The Power Of Prayer

 Pray in silence before going to sleep and when you wake up in the morning when is still dark and be grateful for your life, and everything that God gave you. 

The Lord's Prayer 

Our Father which art in heaven.

Hallowed be your name.

Thy Kingdom come.

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive our debts,

as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil:

For thine is the kingdom,

and the power, and the glory, forever.

Amen

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International educated nurses applying to work in the United States as a Registered Nurse

 Congratulations and good luck with your journey. If you possess a bachelor's degree in Nursing and you are registered with your country's board of nursing you will follow these steps:

1. Contact the Board Of Nursing of your choice from the 50 states in the USA and read carefully the requirements for internationally educated nurses. Apply for licensure by exam. (there is a fee). A background check will be also required, and fingerprints and documents.

2. Create an account with the CGFNS International Commission of Graduated Foreign Nurses, they are accepted in all 50 states and it is essential for your credentials evaluations, contact also your School of Nursing which will send your syllabus directly to CGFNS along with the certified translation. Contact also the nursing board to fill out a document and send to CGFNS the registration numbers that certify you worked as an RN in your country,  all documents are to be sent directly to CGFNS.

3. While CGFNS is working on your credential evaluation it is time to register for the English Proficiency test. TOEFL or IELTS. I highly recommend getting their material for preparation for the test. For the test you will need to read and comprehend, listen, speak, and write two essays of 150 words and another of 300 words, again it is very helpful to follow their preparation course or book. The speaking test with TOEFL is recorded and the speaking part of  IELTS is a chat with a person usually on the same day in the afternoon after the morning first part of the test. Minimum score requirements depend on the board's requirements. Good luck with your English test, preparation is very important.

4. Now that you passed the English test and received the CES from CGFNS it is time to register with Person Vue to book your NCLEX by NCSBN. The test is an adaptive test that will offer more complex questions as you choose the correct answers, the more complex and correct answers the better chance to pass the NCLEX. So it is very important to read carefully each word and every line and make the correct credited answer. When you book your test with Person vue NCSBN  to take the NCLEX test, an ATT authorization to test will be sent to you by the board of nursing when you are eligible to take the NCLEX. Some boards will require an online review course to take the NCLEX. 

5. Enroll in a 3 to 6-month review course with Kaplan. I highly recommend this course by Kaplan made from nurses to nurses. They are amazing teachers with many many years of excellent experience preparing nursing students to take the test.  Besides learning a lot of important content review you will learn the strategies of the decision tree and Masllow ABCs priority questions. You will also learn how to pronounce words that might be new with a different sound from your mother language but with the videos, everything seems so familiar your confidence will be high on the test day and you will take many practice tests that will prepare you for the big day. Good luck, pray to remain calm read carefully each question, and ACE the test, meaning PASS the test. 

6. Congratulations you passed the NCLEX, and now you will be able to legally work in the USA as an RN, contact the workforce you will get your work visa or green card, and best of luck on your endeavors.  These three following quotes are from Florence Shinn:

"Every person is a golden link in the chain of my good"

"Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way"

"There is a place that you are to fill and no one can fill, something you are to do, which no one else can do" 

"The end of matter is better than its beginning and patience better than pride" The book of Ecclesiastes 

Gardening With Grace And Gratitude

 Gardening is a hobby I've always admired from far. I enjoy looking at the plants and flowers and admiring their spectacular colors, bright vivid colors, and all the lush green leaves, the tender baby leaves we want to gently touch and smell their flowers with unforgettable fragrance like The Lady of The Night which is a small tree or shrub with a purple small flower that fades away into pale and smells so sweet after six in the evening. At night their flowers are fluorescent.

My grandmother had snake plants, and my mother had ferns in their living rooms. I sometimes helped water them. In Gratitude and Grace, they release my favorite smell on Earth which is the smell of wet dirt. It is definitely one of the most satisfying smells that makes my mouth water and almost want to taste it.

