Fish Tales

Two months ago, a friend and I went shopping and out to lunch to celebrate my birthday and I found this fabric at a really good price. I needed a new shower curtain and thought this would be a fun design, so I bought several yards. With our power issues being what they are (we've had zero electricity now for eight days, it took me all this time to finish when it would have been a one-day project in the U.S. But! I did finally finish it! I would have finished a little bit sooner, but I made a mistake and had to correct it. I was staying up late to sew because for a while we were only getting power from midnight to 6 or 7am. I thought I was nearly finished with my shower curtain when I took a closer look at it and realized something was not right. My fabric was 42 inches wide, so I had sewn a second panel to the bottom of the first panel in order to make the curtain long enough. I must have been a little too tired when I sewed them together, because I had sewn the bottom panel on upside down. All the fish were "belly-up." So, today while the generator was on, I stole some time for sewing and finished my curtain.

Last week Joshua travelled to Morocco with his school swim team for a meet. He came back with a medal, some new friends, souvenirs and photos, and nearly $60 in Moroccan currency. Not sure if we'll ever find a place to exchange that. He had a marvelous time and we are very grateful that he was able to go. It was a real answer to prayer because the cost was way out of our budget. The team had several fundraisers and worked very hard together. I have to brag on them because Josh was the new kid and from the very beginning the entire team has been behind him, helping him improve his swimming skills and encouraging him. They truly function as a team and I am proud of all of them. Here's a photo of them. Josh is "front row, center." Check out the TASOK pants! They were a real hit at the meet.

Run for Congo Women

This morning I participated in the Run for Congo Women on the TASOK campus. Run for Congo Women is a fundraiser, the proceeds going to Women for Women International, specifically to help women who are war victims here in the DRC. A group of us from the neighborhood all went together. In the photo are Bethany (an MK from our neighborhood), Suzanne and Sandy Francis (MAF missionary family), Valerie Hochstetler (MAF missionary), Josh and me. Just to clarify and ensure that no one is unduly impressed, I did not run. My hip and feet can’t handle that, so I walked it. Josh ran, though, so if you want to you can be impressed with him. I was explaining the whole fundraiser idea to our guard, Jacques, and told him that Josh was running but I was walking. He asked me why and I told him that we were paying the same amount of money to participate, regardless of whether we ran or walked, therefore I was walking. I thought that was just being sensible, not wasting energy, but he thought it was funny.

I arrived home to discover my husband had repaired our toilet. Hooray! No more bucket flushing. Except for when there’s no power or no city water. Oh. Never mind. The power problems here actually had improved for about a week, but now it seems we are back to only having electricity between midnight and 8am.

Tonight our whole family went out for supper to celebrate our first six months in Kinshasa. The custom here is to eat late, around 8pm, so we like to go at around 6pm and enjoy having the whole restaurant to ourselves. We had a very nice time, talking and laughing in the air-conditioned restaurant. We ordered dessert just because we didn’t want to leave the A/C yet. At one point, it struck all of us as very odd that we were sitting in a Chinese restaurant, in Africa, eating ice cream to background music that sounded an awful lot like the theme to Starsky & Hutch.

"No Electricity Cookies"

Cover via Amazon

Our ladies' Bible study group has been working through a Beth Moore study, Beloved Disciple. At the beginning of our ten week study we drew names for "secret sisters" and enjoyed several weeks of praying for our sisters, giving them small gifts, and writing encouraging notes to them. I drew Christine's name, my same friend who helped me with the burned electric cable and invited me to her Bible study with the ladies from her church. Last Tuesday, we had a potluck dinner to celebrate finishing the study and we all planned to reveal our identities to our secret sisters. It turns out Christine had drawn my name also, and neither of us ever suspected the other. She gave me a really cool sewing basket made of rafia here in Congo, and she sewed a skirt for me out of local material. Talk about being spoiled! I will get lots of use out of both. During our ten weeks, most of the ladies in our group were without electricity about 18 out of every 24 hours. One week I was searching the internet for a dessert that I could make without electricity and without dirtying a ton of dishes. I found the one below and shared some with Christine, telling her that I was delivering it in behalf of her secret sister. It was the truth, I WAS delivering it in behalf of myself - I mean her secret sister.

"NO ELECTRICITY COOKIES"

1/2 cup softened butter
2/3 cup white sugar
3 TBS unsweetened cocoa
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 TBS brewed coffee (or water)
1 3/4 cups oats
powdered sugar

Cream butter, sugar, cocoa, coffee, and vanilla. If your butter is soft, you won't need a mixer. Stir in oats. Roll into one inch balls. Roll in powdered sugar. If you do have electricity, the dough is easier to work with if you chill it for a little while, but it isn't necessary. On days when you are really desperate for a chocolate fix you can just eat the dough out of the bowl and save the expense of the powdered sugar. Don't ask me how I know this. Just trust me.

