The Potty Plant

Last week Emily started with basic white and mixed her own custom paint color for her bedroom. Here’s her new color. The photo doesn’t do it justice. In real life, the walls are darker. Much darker. But she loves it.

She doesn’t have as many choices and freedoms as her peers in the states and this was one area where we could let her have her way. Now she has a space that is truly hers, and she made it that way herself. All that’s left is for her to finish unpacking and decorating. Cool beans!

Emily's room on moving day

Yes, she is indeed stirring the paint with a broken broom handle. When you buy paint here, they do not give you a paint stirring stick thingy. At least at the stores I have been to, they don't sell them either. You use what you've got.

That white door off to the left is a ¾ bath. What teenage girl wouldn’t like to have her own private bathroom that her brothers do not have access to? Moreover, what boy would not be happy if he no longer had to wait for his sister to get out

Emily's room after paint job

of the bathroom? What mom would not be happy to have a little less mess to clean up? Now that she has her own bathroom, she gets to clean it herself. Good practice for college. Her future roommate will thank me one day.

For my introvert daughter, having her own space is a big deal and something she wanted for a long time. She’s had her own room before, so it’s not about privacy. It’s more about “fit.” She needed her room to be an expression of herself, a reflection of her taste and personality - and not just a place to set her suitcase. I totally get that.

We’ve made changes to the rest of the house too. Once Lily recovered from her near death experience of getting spayed in Kinshasa, we took away the litter box and now both cats go outside to do their business. Very nice. No more odor. No more emptying the box.

We’ve added our first house plant. It’s called “snake plant.” If you come visit me, you’ll notice that our snake plant, as well as all future house plants have sharp rocks on the top of their soil. That’s because Lily, still young and new at the whole go-outside-to-do-your-business thing, thinks "potted plant" means “potty plant.” The rocks have been an easy and effective deterrent.

Firsties

Here are ten of my most recent "firsties," things I did for the first time:

* met Rita Chapman, a missionary serving in Kikongo whom I've been hearing about since 2008. Very Cool Beans!
* washed myself with gasoline. Peeyou.
* "jumped" electrical phases in our breaker box. Needed to learn and now I have.
* went through a Congolese military checkpoint. Ok.
* led a group of high school girls in a Bible study. These girls are fantastic!
* made pickles that actually stayed crunchy. Too salty, but at least they stayed crunchy. (whisper: They taste like Claussens.)
* drove more than three miles one way from my house, and back. Survived. Barely.
* went to the consulate for the U.S. embassy to renew our kids' passports. Not fun.
* went to a parent/teacher conference for my daughter, a senior. Somehow when we were home schooling her it seemed way too odd, even for us, to have parent/teacher conferences. hee hee.
* took my new friend Hannah to the orphanage with me to play with the kids. This is Hannah.

There is just nothing like hearing a little kid giggle!

Obviously, God is not letting me stay in a rut or get too set in my ways. Living a Christian life takes "muscle," which brings me to the subject of my new post, "Move That Muscle" on the MAF blog. I hope you'll check it out.

Wait Til It's Painted!

Slow internet, plus no electricity, plus a very low battery equals:  a very short blog post! I took this photo while we were in Kenya. There were construction projects everywhere, each surrounded by these corrugated tin fences and I thought it was hilarious! I couldn't capture the entire thing from a moving taxi with my camera, but it says "It doesn't look like much now, but wait til it's painted!" 

That's how we feel about our new home. There is not one square corner. Emily's room is a full foot shorter on one end than the other. We are working on plumbing and wiring and window latches and light fixtures. Every single room was yellow, and most had water damage on the walls. 

But, I am very please to have my bedroom almost completely finished! We've painted, and hung curtains. I just need to scrub the door and scrape up my paint splatters. This room is bigger than our old one so I think I will try to find a pot and get a plant.

The color is supposed to be grey with a hint of blue, but over the yellow paint it dried kind of a green-grey but I like it. 

I love my crooked house!

