Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Turning of the Season

written December 12, 2010

Well, as usual, a lot has happened since we last posted on the blog –– each day with its share of challenges and blessings. Thru it all, God is good!

Two Sundays ago Kel went with Augustine (an officer at the hospital here) to look at a piece of property at Delbia, a village about 18 km South of us. There is a small group of church members there –– really nice people –– and they need to put up a building in which to worship. This will be the first of the more than 30 pre-fabricated gauge-metal ““One-Day Churches”” we have to erect here in Chad. (It takes a team of 4 people one day to erect the galvanized sheet metal structure and sheet the roof for one of these. The congregation is responsible for putting up the walls, windows and doors.) Kel walked the property with the delegation and they decided on a suitable location and orientation of the building. A prayer was offered while on the property for God to bless the outreach of this congregation in its village. The designated area has now been cleared and we are getting a team ready to erect the structure.

Work on the steel-framed airplane hangar is moving along. The Fabricator (based in the capital) needs to make a final delivery of material and we can wind up the remainder of the frame, then get it roofed. There have been several challenges and Kel has made some necessary modifications to the framing.

Gary has been away on business for several days. He left, feeling like a bug was getting hold of him - sinusitis and bronchitis has hit all of us here on the mission at more or less the same time. The native children are coughing and have runny noses, so we know where we got it. Josie and Gary seem to be mid-stream as far as getting over it goes. Wendy & little one are almost over it. Kel seems to be nearing the end, but coughing at night breaks up our night’’s rest.

Josie has been to the market several times with Wendy. It’’s good to have someone to go with who knows what price ranges should be, so we don’’t get ripped off.

The birdlife here in Bere is incredible. We have long-tailed glossy starlings in our compound (an 80 metre square compound with 2m high wall on 3 sides and fence in front, complete with guard dog, who keeps undesirables out –– she’’s really a cool hound!), Burchell’’s Coucal, swallows, hawks, ring-necked doves that make the coolest call, a pair of fork-tailed rollers, with the coolest iridescent blue wings, and we’’ve heard a screech owl at night

A week ago 2 of our student missionary girls were badly burned when they opened a pressure cooker that wasn’’t totally de-pressurized. Wendy, a nurse, helped dress the burns. They went home to the States a week earlier than they had planned, in order to recover.

Also, a week ago, we were smelling a bad odour in the piped water to our buildings. Kel got up a ladder and discovered a dead bat in the water tank. Needless to say, he scrubbed the entire tank out and we added several bottles of bleach to the newly filled tank –– now the problem has disappeared. We still filter our drinking water, using some of the world’’s best water filters.

Two weekends ago we noticed a hot wind move thru this area. There were high wind clouds that day. Since then, it has been cooler at night, especially after midnight –– we need to sleep with a blanket on our beds now. This is our winter season. Daytime temps are still hot, but nothing like when we arrived in late October.

For the past few days Josie & Wendy have been painting Jonathan & Melody’’s cottage, to get it ready for the newly-married couple. Jonathan (a pilot, who has been here before) & Melody arrive on Thursday. The octagonal, thatch-roofed cottage has rough-plastered walls, which drink paint, so the ladies will have to apply 3 coats of enamel paint to cover properly. Kel wanted to play a practical joke on them, and move a set of bunk beds into the cottage, but it was too much trouble. Still, it would have been fun to see their faces, if the joke could have been pulled off. Jonathan himself is a jokester –– we hear.

It’’s the time of the year for bush fires –– the veld is very dry, and on Monday a week ago, there was quite a big bush fire near us, moving south and away from us. Gary is thinking of moving the plane off the airstrip and closer to the incomplete hangar, because of fire hazard along the airstrip. He has burned the short grass around the hangar and along the taxiway to the hangar, and it will be safer to park the plane there.

It looks like we are moving closer to getting our own Internet. This is going to be such a blessing. We took over the cellphone (with internet capabilities) from one of the student missionaries going back to the USA –– but, the bad news is that the drivers this person downloaded to Kel’’s thumb drive carried with them 6 viruses, which infected our laptop immediately. So now we’’ve cleaned off the viruses –– no damage done, but one or more files on the drivers have been corrupted, because, try as we may, we can’’t get an Internet connection. Solution: Jonathan is bringing with him a good set of drivers to load on our laptop, then we’’ll be up and running (hopefully), with better contact with y’’all.

We trust you are all in good health and we wish you God’’s blessings in your lives and in your day-to-day plans.

We miss you all. Thanks for your prayers, interest and support.

Till next time,

Kel & Josie