Adventures in Cableland

The photo was taken just yesterday, in the lot behind our church. Friday night Josh's choir had a performance, which we all enjoyed very much. Their performance was part of a fundraiser for a local orphanage, so the admission fee was a donation of food or cash. From the looks of things, they had a very good response. Josh got news from one of the colleges he applied to that he has been accepted. Please pray for a really good financial aid offer!

On Tuesday, Christine was hosting a Bible study for the ladies in her church and invited me. There were several ladies, maybe 15 or 20. Some of them spoke French with me, but the study was in Lingala, and so were the songs. I got to sing "Holy, Holy, Holy" in Lingala. I had no idea what I was actually singing, but because I know the hymn, I knew the heart meaning of the song and was still able to worship with them. I enjoyed meeting the ladies and they invited us to visit their church. Since Josh plays guitar for our church, I'm not sure when I'll get the chance, but I would like to visit one Sunday. Since I don't know Lingala, I'm sure it would be a bit out of my comfort zone, but I'm the world's biggest chicken, so everything is.

One day last week I woke up to a strange noise. Our voltage regulator was going crazy. The electricity comes to our house in three phases. When I checked them, the first two phases were dead and the third phase was getting 343 volts and climbing. I shut the breaker switches off to the house, but not in time. Our a/c got fried. Thanks to some help from a friend here, we discovered that the cable down the road had burned up and about three meters of it needed replacing. I use French every single day here, and get along fairly well most of the time, but these guys from the electric company were using a lot of vocabulary that I didn't know yet and speaking plenty fast, so I was very grateful for my friend, Christine. She speaks Lingala and spoke with them in my behalf. We learned that here in Congo, when a cable burns, the electric company does not pay for it. Nor do they pay their workers to repair it. The affected neighborhood has to pool together and share the expense, and the labor costs. We were told up front that on our street, there is only one other person who is ever willing to pitch in toward these types of repairs, and he is out of the country right now. Our other neighbors had bigger generators and more money for fuel, so they were willing to wait until we caved in and paid for the whole thing. Which we did, because we wanted electricity. The good news is that our power is better now than it was before all this happened. We actually have all three phases when the power is on, and the voltage is better. The power situation over all is improving also. For a long time, we only had power for a few hours in the middle of the night. Now we are having power almost every night and every other day. When I lived in the U.S., having electricity only every second day would not thrill me, but here it makes me very happy! I wish I could take a photo of the "new" cable for you. You wouldn't believe it! It doesn't look anything like what the utility companies do in the states.

Living in the Dark Brings Vanity into the Light

Image via Wikipedia

Sometimes, life in the Congo has a way of revealing and striking at one’s vanities. Shaving my legs in semi-darkness with a bucket of water has produced less than ideal results. Applying make up in poor lighting, and then having half of it drip off with my perspiration makes me want to disregard make up altogether, except that I’m so vain. Showering and getting dressed; only to be drenched in sweat and stinking in two hours’ time does not make a person feel attractive. Because of power and water issues, I sometimes have to wear dirty clothing. And forget fingernails. It is impossible to keep them clean, no matter how short I trim them or how frequently I clean them. If I paint them to hide the dirt, the bug spray melts the polish. The humidity is not good for my hair either. So, I have learned that I esteemed too much of my value and self-worth from my appearance.
God showed me I had other places of hidden pride/vanity. I did not realize how deeply attached my sense of self-worth and value were to my role as a wife and mother. Here, preparing a meal can take hours longer than it used to, because everything is done from scratch. Often there is no power or water or both, making it more challenging to do cooking, laundry, cleaning, sewing, etc. When the power is off, and it is 95+ degrees and we can’t even run a fan or open the refrigerator, it is very challenging to get school done because the kids are so uncomfortable. There is no postal service and internet connections are often too slow for Skype, so keeping in touch with family and supporters is difficult. Some days I am forced to do nothing. I have succumbed to tears more than once, telling my husband I am ill equipped to be a missionary. I am doing what I used to do in the states, wife, mother, home educator; only I’m worse at it, so how can God possibly use me? His response has always been that he could not be here and do what he does without me, and that calling ill-equipped people is the way God works. If I had it all together, I would be too proud and unteachable for God to use me. But if God uses me to minister to my family, my friends, and the people here in Congo, then He will get the glory! God used my husband to gently remind me of a couple of things. My usefulness to God has nothing to do with me and everything to do with Him. My role as a helpmeet for my husband has very little to do with how well I cook and clean and a whole lot to do with respecting and encouraging David. My role as a mother is not diminished by how much I get done for my kids as much as it is enhanced by how much I do with my kids. Admitting my vanities and learning to let them go (still working on it, by the way) has been unsettling. I always knew in my head that my value to God and to David do not come from the things I accomplish, but perhaps my heart still harbored some doubts. Nor does my value diminish in their eyes when I don’t get all the things checked off my “to-do list” each day. I am so thankful for the Godly man I married!

