Rain is pattering on the roof, thunder is rolling in the
distance and we’re sitting here hoping that we have to mop water in the house
tonight. Things are pretty dry and a
good all night rain would be a very good thing!
One challenge we've faced is trying to get rid of a rat that
keeps invading our house at night!! He’s
found my seed stash and the corn we have stored and just making a pig of
himself. He’s trying to gnaw his way
into some of our food storage tubs too, and that really gets on Cheryl’s
nerves.
He’s coming in under the door so we spent a couple nights with an assortment of traps in front of the door to no
avail. Installed a wood strip on the
bottom of the door yesterday and seems to have done the trick – for one night
at least. We’ll know more tonight!
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School is open here and we’ve had the pleasure of sharing all the school supplies and bags that were so generously shared by our Canadian friends and the Hopewell Methodist Church.
The teachers were thrilled with the bags and supplies also sent from the
Hopewell Church. You are all a real
blessing to us!
Cheryl is busy with the children writing thank you letters to
their sponsors. We still have over 40
kids without sponsors. We’d love it if
all the kids could write thank yous!
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Vlad and Ashly have been in the states for a month, so we’ve
been on our own learning how to do some things that need to be done for the
school. That has meant we’ve spent a
little more time off the mountain. But that also means we were able to do some
visiting. One highlight was meeting up
with a short term team from Cheryl’s mom’s church in Florida. We had tried to meet up with them last
November but things didn’t work out. It
was fun to get together with them for an evening. Of course free food (lasagna! Yum!) is always
a great way to build a relationship, but we almost felt like we were old
friends from the beginning. Thanks Trevor and team for a great evening! Looking forward to seeing you all again soon!
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We are learning to get around better and our network of
friends continues to grow. There is
exciting news! Our Gator is in port at
St Marc!!!! We’re waiting to hear from
the ‘big chef’ about how much it will cost to get it out of customs. Hopeful to have it in the next couple weeks!
If we can throw in a prayer request, pray that we would
adjust better to life here after being home on furlough. It just seems tougher than it was before.
internet here has been really lousy and that doesn’t help much. It’s
hard to get messages back and forth and Skype won’t work. That makes our time on the telephone pretty
precious! It’s harder on our budget, but
the resulting smiles are worth it!
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My reputation as the ‘gwo boss’ has expanded
into shoe repair man!
I’d brought a set
of upholstery needles and some ‘Fire Wire’ fishing line back from furlough
thinking it would come in handy.
That
and a couple bottles of super glue have made me pretty popular if you need to
have your shoes fixed for school. I’ve
learned to stitch on some book bags too.
It’s good practice for tying suture knots. Cheryl says I get the next cut needing
stitches.
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People are still getting our house confused for a
clinic. People just showing up wanting a
consultation, whatever that means. If
you’re pregnant, it’s pretty obvious, but it’s really hard to tell what is
wrong with many of the ‘patients’.
Cheryl has way more patience with them than I do!!!
She’ll sit them down, sometimes the whole family, and try to figure out what the problems are. Recently, there has been a lot of legitimate fevers and flu like symptoms.Rainy season dampness and really hot days
followed by cooler nights has lots of people sniffling around.
Our
available meds for these things are very limited, so usually what they get is a
couple bundles of leaves, eucalyptus and citronel grass, to brew teas. The eucalyptus is great for opening stuffy
noses and congestion and the citronel works good for fevers. We’re thankful to have a little cough
suppressant and some Tylenol for fevers, but we try to get them to use what’s
available in the garden instead of giving them a bag of pills.
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I know the suspense is killing you, but no we didn't have to mop any water. We've installed a drainage pipe to divert some of the water (we hope, we haven't had a significant rain since) so maybe that won't happen, but the patter of rain and distant thunder was just that. Got a little over a tenth of an inch. God knows what we need and we are slowly learning to be content with what He gives. We count our blessings daily and our cups are overflowing!!! A lot of that is because we have the greatest supporters in the world!! The prayers of our friends are sweeter than honey! We love you all and are forever thankful for your participation in the work God is doing here. He will surely Bless you!
