We need rain!! Man! Coming home late last night I marveled at the amount of dust that has settled on all the plants and trees. Memories of cold winters back in Ohio flashed thru my memory. You know... the memories of trees heavy laidened with snow. Leaves dripping with beautiful twinkling snowflakes...a kind of "Currier and Ives," warm fuzzy kinda memory. That all flashed back at me. Unfortunately the memory was quickly invaded by the taste and smell of dirt blowing thru the a/c and it become quite evident that not only was it not the lovely Ohio winter memories that I was basking in but it was two months of accumulated dust and cow manure! :-) The dry season is heavy upon us. No kidding..the dust is sooooo heavy that in the glow of the headlights it could have almost passed for snow. We need rain! Thankfully we have a well on our compound so we water regularly enough to keep the dust down inside our walls. But, the moment you venture out...it's like something out of movie...clouds of dust. We have to be sure to drive slowly as often times cattle or children can appear out of the cloud of dust. There is one place where like snow...the dust is about 6 inches deep. We have to use our windshield wipers to actually swipe the dust off to see. The rains aren't far away but we sure could use some now.

Things are coming along with the house. Now that we are pretty much to the design phase we can see daily progress. Paint has gone up on the walls and that is so exciting. We've had to make some minor changes along the way to make up for some errors made in the bldg process. For example, the pipe leading to the toilet in the 1/2 bath was put in 4 in away from the wall. That means there is pretty good sized gap between the wall and the toilet tank. We discussed several options and opted for the cheapest. We're going to brick the wall behind the toilet for the purpose of "bridging the gap" but also adding some design texture. The welder making my railing was having some difficulty with the design so we had to change styles, etc. We should be getting our windows put in this week. We had to wait for them to get the aluminum in and get them made. We should also be getting our kitchen cupboards put in. Those cost more than I had hoped. It's really stretching our budget but I must trust that the Lord knows all that. It just gets a bit daunting when you know all that has to be done with the amount that is present in the bank. Our gracious Father knows and is always there to provide for His children's needs. Blessed be His Name!

We have a welder working on door handles, screen doors, light fixtures, stair railing. We have a carpenter working on cabinets and some maasai lady friends beading me more lights. The first ones they made for over my coffee bar turned out so nice I employed them to make lights for the girls' room as well. Todd and I have been all over town several times looking for light fixtures. What I wouldn't give for a Lowe's! :-) We're finding some good things. Isn't God great that way? It literally takes us all day to hit all the "hole in the wall" mom and pop shops but it has paid off. We still haven't found all the light fixtures we need but we're at least finding some. The challenge is not only finding all the little shops on the side streets but it's finding safe places to park our car too. We've already had our side mirrors stollen, not to mention the toyota logos off the side of our car. Friends have had their tire lug nuts taken as well as spare tires, etc. With the economy being so difficult here the thievery has increased. People are starting to feel desperate and resigning to all kinds of evil to get what they want.

We thank God for His protection and watchful care over us. Thank you for your prayers indeed! Please remember the Tanzanians as you pray. Prices only keep rising as the TZ shilling keeps falling. Many of them are desperate to just feed their families let alone school their children (education is not free here) and take care of extended family. I understand things in America are nothing short of desperate either. As I was praying for the economic situation in America the other day the Lord reminded me of Psalm 75, "Tho the earth shakes and trembles, I am the ONE who holds the pillars firm." Isn't that the truth?! Even if it seems the world as we know and trust is falling apart, God IS in control! Nothing is beyond the reach of His mighty right hand! Nothing escapes His watchful eye. We can run into HIm and be saved for He truly is our Strong Tower! Our Precious, Gentle Shepherd keeps watch over His sheep and nothing goes in or out without His knowing or HIs consent. We CAN trust in Him even when the world would tell us not to. This is why we "live in the world but are not of it." He is the Sovereign Lord over ALL!

A mighty Fortress is our God! A Bullwark never failing! Our helper inthe midst of strife!!! And in that note I will sign off....leaning on the Everlasting Arms! Blessings abundant to you all!

Rocks, Bees, Dirt...It's All Good!