It wasn't until lately while working at The Home Depot in Garden Center, that I had the chance to get in touch with an enormous variety of plants and so many customers interested in plants asking me all kinds of questions or teaching me all about the favorite flowers for the bees, Monarch butterflies, and hummingbirds. I was so curious about all that stirring around the fantastic world of gardening that I started to search for answers, in our app, in other words, on our work phones we had quick access to all kinds of learning from all departments and games which I found so cool. I've learned so much and thought that for the first time, I could have my own little garden. I now have a collection of house plants including snake plants, fiddle leaf figs, croutons, and palm trees.

A green thumb is something we all possess and is easy to take care of the plants with a little Google search and by admiring the plant and watching it grow. Usually requiring very low maintenance, they require a little water every week and some light just placing it by the window.

For outside plants, I enjoy Lantanas and zinnias, during the summer, and during the winter the pansies are my favorite. Pansies flowers have a painting on their petals that looks like an angel with open flying wings. Shakespeare mentions pansies in his Midnight Summer Dream poem:

."I fell upon a little western flower; Before, milk-white, now purple with love's wound and maidens call it 'love-in-idleness'.Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once. The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid Will make or man or woman madly dote  Upon the next live creature that it sees. Fetch me this herd, and be thou here again Ere the levithan can swim a league'

Encountering An Animal, An Insect, Or Plants And Flowers

 I believe that random encounters with certain animals or insects or even the smell of the plants or the irresistible misty smell of wet dirt when it's about to rain, all of these sights really catch our attention to pause our busy lives to look quickly into the nature. Those signs must mean sort of a soothing call from the universe. Or those calls might help us clarify our own doubts that are happening at that moment in our head solving the many puzzles of expectation of events in our thinking brains. 

Beetles, for example, usually swarm around lamposts at night during springtime. Curiosity ignited to look up upon  Google' beettle spiritual meaning' which says beautiful things including something about change. "Change is about to happen whether you like it or not", said the website. Change is usually an exciting event that renews and refreshes our spirits.

The idea of intuition comes along with the unexpected encounter, knowing that, it comes to my mind immediately the words of Florence Shinn about intuition: 'Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way.

On one of those mid-spring nights while observing the beetles I touched these funny-looking insects with empathy, believe it or not, without any fears or disgust. Those precious mother nature moments spent looking at their awkward fly around the lamp and their drastic drop falling off on the ground and then spinning frenetically or just sitting still as if a stiff stick, all that jiggling, and tickling of those thin hairy legs crawling on my hand were perhaps a sign for preparation for more changes for better in my life.

I was very unsatisfied with my previous job mainly because it had too much driving involved, besides the tiring driving I find out while filing for taxes last February that I was not considered an employee,  with that  I was looking forward to finding another job which would deduct automatically taxes for retirement and medicare in which I also could just drive a little bit, some kind of indoor type of work close to commute with the chance of learning something knew and meeting new people. Thanks to God, and to the beetle, I have now two part-time jobs and I'm very satisfied with the work I'm doing. Learning different things is always so much fun.

Whenever I have spare time I always look up the meaning of the animals or insects that I dreamed of or that I spotted in my encounters, it is very interesting.

Bridge Over Troubled Water

 If you were born between 1965 to 1981 you belong to the so-called generation X, and you probably have listened to this amazingly beautiful song Bridge Over Troubled Water by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. My grandfather loved this song so much that he asked me to play it at his funeral, which was not possible at that time, long story short we had appointments for his funeral in the morning,  but the death certificate and his dead body weren't released until that afternoon and we, actually myself, confirmed it for the morning, which didn't happen, I was very close to him and had to deal with a lot of things related to the burry. But I did I sing it to him in my mind. These lines are incredible:

"Sail on silver girl

  Sail on by

 Your time has come to shine

 All your dreams are on their way"

Thinking about these beautiful inspiring words it came to my mind these quotes from Florence Shinn, which are also amazing and like a puzzle their meaning, in my opinion, complete the thread of thoughts from the song Bridge Over Troubled Water:

Man's word is his wand filled with magic and power. The man comes into the world financed by God, with all that he desires or requires already on his pathway. This supply is released through faith and the spoken word. Believe all things are possible". 

