July-August 2011

Hello Friends and Family,
I apologize for such a long silence. You can find me on facebook as well, but I will try to get our blog back running.

Let's catch up:

Our new home.

We have been diligently working on winterizing our home. It is a basic adobe style home with a flat roof, which has transformed into a red brick home with a blue metal roof. This was accomplished by purchasing red bricks from a local coal fired kiln. Our walls are now adobe, three inch thick insulation, and red bricks giving us about a two foot thick wall. Our flat roof will now be able to keep all our heat trapped inside this winter.

What is to be done on the home before winter:
Composting toilet
Outside hand dug water well
Bathtub, water heater, pressure tank...i.e. Our own personal shower house :-)
Fitness Garage (We need to raise 7,000 USD)

With the outside and the inside of the home(mostly) finished we decided that it would be a good time to have a house warming party before J and K Fields left for their home assignment.
We handed out approximately 50 invitations to families that we have met and got to know this last year.

On Party day we had around 60-70 people come to enjoy in the festivities. With the help of some Kazak friends, we boiled a sheep, made besbarmak (horse sausage, sheep and a huge noodle filled with onions, garlic, and carrots), candy, salads, baursak (fried bread), milk tea, and 30 liters of fermented horse milk. Just about everything was consumed and people didn't leave that night until 10:30.

That's when it hit! I started shaking and freezing, which led me to the Tylenol and my bed.

The next day we had a smaller gathering of people over to talk with a Kazakh bele-r. I stayed in bed. The gather went well, but the men were a bit apprehensive about the topics discussed.

When I finally got out of bed it was four in the afternoon. I struggled to make it to our bucket to use the restroom and was bouncing off the walls like a drunk man. I came out of the bathroom and passed-out; shaking uncontrollably and totally unresponsive.

After scaring Krista and the kids half to death, I finally gained consciousness as Krista poured cold water over my head to get my fever down. The next day Krista found me some antibiotics. Thankfully, we had some tickets to go to the capital city a few days later. The morning of our flight I finally started feeling good enough to walk a bit and help Krista pack the last suitcase.

We went to the hospital the day following our arrival to the capital city. They scheduled me for a C-Scan at the end of the week. After 3 trips to the hospital, we finally got my results on a CD. All clear! PTL!

After talking with some docs, it was determined that the seizure must have just been a very bad case of passing out from a very very high fever, low blood sugar, and low blood pressure. Since being in the capital we have made many trips to the hospital, the embassy and immigration. We even had a great week retreat with our teammates at the Secret History Camp. Hopefully we will get our passports and immigration cards back next week so that we can return to our new home in Hovd. Until then...lots of shopping for plumbing parts and furniture. Thanks for your prayers!

.....to be continued.