Wow... we're getting closer and closer to the fun part of building...the design part. Up until now it's been really hard for me to gauge the progress as it was really hard to tell. That is...for me at least. :-) Our friend Brandt, who is in charge of it all sees the progress. I'm amazed at builders. They have incredible patience. Brandt has been coming in every day for months doing all the behind the scenes, unappreciated things that most people don't even notice..that is until something's not functioning right. For example, he helped put in all the plumbing in the walls. Things are done so differently here as I'm sure you can imagine. Because the threat of termites...and I mean by the billions, houses are made of concrete block. The house structure is built and then channels are chiseled out of the concrete block to put in the plumbing pipes. After that, they are tested and if all goes well then they are plastered over. We've had to chisel pipes out a couple times now and replaster for one reason or another. The same process is done for putting in wiring for electricity. It's quite a painstaking process; one that has deepened my appreciation for builders and their patience level. :-)
All the prep work is finally done. We are now to the painting stage. We still haven't figured out a solution to our floor crisis. Not one that we can afford anyway. Tile is so expensive. It would be the easiest option but would cost us a few thousand dollars that we don't have. We'll keep thinking and praying about it while we do the painting.
I'm having doors made this week. Again...things are done differently here and there is no such thing as "quality assurance." As a result, I can't just order 9 standard doors. There is no such thing as "standard." I have to order 9 doors of various sizes depending on which carpenter made my door frame and what kind of mood he was in that day. All 9 doors are different sizes..off by a centimeter or two. Go figure! My wrought iron railing is being made as well as screen doors and the security grill for the top of our stairs. Because theft and crime are real fears here, we have to have burglar bars on all our windows as well as a security gate at the top of our stairs protecting us while we sleep. A local welder is making all that from some pictures and dimensions I gave him. He has made my light fixtures this way. He has done a great job. There is one store here in town that offers you already made...fantastic looking wrought iron fixtures. However, they also cost 4x what I'm paying. It takes twice as long to do what I'm doing but I'd rather bless these local tradesmen plus empower them with new ideas. That's what we're here to do...to bless the local people. Sometimes I get frustrated with all the discussions and corrections regarding the things I want made but in the end I know it's worth it. Tanzanians are amazingly resourceful and talented people. Having said that...what I wouldn't do for a Lowe's store tho! :-)
So far we've designed and ordered a railing for our porch, stairwell, burglar bars and security doors, door latches and handles, etc. I have carpenters making bathroom cabinets, kitchen cupboards and a bar stools. One simple bathroom sink cupboard at that fancy store..already made... would cost me over $1000. However, by going thru a local tradesman I'm getting the same thing for 1/3 that cost plus I'm blessing his business with money and new ideas. Again...it takes 2-3x as long but well worth it in the end.
One really exciting thing is our "rock wall" is up. I purchased some flat rock from down the road, hired a local mason and had rock put up on the wall to my kitchen to add some design and texture to the wall. That really excited me as that's design and I could see instant progress. Yeah...not to mention that it looks fantastic. I took pics and will put them on when Todd shows me how to do that! :-) I'm not savy that way...not yet!
That same mason helped me put brick on my bedroom wall. We had some brick just laying around here with no purpose. So, we cut them in 1/2 lengthwise to thin them out and have put them on the wall..again for decor and texture. It turned out fabulous. Got pictures of that too...
The main challenge this week was not so much local tradesmen issues or finances, or even the lack of quality control. No.....the main challenge this week was bees. Not just any bees either....real Killer Bees! These bees have been known to kill a dog and almost take out one of our cows. I had at one point thot about keeping the bees to harvest their honey but they were just getting out of control. We had 3 hives in the house we're in right now as well as 4 more in our house we're building. The only way to get them out was to kill them. Sorry to any bee defenders that might be reading this but we had no choice. Not here anyway. Poor Brandt couldn't even put in my upstairs tub without being bothered by them. I'm glad to say that they are mostly gone and all is well.I say mostly b/c the very next day I found some of them back. don't know why..will talk to the specialist tomorrow.
One more exciting progress at the house is grass! Right now is dry season and the dirt/dust is well...out of control. I mean it is bad! Everywhere you go you see what we call, "dust devils." Those are like tornados of dust. It's amazing... and dirty! There is no such thing as "rolling out" grass like carpets.No, two guys have literally worked their tails off for two weeks now digging up the old weeds, leveling off the ground and transplanting little spurts of grass. It looks like hair transplants. It's painstaking, I"m telling you! These guys have been so joyful and patient..working so hard. We are blessed to have them. They are just two local guys from the surrounding villages who are simply thankful to have work. We're truly thankful and blessed for their hard work.
Well.. that should do it for now. Brandt is still saying our date for moving in is November...even with the floor mess up. He's a little concerned as he has to make a missions trip to the Congo for 2 weeks in Oct. That will cut it close. We need to be making some decisions on what to do with the floor. We cherish any prayers and wisdom and ideas with that.
I'll leave this for now and wish everyone a blessed Lord's Day. May we, along with the Psalmist of old declare from our hearts," Better is one day in the courts of our Lord than 1000 anywhere else!" Amen.
Be blessed!