I'm getting the yellow warning that my battery is about to die. Yikes, I still have so much to talk about!  It will have to wait. I did write an article for the MAF blog that will be posted next week so I'll let y'all know when that's up. 

Our Sentinels

Jacques with our boys

As a security measure, we have two sentinels who alternate 24 hour shifts. Jacques and Leopold have been with us since we arrived here two years ago and I affectionately refer to them as "my guys." In addition to keeping watch over the house, sentinels also answer the gate, run errands to purchase items or pay bills for us, do the yard work, help David work on the house and car, do cleaning, etc. They are a lot of help to me and I sure don't take them for granted. In this culture, the job of sentinel is a low paying, low status job because it does not require an education or special skills. Unfortunately, many people treat their sentinels badly. In our culture, if your boss screamed in your face or berated you in front of others, you would not stand for it. You’d go over his/her head and demand justice, or you would find another job. Here, jobs are scarce and there are few options. MAF families and other missionary families tend to pay above the average for our sentinels, and we have a reputation for being desirable employers. 

Jaques and Josh in front of the old house

Jacques is originally from the village of Semendua. I asked him once how far Semendua is from Kinshasa and he said not long at all by MAF plane but several days by boat. He is married and has five children ranging from 18 years of age to 1 ½ years. His youngest was born several months after our arrival and is named David, after my husband. Depending on the village you hail from, naming your child after someone can signify one of two things: either you are supposed to give a gift to that person and ask them to pray a blessing over your baby, or you expect that person to be a type of “godparent,” a life long benefactor for your child. It is also common practice to name a baby after someone or something significant in your life at the time of your baby’s birth. 

Leopold with two of his sons, Eric and Christian.

Leopold is from Kinshasa. He is also married and has five children, all of them boys. The youngest was born about six weeks after we first arrived here, and is also named David. Leopold is a unique sentinel because he has a trade. He is a mason and does concrete work, lays tiles, etc. Leopold took a sentinel job because he was not finding enough work as a mason to support his family and still does mason work on the side, including some jobs for MAF. He made the foundation for our water reservoir, repaired the wall for one family when a tree fell on it, and built our IT building.  

This week, Leopold’s wife fell from a porch and broke both bones in her forearm. Leopold took her to a hospital and was told that the doctors would not examine her until he paid $150 cash up front. To put that in perspective, many people don’t earn that much in a month or even two months, a pound of ground beef here costs over $5, and the average family here does not have a checking or savings account because they live payday to payday. Leopold moved her to another hospital that only demanded $70 and then came to us for help. He came by again the next night and showed us the x-rays. The doctors had only just seen them, because the power was out the day before at the hospital. So it was over 24 hours before x-rays were even available for her, and 48 hours before she finally had her arm set and in a cast. All Leopold could do during that waiting period was pay for an IV drip with pain medication. She is home and doing better now, but please keep Suzanne in your prayers as she recuperates and tries to work and care for her family. 

Unknown Variables

source: www.openclipart.org

People here joke about "the Congo factor" or the "Congo variable (an ever changing factor or set of factors)." When you have a project to complete in the states, you determine what supplies you need, the amount it should cost, the amount of time it ought to take to complete, and then you get to work. Adding in the Congo variable, means that you probably won't be able to find all the supplies you need, you are likely to discover after you've begun your project that there is more work to be done than previously thought and more supplies are needed, the parts you purchased are of a quality that renders them likely to break during or shortly after installation, and the entire project from start to finish is likely to take MUCH longer than originally estimated. We've done a fair share of dealing with Congo variables this week.

Variable 1: cheapo parts. A lot of new plumbing has been installed in the last couple of weeks. We also spent the better part of our first two days in our new home fixing leaks in the new plumbing and mopping floors. High quality parts and fixtures are impossible to come by here. We still have some leaks to deal with but not as many.

Variable 2: humid climate. Some walls in the house were damaged by water due to leaky plumbing but the climate here is also hard on things. A good deal of the paint was bubbled up and falling off the walls so we have been scraping, spackling, and sanding.

