Our Travel Blog

Soleil's Birth and Illness

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 14:11:43 -0500

Our little sunshine decided to take her time and 9 days after her due date finally made her appearance on October 29th at 6am. A drug free 7 hour labor, KC was relieved to not relive the long traumatic birth she had with Carson and she earned the praises of the nursing staff and her awestruck husband. In a hospital where the cesarean rate is 80% and most staff have never seen a ‘normal’ birth we were thrilled with our doctor and how she ‘shooed’ everyone away. It was such a blessed experience to be able to hold our sweet girl and be with her immediately after the birth. At 8lbs 12 oz, 20.5 inches long, she’s been endearingly called, “Gordita” meaning ‘little fat girl’.

From the moment she arrived, she’s been adored by her big brother. He was quite upset that her first night home that she didn’t get to sleep with him! Unfortunately, she only spent one night at home before coming down with a high fever and being admitted back into the hospital. What proceeded were a few of the scariest days of our lives. Soleil was sick and fighting for her life. We were crippled once we realized the severity of her condition.

After multitude of tests, pricks, and immediately starting saline and antibiotics and days of waiting she was diagnosed with neonatal sepsis, blood infection that is a common cause of death in infants.

Before we got this diagnosis we had a day or two where we felt completely abandoned. We couldn’t get a hold of our doctor and the whole day Soleil had been unresponsive. We tried to tell the nurses/orderlies that she wouldn’t wake up or feed. We understand we were in a different country with different policies etc, but we feared we could lose her and nobody was around to not let that happen. We posted on facebook our fears and asked for prayers. We were so scared. Within 5 minutes of posting we managed to speak to our doctor who was also worried and sent an English-speaking doctor to look at her. There was a neonatal specialist who did his training in the states, who happened to have had a baby that very same day and was on the same floor. They both came to our room, ran tests and kept us updated after every result for the next 24 hours. Even texting us back at 12:30am. What immediate answers to prayer!

The love, prayers and support that flooded in have encouraged us greatly. The next day was better and she continued to improve. They did more tests to see if it was metabolic, thankfully it was not. They did a spinal tap to see if she had meningitis, that too thankfully came back clear. The blood culture came back and she had staph epi. It’s a type of staph that is on everyone’s skin. It’s very rare that she contracted it. The course of treatment continued to be the same. A 10-day course of IV antibiotics administered twice a day. Not exactly the first week we had in mind. But we’ve been reassured she will make a full recovery and we hope to take everyone home to Santa Catalina this week.

As you know we raised financial support to be in Santa Catalina for a year. We’ve seen God provide for us to be in this community; everything from our car to our home. We have budgeted accordingly and will return to the states in March. However, we did not foresee a financial burden such as this. Now that our fears of losing Soleil have subsided, it’s been replaced by our fear of the hospital bill. However, we are confident of God’s hand on us being here. He has provided for us and will continue to provide for us. We continue to choose not to let fear rule our hearts, but trust in God’s plan and His provision.

Please consider us in your end of year giving. Your financial gift is tax-deductable and will go towards our emergency care for Soleil and us being able to finish our commitment in Santa Catalina. (To give please see the GIVE page)

Thank you always for your continued prayers. We know that God is the giver and He allows us to bless others. Thank you for being a blessing to us.

KC, Jonathan, Carson and ‘Gordita’

September 2013 update

Sun, 1 Sep 2013 13:38:05 -0500

Rainy season this week is upon us and we’re loving the (slightly) cooler weather that it provides! The new baby is upon us too! KC is 38 weeks and we’ll be traveling to Panama City in a couple weeks to have our baby girl!

As we continue to seek God in Santa Catalina we continue to look in the past and the future at this journey. This month we’ve really felt the hand of God giving us ‘Peace in Provision.’ Honestly, there are many days we wonder why we are here. Especially on homesick days, when days just don’t go right, or we’re up against conflict. The journey to step out in faith to move here and ask for financial support was something we did/do not take lightly. There was uncertainty and fear, yet God has continued to financially provide for us here! When we left the States we only had secured accommodation until when the baby was born; what a time to move!! Yet, we now have our comfortable home until we leave. And the past couple of months was going to be our longest stretch of time without doing a big grocery shop and we found ourselves running low on food (we wouldn’t starve, we’d just be eating a lot of beans!). Then we had a surprise visitor from the City who brought us bag upon bag of groceries - enough to get us through! Through these large and small provisions we’ve learned a new kind of trust; and it continues to reassure us that God placed us here for this time and season.