Back to the Drawing Board

Well... it's back to the drawing board....again! Two weeks of hard work, not to mention the money involved and well....it's all for NOT. We worked so hard to keep the prices down on building our house. In doing so we had such a great idea. Actually, it still is a good idea. Because it's just way too expensive to use tile to hide the concrete floors, we tried to save money and just use the concrete but stain it. I researched the internet to learn how to do it. It involves quite a bit of chemicals that aren't available here. Upon further research I happened to find home made "recipes" using local chemicals we can find right here at the pharmacies and agriculture stores. Our goal was to go for a rustic, worn leather look with a rust tone to it. The final product was wonderful. We loved the old map kind of look to it. The problem came when we put the varnish down. The concrete looked dry to the eye and to the feel. However, to our horror, what upon finishing looked absolutely incredible and inspiring, turned out to be a disaster just two days later. There must have been trapped water down inside the concrete from the staining process. Tho we thot it was thoroughly dry it wasn't. The water rose to the top, being trapped by the varnish, caused white cloudish blotches and bubbles all over the place. The varnish literally pulled off like old nail polish. I couldn't believe it. Soooooooooo disappointing. Now we have to entirely re-think and do it over. So, our effort to save money has turned out to be a waste. I'm so bummed about that. Our only reasonable option is to sand down the varnish and paint the concrete. The cost of chopping up the concrete to lay new concrete or tile is just too much money. I go this week to look at paint color. I'm sure it will be fine I just have to shift my thots that way.

On the up-swing... the good news is we should be in by November. Our hope is to have Thanksgiving in our "own" house..our new house. We are very blessed to have our teammates house to use while they furlough. They come back in Jan so it's essential we finish before then. I don't think they want 5 roommates crowding them in. :-)

So, the weekend is here..... no worrying about building costs, materials, etc. Ahhhhh....just a little r and r. It feels so good. Now we're sitting as a family to watch a movie and just chill on this wonderful, restful Saturday. Don't wanna miss out on all the cuddling that awaits me. So, until next time.....

Ramblings of an early morning

Aaahhh... the peace of a quiet morning. I woke up at 4:30 this morning... wide awake. My mind immediately starting racing with all the decisions that needed to be made for the day. Wes begins his all day Science course he's taking this semester. That's exciting. We have a certified Science teacher who is offering a fantastic science and design tech course. It goes from 8-12 every thurs. This means I have to do some creative altering to his home school curriculum but it will be worth it. After that we rush to his violin lesson. Today will be the first one. So exciting. Arusha is really booming with opportunities. I don't feel like my kids lack for anything, truly! That is such a blessing. I do ache a bit for Savannah. There really isn't much for her in the way of extra curr activities. She does take flute lessons and that is a huge blessing and great outlet for her. But, in the way of sports or drama, etc...not much. There really aren't even that many friends her age. She has two good friends. One is on furlough right now and the other is in school at the international school here in town.

There are a lot of things being offered at the gym for the home school community. Yesterday Wes participated in a fantastic swimming program. He's not the greatest of swimmers but that's what this is for. It teaches technique and competitive swimming. I think it'll be really good for him. The best part is, it's free for members. Yeah! Soon they will be offering taekwondo and soccer. Meg will be thrilled. There is so much here for Wes and Meg's age but again, for Savannah... need to be praying more about that. Yesterday Savannah was even looking into RVA. That is a missionary boarding school in Nairobi. It's only 5 hours away but I never thot that as an option for our family. I always felt our kids should be at home with us. However, if she feels this would offer her more of a well rounded education with the blessing of friendships and activities...I told her I totally bless her in it and encouraged us all to look into it and be prayerfuly discerning if it is the best move. We won't consider it till her jr year so that is still 2 years away. That only makes sense since we furlough her sophmore year and we've already started her freshman year now. Sigh..... I hate the thot of it but must do what is best. I just NEVER want my children to feel like our work was ever more important than they are. We just need to pray about it and let the Lord guide us.