Variable 3: Just because it fits, doesn't mean it belongs there. As I lay in bed our first night in the new house, I heard numerous loud noises like something popping or snapping. Most of the noise was coming from directly over our bed, which did NOT help me relax and fall asleep. The next day we discovered the source. The landlord had replaced several light bulbs and added covers to the fixtures. The bulbs fit the sockets and the covers fit over the bulbs, but obviously they weren't meant to go together. The plastic fixtures were melting from the heat of the light bulbs, and making loud noises as they cooled after we turned off the lights. This is the one above our bed, and the light bulb has burned its
 way through the plastic.

This one from the hall is my favorite! That thing you see hanging down is not a spider web but melted plastic about to fall. Light fixtures are coming down ASAP.

Variable 4: Just because it's new, doesn't guarantee it will work. We finally got our new water pump installed. It did not work. The inside parts were messed up, so even though it is nice looking on the outside, the pump can't fulfill its purpose, and actually caused a good deal of wasted time and frustration. I guess people are the same way. What others see on the outside may look really attractive and "together" but sometimes we are a mess on the inside. Instead of fulfilling our purpose to minister to and love people, we become a negative variable in the lives of others. "People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." (1 Sam 16:7b)

We had a friend help us yesterday with a temporary fix, allowing us to borrow a pump from him so that we could get water into the house. Last night I enjoyed my first hot shower in a week, and it was superb! This past Wednesday marked our two year "Congoversary." Someone remarked that we've been here two years and lived in two houses. I like this house, but it's going to take a long time and a lot of work to get it in good shape, so that is a trend I really don't have a desire to continue, thank you very much!

One last little note. A friend recently sent me this link to Jon Bloom's blog post "Don't Give Up."  If you are dealing with lots of variables lately, I think you'll find it as encouraging as I did.

Life in a Construction Zone

I am writing this in our new home! Our friends who so graciously loaned us their home while we worked on ours returned yesterday, so we had to move our family. Since our house still needs a lot of work, we were given the option of moving to another temporary residence, but the entire family was tired of the moving and just wanted to be in our place, even if it meant living in a construction zone. So last night we spent our first night here. I thought I would post some "before" photos, and then later once we've made this place more homey, some "after" photos.

This is the back porch, off the kitchen and dining area.

Living room. As you can see, I have lots of curtains to sew. The awnings are nice because they help keep out some of the heat from the sun.

Dining area. We can't eat in it yet, but that's ok because I can't find my forks anyway.

This house has a lot of bathrooms. Nearly every fixture has to be repaired or replaced. This one is waiting for a new shower but the sink and toilet are finished.

Kitchen. I am very happy to be able to reach my cabinets! The guys hung them the way all cabinets should be hung, with the height of the person who will actually be using them in mind. It's so cool beans! No more dragging a stool all over the kitchen. Well, okay, I need a stool for the top shelves. To give you some perspective, David is taller than our refrigerator.
Our priorities are so obvious in this photo. I can't find pots and pans or silverware, but I know exactly where the Cokes and the coffee maker are. Now to get an outlet for that coffee maker.....

One of the kids' rooms. Both of their rooms are just waiting for paint and curtains.

Master bedroom. Also waiting for paint. All that wire is going to become our back up light source for when the power is out: solar panels will charge a battery pack and the batteries will provide power for the lights. The batteries are already running our internet antenna!

This will eventually be the office/sewing room/storage room. We no longer have a garage to store stuff or work in so for now it is where the guys are keeping their tools and supplies they need to fix the house.

This may not look like much, but it's beautiful to me! This is a new concrete foundation that will hold our water tower and reservoirs!

We have a lot that we are thankful for. We are in our own place, sleeping in our own beds. We had power and water last night. Good friends came yesterday and helped us clean our friend's home for her and another friend helped David get some work done on the new home.

