Exhaustion

Well it's been a few days since I've been on here.  Not intentionally but more out of pure exhaustion.  Here's a rundown of the past week.

FRIDAY:
Friday go to the bigger mall for everyone to experience it for the first time.
Get lunch at the mall, go to the big grocery store nearby.
Go back home, get ready for leadership retreat.
Students begin arriving at 6:00 and we start dinner around 7:00.
There's a talk, some worship, small groups, then who knows what because we pull the parent card and get out of there!
SATURDAY:
Students have spent the night at the guys' or the girls' apartments and ate breakfast there.
There's a group game then scheduled time with the Lord.
Then to our place for a meeting including worship, a talk and small groups.
Then lunch at our place (this involved starting on Friday night and all of Saturday morning, who thought that would be a good idea?).
Then the students have free time and slowly trickle out, but we can hear them having some sort of dance party 2 floors up.  Yes, it was that loud.  Welcome to Venezuela.
Then the students come back.  There's a couple of meeting times.  Then dinner.
Then the students share testimonies and everyone takes communion together.  It honestly was really sweet.
Then we have no idea what the students did because we pulled the parent card and graciously allowed them to leave.
Following was cleaning and mopping the entire house.  What a mess.
SUNDAY:
The students leave in the morning.  We're in a coma.  I don't even know what happened on Sunday.
Some members of the team came over pretty much one at a time and had lunch.
Then some of the girls and I went out for manicures/pedicures.  This is a first in a while.
Then go see the new baby on the team!  Christian and Julieta had a little girl so I got to meet her.
Then out with the team for dinner to sort of celebrate my birthday.  Back to our place for homemade ice cream cake and a fun game.
MONDAY:
School with the kids, gotta start early on Mondays.
Staff meeting, the power goes out like 15 minutes into it.  This is a bad sign because I'm pretty sure it's just our power.  Yep, our power was cut.  Not cool.  Not cool at all.  Hold back tears.  Must hold it together.
Team leaves, I cry.  Leah consols me.  Douglas offers to go figure out what's going on with our power. Surprisingly it's turned back on before 5.  Only like 6 hours without it!
Team prayer that night, I'm in charge so Bart takes the evening with the kids.
Hang out time afterward, which ended up being great to connect with one of the girls on the team.
Intense stomach pain has ensued after having off and on pain all weekend.  Monday night is rough.  Up most of the night in pain.  Noooooo.
TUESDAY:
I am out of commission.  I feel terrible.  Nice wonderful stabbing pains in my stomach.  Why won't my daughter just get out of my face?
Praise the Lord the team had a day off this week and Bart was home to take care of the kids.
I lay in bed most of the day.  Tums is sort of my friend but not really doing much.
A couple people come over to play.  I lay there pathetically and watch.  I don't care.  Really.  I didn't want to play at all. :)
Oh the power goes out again.  This time over a large area so I'm not worried.  This means the kids come out of their room.
Bart takes the kids out for dinner since it's tricky to cook without power.  Luckily the one mall area nearby was open and they could eat there.
The power comes back on after about 4 hours.  That wasn't too bad, minus the mosquitos.
WEDNESDAY:
I'm trying to recoup.  Slowly eating food again.  Wednesday is usually my day on campus so I bow out graciously for internal reasons.  I'm trying to get caught up on school with the kids.  I'm not super successful.
We decide to get out of the house.  Bart and I haven't talked in a while.  We head to McDonalds since it is the closest place to walk where the kids can play.  It was a success.  They played for longer than they ever have before.  The chicken sandwich was surprisingly gentle on me.
Back home.  We have to try to get a little bit caught up on school.  Noah's not a fan of this.
Dinner with one of the guys on the team.
Team Bible study.  Put the kids to bed early.  But everyone didn't leave until after 11.

I'm tired.  Bart's tired.  We have water all over our bathroom floor.  The toilet won't stop leaking and we can't figure out how to make it stop.  Our shower won't stop dripping thus cause mildew and nastiness.  Our air conditioner pooped out.  Oh and our door fell off the hinges!  Yeah!  For real.  Praise the Lord for the gate that we have along with the door.  We're going to need to get all of these things fixed.  Thus the build-up and tears that followed on Monday when our power was cut.

Deep sigh.  Yes, I needed a deep sigh after writing all of that.  Life can be really hard here, not because these things are terrible in and of themselves, but more because they just slowly wear on us.  And with being the ones people look to with team stuff, we can honestly feel like we need to be "on" all the time.  They're still adjusting, so we want to help.

But we're ready for this weekend.  No plans.  Maybe head to the zoo or something since we haven't been since Leah's birthday.  But we just really need to relax and have a nice chill weekend.  Would you pray for that for us?