Todd comes home today. He and some college mates climbed Kili this past week. It'll be good to have him home. The Lord was so gracious to us while he was away these past 7 days. All went well with no major catastrophies. We had a few minor water pump leakage issues but again, nothing major. The challenge was just juggling home school, building a new house and all the decisions that need made as well as running this house we're temporarily living in. God was soooooooo gracious. The kids all slept in my room with me. So, aside from lack of good sleep :-) all really went well.

I've used the time while Todd was away to research some new approaches to our training. One is in the are of agriculture. So many of our rural church planters need to be self supporting. That's the nature of what we do. We train them to go back to their homes and disciple their own people. ONe of the ways they can provide for themselves is thru raising their own crops. This only makes sense to us. But, for the Maasai who are herdsmen and the Hadzabe who are hunters... this means an entire paradigm shift. Plus, many of them live in areas where there isn't much rain. But, if they are to live the abundant life they are called to, they must learn to embrace a "kingdom culture" mindset.

When a person comes to know Christ and is completely transformed by the "renewing of his mind.." he is set free to embrace all kinds of new and exciting things that the Spirit of God has for him. The Holy Spirit opens up the "eyes of his heart" and he is able to see for the first time God's amazing plan for his life. I believe one of these exciting things is to see God's provision in nature for him. Instead of worrying about how to get food, they rise up to embrace God's design for them...to have dominion over the earth. We are God's children... "THe earth is the Lord's...the fullness there of.. and the peopel who dwell in it." From creation we have been given charge over the things of earth. It all belongs to the Lord and I believe it is to be a blessing to us as His children. So, to cultivate reaps a great blessing to us.

I've recently learned of a fantastic course called, Farming God's Way. It is designed to bring about 3x the normal harvest as it simply reproduces the concepts taught in scripture concerning God, His creation and His example of how to care for His creation. I encourage any farmers out there to google it and share your thots with us. What I love about it is it not only teaches the pragmatics of farming but it also teaches God's Word and His promises along with each lesson. It ties in so well with our COmmunity Health Evangelism courses. Our hope is to train ourselves in this mode of farming to then train our students in it. Our intent is that while they are here training in church planting, they will take part in learning and implementing these farming skills hands on, eating of it's harvest while learning valuable skills to take back with them upon graduation. This will not only equip them with self sustaining principles but will also help to cut down on some of our food costs for the training. I'm also looking into raising chickens for the same purposes. Please pray for us. We need wisdom to know how to best equip and train these people. The challenge is they all come from such diverse backgrounds and tribes. We need all spiritual wisdom and discernment to recognize and address individual needs as well as needs as a whole.

Bummmer.... my alarm has gone off. Time to start my day... I'm off and running.

Till another time.....

It's been a while!

After several emails from friends and family saying they aren't getting my email updates, I decided it was time to perhaps be an official blogger? Funny tho b/c back in Jan in my first blog I mentioned that I am now an official blogger. Ha! That's a hoot since I haven't been back much since. I will try much better now.
Back in May my computer crashed and unfortunately could not be restored. All my info, data, fun stuff, pics, etc was lost. That included all my mailing list. I was devistated. It happened 4 days before a ladies retreat that I was co-hosting. I had spent weeks putting together some multi-media productions and before I could burn them on to cd's...BAM! Out went the computer. I cried for several days...so upset that I didn't think to back up my system and so frustrated that nothing could be retrieved. I will say tho that we got the computer up and running again. The only unfortunate thing is that it has a mind of its own now and I can't predict what it's going to do. I'm just thankful it's still running again. I have learned my lesson tho. If it's important.. back it up!