The Vet

Today I had an experience that I am positive would never have happened to me in the United States. I had an appointment for the cats to be sterilized, and the vet came to my home. He asked me for some soap, water, and a towel to wash his hands. Then he put Elliot to sleep and neutered him on my 3 by 3 foot plastic table on my front porch. He examined Fiddle and said she is still too little, so in three weeks my porch will once again become a surgical suite.
Our power is still off more than 12 hours per day, on the average. Today it was on until noon, but the voltage was so low and fluctuated so much that we couldn't really use anything. The a/c didn't work. Fans made strange noises and bounced between barely moving and going into orbit. The refrigerator and dryer weren't working well. For a long time now, the power has been coming on during the night some time and going off between 5am and 6am. David and I feel victorious when we get the coffee brewed before the power quits. Wouldn't you know that since I got up at 4:30am today to try to get a load of laundry done: 1. The power would stay on, and 2. the water would be off.
Last Friday we went to the talent show at Josh's school. He was one of the MC's, and several of our church youth were also in the show. We enjoyed seeing kids share their talents, and every grade was represented. The school pottery class had a table set up to sell their ceramics, and I was excited to find candle holders. We use a lot of candles (see above paragraph), and we've been setting them in empty tuna cans and jelly jar lids. That's fine on a flat surface, but they are not easy to carry from room to room that way because they get hot. The candle holders have handles for carrying them. There were only two left, so I grabbed 'em.
Next week is spring break and the church youth have a three day retreat March 14-16. Please pray for their safety and for spiritual renewal/growth. In years past, not all of the kids who went were Christians, and this is an opportunity for our youth to be witnesses in addition to growing themselves.

No OSHA in Congo

Here in the Congo, there is no OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). When we arrived here, we noticed a building was in the process of construction across the street from us. It's three stories high plus a roof with a steep pitch. The workers never wear harnesses or hard hats or even shoes. We have very windy storms sometimes, and they stay up there, clinging to the roof with one hand and working with the other, until the rain drives them down. Yesterday, they were nailing pieces of roofing on and there weren't enough hammers to go around, so one guy was hammering with a piece of 2x4. Some times they sing in Lingala while they work and if we are doing school outside on the porch or have the windows open we can hear it. This is one of the many things here that are hard for me to see. I pray often for their safety, and for their families and salvation. It's not hard to find things to pray for here. When we go places, all I have to do is look out the car window and I see plenty to pray about and plenty of people to pray for. Sort of like prayer-walking only we move faster, though not much.

Surprise!

When we arrived in Congo, two MAF families here had recently been blessed with litters of kittens. As soon as they were old enough, we acquired one female from each litter, hoping they would become good mousers and buggers. (Is "buggers" even a word? How about "roachers?") We named them Lydia and Fiddlesticks, Liddie and Fiddle for-short. Well, Liddie rapidly learned to catch roaches, earning her lots of brownie points in my book, since I detest them so much. We'll just say Fiddle has other endearing qualities. I happened to glance up as Liddie was walking away from me the other day and I noticed she did not look quite right. Liddie, we discovered, is a boy cat. So, now I have a boy and a girl, both rapidly approaching sexual maturity, and I am thinking I need to find a vet AND FAST. Emily and I decided this morning that calling him Lydia just won't do, and unless the rest of the family votes it down, we want to rename him "Elliot". We thought about naming him Merlin, since he tricked all of us, but he really does look more like an Elliot. This will take some getting used to. We all keep calling him a her out of habit. Poor guy. Here are some photos. The little calico on the bottom is Fiddle. The one on top with stripes is Liddie, I mean Elliot.