With that I'm leaving today's post with another quote from Florence Shinn:

"Gratitude is the law of increase and complaint is the law of decrease"

To wrap up all these positive words,  trust in God your dreams, work hard today on your assigned tasks, pray and have faith your dreams are on the way these attitudes you know already so well, are also called the path of least resistance. Gratitude for all your dreams that you so eagerly dreamed of all the accomplishments you have obtained through prayers and think of them, with the same gratitude of that day, it lift up our spirits to remember we were answered through prayers. There are so many to mention... praising the Lord they were answered when we most needed. :)

 

  

How to survive Covid-19

So I'm here to tell you that I had covid and miraculously I survived. I prayed too, of course. I  started feeling feverish on Tuesday, February 1st and by that day at night I had chills and my throat was red and sore it stung as I swallowed. The next day I called in sick and I only started working again the next week I was quarantined for 6 days and as I felt better I was confident about returning to work. Now  I can say I survived and the symptoms I experienced were scary, scarier than the normal flu or a simple sore throat. Like Dengue another dreadful viruses disease, my whole body was in a state of alarm by raising its temperature, my thermometer was missing somewhere around the house, so I couldn't know for sure if I had a high fever. The next day I had no energy to make a complete meal and so I managed to cook a soup containing potato, carrots, and ground beef and also leek soup with some leftover roasted chicken and the leek soup I cooked at the very beginning of covid. My boss texted me to hydrate, so I did. Among the hot beverages I especially need to give special attention to the hot honey lemonade with 3 drops of propolis, I ordered several small bottles of 30 ml each they have also spray bottles from Amazon. they're amber in color and glassy vials which are excellent. 

I had normal coffee with cream half and a half and cinnamon raisin toast for breakfast which was my delightful hour because I had that warm drink going down my sore throat and I felt deliciously healing, warming up, so I coughed a little.  Whenever I felt too weak to be standing up cooking I just got Mcdonalds and that was great. 

I did lose my sense of smell which is quite scary if you think about it. In the shower, I tried 3 different body washes I had bought recently and couldn't smell any of them. I now as I'm writing these lines I can smell again, thank God.

The soreness in my throat was like a sting as I swallowed, first on my left side affecting also my left ear which I felt a sharp pain for a couple of times, and then it started popping. As soon as the left side had almost completely improved the right side began to bother just like the left side the stinging pain in my throat as I swallowed and the sharp pain in my right ear then a good deal of ear-popping  and belching. I actually enjoy burping so it was a way of expelling this virus. 

My eyes had a little burning feeling for three days. at the end of the sixth day my face, lips, and nose were extremely dry and my skin was flaky as if shedding the very top thin skin. just a little but not like a snake or anything like that. 

I did not take any medication I conducted my infection hydrating as much as I could, resting and cooking simple food. None of my family members caught it or none of my clients caught it, Thank God! I wore a KN95 mask at all times and washed my hands, and had the necessary care not to cough on anyone or anything, the basic manners tell us to always cover our cough and sneeze as a good sense.

Hopefully, my words will be as a balm for your worries, just as a reminder that although there's a lot of fear, bullying, and panic around covid, please do read Psalms and believe in those words and promises be calm and focus on your own beliefs, hoping they are optimistic and may the strength be with you always, Amen!  

New language, new challenges

I moved to the USA in February, 2017.

I have family here so it has been easier.

Since i am learning the English language, the culture, the rules, relationships at work, i chose the public library to help me with English books and literature.

I am reading lately fairy tales for children in English. I read it for the first time The Snow Queen, The Nightingale, and The Little Mermaid by Hans C. Andersen. I cannot believe i haven't read them before, they are so joyful precious reading.

I really enjoyed this book too: American Accent Training by Ann Cook it has 6 audio cds so it's awesome.

I just read yesterday The Frog Prince by Brothers Grimm which i really enjoyed  it's so much very funny.

I have a very strong English accent, we still speak Portuguese among ourselves at home, so yes, but i plan to speak English as clearly as possible which that is the one of my biggest challenges, but don't you agree with me that challenges are like gifts very well wrapped so that we have to unwrap it to see what's inside so that it's like what move us forward with curiosity. I am really excited.

Someone said to me after a quick dialogue: "I can understand you well.", Other said: "mamn i'm sorry i can't hear you." Others just look at me with the most disappointed face, that is why i recommend the American Accent Training.

That's all for now. I'm so glad to write here again, have a great weekend!