There have been a lot of unforeseen obstacles causing our progress on the house to go slower than we anticipated. When I looked around yesterday at the broken, ruined things that need to be redone, I was reminded of Isaiah 58:11-12: "The Lord will guide you always; He will satisfy your needs in a sun scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; You will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings." A lot of things are being rebuilt and restored in our home to make it not only functional, but a sanctuary and a source of blessing for our family and friends. I think it's a perfect picture of what God does in our hearts.

Moving Day: Take Two!

Coffeemaker (Photo credit: Daniel Panev)

Cool Beans! We have moved out of our old home. But! - We are not yet into our new home. We are sort of in limbo, staying in a friend's home, until the new one is repaired enough for us to move in. So for a short time, home is not where our furniture and other stuff is, but where our coffee pot is. We have to be out of this temporary home by Friday so I really, really, really hope we can go straight into the new home and not into another temporary one. It would be nice to be able to put things away, rotate our three day's worth of clothing out for something  different, have access to all of the school books, stay in one place, etc.

Matthew Lind securing our water tower.

One reason we can't settle in yet is because in Congo, home is where the water is. We do not yet have a fully functioning bathroom or a way to store reserve water for times when the city water is off.

Almost everyone has "moving day" photos, but in all the times I've moved, I have never moved a steel water tower like this one, along with two big water reservoirs. Once the tower, tanks, and water pump are installed at the new house, we will have a much better water situation. Right now we have to get a concrete footing made to hold that tower.

photo credit: Jocelyn Frey

Another unusual item we moved this time: the chicken. The cats are with us, but the chicken and the parrot are both already there and being taken care of by our guards for us. We transported her in a little box to keep her calm and our friend Jocelyn snapped a photo of her leaping out of the box at her new home. Yep, that's our new gate back there. And it's my favorite color! That's Emmanuel in the photo. He and several other members of our team helped us move all our stuff before the big deadline. We are so grateful for the friends God has given us here! Because of their help, everything was out of the old house within a few hours, using just vans and a pickup truck.

Do I miss the old house? Nope. It had some nice features but I brought all the best stuff with me: my family, the things that made our house feel like home, my pets and flowers, and my coffeemaker.

No Place Like Home

Ruby Slippers (Photo credit: ZakVTA)

I just sat down to lunch, yeah, at 3:15pm. We've already had quite a day. My sandals gave me a nasty blister on my toe, which kept getting worse, so after Daniel finished school we headed for the house (we are staying at a friend's house down the road for a few days while we pack and move.). We were supposed do actually DRIVE to the house so that after packing for a few hours, I could return here to cook supper, bringing back my dirty laundry and the items we will need between now and when we move into our new home. My car decided it does not like this moving thing and it is not going to run anymore. So, blister and all, we walked to the house, discovered I had forgotten the key, walked back, returned with the key, and proceeded to pack until I ran out of boxes and realized I had forgotten to eat lunch and maybe that was why I felt so tired. Um, there's a lot of stuff still.

On the way back to my friend's house, the first time, I spotted the reason why I am packing in the dark in 94 degree weather with no fans or a/c. This is my power line. It's hard to see the details because I took this with my cheapo phone but that is a broken bottom of an office chair wedged between the wires to keep them from touching each other. The blue and white you see are plastic grocery bags that have been tied around the cable to "repair it." Throw in a few tree roots and you have my power line.

Here's another section of my power line, just a few meters from where I snapped the first photo.





I will miss my neighborhood and being close enough to walk to see most of friends. I will not miss my power line.



Saturday the vet came and spayed our 7 month old kitten. He was supposed to come to check on her the following Monday but never showed. By Tuesday morning she still had not eaten and was lethargic. Her breathing was rapid and noisy. I called the vet and told him I was anxious about her and he said he would come. He said "today" but he showed up on Wednesday. By that time, she had improved a little on her own but still sounded raspy. He gave her antibiotics and went on his merry way. Today she is much better. Lunch break is ending so here's one more photo. Next post will be from the new house!

This is how we keep our cat from licking her incision. I cut the ends off a clean tube sock. She is obviously humiliated at having to wear David's half-sock.  That's why she won't show her face for the camera.

