The Heart Attack of Senhor Flavio

After the past couple of weeks, we thought this humorous story fitting. More serious posts to come, but for now . . .

Senhor Flavio is our landlord. He's the man to whom we pay rent. He's Brazilian, but his German roots and accompanying obsessive compulsiveness and control issues are very apparent in nearly everything he does. I'm not sure if it's better now that we can communicate more effectively, it was much nicer when we could just nod and smile and wonder why he walked away shaking his head.

When you ask a question to Senhor Flavio's children, he answers for them. His youngest is 28. Senhor Flavio washes EVERYTHING, even dirt. I can't explain this in English, we have our clean freaks, but this man shames them all. We are the Mersingers, clean is a relative term, imagine the context.

So I'm sitting on my bed this morning rubbing my feet, still jet-lagged and exhausted from this past week. Have had a wonderful time back with Shannon and the kids, arrived to see Naomi speaking about 50% more Portuguese than when I left. I think she's about caught up to us in just the past week.

As I was sitting I hear a "scream" of sorts. I recognize my name mixed in with some new interjections. I run out to see Senhor Flavio ascending the stairs screaming "my wall, my wall, my beautiful wall"!

One more interjection, they don't have chalk here in Brazil, that we've seen, certainly not the kind that kids use to color walls and roads with.

He arrives nearly in tears, asking me what we let happen. Pointing and screaming at the mural that Naomi and Caleb began their day drawing. He says "it is ugly, it's so UGLY, it's ruined, I will have to repaint everything". I began to explain that it is children's chalk and that it will come right off. He screams, "NEVER, I've already tried, it is there forever, it's SO UGLY, I will have to repaint everything the entire wall, because it will have to match the new paint". I apologized and took his feelings sincerely, but kindly asked for five minutes to try myself.

I now know what the face of Martha looked like when she received her brother Lazarus back from death. It was like Senhor Flavio's when I clapped my hands downstairs from his kitchen and called him out to observe. He beamed, his precious wall was saved. He thanked me over and over, said that he was so scared, and so amazed at how we restored it so quickly.

So, thank you Sarah Reynolds for the chalk. However, we won't be using it anymore in this location. It's not worth killing our landlord over. Somehow he still likes us, even though we're a terror to his precious environment.

It was a huge disappointment for the kids, so we had a whole morning explaining property rights and the Kingdom of God to our 5 and 3 year olds. That Jesus loved their work and all IS truly His, but we also live in a broken place with OCD old men and from this perspective it is his wall and we can't draw on it anymore. Caleb refuses to concede and spent an hour lamenting his loss, Naomi struggled also, but made up a song that she told us is entitled the Mourning Song, and after singing it to the wall as she sat on our steps, is feeling better.

I could create a new blog centering on our adventures with Senhor Flavio, but though it might interest some others, it's just become a bore for us, but at least a humorous bore.

The Baby Name Game

So . . . for the first time, we aren't set on a name three years ahead of time. We were, but Steve changed his mind. If it were a girl, we were set. However, baby Buzz Lightyear Optimus Prime Mersinger threw a wrench in that. Caleb is serious about this name, Naomi insists a baby brother named Hannah will make her happy enough.

The challenge at this stage in the game, is that we have to find a name that works in two languages. Steve LOVES the name Seth, and is really pushing for it. However, Brazilians CAN NOT make the TH sound, at any place in any word. It's extremely hard for them, so Seth, Adam and Eve's third son, is translated in the Bibles here as Sete. Kind of sounds like sechee. Steve likes the symbolism, Seth, the renewal of creation after Cain and Abel, after all of the loss that we've had, this kid brings hope for a new start. The biggest problem for me, the Portuguese word sete is the number 7! Steve even went as far to argue that this is fine because, counting miscarriages, Seth would be number 7 for us! Sorry, I'm not naming my baby Seven. It might have helped my dad, since he refers to us by number anyways, but I just can't let that fly.

The initial name we had agreed upon was Isaiah, but Steve changed his mind and doesn't like it anymore. We're trying to stick with Bible names, but I won't let Steve go with Heman, Goliath, Sampson, or any of the extremely odd ones like Elkiniah. Meaning is important to us, but so is our kid not being a prime candidate for wedgies based solely upon his name.

The middle name is settled, it'll be Daniel, in honor of our good friend Danny Smith. Sorry to any other Daniel's out there, we wanted to be honest, but you can rejoice in the fact that you weren't part of a conversation that went something like . . . I could never give my kid the name Daniel because of Daniel . . . . So again, Rejoice! :)

We've kind of whittled it down to three options at this point, though the book is still open, and we are receiving suggestions. Jordan Daniel (this is the closest we've both come to agreeing, the problem is the translation Jordão (JordOW) is only used as the river), we've been told it could fly if we don't translate and just tell people Jordan, they'll still have trouble pronouncing a little bit but it could work as a name. The next is Simon Daniel, we're not crazy in love with the name, but it fits here, even the translation Simão (SeemOW). Finally, a name both of us love, but don't necessarily want to give to our kid, but it works great in both languages, Gabriel Daniel.