September was a good month for us as we are getting into our groove here. Nothing much new has transpired since our last newsletter but the activities we are involved in are gaining some momentum. Movie night continues to be successful. The owner has given us positive feedback and some of the locals have told us they enjoy the “consistency” of the event. Our beach clean up this month was also one of our best, yet! Lucky for us the teachers went on strike for a few weeks so the kids have to make up school on Saturdays. Our last clean up we had the 4 classes picking up trash and continuing their education in recycling. “Plastico is Fantastico!” Check out the pictures of the clean up. We’re hoping by continuing to have the community see us cleaning this town they will litter less, and they will see that we care. KC has been going into the classrooms at the school with a fellow business owner and making crafts out of plastic bottles. The last project was a piggy bank and the kids and the teachers really got into it.

With a 1-week vacation for the Panamanian schools during the 1st week of September, we found ourselves running a mini-surf camp with some of the local kids and our neighbors. Almost everyday for 5 days straight the kids would come to our house with their boards and we would drive them to beach for the morning. The surf wasn’t all that big but we had beautiful weather and Carson enjoyed hanging with the “big” kids at the beach all week. It was a good week to spend some extra time with the community to get to know them better. And we ended the vacation with popcorn and a Christian surf movie at our house. It’s these times we really cherish and pray for more chances to discuss God’s love for them.

We continue to teach English to a local boat driver who in turn took us on a boat ride to Isla Santa Catalina where we got to spend a family morning. It’s about a mile across from our polluted town beach yet with pristine water and sand! We were thankful for quick excursion and hope our future lessons present additional opportunities to show him Christ.
We continue to do prayer walks praying that the Holy Spirit will ‘take over’ this town. We pray that the darkness will be lifted and the people will stop the cycle of addictions that lead to poverty. We continue to ask you to pray alongside us.

We also ask for prayer for the birth of our baby girl. For those of you who were not around we had quite a traumatic birth with Carson. After a long, arduous labor and Carson in the NICU it definitely scares us for the second time around. We know and believe this is a different birth and pray it goes much more smoothly, uncomplicated and fast... but not until we reach the City!! We will be traveling the 6 hour drive to the City on KC’s due date (October 20th).

We can’t thank you again for your continued love and support on this journey. We definitely wouldn’t be here without each of you.

Blessings,
KC, Jonathan, and Carson

July/August 2013 update

Thu, 1 Aug 2013 13:35:14 -0500

We are a little late for our update because we didn’t know what to say. But as we look back on our last monthly update, we realize a lot has come to light and things have transpired to share with you.

Yes, it continues to be an up and down roller coaster. We wish so badly that we could write you and tell you of the millions of things we’ve done and been involved in and how many lives have been transformed. Partly being new here, and partly because this town is resistant to the desire to change, we are limited. We keep hitting roadblock after roadblock and it gets frustrating. Sometimes it feels our only safe haven is the walls of our home. But our persistence for seeing a difference keeps us from staying contained.

The people of Santa Catalina have been poor for so long and have received handouts from the government and visitors, that instead of working to get out of the cycle, they believe it’s okay to lie, cheat, steal, and drink away any income they make or are given. There is no comprehension that if you don’t spend the money at the Cantina (bar), then you would have money for food, or for the bus etc. Children are taught by their parents that the gringos and business owners have money so ask them. Meanwhile the cycle of teen pregnancy, alcohol, drugs, infidelity, laziness and lack of education continue. We want to help, but we don’t want to contribute to the problem by being a handout.