A Couple of Triples

Yes, it's been a really, really, really (triple number one!) long time. I could make a bunch of excuses, such as we have power outages nearly every day, we have internet problems frequently, I'm busy home schooling two kids and cooking from scratch, I got caught up in Thanksgiving and Christmas and potlucks and all that - all of which are true, but whatever the excuse, it has still been a really, really, really long time. I'm sorry. Ok, quick "catch-up", in as few words as I am capable of. All of the windows have been repaired. And the roof. Last month Emily told us her wall, the one between her bedroom and the bathroom (yes, the same bathroom that flooded with sewage and has a broken toilet) was wet. It had been wet for a while and she just thought the spot was a stain from when the roof leaked until she actually left something touching the wall and it got wet. The stain was wider than my arm span and about 3 feet high, and a nice mold was growing. So, the plumber came out and made holes in the walls to fix the pipes. At least he filled in the holes though, and Emily's wall is drying. We celebrated the holidays with our MAF team and other missionaries here. It was hard to be away from family, especially since our skype wouldn't work. Josh played in the orchestra for the school musical in December. We searched for things to buy for the kids for Christmas and could not find anything here, so I bought some local fabric and sewed gigantic bean bag chairs for each of them. We filled them with bags of chopped foam that we bought at the local mattress factory. They were a big hit! We still have power and water issues, almost daily. Once we had no power for 72 hours. A couple of times we ran completely out of water, even in our reservoir, and had to haul water from the Francis house. We had the annual MAF family conference in January. It was our first conference and we really enjoyed it. We have hired a tutor to help us improve our French. There are two things which make French more difficult here than I had anticipated. One is that our vocabulary is too small, we just don't know enough words. We're working on that. The other is the accent here. The Congolese don't pronounce their vowels the same way we were taught, and it has caused some misunderstandings. For instance, when they say "two", it sounds just like "ten". That makes shopping fun. A couple of weeks ago, I asked our guard how his family was doing and his response sounded like "sah vah impay". I knew what the first part meant, "ça va" means "it goes", a way of saying things are fine. I couldn't figure out what "impay" was, but I knew "paix" means peace, so I thought "he must mean all is well and peaceful", so I said that was good news. He looked at me strangely but said no more. Then David asked me a couple days later "what does impay mean?" Our guard had just said the same thing to him, again in response to an inquiry about his wellbeing. I told him I didn't know, that I couldn't find anything like it in the French dictionary, and what I had guessed it meant. He said he had guessed something similar and said "that's good" and got the same strange look. So the next time our tutor came, we asked him about it. He said it the same way our guard did, but when he wrote it out for us, he wrote "un peu", which sounds more like "uhn puh" (short nasal sounds, not long vowel sounds)in International French. Ding! The light was now on! It means "It goes a little", which here means the same as saying it is not going well at all. So our guard was telling us things were not going well for his family and we were telling him what great news we thought that was! I felt even worse when we learned that he had two children with malaria that week. So, that's one lesson we shan't forget and a mistake we won't make again. One more small chink out of the language barrier.
Ever since Christmas, my friend Sandy has been waiting patiently for me to remember to share my recipe for crescent rolls. To atone for neglecting my blog for so long, I'll share it here also. I got this recipe from my sweet mother in law and it makes nice flaky rolls. And the smell! Amazing! They are really, really, really (triple number two!) good! Here you go, Sandy!

Crescent Rolls

4 1/2 cups flour
3 eggs, beaten
1 package plus 1 TBS yeast (so you don't have to look it up like I did, one packet contains 2 1/2 tsp)
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup Crisco (I try to avoid shortening. You know, the whole hydrogenation thing. So I use real butter and it works fine.)
1 cup scalded milk

Mix milk, butter, sugar and salt. Allow to cool to lukewarm. Add yeast and eggs. Add flour a little at a time until dough is too stiff to stir. Let rise, or chill until later. Three hours before baking, divide into three sections. Roll out into circles and baste with melted butter (not too much). Cut like a pizza into 8ths and roll into crescents. Let rise. Bake 6 minutes at 375 degrees.

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!

Kinshasa Journal

Well, we made it to Kinshasa! It's been a whirlwind. I tried to keep a record of events so that I could post them later. I may have gotten a couple of things written for the wrong days, but all of the events are true. Sorry it's so long. I actually left a lot out. I wish I had photos. Taking photos here is illegal in a lot of places and I haven't chanced it anywhere yet. So, here's my journal of the last several days.