Quitch Yer Caterwaulin!

Lily and Elliot

Lily, our seven month old kitten, is in heat for the first time. She was supposed to have been spayed in August but somehow I kept forgetting to call the vet. She's roaming the house, completely obsessed. Now I know where the term "caterwauling" comes from! Oh my! She is a very petite cat and it is hard to believe the amount of noise she is capable of making. The last two days we've had her crying in the house, at least two males crying on the porch, and the parrot doing a fair imitation of all of them. A regular cat symphony. Thankfully, the vet is coming today for another front porch surgery (see The Vet for explanation).

As I laid in bed at 4:30am listening to the cacophony, in my stupor I began to think about cats, and God, and people. I thought about all the times I have whined to God, cried out to Him or acted self-centered and obsessed. I thought about all the times someone else around me has acted self-centered, or whined, and given me a clear picture of what I must look like when I behave that way. Oy!

When the neighborhood cats are doing their caterwauling on your porch while you are trying to sleep, after a while you lose patience and frustration grows. You want to throw a bucket of water on them or something to make them quiet down.

I'm glad God never says the kind of things to me that I have said to/about my cat (and admittedly, my kids):

"Can you believe it? She's little but boy can she make a ton of noise!"
"Can't you see I'm trying to rest here? Tone it down a little!"
"Aaaaaagh! Stop the whining!"
"Where's my water gun?"
and one I heard when I was a child, possibly from my grandmother: "Quitch yer caterwaulin!"

It's a house!

Hooray! With ten days left on our current lease, we finally have a house! It needs some work/repairs and a good scrubbing, but with some TLC we will soon have it feeling like "home."

The focus now is on getting the house ready for us to move into it, and we are grateful for Matthew Lind to help with that since time is short and David is working at the hangar during the day.

For now excitement is taking a back seat to other emotions: relief at finally having a place to go and whatever the opposite of enthusiasm is (anti-enthusiasm?) at packing, moving, all the cleaning, working and unpacking. We are also feeling gratitude for those who spent time helping us find the house, for those who prayed for our search, and for the help we have to get the house ready.

More photos and info later!

Mussolini for Dinner: Ten Cool Gifts!

tortellini (Photo credit: scottfeldstein)

When I feel down in the dumps, I often turn to the Psalms and to my favorite praise music, making them prayers from my heart to God as I read and sing. This past week as I was feeling discouraged and asking God for help, encouragement and direction, the Giver of All Good Things responded lovingly and generously, beyond what I deserve.  Here are some of the gifts I received this past week, in order of my random thought patterns.

1. New friends – I met a lovely Christian woman, her father, and her new son this week and got to spend a couple of hours getting to know them. They are passionate about missions and it was a real treat to get to connect with them.

2. Generosity – This same family brought enough clothing, formula, and medicine for the orphanage to fill my trunk! My daughter’s school had a drive for the orphanage also and collected lots of food, clothing, and toys. There were many other instances where I was blessed by seeing people show generosity toward others.

3. Letters from home (well, emails, really)! And an email from my son!

4. Unexpected help – We literally had no clue how to look for a house here or what questions to ask a potential landlord before we made a decision on a house. In our prayers we told God, “we don’t know what we are doing or where to look.”  He sent a friend with experience in house hunting to help us!

5. Pumpkin! – Our new friends brought us a few gifts also, including REAL PUMPKIN! We are all very excited about having pumpkin pie with real pumpkin. We did a little happy dance in the kitchen!

6. Electricity – I don’t understand how our old cable keeps going other than God must be sustaining it. We’ve had more than the usual amount of electricity and it has been a nice break.

7. Prayers – Lots of people have let us know they are praying for us! We know God hears and answers, and knowing that folks are praying is encouraging to us.

8. Closeness – As the housing options have been narrowed down, our family has had to talk a lot about what is important in a home to each of us, what is not important, how we are all feeling about everything here, and we have grown closer. It is always a gift when your child desires to share their heart with you, especially as they grow older and more independent.

