Palm Sunday

Today is palm Sunday. We have a new interim priest at St. Paul's - and it is clear it is a new day. First we had a procession with palms aound the block that the church sits on - I have been there 10 years and this is the first for that. The block has the countrie's best public High School on one side but the rest of it is inner city. Many people participated including Daisy Letts who is 89 or 92 or so. That was not the only change. This is the first Sunday of the month and that means ENGLISH. But we had a bilingual service. The verses of the hymns alternated Spanish English, we did the Lord's prayer together in both languages and many other things that that would be in English were partially in Spanish. A woman priest who is not serving as an active priest now but who served at St. Paul's in the past was invited by our new Interim, Glenda, to come up as co (or con) celebrate with her at the alter. Diana did not have vestments and celebrated in regular clothes. Our Sr. Warden explained at the end of the service that it was not out of order for Diana to celebrate in regual clothes I think it is a good new start for St. Pauls. We have Glenda for 2 years by which time we are to call a rector. Although she is serving at St. Pauls, she is also the church development director for the entire diocese of Panama!

I am doing my weekend care of the 3 dogs and 4 cats at my friend Lizzy's house. She is in the states until the end of April. Olivia, who is about 7 moths old was by report mated with a number of times during the week, including by her father - who is a Huskey! Olivia has a skin infection inside her outer ear and also around the base of the ear. I bought some antibiotic cream for it and she was very cooperative while I washed it with agua oxiginada (which is something I can't remember ) and put on the cream. It has something in it to cut down on itching as I think she is scratching.

I think Olivia is pregnant because her nipples are more prominent. I can't tell with Natasha.

The young woman on Dialysis from Children's hospital has spent the weekend with us. On Saturday around noon when I left all of the tutors (from a couple of different high school doing their required 80 hours of social service) and all our girls were in a circle around our two kindergarten kids who were dancing. That must have been very different than life in the hospital for the last 3 years. Her mother at first was not going to be bothered to sign her out of the hospital to come live with us. Then we got a call that she was coming down to Panama City and Elba (the director) and I went to the Hospital to tak to her on Friday. She did agree to sign and also Elba asked her not to disapear from her daughters life. We took her out to the home with her daughter (who stayed for the weekend) We are going to try to get some help from church people in Bocas so that the young woman could go home a visit for a weekend. ( she can skip dialysis occasionally. She is on peritoneal dialysis and it is done at night while she sleeps - this will take place at the home.) Her home is in Finca 4 which Joellen (a nurse missionary who directs the medical mission program of the Episcopal Church here) says is near Changuinola. It turns out that the family are Ngobe! (One of the 7 different tribes of indiginas here. We have girls at the home from three of the tribes Our newest resident will move in right after Easter. That is because everyone at the home will visit someone for Maundy Thursday through the late afteroon of Easter day. I will be here in Gamboa with the animals from Thursday night.

Last week I went to classroom visit at the other primary school, Escuela Republica de India. We have four girls there and we got some hints one how to work with the 1st graders who are learning the vowels and are about to start to learn to put consonants with them.

Tia Sue