Day 1 – Monday
Arrive in Kinshasa at 7pm. Our team had hired two men to help us collect our bags, but when we arrived, there were three men doing the job. We, of course, knew none of them, and couldn’t have stopped them if we tried. In fact I think David did try. Once Garth and Brian got us to the vehicle, the third man, who had stayed on our heels this entire time, demanded money for his service. We were happy to let Garth take care of it. We were taken to our home and introduced to one of our new sentinels. We found beds made, clean water, pizza in the freezer, and food in the fridge. John, a pilot but also our team’s IT guy, had even set up our internet for us. Discovered none of the exterior lights work, which is a safety issue for us and for our sentinels. Garth said he would tell the landlord.
Day 2 – Tuesday
We tried to cook eggs for breakfast but the stove wouldn’t work. Spent the day with Garth. First we went to Josh’s school to get him enrolled. Josh and I were able to take a tour of the campus. We went to the U.S. consulate to register, only to learn that you can no longer do that in person. You must do it via internet. Experienced our first restaurant in Kinshasa. We had these things called schwarmas: basically chicken, French fries, and coleslaw wrapped in a type of tortilla-shell-thingy. And Coke in a bottle, with real cane sugar instead of corn syrup. We looked at furniture and appliances but didn’t buy any. We were getting an idea of what is available and what the prices are. Dinner with Garth’s family. Power went out this morning but came on again about ten hours later.
Day 3 – Wednesday
David discovered that the stove has three breaker switches and only one was on, so now we can use the stove. Shopping. We were told to make a list of things we needed so Garth could take us shopping. All the newness, combined with jet lag had our heads a-spin. I couldn’t come up with a very good list. We wrote down some food items and some household items. Went to several stores and found about half of the items on our list. I’m told that’s not uncommon. We visited a physician’s assistant/missionary to discuss staying healthy in the Congo and what to do if we have problems. We had a lovely lesson on the various parasites. Today was Josh’s first day of school. One of our team members, Sandy, lives right down the street so she gives Josh rides to and from school. Dinner with John and Marilyn. He makes amazing salsa. I must get his recipe. This time of year is rainy season and we had our first tasted of that tonight with a big storm. Arrived home and discovered our roof leaks in a few places and one of our windows had broken. Power went out for a few hours. I’m thinking this might be something I should just expect. Emily was invited to a girl’s Bible study at the TASOK campus (Josh’s school).
Day 4 – Thursday
We have city water, but it is inconsistent and not drinkable, so we have a reservoir that holds 1,000 liters for when the city water is off, and a filter. Today we learned that we need to keep an eye on the reservoir, or have our sentinels do it. The water had been off for a while and we didn’t know it so I was doing laundry, washing dishes and floors, and we were all taking showers. We found out the water was off when our reservoir became empty. Thankfully, water came back on shortly after and our tank filled back up, so we learned our lesson without having to haul water from a friend’s house. Now we know. David got up in the crawl space and looked at our roof. We thought it was tin. It looks like tin from the outside. It is actually asbestos, which is why no one collects rain water off their roofs. It is old and there were at least two cracks that he could find. Dinner with the Writebol family. Brian Writebol is the other full-time mechanic here.
Day 5 – Friday
The stove has some wiring issues. Something about arching and burning. David put some electrical tape over the bad spots. I’m not too sure about all that, but I have to cook. David Francis took us shopping for furniture. We found a dresser for Emily. We ordered a sofa and loveseat from this business that was about 6 square feet, made of tin and wood with dirt floors. They get fabric, foam, and wood from where ever and make furniture with only hand tools. It is far from perfect, they don't even cure the wood, so sometimes after you buy it it warps or cracks, and they stain it any color you want. Someone said they thought the stain was shoe polish but I don’t know. Considering their resources, they do an amazing job. When we arrived home, there was a man in the yard who claimed to be the plumber. The landlord had sent him to fix the leaky toilet. It was supposed to have been repaired by October 1, and our MAF guys had repaired it on the 11th before we arrived, so he was sent home. David and David also worked on the wiring for our dryer because it was burning up the outlet and plug when we used it. Some of the families in our neighborhood have a weekly play day so I took Emily and Daniel . This week it was at the Greene’s home. They are local missionaries. We stopped at Sandy Francis’ for a while. She has kittens at her house, which we enjoyed. Potluck dinner with the whole MAF team. We had a very nice evening getting to know people better and watching them interact with each other. They are like a big family, and they just welcomed us right into their family “ as is” . Arrived home to discover we had no internet.
Day 6 – Saturday
No internet. Every Saturday there is a softball game at TASOK and people from MAF, the embassies, and local missionaries participate. Josh wanted to play, so I went to watch and Daniel went to play with his new friend Nicholas. The black flies had a feast at my expense. Another lesson learned. Wear bug spray at TASOK. Tried to mop the floor. I can’t figure out this mop thingy. It’s actually a huge foam squeegee with a long wooden handle and you are supposed to somehow put this shammy type cloth on the end and mop with it, but the cloth doesn’t stay where you put it. It kept falling off. The mop is too wide for the bucket. Am I supposed to wet the cloth or just pour soapy water on the floor? I just gave up and got down on my hands and knees and cleaned the floor by hand. Got a backache but we discovered that our kitchen floor is green. At least when it is wet. Dinner with Rod and Valerie. We got to hear their testimonies and how they came to be with MAF, and play with their kittens. We fell in love with one of them, but I think she is spoken for already. Emily is trying to talk David into letting us have one of Sandy’s AND one of Valerie’s.
Day 7 – Sunday
We went to IPCK, International Protestant Church of Kinshasa. About half of the congregation is Congolese. There are members from all over the world, which was fun. There is no air conditioning, so all of the windows were open and everyone outside can hear God being praised. David and Sandy took us out for lunch and took us grocery shopping. By this time, I had a better idea of what might be available and had actually planned a few meals and made a decent list. We found almost all we needed. I think I paid about 2.00 per ounce for cheese, and that was the cheap cheese. I didn’t buy very much. We found pepperoni at one store. It wasn’t on my list, but it is very hard to find here so I bought some for the freezer. Still no internet. At bed time, our oldest decided to tell us the bathroom floor in the main part of the house had been wet all day. Yes, it was sewage.
Day 8 – Monday
Hooray! John got our internet repaired! Unfortunately, we had to have a person on the roof to do it, so now we have more cracks in the roof. Valerie picked me up and we went walking at TASOK. I am still itching from the black fly bites, so I remembered my bug spray. The Greene family had us over for dinner. Came home to discover we only had electricity to half the house. Some of our wiring was burnt through. Isn’t that nice to think about when you aren’t home? Apparently, the window a/c unit we put in the boy’s room cannot be on when I do laundry. David made a temporary repair, but he had to cut power to the water pump (no water), internet, and washer and dryer in order to cool the boy’s room. That’s the only a/c unit we have installed. I wondered, if this is what happens with one unit, what will happen if we try to cool all of the bedrooms? I was really, really tired and for some reason I decided I needed to wash dishes before I went to bed. Since the water pump was off, we only had a tiny trickle coming out of the tap. And my hot water heater wasn’t working. I actually cried because I couldn’t wash dishes. Can you believe it? I should have thrown a party! I mean, who actually WANTS to wash dishes? I was just too tired to handle it.
Day 9 – Tuesday
Our driver’s licenses have arrived. They messed up my entire date of birth, the day, month AND year. AND!!!! They made me OLDER. I tried to give it back to David. I told him I don’t want to drive and I don’t want to be older. He made me keep it. They messed up his too, but they got his age correct. They gave him an endorsement to drive buses and semi-trucks. He has never done either one. In our neighborhood there is a Women’s Bible study on Tuesday evenings, so Esther picked me up for that. Our trash had been piling up because we didn’t know what to do with it. David dug a hole in the yard for the compostable stuff. We separated the burnable stuff out. The rest went into a bag that the Francis family gave us for the trash pick up. You have to pay “ by the bag”. David Francis came over. He and my David worked on the wiring (not fixed but better) and the toilet, which was till leaking sewage even though no one had used it in over two days. You can’t buy wax rings for the toilets here, so someone had used cement instead. We hope it is fixed. I’ve had “mop” on my shopping list since we got here. Now I have “MOP!!!” on my shopping list. Guess I could try the squeegee thingy. I’m thinking it might be a challenge trying to use a 30 inch squeegee with a fasten-less cleaning rag around our toilet base. David checked his email and learned that our shipment had arrived on Monday. We’ve been told it could be several more weeks before the “powers that be” decide to let us have our stuff. Tonight was my first night cooking. We were talking about making substitutions, trying to find stuff in the stores, the unavailability of convenience foods, the occasional power outage. He made the comment that “cooking in Kinshasa is kind of like camping in your own kitchen.”