9. Possibilities! – We don’t have a house yet, but we have a couple of possibilities! Both have pros and cons and neither one is a sure thing yet, but we finally have found a couple of places that we know we could make work for our family.

10. Humor – Always a great gift! I wish I were better at making others laugh. I am sure it looked pretty amusing to our guard and my family when the parrot escaped, as I tried to catch her without getting bit. She actually chased me across the porch trying to bite my toes! Picture a grown woman feeing from a naked, running parrot! And if you want to know how the mind of a boy works, just give him a stack of cards from an Apples to Apples game and listen to him as he goes through them:

“I thought Mussolini was a kind of noodle.”

“If Dick Cheney was our vice president, then who was the bad guy in True Grit?” (That would be the character Tom Chaney.)

After being told that Al Gore was vice president with President Clinton: “you mean Hillary?”

Two Stories to Every Side

I feel as though a lot more time has gone by since my last post than actually has. In addition to our two cats, our hermit crab, and the chicken that adopted us, our menagerie now includes an African Grey Parrot. That's her in the photo. We don't know why she is almost naked. I do know from having pet birds in the past that a bird that is stressed or bored will over preen and/or pull out its own feathers. The African Grey is a very intelligent species and needs a lot of attention and stimulation to keep them entertained and happy. We plan to buy or make some toys for her cage and spent lots of time nurturing her.

We've learned some interesting things about her already. For one, she bites. Hard. She drew blood her first day here. For another, she likes peanuts. A lot. We've been experimenting with various foods to find out what she likes to eat. So far peanuts are her number one choice, followed by palm nuts, mango, papaya and cabbage. Also, she has quite a repertoire of sounds and at least one comprehensible word: "hello." She can do several whistles, including cat calls, and perfect imitations of the following:

a cat
an owl
the little toy plastic whistles that the police buy and use here
a chicken
a car horn, this was pretty impressive. She totally fooled us.
a person laughing
a magpie, we aren't so impressed with this one
the loud and squeaky wheelbarrow they use everyday on the construction site across the street

We are really hoping that we can find a house and move before she has time to learn how to imitate the neighbor's Guinea fowl, or their constantly crying baby, or their habit of screaming their guard's name loudly.

Speaking of moving, here's an update on our housing situation and a Cool Beans story. After a wonderful week of having power almost constantly, Sunday morning our line went out again. The story from the electric company on Monday was that 25 meters of line was burnt and needed to be replaced. A year ago we paid $75 for three meters, so we figured that to mean it would cost $625 or more. We have to move in less than four weeks, so we told them we could not pay for that. There are other people on the line but it seems like our family is often the only one willing to pay for repairs. We resolved ourselves to having no power until the move.

Fast forward to yesterday. I had caught a stomach bug from David and hadn't been eating, which caused me to wake up with a migraine on top of the nausea. Then I couldn't get the generator to start. I called David and he came home and fixed the generator and took care of Daniel, including making sure he did his school work, so I could go to bed. In the midst of all that the guys from SNEL came and told us their "new assessment" (sound suspicious?) of our power situation.

"That story was for the birds!"

The new verdict was that only ONE meter needed to be replaced and it would cost $100.00. David gave them $20, partly since we knew it was only $20-$25 per meter just last year and partly because it was all we had on hand. He told them that should cover our share and to knock on the other gates if they needed more money. Amazingly, by 6pm we had three phases of electricity for the first time since May. By 7:30 we were down to two again but we were still happy. If it lasts today, we will have made our money back on what we would have spent in generator fuel and we will have had a cold refrigerator, hot water, and a dryer. We are hoping and praying it lasts until we move. I still have a headache today but not a migraine anymore, more of a residual effect that is slowly wearing off. I wanted to share all this because I know lots and lots of you were praying for us yesterday and we could tell. Not only did God take my migraine away and enable David to get the generator running, but He gave us electricity when we thought it was impossible!

