I woke up this morning around 6:30 am as usual to make coffee and start breakfast for the kids. Oren joined me in the kitchen just before 7:00 am, and just as he sat down I heard a loud rumble and the sensation that a large truck just smashed into our house, followed by a sensation of waviness under my feet. It was a small earthquake (4.8 on the richter scale) according to information on the internet. There was no damage but I did not know that there were earthquakes around here in central Africa. (this was begun on Sunday now it is Monday.)
Although it was not a particularly interesting week I wanted to note a few of the high and low lights. I feel it is almost worth mentioning as an event, weeks in which neither child nor any of our staff was sick from Monday through Friday. That is extremely rare.
I also find myself in the odd position of feeling that some of what I did this week is too 'classified' to put on a public blog. I did take some action in helping the wife of our friend pursue justice in the case I mentioned last week. But I do not feel I can reveal any of the specifics. I will simply say that the situation this week is still largely unchanged, so please continue to pray that this person may receive justice and at least be freed from prison to begin with, as soon as possible.
This work took some time this week and a lot of emotional energy.
Rebecca interjecting: Midway through the week, we went out on a limb and attended a modern dance concert. There may be two of these per year, produced by the French Cultural Center -- we'd never gone before to any of the interesting concerts hosted there because of our logistical difficulties as the parents of young kids. It was a last minute decision, and we felt pretty bold taking the kids to this arts event. Luckily, David fell asleep on the way, so we only had one child to actively worry about. Although Oren was reluctant to go at first, he was quite enthralled by the little theater and asked if we could come to dance concerts every day (this was before the show started). We were impressed too! The theater had nice seating, sound and lights, even air conditioning and a wooden stage floor. So if any of you dancers want to come produce your work here, there's a venue! The two solos proved to be quite inaccessible to a five year old, though Oren tried valiantly to understand what was going on and asked lots of whispered questions about why the woman dancer was hissing, writhing and crawling on the floor pulling a table around by a rope around her neck. The second piece had scary music, so Oren fell asleep and we just enjoyed being in a theater, taking in some of the arts for the first time in a long time. And, we were home by 8:30!
I think the highlight of the week would have to be Saturday. We decided, again somewhat last minute, to have a contradance. We are now getting pretty adept at sending out text message invitations from our cell phone and we had a very good turn out of people this week. It is interesting to see the cross-section of communites that come together in this kind of event. We had many of our missionary friends from small group, Bible studies, and Church, as well as many friends from the NGO community who we know primarily from Oren's school.
The pot-luck was really fabulous this time and I think most everyone enjoyed the smorgasborg. The whole evening would have been perfect if Oren hadn't, as the last guests were leaving--(Zachee and Tim), decided to show-off a 'move'. He stood in front of a chair, and having learned to do a flip on the trampoline, decided to try to flip himself from the floor onto his back on the seat of the chair. (A big living room chair.) He missed. That is, he basically did a dive from standing on the floor directly onto his head without putting out his hands. I heard the thud all the way from the kitchen eventhough he was on the front porch. Rebecca screamed when she saw him do it.
I rushed out to see him on the floor screaming and picked him up. I ran through my mind the plan we would need to have. What doctor, hospital, emergency air-lift service, etc. would we need to start contacting, and how were we to know how serious it was. As he calmed down I saw there was no blood, he was not disoriented, and it became apparent that it was not too serious as he was in fact on the ground when he did dive. I had a typically parental mixed emotion of relief that he was ok and anger at what appeared to be stupidity on his part for doing something so obviously risky. I do hope whatever he learns from this will stick.
Sunday was a fairly quiet day. We went to church then came home and did things around the house like cut David's hair. Our Bible study group sadly continues to diminish as we said a temporary good-bye to Tim and Jeanette, the only other couple in our group. They will be on a 2 month furlough which unfortunately will end about a day after we go on our homeleave for 3 months. So we will not be seeing them for a while.
I am not sure what we will do about our small group again. This is not the first time we have had such a group dissipate as a result of people leaving. We are hoping to find some new people in the next couple of weeks.
Bonus Photo: I said last week I would put in a picture of the ballet barres we had constructed and the mirrors I bought for the ballet class I am teaching. It feels like a real ballet studio :-)
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