Visas and a Place to Live

We have had an eventful week and it is only Tuesday! Yesterday we received our visas and reached the 97% mark in our ministry support. Josh received his diploma from the high school in Quebec also. It's mainly a souvenir, since it is only recognized in Quebec, but he thinks it is cool. It's also a reminder of all he accomplished in his ten months in Canada. He grew up a lot and made many friends, survived his first year in public school, and ended the year on a positive note. In Quebec the kids graduate after the 11th grade, so he will finish his senior year in Africa and will end up with two diplomas from two different continents, which he thinks is really cool. There are three families here for standardization right now, and yesterday afternoon the wives enjoyed a cooking class. The focus was cooking from scratch because we will be cooking that way overseas. I've had some experience in cooking from scratch already, so that wasn't too new for me. I did learn some interesting substitutions. For example, we used manioc in place of potatoes. Manioc is the staple starch in DRC. Manioc root looks like a tree branch and is about as hard to peel. I think it resembles potatoes when you boil them too long and they get sticky, but it tasted pleasant enough. This morning we received word from our program manager in DRC that they have found a home for us. I don't know what I was expecting, but I'm pleasantly surprised. For one thing, it has 1 and 3/4 bathrooms, so for the first time since we left Florida, we will have two toilets. It is within walking distance of another MAF family, which will make carpooling easier and we'll already have friends in the neighborhood.