Also we MAY have found a house. We are trying to line up a meeting with the landlord and our program manager and work out an arrangement that both parties can agree with. I won't go into details on the house until we know if it's the one. Thanks for praying for us!

Mundele, moi!

I’ve been visiting the orphanage for over a year, and I think that FINALLY, some of the kids have learned my name. Every time I go, the kids ask me my name and I tell them “Maman Nancy.” They always call me “mundele,” which sounds kind of like “moon-deh-lay.” Depending on the tone used, it can simply mean “foreigner,” or “white person,” or it can be derogatory. Friday, Daniel and I went to the orphanage and took our friend Roz along. I made a batch of bubbles and took them with us to entertain the kids. After a while, I stopped blowing bubbles and let the kids take turns blowing.

The kids do not take turns well. Pushing and shoving commenced, along with cries of “mundele moi!” That loosely translates to “hey white lady, pick me!” If I didn’t respond quickly enough, a couple of the kids in particular would yell it louder and slap or pinch my arm. Finally I got tired of that and I turned to one of them and said “pas mundele! Maman Nancy.”  It took them a few tries to get the pronunciation, but pretty soon about 15 kids were loudly and repeatedly chanting “Maman Nancy!” They were having so much fun with their chant that they forgot about shoving each other around so I went with it. The whole thing was pretty amusing.

My car overheated on the way home from the orphanage and blew a hole in the plastic water reservoir, so long distance driving is out for the time being. Between that and the fact that we have to be out of this house by the end of the month and still haven’t found a place to live, I am not sure when I can get back to the orphanage. I’m going to have to step up the packing and house hunting, but the realtor says he has no more places to show us within our price range. Please pray for our search for a home and for our search for what we need to repair the car. Also a matter of prayer, I suspect our cable is burnt again because once again we are without power while everyone around the corner from us who is on the same power line does have power. We just paid for repairs on that cable and the new electricity lasted about a week. 

Sometimes when a lot seems to go wrong at once, I want to act like the orphans and yell to God, “Hey, pick me! Pick me for your blessings!” I know He has blessed me, in amazing ways and in abundance. Sometimes, though, I am impatient like those kids and I want Him to answer my prayers in my timing, meaning immediately, instead of his timing. 

Candy Theology

We were excited to find Rolos at the store recently, then disappointed when we realized that these Rolos are different. They are square. I know, I know, they are still "chocolate covered caramel from end to end," but now the other part of the commercial jingle of my childhood - "you can roll a Rolo to your friend" -  is no longer true. At least not if I am in Congo buying Rolo candy from South Africa. Rolos are supposed to look like this:

Rolo original chocolate coated caramels, as sold in the UK (September 2006) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Those little square versions can't possibly contain as much caramel, so how can they be the Rolos I remember? I guess I can consider this a little reminder that things change sometimes. Change doesn't have to be a bad thing. I'm grateful to my core that I am not the same person I was back in the early 80's when I was in middle school and astronauts were singing about Rolos on TV. (If you don't know what I am talking about, you'll have to catch the commercial on YouTube.) I'm also thankful to know that God is still working on me and years from now I will not be the same person I am today.

More has changed than the shape of the candy. Across the top of the package is a declaration that this candy has no artificial colors, flavors, or preservative. It's all real. You could joke that candy companies are more transparent than some people are, but it is partly true. My "real-down-to-earth-what-you-see-is-what-you-get" friends are gold to me. 

In my childhood, there were only about six lines to that commercial jingle, and half of them were about rolling a piece of candy to your pal, your chum, or your friend. Nevermind what our moms always told us about playing with food or eating off unclean surfaces. What kid from my generation has never tried to roll a Rolo just to see if it worked? This new packaging, though, says nothing about sharing with friends. It does say "Do you love anyone enough...to share?" I jokingly told my family I would have to think about it. To me, this is not a good change. It's a suttle switching to a more self-centered, self-indulgent marketing approach, sugar-coated in humor (pardon the pun). I've been thinking about all God has given me, physically and spiritually. Do I love anyone enough to share? It's not so hard to love some people, but do I love everyone enough to share? 

