My Heart Will Go On

So last night, in celebration of the quinceñera, our dear little Gaby, Mariya and I did an impromtu lip sync to Celine Dion´s My Heart Will Go On - Theme from Titanic. And yes, it was hilarious. Our Gaby is such a funny character and few things really make her smile but she really likes this song and so we presented in front of the whole base at her 15th birthday celebration. MOL lipsync has nothing on us and all of my Stella sisters would have been proud, it was a great evening.

The lipsync was a perfect ending to a rather random week. This week was filled with surprises and funny things, where to begin. First, my collegue Narcissa finally returned from Quito and we sat down with my list of questions and I showed her the fruits of my organizing labors. I learned that the social worker who had previously been in charge of the kids on base and had been on home leave is not coming back. The good news is we have permission to hire a new social worker to replace her. Our hope is that we will be able to hire someone to take Narcissa´s case load in the city and she will be able to work on base with me. Please pray that the Lord sends us some capable and joyful hands and soon, as well that all the office politics are worked out. Really, until Narcissa, or Nacho as we call her, can work on base with me, the cases here will remain sorely in need of attention and I will not be able to do much else to help as I as of yet do not know all the cases and cannot do home visits on my own. I did however make my first decision as a social worker on base the other night (Nacho is back in Quito for another conference and so they were stuck with me) and it was a really hard one and I think it was the right one. We´ll see!

Also this week, I resumed working with my group of young people, this time to do an artistic presentation on HIV/AIDS. Needless to say, working with this group is a quick path to sainthood but I was thankful for my LifeTeen/SENT training as I wrote the drama that they presented. The cool part of it was that I was able to convince them that we should promote abstinence and monagamy, especially in the context of healthy families. This is cool because down here they heavily promote condom use as a HIV prevention which is bogus. Condoms have been shown to be INEFFECTIVE as a prevention for HIV transmission due to the small size of the virus and even on the condom boxes it says this. Sure, there is more protection than if you didn´t have anything but I feel it is irresponsible even on a non-moral level to tell people to use condoms to prevent HIV, it makes it sound like it is foolproof and it is so not. Not to mention, this group of young people is representing our Catholic organization. I was excited because, even though they hardly practiced the skit I wrote and it could have been done so much better, we still got the message out of abstinence, monagamy and family in the midst of a festival that was presenting very different ideas. Praise God for the small things. I hope despite our limitations the Lord was able to use the skit to get the message to someone.

This next week we are off to Tena to make contacts and arrangements for FUS March medical mission. I am excited about this as it is on the edge of the Amazon and a part of Ecuador I have yet to see (and I get to wear my boots!). Please keep us in your prayers as we travel and also for the safe return and efficient work of my collegue Narcissa as she travels back from Quito today and I hope to spend some time with her in the office tomorrow. Much love to everyone at home, catch you again next week with news from the flip side...