It's A Date!

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We have a tentative departure date! We are still raising ministry support, but we have already raised 96% of what is needed, and if all goes well, we will leave the U.S. on October 10th and arrive in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, on October 11th. Please pray for our support to reach 100% quickly. We are very excited, and yes, a little nervous. Visa applications have been submitted. There is one more vaccine to go, the last of a three-round rabies vaccine, which I am not looking forward to because the side effects seem to increase with each round. I am busy trying to tie up loose ends and sort through our stuff. Our team in Kinshasa is looking for a place for us to live. Mail works a lot better here than there, so one of the things I am trying to do before we leave is write letters and thank you notes. I remember when I was a child, if someone gave me a gift my mother would strongly encourage me to write a thank you note. Being a child, I didn't want to stop playing and write a note. That felt too much like homework. Now, though, having a list of people I need to write thank you notes to is an opportunity for me to count my blessings, one at a time. Each note is a reminder that God loves me and has blessed me, and an opportunity to let God use me to bless someone else. So, I'm going to stop blogging and go write some thank you notes.

Back in Nampa

We are in Nampa, now! David is taking classes and brushing up on his mechanical skills. He is glad to be working in a hangar again. Yesterday I got our oldest enrolled in the local high school. This summer has flown by! School begins tomorrow. We are praying for God to raise up more people to pray for us and support our ministry with MAF so that we can leave as soon as possible for Africa. We are eager to go and Josh needs to be there by mid-October in order to be able to transfer to his new school as a senior. We only have 12% more to go. Please pray with us. Josh and Daniel both had birthdays recently. Daniel always seems to have a birthday "on the road". Depending how you look at it, he either gets the short end of the stick or the "easy button". We are almost never at home, but this usually means he gets more than one cake and more than one party because we have one at home and one with whomever we are visiting. While driving up from Missouri, we drove through a town in Idaho called Twin Falls and decided to stop. There is a waterfall there called Shoshone Falls that is comparable to Niagara Falls when the water level is up, but it was low when we visited. It was still beautiful. There were places to hike and lakes. It only cost 3.00 for parking and everything else was free. That is way cheaper than Niagara Falls was and we had more fun. Twin Falls is also where Evil Knievel made his attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on his skycycle. The dirt ramp is still there for people to see. We thought Twin Falls had a lot of character. In addition to the historic Evil Knievel jump and the water falls, we saw two car dealerships. One was owned by someone named Con and the other was owned by someone named Rob. We were so travel weary that we thought that was really funny.

Mystery church shopping?

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Recently I heard something on the radio that I had never heard before: an advertisement about mystery church shoppers. In my past I was a mystery shopper for a while and I am familiar with how that works, but I had never heard it applied to churches before. The speaker in the ad stated “Churches know why people stay. They want to know why people DON'T stay.” For a fee, the mystery shopping company will send a “shopper” to your church. Later, you receive a report informing you of the shopper’s experience in your church and their impressions, everything from how clean the bathroom and sanctuary were to how friendly or unfriendly the church members were to the quality of the sermon to parking availability. That set me thinking about what does cause a visitor to decide to return, or not, to a church. As someone who has spent the better part of the last two years being a visitor in multiple churches and denominations, I tried to think about my experiences as a guest and how I felt. When I felt really drawn to a church, what was the reason. Was it a clean bathroom? No, not really, although that certainly matters. Was it the newness of the decor or the size of the building?  No.  Was it convenient parking? Friendly greeters? The music? The sermon? It really wasn't any one of those things by themselves. They are all significant. I think the key difference is relationships. Our God is all about relationships, and as His people, we should be also. When I visit a church and someone there seems genuinely interested in a relationship with my family and me, that blesses me hugely. The priorities in our life are the things we focus on. So I hope the next time I am at church and I see someone I don't know, I make them a priority. Philipppians 2:3 says “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” This is my prayer, and something I am hopefully getting better at.

Happy Birthday, Em!

Today was my daughter's birthday. I bought her a rose and her daddy took her out for lunch. Then later today we had a small family party. These videos are for the grandparents, aunts and uncles. The reason there are two videos is because one gift had arrived in the mail and we put it up and forgot to bring it out at first. Happy Birthday, Em! You're amazing and we love you!!!