Your thoughts???

Glutaric Acidemia - MOST BORING BLOG EVER

I hope that you will forgive the "monthly phone call from Grandma" format I've chosen to go with. I don't believe that anyone particularly enjoys an onslaught of medical diagnosis descriptions, however, since so many of you have invested your time and prayer into the life of our daughter, we thought this would be the best way to give a comprehensive update. If you're already up to date, or simply not interested, please feel free to grab our blessing and insistence to pass on this and run!

It was a great comfort to us as we were preparing to leave that we came face to face with nothing but encouragement and blessings from all of those who support us. From our church, our friends, our cheerleaders. We had expected, to be honest, more than a few comments tossed out such as "looks like God's trying to tell you guys something". It was hard enough to go through everything, we were thankful that we didn't meet any of that. We believe that the Lord does move like that, we know a plethora of faithful people who planned to head to the mission field or were there, and were called back to their home country because of a health issue in the family. However, for us in particular, we consistently felt affirmation and confirmation to move ahead with this call upon our lives to do mission work here in Brazil.

Since arriving, we've met nothing but deeper confirmation that we were thinking of what was best for our daughter and being faithful as well. The medical system in the States is good, we were very thankful for the care we received. However, for Naomi's condition in particular, we met the one doctor in Miami who made an amazing presumptive diagnosis, and no one else had ever heard of it. To be fair, they've estimated less than 100 people have this disorder in the whole of the United States, it's skewed towards native tribal populations, and the majority of the cases are of a severe nature that leaves the child dead before the age of 3. To be defensive, Shannon and I are not related, we've checked on ancestry.com :).

Since arriving here in Brazil, we've made contact with four different doctors who had intimate knowledge of this particular genetic disorder. While it is still a "presumptive" diagnosis, we picked up an order yesterday for a lab to be drawn that will give conclusive results. It's a complete genetic analysis that our Brazilian insurance will cover, that is not done in the states for less than the lifeblood of the person you want to cure (it's expensive).

To top that, we met with a nutriologist (don't think we have those back home) it's a nutritionist who is also a licensed and practicing doctor. She had intimate knowledge of Glutaric Acidemia and put together a diet plan for us. This is where this blog gets juicy, at least as juicy as a blog written about glutaric acidemia can get.

Naomi has had much fewer and less severe episodes since we've arrived. Four major ones, with a bit of paralysis, but no seizures. The first two because we were still learning to read food labels, assumed pasta was safe, and fed her bowls full of noodles made from eggs, not with, from! We took her to the hospital once to get the ball rolling with the doctors here, but the rest we road out at home, with seizure medication as a back up, and just waited for it to pass. She's continued to develop fine, has started school, and everything had been pretty great. Though she had started to wet her bed again, for a few months straight, and would weaken considerably after a half hour of running or playing she would lose her ability to walk properly and we'd have to carry her home.

Since visiting with this Nutriologist, we learned that it is not just animal proteins or meat, cheese, and egg that we must avoid, but protein in general. Specifically, limit her to fifteen grams per day. Even more important, the particular amino acids Tryptophan and Lysine (which form glutaric acid, the thing her body can't process normally) are what we needed to focus on. The diet plan we were given was built around the limitation of Lysine to 2000mg per day.

The rough news is, the things that we were using as staples, potatoes, rice, beans, and bananas all of the sudden hit the prohibited list. They're extremely low in protein, but the protein they do have is composed of Lysine and Tryptophan. Even in cutting out major proteins, the things we were leaning on were still creating a toxic environment in her body. So for the past month we've been diving into new foods, new recipes, new torture devices to force vegetables down her fried chicken loving little throat. j/k. She's taken to it wonderfully, even though she's expressed sadness over losing yet more foods. For the past month, she's had energy out the wazoo again, can run for hours without any strange side effects, she's quit wetting her bed, and her only "issue" was a little five minute loss of speech and movement on this past Saturday because her teacher forgot about our requests and gave her some chocolate cake for a class party.

All in all we really feel as though we've gotten a handle on all of this. Most of the research we've done says that a case as mild as hers is easily manageable. It's not something that she'll ever grow out of, but as she grows and her weight increases, in most cases the metabolic crises cease as well.

We just ask that you'd continue to join us in prayer, we still would love to see an act of complete healing and our little girl stuffing pizza down her face again someday. Even more important for our mental sanity, that this genetic analysis confirms the diagnosis, and if not, that I restrain myself from going Sampson on our block of four apartments here, calling all of our Brazilian neighbors Philistines, and trying to bring the roof down with my forehead.