KC’s Bible study today taught two points that really spoke to us in our present situation. The topic was on the role of the Holy Spirit. One, it is not our role to convict. No matter how hard we try to bring change or to work in people’s lives, the responsibility lies in us to pray and for God to work and sometimes that’s thru us. Secondly, the reason there is good in the world is because the Holy Spirit is the restrainer. In this present age Satan is not unleashed completely. God will always be in control and although there may be darkness, there will always continue to be light.

The reason why these 2 points spoke to us is because many days we feel our efforts are futile. We feel the darkness in this town and want to do so much, yet it feels lots of days that the darkness wins and we retreat. We may feel powerless to work in this town and bring good, but the power of prayer to bring light to these people is stronger than anything we could ever DO. We are encouraged that we are not defeated here. We have started to do prayer walks through the town, we ask you to pray with us that the darkness be lifted and the people will want better for themselves and family and want to make the change.

We continue to have a successful movie night on Thursdays and try to bring the community of expats and travelers together. In fact, we’ve been told that ever since the movie night started the restaurant has been constantly busy every night of the week! We had our monthly town/beach clean up recently. Once we got started we managed to get a bunch of local kids involved and even one Panamanian adult, which made it go quicker; and the sun stayed away so it wasn’t too hot!

We’ve started teaching English lessons to a couple of boat drivers in town. We find it much easier than teaching in Korean! KC’s women’s Bible study has started with 4 women yet continues to need prayer that it will not falter and the woman will open up.

Lastly, there’s a mom, Edie, and her 10 year old son, Tyler (and 'step-son' Michael), who live next door to us. Edie is the manager of an inn that her ex-husband (ironically from San Diego) owns. The owner is not liked in this town and there are rumors that he is ‘running away’ from something illegal. Edie is a hard worker and super nice. KC gave her an English Beth Moore study (Edie was very happy!) and hopes to start a small discipleship with her, despite Edie’s broken English and KC’s broken Spanish! Jonathan takes Tyler out to surf and have him over to watch surf movies and talk to him. A couple weeks ago we had Tyler, Victor (7r) and Eckert (10yr-known for sticky hands and troubled father) over to watch Walking on Water. Afterwards Tyler translated for us questions we asked them about God and why it’s wrong to steal etc. We pray for more opportunities like that.

We’ve had a huge answer to prayer. Our ‘landlords’ have allowed us to stay as long as we want. We really feel this has been another confirmation of God’s hand with us here. They never rent long term (many we know have asked and were turned down before us). They initially agreed to rent to us for 6 months but have now told us we can stay as long as we want. Last week we stopped by their house to let Carson play with their 3 kids (Maya-10, Anabel– 6, Omar–2). Without prompting, Paola told us that since they started renting to us they’ve had good luck [in the raining season] with renting the house next to us. It was an encouraging compliment to know that even as we feel blessed to live in this house that God has evidently provided, He is also blessing the owners for their generosity to us.

At this present moment there hasn’t been any further developments about running the hostel. It’s closed at the moment for ‘refurbishment’ and the owners are not sure what they will do with it. We are still open to the opportunity but are in a waiting mode on both God and the new owners.

As always thank you so much for your prayers and support. We wouldn’t be here without you.
Blessings,
KC and Jonathan

June/July update

Mon, 1 Jul 2013 13:32:18 -0500

It’s July!! Now a lot of you are as hot and humid as we are! We’ve been desperately waiting for the rain the past few days to cool things off (as if it ever really does!). Lots of lightening and threats of rain; but nothing for our little boy to go dance in but the hose!

This month has been a month of ups and downs for us. The more we get to know this town the more we either like it or dislike it more! It really has been a struggling month for us. There have been plenty of days that we have felt beat down and defeated. But we keep reminding ourselves that God brought us here. It’s undeniable that he provided for us to be here. We’ve definitely been praying for that peace and assurance. It’s a constant reminder for us to fix our eyes on not what is seen, but what is unseen.

This month we’ve had a few groups from the States in town that have been helping in the community. Jonathan has helped them dig ditches and assemble zinc roofs; and we enjoy seeing the kids come out to be apart of the VBS. Plus Carson loves getting to make new ‘friends’.

