January 25, 2009

Friends Over

We have become friends with a really neat family here in Quartzsite. I believe I have mentioned them before in the blog. They sold their house in Kentucky last June to go on the road full time. They said they felt it was something God wanted them to do. They have 12 children and are expecting a thirteenth. They are also hoping to host a campground up in Oregon, but they have found that with the number of kids they have, the campgrounds have been a little slower to give them a definite commitment.

On Thursday we invited our friends over for a marshmallow roast. We thought about inviting them over for dinner, but were intimidated by the idea of preparing a meal for that many people from the trailer. While we waited for the fire to burn down to coals we got a wonderful game of steal the flag going. It was a lot of fun having so many people of different ages playing together. It was also a nice way to learn the kids names in as much as there was a lot of yelling of "Watch out for Peter!" or "Come on Sam!" I still only know the names of their fastest kids, but I think Lexie knows all of their kids' names. After each side had won a game it seemed like a good place to stop the game and roast marshmallows. It was great to sit around the campfire and visit.

We talked about the hunger problem in the world. I had not been aware of how bad things are in Zimbabwe. Something their family does which I think is really interesting is they will fill international flat rate shipping boxes with food and mail them directly to Africa. I got excited about the idea, because it is something very visual, which could help the children understand what is being done for someone else. It also eases some of the concern about how aid money is spent. After doing some more research, while I am still not certain which organization is best, I think I am going to channel my effort through an existing organization rather than try to do something on my own. Even though the flat rate shipping provides a reasonably priced shipping method it still adds a lot of overhead for something with as low of a value density as food has. I am sure that for the same money, I could use to buy food from a grocery store and send a package through the mail, an existing organization could distribute a lot more aid to a needy country. Right now there is a cholera pandemic in Zimbabwe. Cholera is a disease which can kill a person within 18 hours of contraction if not treated. Untreated cases can have a mortality rate as high as 50 to 60%. When cholera is properly treated the mortality rate drops to around 1%. If my reading was correct proper treatment can be as simple as oral re hydration. Even home made mixtures of clean water, baking soda, salt and sugar can be helpful. The prevention of contracting the disease also seems pretty straight forward in that it is a bacteria which is transmitted almost exclusively through drinking water. That means that boiling or bleaching drinking water will greatly reduce the spread of the disease. It seems that some very simple intervention could have some great positive consequences for people. The fact that the problem exists and is spreading indicates that the resources available for that simple intervention are currently insufficient. I'll need to look into my family history to get the exact details but I believe it was cholera that killed my great great grandfather and most of his children, on my mom's side, when they they were migrating west to join the Mormon settlers.

11 Year Anniversary

Yesterday, Saturday January 24, 2009 marked the completion of mine and Lexie's 11th year of marriage. It really is amazing that we have been married that long. Not amazing that we have stay married, just amazing that the time has gone so quickly. We didn't do anything really extravagant to celebrate, however, we did get our friends' two oldest kids to watch our four oldest kids so we could have a date alone. We have been married long enough that us and the baby counts as alone anymore. We took the opportunity to take a slower look at some of the booths in the rock and mineral show, which were more interesting to adults than to children. I was thrilled that after talking quite a while with a person, selling meteorites at a booth, he gave me both a meteorite and a slice of a "fools meteorite" as a gift. I can't tell the difference between the meteorite and the fools meteorite by looking at their composition. I am also careful to keep my meteorite in its bag in as much as I am not very confident I could tell it from most of the rocks in camp. Even though the appearance of the meteorite isn't spectacular it is a lot of fun to have something that came from space. I suppose that according to present scientific theory and really most religious theory for that matter, everything on earth at one point was out in space somewhere. All the same it is neat to have something that came crashing into the earth. When I was a kid when ever I got a coin from a foreign country I would stare at the coin and wonder about the culture and circumstances which surrounded the coin and how odd it was it came into my possession in a place so far away. That is how I feel about my meteorite now.

When we got back to the trailer the baby sitter was sweeping up an impressive mound of dirt. The kids were in great spirits sporting their now typical dust glow. We were glad they had a good time. The baby sitters also acted like they had a lot of fun. I really appreciate a baby sitter that will actually play with the kids as opposed to gluing them to a cartoon.

Church

David had a couple of other kids in his nursery class with him today, but the oldest three kids were the only kids in primary again. With about 500 people in the branch almost all great grandparent age, the kids found they got a great reaction to pictures they colored in primary. After church they would walk around proudly showing the pictures to as many people as they could. Everyone they showed them to was extremely polite and grandparent-like in showing them a great amount of interest. I know I haven't ever seen pictures colored in Primary ever get so much attention.