The hits, they just kept coming

(from Tamie)

I was going to title this one '2007 Mexico Mission Trip goes down in annals of history' and have everyone guess which word had too many n's, but Kendall says we can't laugh about that yet. Oh well.

The Ross children made this trip most exciting. All three of them acted as if Nurse Dora was their personal health guru. And no co-pays for office visits! I'm sure our insurance company is thrilled.

Without giving the play-by-play, I'll just say that Keaton started things off right after the trip got underway by vomiting on (as opposed to in) the Temple (Texas) church about 3 a.m. Friday. And three more times after until his medicine kicked in.

Brady, ever the competitor, got into the game Sunday afternoon when his left leg failed to yield to the rest of his body as he ran down the side of a mountain. Something about 200 lbs. of momentum that not even his over-sized feet could put the brakes on. Anyway, something strange happened and parts swelled and the kid had to be air-lifted/wheelbarrowed/dolly-driven by his friends to the outhouse for a few hours until one of our traveling companions remembered that a knee brace had been left at camp. Four ibuprofen every six hours helped most of the pain, and I'll be calling the doctor this morning to see if we need an MRI.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were fantastic. We worked hard on projects in the morning, helped with VBS's in two different villages in the afternoon and had all sorts of adventures. That should - and will be - its own post.

But right now the memory of Thursday must be exorcised. DUM DUM DUMMMMM ....

You know, it's never pretty when one of your children gets sick in the middle of the night. But you pop them into the tub, dress them in clean clothes, change the sheets and start the washing machine.

Take all those cleanup options away, add the fact that Kendall was my air mattress buddy inside our tent and that she was so sick that she was tossing her cookies every 20 minutes for three hours. It was one wild ride!

Nurse Dora (who henceforth shall be known as Saint Dora) supplied me with a suppository for her at 5 a.m. Mother-patient confidentiality prevents me from repeating the conversation that followed, but let's just say that Bobby was laughing so hard that he drowned out the braying donkeys.

Well, that didn't work right away. Whatever bug that was inside Kendall was going to get out in ... various ways. That afternoon, she brightened a bit and sat outside for a while, coloring pictures. Then, all at once, she got tired. And feverish. And that whole mountain elevation meets dehydration malady became Round 2.

The fever left for good somewhere around the Mexican border Friday afternoon. In a moment of brilliance, we chose not to mention that to the guard. (Zach, our 16-year-old friend on board, did declare Pop Tarts, though).

We didn't know it at the time, but we had it pretty easy. At least three of our group members called home once they could get a cell signal and found out that their fathers or wife were in the hospital. Just another reminder how important it is to trust in God to take care of us all when some of us are so far away from home.

So many people asked us whether we would blog about this once we got home. And then when things kept going down hill, those same people began asking if we would go back with the group again next year.

Yes and yes. The experience is priceless, if not costly. :)