So much has been going on since I last shared. Where do I start? We have moved out to the mission center. THat is exciting! We love living in country life. We wake up to the screeches of our neighbor's donkey. We drink fresh milk from our cows. I even make my own butter and sour cream. How fun is that?! One of my favorite things has been getting out in the villages for walks and getting to know the people. Most of them are Warush tribe which is very similar to the Maasai. They all speak Swahili which is nice. We've been blessed to know that our presence here (CMF) has been a welcomed one. It's exciting to see how God wants to use us right here in our own back yard, so to speak, as well as out in the rural, unreached areas.
We gradutated another round of students back in June. They are now out in their perspective places of calling. We look forward to touching base with many of them real soon to see how things are going since graduating from our course. We had several tribes represented which is always interesting and exciting. I think we learn just as much from them as they do from us. :-)
A couple weeks ago our family took part in a traveling immunization clinic out amongst our maasai church plants. It was an eye opening experience, for sure! My heart was broken to see so many sick children. It's all I can do not to cry. We hosted the clinic in 2 different places. The first one was at Matale B where Peter and Solomon live with their families. I was asked to teach on HIV/AIDS awareness. I was shocked to find that even though they all knew people with this disease they had absolutely no idea where it came from or how to avoid getting it. It was mind boggling to me! We take so much for granted in the west, don't we? I mean, we all grow up hearing about HIV, how it's spread, avoided, etc. Tho people are still greatly affected by this dreadful disease in the US, we still have hope and access to powerful meds to combat it. In Africa, however... a whole different story. These people literally knew nothing. I was completely at the mercy of our precious Holy Spirit to know where to begin. He truly is the One that guides us into all truths. I didn't know where to start but He did. I simply trusted Him to anoint my lips with His words to show His heart for those precious, lost people. It was a profound moment for me. The enemy did not want those people to hear the good news. The distractions and cacaphony (sp?) were truly beyond normal. It was demonic. There was one point where my interpreter was lieterally yelling to translate what I said into Kimaasai. The distractions escalated to the point that a holy anger erupted from inside me. Out loud I just denounced the power of the enemy over those people and declared in the powerful Name of Jesus that "the True Light has come" and the enemy wasn't going to stop those people from hearing the good news.. not that day.. praise His name!
Our second clinic was literally a clearing in the bush. The drive just to get there was a challege in and of itself. The people are so thankful for our presence there that they have been working for months by hand to take out the brush to make a "road" for us to come. Now when I say road I'm simply meaning a clearing... we still have to navigate over large rocks, over brush and thru dry river beds. But it was worth it. When we got to the village of Laseret I was overcome with the compassion of God for those people. Many of the children didn't have clothes. They simply wore a cloth much like a cape. What gripped me most was the amount of eye infections. It was epidemic. I couldn't believe it. Several of them were so severe that any chance of sight being restored was at the mercy of our Healing God! Lorivi, our tanzanian clinician shared a lesson on hygeine and eye care.The people were so grateful as they simply didn't know all the things that we think are common sense.
Maasai are herdsmen so cows are an integral part of their lives. In fact, their lives revolve around their cows. All around their bomas is cow dung...everywhere. We were invited to one man's boma for tea. We literally sat on stumps in a "yard" of cow dung...I mean everywhere. The flies were like something out of a horror movie. You can understand then why I wasn't shocked to find all the children in that boma with eye infections. My heart broke. They didn't understand that doing something so simple as cleaning up the cow dung from around your home would cut down on illnesses being spread by infectious flies. Imagine! They didn't know that a simple washing of your hands and face will help in the prevention of disease. It was all new to them. They were soooo grateful to receive our lessons. Once again, they had no basis of understanding on what AIDS was or how it was transmitted. This time tho there were no distractions. In fact, there were times you could have heard a pin drop. It was amazing. I was humbled. I left heavy hearted but hopeful that the Light of Jesus has come to the village and the darkness could not contain it! We will be doing further immunization trips to more villages in that area come Oct. I'll keep you posted!
For now we work on finishing building our house. Our plan is to be in by November, Lord willing! Todd will be working on enrichment programs for our graduates out in the field while working to prepare for our next round of students. I continue to home school the kids and juggle all the other things that come our way. Right now most of those "things" are dealing with the various people helping to build our house. Whew... what I wouldn't do for a Lowe's right now! :-)
Well... this should do it for now. I'll try and be better at blogging. Please do email us when you get a chance and fill us in on your lives.
Blessings!