignment. (We want you to come and do A, B, and C, during your first term.) 
  • Then! We will begin filing for our visas. (And getting new passports)
  • We will do partnership development (raising money) 
    • We need $5000/mth
    • We need $44,000 in start-up expenses (relocation expenses, POC, solar panels, Toyota Hilux)
    • We are praying to be fully funded by Oct 3rd (Jacob's Birthday). Just a couple of weeks before our son is due. We really really don't want to worry about fund-raising and infant-raising. We hope you will join us in these prayers. 
  • We will leave for the Pacific Orientation Course in May 2015. The enrollment process for May POC has already begun. 
  • We will spend approximately 4 months in POC learning everything from how to bake bread over an open fire to how to speak Tok Pisin. The course in completed after spending a few weeks living in a village setting. If you're still alive at the end of the time period, you pass. (Just kidding! The death toll of POC is quite low.)
  • We will spend however long it takes researching and doing survey work to figure out where we're going to live and work full time. 
    • This will probably be in or near the Lower Ramu River Valley, which happens to have a road that connects it to Madang. This means we won't have to spend $3000 on a helicopter every time we want to arrive or leave the village. Instead, we can buy a Toyota Hilux for an up-front cost of $35,000 and save a lot of money in the long run. 
  • We will load up our child and cargo in our Hilux and go out to the village to live in a small bush house for the remainder of our term. 
  • We will begin language learning. 
  • If we decide that is the right location for us to be long-term, we will start figuring out how much it will be to get a house there. 
  • We will go on home assignment, visit all of you, and raise money for our Americanized house, and start planning for our second term in approximately 2019. 
Bam! 4 years in 10 bullet points! That's what we call an overview!

(Please remember that there are two constants in the life of a missionary: miscommunication and change. Please don't feel lead astray if there's a change in this plan. We have to roll with the punches...)

Thursday, June 5, 2014

"So how's your pregnancy been?" Conceiving after a Loss

(Note: I'm doing great! Fantastic! Really. I have some stress, yes, but compared to anyone else who is quitting their job, packing their house, getting ready to be homeless for the next who knows how long, including when they deliver their child, getting ready to ask people for money relentlessly until they get on a plane to go to a third world country where they still don't have a house with a newborn, I'm doing really really really well. This blog post looks back at February/March. That was months ago. I'm great!)

I, like every other pregnant woman, often get asked how every thing is going. But people seem really stuck on morning sickness. I'm not sure what's up with that. Even well into my 2nd trimester, people keep asking me how the morning sickness is. Maybe it's because that's the one miserable pregnancy symptom everyone knows about, so that gets overly worried about.
I haven't had morning sickness. At all. And I'm always so taken aback by that question. Because the first one, "how's your pregnancy been?" causes me to reflect and think, and then out of nowhere "have you been retching in the toilet?" What?! No! Compared to what I was just thinking about, that seems so trivial! As much as I hate throwing up, I'd rather bear that burden than this. But these generous souls have given me an out, so I take it. "No! None at all!" I smile up at them. "Good, good!" They pat me on the shoulder and walk away. And I never have to tell a soul that I'm afraid I will fail again. 

I had my D&C on December 5th. We start counting how far pregnant I am at January 7th.
Unlike the first time we were trying to conceive, I didn't take a pregnancy test every month and cry over negatives. (Mix hormones with disappointment and it gets messy!)
This time though I took got a positive on the first try. I came out of the bathroom holding a pregnancy test and bawling my eyes out. Needless to say, my husband was uncertain of what was happening. Why bring a negative test to him? Why cry if it's positive? But when he saw the positive test, fear flooded his face too.
Fear that we would miscarry again. Fear that we would have to go through this emotional turmoil again.

Every day for 6 weeks, I would replay that miscarriage again and again in my head. That moment of false hope when I saw the small form on the sonogram. The world falling down around me when there was no heartbeat. Everyday, I heard my wails echoing off the walls. Everyday, I felt the cold that the IV drip filled me with. For 6 weeks. I feared it would happen again. And I knew that if it did I would die. I knew I could shed no more tears. I knew I would go through the whole routine of the D&C shut down, going through the motions, without the emotional strength to do anything. I didn't know how long that emotional death would last.
But at 10 weeks, I had an ultrasound (that was actually not any further along than the first had been so offered me no reassurance). Nonetheless, peace came. And not the peace where I had to scream out to God to take these images away from me and let me sleep. Not the peace where I had to pray that God would protect me from my imagination (as I child with some mild paranoia issues, this was a common prayer). But a true peace that didn't need to be scrambled after, but endured. A peace where people would ask me how I was doing, and I was surprised to realize I hadn't been worrying about it.
The second trimester finally came and the doctor looked me in the eye and said, "You are not going to miscarry. Do you believe me?"
I did.
(Though if a kid dies in utero after the first trimester, they just call it by a different name. Tricky, tricky, doc.)
Our son started kicking two days before 19 weeks. Our final ultrasound looked great and the next doctor's appointment is the day after Father's Day.

Now the answer to that question?
Everything is looking great! I feel good. My child's kicks haven't become painful yet. I'm not uncomfortably large yet. None of the stress in my life is related to my kid at all. (Unless you count the diaper-shaped fabric in the to-sew pile.)

So the moral of this story is, don't lead the witness pregnant lady. Sometimes that gentle inquiry is enough of a platform for someone to open up. But it's a natural tendency to take the easy way out, so don't provide it. Give people the opportunity to gather the courage to share.