Month: March 2017

Raelee has had a girlfriend for a couple of months now. It’s been a good thing for her because she has only had the boys to play with and they went back to school. The bad thing is this girl should be in school but isn’t. Remember when I told you Kimuli got married? Partly because he felt it was time and partly because that is what is done to prevent family and friends wanting him to support them because he works. Well, he paid what the family requested and got his wife…plus two of her sisters! They were sent with her to live to “help” her with her household. So, he not only paid for his new wife, he also got two more dependents. Not sure that deal worked out as planned! So, this little girl – Favia – lives with Kimuli but he is not able to pay to send her to school. I’m not sure why she doesn’t go to the government school, it is free except for exams but many people say the education is not good so rather than go there they don’t go at all. She’s a good little girl and they play well together. Now she has someone who wants to play with dolls!

The building for the mill is coming along nicely. They are currently plastering the inside, when that is finished they will plaster the outside and all the buildings but ours will be plastered and looking good. When that is finished our building will be plastered it doesn’t look good standing beside all the pretty plastered buildings! There is also a little covered “pavilion” being constructed beside the Church building, it will have a long table with benches for Sunday School and other things. We let the little ones stay inside the building and take the older kids outside. It will be nice to have a table for them to sit at and be able to do more things. So much progress going on. The rabbits are growing, the goats and bulls are happy. The bulls are getting ready to go to work since it is planting season again. The rains teased for a couple of weeks and then disappeared. Makes it hard for the farmers to plant at just the right time, the ground had barely started to soften up and the rains stopped.

Papaya no longer stays tied, he stays pretty close to the females.

Papaya’s wife!

Chris has become a carpenter, his work is getting noticed which brings many requests for doors and door frames! He’s decided he really likes doing the wood work so he is going to look into some of the widows homes and see if they need doors replaced etc. He has already built a door for one widow and is to help fix her outdoor bathroom. They do have inspections on the outdoor bathrooms to make sure the village has sanitary conditions so there are a few people who may need help getting up to “code” on their outhouses! A neighbor brought boards and Christian constructed a really nice door for him so I expect there will be more to come! Everyone was impressed with a table he made me, (not really that impressive!). I decided I wanted a coffee table made out of one of the packing crates for mill equipment. After they unpacked the machine – carefully – he put it back together adding wheels so we can roll it around! (I have been determined to have wheels on something, he has not been so excited about that!)

Our building next to the Church building…see the difference?

My table: It is a little higher than I expected, he may take it apart and make the sides shorter, or leave it just the way it is because it is good for playing games on! The metal corner pieces were what I liked the most but apparently when someone cleaned the barn they threw some away, three have been found! If I can find one more I will be happy! I have added color to the living room so now I’m not sure what color I want to paint the walls, Chris says bright orange would be too much!

LaLa is growing quite rapidly, as are all the happy rabbits. She acts like a cat, waits for me to walk by and leaps at me, or just suddenly sprawls out wherever and lays. She likes to be in the same room we are even if she is hiding. We leave the door to her cage open and she goes to eat, drink and do her business. She loves dandelions, bananas and carrots. But never, NEVER give her a pretzel. I gave her a nibble of mine and she went berserk. Attacked me, biting me a couple times, ran off and then came back to bite me again a couple times. Not sure what that was about but not going to do that again! Here is a video of one of her favorite things to play with.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”

For the past few months we have been working our way through the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5. It has been fun, each week I have had an object/science lesson to go along with it. Baking soda and vinegar went over well to show joy bubbling over. There are a couple boys who can go back to the beginning and name every one of the evidences of God working in us, and give examples! That is very exciting, to know God’s Word is reaching in to them.

I missed last week with them but we had left off after kindness. Before we got to our snack I told the older ones they were to put kindness in action and serve the little ones. It also helped them to see that when we work together, it takes less effort and time. It worked so well I decided that’s how we would do it from now on. I am very proud to see these young people who in the beginning pushed and shoved to get theirs first now serving others and being patient. Time and persistance baby! (Not always easy but oh so rewarding!)

Now, along with all our rabbits, two bulls and twenty or so chickens we have two goats! We had made a deal with a man who wanted grasses from our land to feed goats he uses to train children in caring for and then giving them a goat. He would give us a goat in a month. I think it’s been more like 4-5 months but we got a baby male…his name is Papaya. So cute! And a few weeks later someone we had already been allowing her two goats to graze here really needed money so she sold us her female. Raelee is so excited that they will be married and have babies one day!

The rains are here so we have plowed much of the back of the land to plant alfalfa, dodo and some other crops to feed all of these animals. If we can just get our bull keepers to tie them away from everything we will be alright. I had a stearn talk with them the other day because they let the bulls eat about 8 of our banana trees down to the ground. Our favorite bananas, the tiny ones that are sweet. We are working at fencing off a place for all the graizers or we won’t have any crops!