We definitely have felt a huge calling to bring unity to this town. It’s a small town (about 250 ppl) and there is a large ex-pat and traveler community. However, a lot of the expats don’t interact with each other and there is definitely a Gringo vs Panamanian feel at times. Over the course of this last month we’ve really felt a darkness and loneliness in this town.

To help build unity in the Gringo community & support the local businesses, we’ve launched an English movie night (there is currently only a kids movie night in Spanish at the church that is run by the other missionary couple). On the 4th of July we kicked off our 1st English movie night with “Top Gun”. It was a success and we hope it to be a regular thing on Thursday and Saturday nights at 2 different restaurants. Also, during these movie nights we let the travelers and expats know of something we plan to do in the community. This past Saturday morning it was beach/town trash clean up. Our hope is to eventually purchase foam boards and do free surf lessons for the Panamanian kids and have the Gringos pushing them in waves. We will announce similar events like these at our movie nights and hopefully continue to build the unity between the Gringos and Panamanians.

A lot of what we have been doing here so far is just building relationships, mostly with the expats, not what we thought we’d be doing in Panama! But after seeing, feeling, and experiencing their loneliness and the division among them and the locals, we really try to reach out to them. KC is hoping to start a small women’s bible study in the next few weeks as well.

A new opportunity has also has arisen that we asking for specific prayer. We’ve been asked if we be open and willing to manage a hostel in town. Ironically, we were asked this after one of our toughest weeks yet! In so many ways this is a great opportunity to get our feet wet in the area that set us out on this journey. We’ve talked about running our own place to do surf camps out of for a couple years, and we could have free-reign over this place to get a taste of management, and even the opportunity to do camps eventually. We also would have a lot more interaction with the traveling community, which would continue to aid in our ministry here. However, we just learned that the accommodation for our family on the property wouldn’t work for us (and new baby) and we have hesitation about the neighbors and the extra time it would take up. We’ve presented our concerns to the investor and they still want us, and we are seeing if they will work with us. We are just seeking prayer and moving forward where doors open and have peace when they close.

Thanks you for continuing to be apart of our journey down here. Please continue to look on Facebook for our mindless updates and pictures and we’ve just updated our website with a couple blog posts. Thank your for continuing to give prayerfully and financially to us and our ministry down here. We really wouldn’t be able to do it without your support.

Blessings,
KC and Jonathan

May/June 2013 Update

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Ahhh June Gloom, or in our case Rainy May the last few days.
The wet season (or low season) has arrived in Panama. Which is a great thing since a lot of places run their electricity on the 'water-power' they get from the rainy season. It is also nice because it can bring reprieve from the heat and humidity. For our new home it was great to put screens up the other day so during this season we can open windows rather than run a/c.

We've arrived in Santa Catalina last week. There was a surf tournament in Santa Catalina until the 20th, so the town was booked up and we couldn't move into our home. During the time that we were 'homeless' we visited a little mountain town called, El Valle (where you actually needed a light sweater!) and a coastal town, Coronado, for a few days each. Definitely different experiences in each place. El Valle actually is a volcanic crater (but felt more like a small version of Big Bear Mtns) we were rained out everyday but luckily had picked a hotel that had an amazing views, owners and property to be able to lounge in covered areas outside rather than cooped up in our small room. It was a good time of relaxing and being refreshed after the hectic months we had getting here. After a few days we went down the mountain and within 2 hours of us going to Coronado we learned that our new car locks itself if the doors are shut. As we were getting ready to explore, it did just that, with Carson still strapped in his carseat and the keys in the front seat. Some friendly Panamanians stopped to help us. They managed to work at it for 20+ minutes with the alarm continuing to go off. Our new car is so safe it's practically impossible to break into! After awhile Carson realized we were not playing a joke and he desperately tried to save the day and open the door for us, but could only get partway out of the seat. As the sweat was dripping down his sweet little face he started to cry we decided breaking the window was the only way. And even that was a challenge with our shatter-proof glass!! There was a mixture of relief (for obvious reasons) and stress at once again going to get the car fixed and now with a very short time frame. Luckily we found a mechanic in town who fixed it in just a day for the cost of half a tank of gas (we think he had to do a lot of errands!) and monetary payment.