Odors and Allergies

Isn't that a gorgeous flower?! I had never seen daisies with blue centers before, but my friend Lori had these growing in her yard when we visited her family in Kenya. Flowers are in my "favorite things list," along with fabric stores, new books, handwritten letters, and coffee. One of the things I don't like about the prospect of moving is starting over planting flowers in a new yard, but it is also one of the things I look forward to. I was just beginning to gather some flowers and fruit trees in my yard here when we found out we would have to move. If we find a place with enough space, I will dig up my frangipani tree and take it with me because the blossoms smell so nice.

This is one flower I won't be digging up to take with me or purchasing at the market for our next yard. It's called a Lantana plant and we recently discovered that Daniel is allergic to it and has a reaction every time he brushes up against it. I'm sure you've seen this plant and other color variations of it in the U.S.

Last week, Daniel had another interesting allergic reaction. I had purchased some locally grown peppers, a hot variety that is called pili-pili. Daniel saw the peppers laying on the counter and picked one up to smell it. I told him that peppers have oils in their skins that can burn if you touch them and then rub your eye and made him go wash his hands. I guess when he smelled the pepper he bumped his lip because a little while later we were watching a video and Daniel stopped the movie and asked "Does my lip look swollen, because it feels funny?" He looked a little like Will Smith after his character ate the shellfish in the movie "Hitched." His hand was also swelling. Benadryl is Daniel's new best friend.

Besides the pepper fiasco, we had an experience that was both amusing and unique to Congo, I'm sure. When we bought our jeep a year ago, it had this sticker on the windshield:

This is the equivalent of what we called "city stickers" where I grew up. My parents got one every year for each of their cars. If you didn't have one, you could end up paying a fine if you got caught. Even though we purchased our car in 2011, this was the current sticker at the time.

Then word got around that there was a new sticker, and the police were stopping cars that didn't have the correct one. Getting stopped by the Kinshasa police is not something everyone longs to experience, so we got a new sticker. I paid $110.00 for the newer, less-outdated-but-already-expired sticker that now says I am current through 2010. That amount included a $10 penalty for being late to buy their late sticker. Seriously. If you visit Kinshasa, don't be deceived if it looks like a million people are driving around with expired stickers. If it is blue, it is "current" regardless of the dates printed on it.

We are still searching for a home to rent and would appreciate prayers. We were talking wistfully the other day about what an amazing place we could get for the same amount of rent if we were searching in the mid-west U.S. Some things we used to take for granted in the properties we rented when we lived in the states are:

light fixtures
built to code
switches and outlets all work
water and electricity at least part of the day
no missing tiles or torn linoleum
closets
cabinets
no leaks in roof or plumbing
screens on the windows
toilets that work
hot water heaters
kitchen sink
door knobs (yes, we have viewed homes that were missing doorknobs)

Most of the homes we have seen so far have had very few of those items. It can be discouraging. We are definitely not looking for perfection, but hope for something that we can make feel like "home." Something cheerful and not gloomy. We have to leave this house in just a few weeks so we are starting to feel pressed for time.

A house we looked at this week that had lots of "issues." Most of the rooms had a lot of mold and water damage. They had a bucket under the kitchen sink to catch the leak and a dead rat was floating in the dirty water. Between the rat (the second one we found at this house), the droppings, and the mildew this kitchen smelled - interesting.



We are very, very grateful to have power today after going without for almost 72 hours. Yesterday the SNEL workers came to my gate ten minutes after finally getting my power back on and asked how it was. I told them that I had two phases (we are supposed to have three). They demanded $25 for "tape" to fix the third phase. After I paid them, they turned the power back off to "fix it." Four hours later the power came back on and we still had two phases. Sometime during the night it went off again and when it came back this morning we were down to one phase. A little while ago we bumped back up to two phases. Sooooo..... we are hoping that since we have to move anyway, maybe we can find a place that gets better electricity. The first thing I did when we got power was start laundry. The second of course, was to bake brownies!