Promised Pics, Preparing to Leave, and a Post by One of Our Pilots

As promised, here are pics from Emily’s graduation.  Sorry about the low quantity/quality.  A new camera is very high on my wish list for furlough. I think I may have even found the one I want. 

I love, love, love this photo of Emily and David!













We leave in a week! We’ve been going through all our stuff, getting rid of everything that doesn’t fit or doesn’t bless us or that we do not use. FLYlady would be so proud of me for finally doing this. I only read her book like ten years ago. In an act of ultimate irony I gave it away. Not because it didn’t bless me though. I was moving to Africa and got rid of hundreds of books. We could only bring so much with us. It was either the books or the kids. 

At least when we come back and unpack all this stuff, there will be less of it to deal with and it will all be useful, right? Of course, it will. We never really finished finding proper  places for it all after the last move because we still haven’t finished repairing and painting the house. There were always more pressing issues like burning wires and graduations and car repairs. High on my wish list for AFTER furlough is a more reliable car.

I’m almost afraid to say it, but we have had good electricity the last few days, which makes cleaning and packing a lot easier. We’ve had our other issues. Emily got sick. Now I am sick. The dryer broke, again, and will have to be replaced when we come back after furlough. You would THINK that during DRY season, laundry would dry quickly on the line because the humidity is lower, but it is just not working that way. At least no one has gotten any mango fly worms from our clothes. Yet. (more about mango fly larva, also known as tumbo flies, HERE .) That post about the tumbo flies goes all the way back to 2010 and as I read it I thought "It's no wonder we are tired and ready for a break after two and a half years of that craziness!" 

While we are preparing to leave, our friend and teammate Nick Frey is in Canada for a couple weeks and has written a great post for the MAF Blog (click HERE to read Nick's post) contrasting Kinshasa and Congo with life in a first world nation. His post is a great reminder the heart of MAF and why we are here. He's a pilot so he gets to see the physical isolation of people in Congo on a regular basis. Not so much for our family since we are always in Kinshasa, but we see first hand every day that even in this city of millions, people live in self-imposed isolation, whether intentional or not, behind their concrete walls, their emotional walls, their social status, and their fears and superstitions. Pray for Congo, for our pilots, mechanics, IT folks and national staff, and for our travels next week!

I've updated our Media Page with some new items!

Kinshasa Journal: Wednesday - day 10

Today the plumber was supposed to come at 9am, followed by the landlady at 10am. The plumber arrived at 10:15, followed by the electrician at 10:30. The plumber was supposed to fix the leak around the washing machine. He looked it all over, said he had to buy parts and would return tomorrow, and left. The electrician was supposed to repair all of the exterior lighting and the wiring that comes into the fuse box. He looked it all over, said he had to go make a report for the landlady, and left. I turned on the dryer a few minutes later and heard a strange noise. I turned to look at our electricity box and it looked like firecrackers were going off. Ok, turn off dryer and hang clothes up to dry. If you hang wet laundry outside, the Tumbu flies (a type of blow fly) can lay eggs in them. Then, unless you've ironed all of your clothes, when you wear them the eggs will hatch and the larvae burrow into your skin. You get a painful boil and have to remove a worm from your body. Really gross and painful but relatively harmless. I don't have an iron, nor do I like to use one, so I hung the clothes indoors. I should mention that our front door is difficult to latch and unlatch. I took two or three days to figure it out and the kids still struggle with that door. A little while after I had hung the laundry in the house, one of the kids had a fight with the door and body slammed it, breaking the six foot by two foot glass panel. David came home and worked on the fuse box so I could dry clothes. The fuses are 63 amps. Even though the dryer pulls 23 amps and the boys'air conditioner pulls 10, every time both are running simultaneously the fuse blows and then sparks start flying again. Now that we have figured that out, we will not be running both at the same time. The power went out for about an hour this evening, but if there is such a thing as perfect timing for a power outtage, we got it. I had just finished cooking supper. We ate by candlelight, and when the power came back on, we cleaned up the mess. All of my cookbooks are in our shipment, so Esther gave me some recipes that she has adapted to what is available here. I think tomorrow I'll try her cheeseburger soup recipe. Somebody on our team made snickerdoodles and left them in our freezer for us to find. Yummy!