Saturday, May 18, 2013

Saturday, May 18

We are home in Victoria together after 55 days.  It is a bit of an adjustment, but I feel a great relief to be here. It has been hard enough on Ken that I feel it was right to stay the extra time in Temuco.  He was surprised at how big and spread out and cold the house is.  I took the small space heater out of the bedroom to use in the kitchen so I could organize things and cook.  We have a new infrared heater for the living room and the bedroom had a bed warming pad for under the sheets.  I don't want to heat the bedroom at night because of how much dryer it would make the air.  I hope he will find a way to be comfortable in the living room. The sofa isn't really long enough to lie down on.  But the internet works best in the living room.  So long term, it will be good I think for this winter to keep the living room warm.  And I hope we can figure out a way to not have to carry the smaller space heater around the house with us.  

We had a good visit yesterday with the diabetes doctor. She is having me test the glucose level once a day two hours after a late afternoon or evening meal for two weeks.  She won't worry about it if it is below 180, especially if it is going down.  The cortisone dosage also goes down each week, which should help.  I need to try to figure out how to help Elder Babcock gain twenty pounds without gaining any weight myself.  

I was able to get a couple of loads of laundry done and have found that the family room works quite well as a drying place.  With the car in the garage and rainy weather, it will be more comfortable to do the hanging inside and the clothes won't smell so much like the wood smoke from our neighbor's stoves. 

I need to go shopping on Monday, but have enough food in the house to get by.  I did an internet search of how to tell if eggs are fresh enough to eat and put them in cold water as instructed.  About half of them were floaters that needed to be thrown out.  I had about two dozen eggs.

It is nice to have a microwave and an electric water pot to boil water.  I've decided I like rose hip herbal tea. And I like being home.

Ken has been sleeping so much this afternoon, that I'm not sure if he will want to stay in the nice warm bed tonight. 

Here I am being chatty when I should be expressing how grateful I am to all of you for such strong support. And how grateful I am to our Heavenly Father for the miracles and blessings that allow us to continue our mission together.  Eight weeks is a significant amount of time in a year and a half mission.  Ken says I have changed.  I know that I have learned some very important and hard lessons.  I think I am better at loving and being patient, waiting and serving.  

In the church we are good at having compassion on people with short term problems.  Long term support is a rare and wonderful blessing.  I think it is good to look for good examples and learn from them.

Last night as we were going to sleep I found myself thinking about the relationship of personality and memory. Surely experiences affect us and influence how we think and what we do.  Babies are born who they are. Children feel no shortage or shallowness of self.  And Ken without full memory of our time in Chile seems to be responding to the present exactly as he would if he remembered.  How does not remembering our life with God before we were born affect what we do and who we seem to be.