But yes! We got a car! Thank you for your prayers! We laugh to ourselves because we coveted prayers for our plane ride and getting a car and the first 48 hours when everyone was praying for us things were soooo smooth! Then we kept hitting bump after bump and were tempted to send out another email begging for more prayers!! We bought our car from a cranky American canal boat pilot. Our first night in town we called him and he met up with us an hour later (talk about things being smooth)! The car was perfect and we just wanted to have it looked at before we made the deal. We went our separate ways and agreed a time to talk again. Then it was crickets. We called and called and emailed and nothing. And did it again the next day. Because of our time constraint we needed to know if this was ours, or we needed to move on and start the process again elsewhere. We sent a small email out to our small group and a few friends and family and asked them to pray for contact with this guy.

We got on our knees and prayed. Ten minutes later we tried calling again. He answered the phone. We were (and still are) beside ourselves! It was a huge reassurance to us that God hears us and answers prayer and to KEEP PRAYING!! Even if it's for the peace knowing that God has it all in control and not us. Living with anxiety and stress is not how we are to live, but when we pray and hand over control of even the little things God has promised to give us His peace that transcends all understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6)! And in this journey so far there has been so much stress and anxiety! We desire so much for that deep peace that He will work all things together for good (Romans 8:28) and to rest IN HIM!

It seems only natural that bumps happen when moving and adjusting to a new country. Santa Catalina is a small little town in Panama that has become a tourist town in the very loose association. It's still a very small quiet town (except when the cantina is blaring their music), with one main road. It is a dichotomy of houses with tin for siding, thatched roofs and outhouses mixed among the nice (and not so nice) establishments to service the traveler who made the trek here to surf or dive. The closest town is 2 hours away on a winding, 2 lane road (which we learned it's not nice to drive in the dark) busy with stray dogs, children, chickens, horses and views of the cow lined mountain tops. To hear and see pictures is one thing, but to experience it is quite another. A food truck drives by every few days selling fruits and vegetables. We're lucky for Carson's sake that bananas are 10c and pineapple a dollar, when most other food is not so cheap. We've learned that In this town the beer is .80c and the water is $1.25. Which contributes to a drinking problem for many locals. Our large shopping trip in Panama City (5-6hrs away) was a success as we are learning to cook dried beans (and anything else) in a crockpot and shopped at a familar 'Costco' liked store for all things 'kirkland', but saddened that our refrigerator will need to be replaced soon bc of small size and our butter melting! Kind of important when shopping is few and far between! KC has been successful in making her yogurt, hummus (from dried beans!) and was successful in her first attempt at peanut butter! She is trying to figure out ways to make affordable healthy food for us. Next up a garden (in buckets bc the soil doesn't grow much)!

Carson is adapting so-so. He loves to run around in his underwear outside (helps our potty-training efforts when it's socially okay to be in your skivvies), loves sitting in the front seat of our car giving us directions as we journey to the center of town, loves going to the beach and jumping the (warm) waves with his daddy, and loves just walking around town in the mud and being a boy. He's been a bit sick so he's been a bit off and not listening well to us, whining/crying a lot, and a lot of unwanted rough housing. While he loves so much of his new life we can sense this piece of this little person that is a bit off and reacting. We continue to pray for patience (It's been the hardest parenting week of our lives!) and grace when dealing with him.

Now that we are settling in and growing accustomed to our new lives in Panama we will start some of the outreach programs we have in mind. Our hope is to minister to the travelers wandering through as well as the ex-pat community here. We hope to start investing in the lives of the kids here by giving free surf lessons and creating relationships through surfing. We ask for prayers as we brainstorm ways in which to carry this out. We pray that there will be a welcoming in this community and that doors will open in businesses and peoples hearts to accept us and these ministries we are trying to start.

Feel free to drop us a line giving us encouragement, suggestions, your updates, or if you want to come to Panama! :) We will also be facilitating groups to come 'surf and serve' in communities around Panama. If you individually or your church group is interested let us know! We'd love some of you guys to come help with our surf lessons!

Thank you always for your love, support and prayers!
KC, Jonathan and Carson