A Few Updates

Simon Guillebaud and Tim Van Aarde after church on Sunday.  Simon is in Burundi this week and preached at PTI on Sunday.  



This is the week of reckoning for us with regard to work.  All of last year's final reports and next year's program plans are due into our database and replicated to MCC headquarters by tomorrow evening.  We are fairly well on top of this, but we do have to work hard still the next two days, so I will make this entry a short one.

Being at home all last week meant we were able to be in our normal routine of swimming in the morning.  There were no illnesses either so the kids were in school as well.  So since there was not much news in terms of weekly activities, I thought I would update those who read regularly on some past topics:

1) ROAD WORK:  I have disciplined myself to not add weekly diatribes about the way the work is being done, or the speed, etc.  But I am happy to say that there is now light at the end of the tunnel.  You might remember that it was last summer when we came back from vacation in July to find our bridge into our driveway was destroyed to begin the project of redoing ditches and putting cobblestones on all the roads in our quartier.  My complaint was that the systematic way everything was done one phase at a time, and not broken into smaller more manageable chunks.  In fact our bridge was destroyed at least 4 months before any work actually got to our road.  Anyway it has been about 8 months now and they have finally finished our ditches and replaced our bridge.  AND this past week they cobblestoned our road.

I watched the cobblestoning and it is amazing how fast it goes.  They grade the road, then put a ton of sand on it, then bring in lots of cobblestones and embed them in the sand.  Our entire road was done in one day (which adds another layer of annoyance that they made our road nearly impassable for 9 months because of the fact that they did so much at one time.)  But anyway, I think I will say it was worth it by the end of this week when all the roads in our quartier will be fairly level stone and not deep river beds in the rainy season.  There should also be considerably less dust in the dry season.  I am including a picture of the men doing the cobblestoning looking across from our gate toward our neighbors, then another shot of the finished road and our new bridge over the gutter.

2) BOOK DRIVE:  You might remember last month I posted a blog about the work of Rebecca's mom to help MCC pack a half container of books to send to our partners who do education work out here.  I have heard now that the container will leave port in the US around the 18th of Feb with an astounding 20,000 books!! All donations from people like you.  Rebecca and I are a bit daunted about the distribution process once they arrive, but as we have been letting our partners in on the results of the drive, we have received ecstatic responses.  Our partner UCEDD, who runs the Hope School is need of a library building at the school now, something we hope to help them attract a donor for now that they are receiving the books they need.

We are considering posting a one year volunteer position out here as a librarian to help our various partners organize their collections.  If that is something that would interest you, please feel free to let us know.

3) HOME DECORATING:  I started painting the house just before Christmas and after the living, dining rooms and main hallway I have taken a break.  But last week we hired a tailor to come spend a week at our house and make slip covers for all of the couches and chairs.  This will be to keep dust off in the dry season, but it also allowed us to make a color coordinated living room.  We used some 'gitenge' fabric from Tanzania and a solid beige and covered two couches and four chairs as well as cushions.  The fabric cost about $100 but to have a tailor come and work here for a full week only cost about $30.  We had him mend all of the curtains in our living and dining rooms as well.

4) ICECREAM:  This is a special note for in honor of our SALTers last year.  A real soft-serve icecream parlor opened in Bujumbura just down the road from our office.  It offers icecram cones for about 80 cents and tastes convincingly like Dairy Queen icecream (without the variety of Sundaes).  Between this and the very good Indian Food Restaurants we have here, I feel guilty saying that I work as a missionary.  (It is like living in the lap of luxury now!)  --for those of you who don't know, when we moved here over 2 and a half years ago, ice cream was only available in expensive import stores for about $10 per pint (and that was not Hagen Dasz).

5) UTILITIES AND INTERNET:  Generally electricity is much better these days and power failures are the exception and not the rule.  We do not even have what used to be the normal power cut from 10pm to 6am anymore.  Water is still not very consistent at our house and it is often off in the middle of the day, but we do have a 500 liter tower that fills when the water is running so we are rarely aware of the times when the water is cut.

Internet seems great to me.  We can download about a megabyte in a minute 20 seconds.  But it is fast enough to skype with video both directions.  I have also found that I can stream many low bandwidth radio stations available on my itunes.

6) LANGUAGE STUDY:  Rebecca and I are not studying at this time although we use French all the time and I use Kirundi in at least a few situation each week.  Oren continues to make snails pace progress in French, but still does very well in school.  David is learning french in his creche and if I say the name of any animal in French he immediately knows the English translation.  One thing Oren excels at is drawing.  He also really likes to make puzzles out of his drawings by cutting them up.  He gives them to us adults as gifts.  Truthfully, they are very challenging to put back together.

7) PUPPIES:  All four are growing fast and strong, and in fact this week is past the 7 week mark so they are now ready to be passed on to their new owners.  All are spoken for at this time.  I wish I had video footage of David playing with them.  He really gets down on all fours and behaves exactly like one of them.

I am going to stop here and go back to relieve Rebecca who is watching David.  He had a fever last night and we administered a home malaria test.  (I usually get the job of lancing the finger).  It was negative but he does have a throat infection which we are now treating.

We did not have much of a romantic Valentines Day today, but we did have a very nice weekend with an opportunity to go out to a dinner with other adults only on Saturday night.

Sunday we went to church and we were delighted to see our dear friend Simon Guillebaud, who had lived here 12 years with his family and left last year.  He is now in South Carolina working to support the work of some very good Evangelical ministries here including our church PTI and our partner Harvest for Christ.  I have posted a link to his books and video before, but here it is again.  More than Conquerors