God can use Facebook

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Today I met a cousin of mine for the first time. We found each other without even looking for each other because of a mutual friend. My friend posted something on Facebook, to which we both commented. My cousin then made a comment about my maiden name being the same as hers and joked that we must be related. So we began to investigate and realized that her father and mine are first cousins, making us second cousins because we had the same great-grandparents. She "happens" to live only a twenty minute drive or so from where we are staying right now, so we met for lunch. I discovered we have some things in common, our love for Christ, our preference for Coke over Pepsi, both happily married twenty years this summer, teenage daughters, bashful sons, and who knows what else. I am so grateful to have "found" this new friend! I don't believe in coincidences or luck. Nothing that happens to me is a surprise to God, and He is not random. I believe He intended for us to meet. Facebook can be an incredible waste of time if we allow it to be, but it can also be a great tool and a blessing.

Back in the U.S.A.

We're back! We crossed the border into the U.S. on June 30th, our 20th wedding anniversary, and arrived at my sister-in-law's home happy but tired. We left the kids with my in-laws and went to a nearby small town B&B to celebrate our anniversary. In case you think the kids got jilted, their aunt and uncle treated them to laser tag, a movie, shopping, and all the junk food any kid could want. It was good for all of us. We are now in Missouri, packing and working on ministry support. It feels kinda wierd going through the checkout line at the store with enough unscented solid deodorant, vitamins, and tylenol to last a family of five for two years. It does make people stare. It also felt a little wierd the first time we went into a store and everything we heard was in English.  That didn't even happen when we lived in Florida, let alone Québec.

Sometimes you need to stop and smell the roses, so on our way down from Canada, we stopped at Niagara Falls. I had been to see the falls years ago, on my senior trip, and wanted to share it with David and the kids.

Lessons learned

Yesterday we graduated from French language school. It's been a long and challenging ten months. It wasn't only challenging because of the French courses we were taking. This was a year of big changes for all of us. Josh experienced his first year in public school at the same time he experienced his first exposure to another culture. That's really like learning two cultures at once. Emily had to work independently in her studies during my class hours and save the rest for when I came home. Daniel sat through hours and hours of church without understanding what anyone was saying because David and I were required to attend a French church as part of our schooling. I had to balance being out of the home half of each day and having studies and homework of my own with teaching Emily and Daniel and managing our home. David had to balance school with being a husband, father, friend and neighbor. All within a new environment and culture/language. We learned a lot about relationships, priorities, flexibility, and faithfulness. When we first came here, one of my kids didn't believe me when I said that God knows our needs and will provide the relationships we need in Québec. Now that child admits being wrong and not wanting to leave new friends found here. But a lesson was learned, and now there is a confidence that God will take care of us. We are busy packing and cleaning our apartment and squeezing in every spare minute we can with our friends before we go. We'll be here a few more days because Josh has prom this weekend.
We have grown to love the people here. They have been very polite and friendly to us and very patient with our bumbling attempts to speak their language. We like our church and our pastor here very much and were just getting to the point where we understood almost all of the sermons. We have made wonderful friends, not just among our fellow classmates but among local people also. There are some things we won't miss so much: milk that comes in plastic bags instead of jugs, cold weather, having to go to several different stores to get things we need because the grocery stores here don't have built-in pharmacies, make-up aisles, toy aisles, etc.; stores that close at 5pm - the time when most people are finally free to shop. But really those aren't important issues as much as they are inconveniences. I would guess someone from Québec might feel overwhelmed by their first experience in a super Wal-mart, as the Wal-mart here is far from that. We have tried new foods and liked many of them: fresh, real maple syrup, tartinade (a meat pie that is traditionally made for Christmas), Cretons (a meat spread often eaten on toast or crackers), and poutine. Our very first week here we were told that no one has experienced Québec until they have tried poutine. Poutine consists of french fries, with gravy on top, and cheese on top of that. Not just any cheese, though. Fresh cheese curds, usually made that same day, that makes squeaky noises when you chew it. There are many varieties, but that is the basic poutine. Last night, to celebrate that all five of us finished a school year here, we went to Stratos'and had poutine one last time.

Finishing

I finished another quilt! Well, just the top, actually. But that's the hardest part. This one only took about 5-6 years - LOL. I had too many quilt projects going at one time and relocated three times, so this was a project that I started and stopped many times, with a lot of time between each "restart". This is my fourth completed quilt top and it will be the first one I keep for myself. I know I won't need a quilt in Africa, but just having it there to look at will make my house feel like "home" to me, so it is going. And who knows, maybe one day we will purchase a window A/C and if so, I will want a blanket. I love the batik fabrics in this one and since I have worked on it in three states, one province and two countries, it's kind of special to me.

David and I completed our final exams today. We graduate tomorrow! After that, we will be cleaning and packing like crazy and then we'll begin our voyage back to the U.S. Our first stop will be Wisconsin. Then we'll head south. I'd like to write something profound, or even interesting, but I'm tired. Anyway, here's a photo of my not-quite finished quilt.