SLC was GREAT!

We all had a lovely time at our Spiritual Life Conference.  I am assured anyone can see the pictures on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150138985398235.282877.609863234&l=81a826790b

It was a great time of teaching, fun, good food, fellowship, rest, reflection, and worship.  It is hard to describe how significant this sort of retreat is for missionaries in primitive living arrangements in isolated spots to get to fellowship with others of the same kind, and in a pampering environment.

EASTER

Easter was a special time of trying to reach out with the story of Easter to those who have not heard it and worshipping together with the few and scattered Christians in the greater Kaffrine area.  Good Friday service was held in Wolof in a nearby village and Easter worship was in French and Wolof here in town.  The 3 missionary families gathered together on Thursday to dye eggs together and then on Friday morning we all went to the Catholic school ground to have a grand egg hunt with the dyed eggs plus plastic ones filled with candy.  This also was a great success and we had a time.  Unfortunately, we were all having such a good time hunting for eggs, no one thought to take any pictures, so I don’t have any to share with you.

FRENCH

We have really enjoyed having Alexia here to teach the kids French in the mornings.  Thursdays she comes in the afternoon and has class and some fun additional activities.  So far they have made a cake for Carla’s birthday, colored pictures, and prepared a special presentation for the parents on Easter.  We all love Alexia and are sad that she left last week.

SCHOOL

We have tried to get some usual school done as well as some not so usual things!  We took advantage of Carla’s birthday to learn some computer skills to make birthday cards for her.  We also have been working on hands-on map making and city planning by making a town in the school room.  We found some great houses to make ( http://www.kobe-np.co.jp/sukusuku/dl.html ) and are thoughtfully planning our town.  Katie and Wheaton continue to work on homeschool – even when Wheaton isn’t feeling too well.  We have also started having a special day each week.  So far we have had Crazy Hair-do Day, Dress-up Day and Wear Primary Colors Day.

FUN STUFF

At Easter all three girls stayed one night with me so Corey and Katie could transport more folks to the worship services.  We had green eggs and purple pancakes for supper, along with as much silliness as you can pack into 24 hours.

I have been sewing a bit and completed a top for Emma’s pink fairy skirt, and to celebrate she had her hair curled.  I also finally finished the matching outfits for Wheaton and Katie that were Christmas gifts.

Emma and Molly have also decided they want to crochet, so we have gotten some yarn and they each have a chain of crocheted yarn yards long!  This week we will start on some simple projects to make.

Last week Corey and Katie went to Dakar for about 5 days leaving the girls and me home alone.  They went to pick up two new interns, Jacob and Scott, purchase a new generator and water heater along with other goodies we can only get in Dakar, as well as have a date or two in town.  There is NO where to go out with your sweetie in Kaffrine.

Please take some time to view the pictures of our activities this Month on the Pictures page!

LOOKING AHEAD

In addition to the two new interns coming in May, we will be saying goodbye to the three interns we have now.  Alexia returns to France in June, Silas returns to Switzerland and Josiah returns to the USA in July.

We have 2 more weeks of curriculum to finish and then we will be officially done with school till September.  However, we will still have some fun units in science, library science, the history of Senegal, sewing and piano lessons, reinforcing those addition and multiplication tables, and other fun and educational activities to keep the summer busy.

We are looking forward to visiting another missionary family who serve in southern Senegal below the Gambia.

We are also in the midst of the hottest and driest time right before the rainy season starts in July.  It is getting hotter, we are having dust storms, the humidity is rising, so it is a pretty uncomfortable time.

Through all this for the last month at least, I have had some trouble breathing, and lack energy.  Thankfully constant lotion and wearing shoes in this dusty place are keeping my skin from drying out.

The most exciting news is that Beth Drury will be coming to visit in June!  It will be so good to see her and show her all the “sites” in Senegal!

PLEASE PRAY FOR:

• Molly.  She made her first conscious decision to choose to follow Christ last week during our Bible reading.
• The adjustment of the two new interns.
• Praise for safe travel for Corey and Katie; that they had a good time of couple enrichment, successful purchase of new generator and water heater and other purchases.
• All our summer plans for travel, ours as well as Beth Drury coming
• Good finish, evaluation, and growth from the experience for the three interns who are leaving as well as safe travel for them all.
• Good rainy season so crops will grow and Corey’s farming projects would produce helpful results to benefit the farmers and open more opportunities for spreading the Gospel.
• Good end to school year and fun learning for summer
• Continued good health for me; complete healing for breathing problems

We are all wildly excited this week!  NO SCHOOL!  And we are traveling to the coast for our annual Spiritual Life Conference (SLC).  This is for all SIM Missionaries in Senegal.  A team from the USA is coming to provide the leadership.  We will leave Kaffrine Tuesday and return next week.

Please pray for safe travel for all and a deeply refreshing time of spiritual renewal at this conference as well as good fellowship with our team mates.

The week we get back, Alexia will arrive from Switzerland.  She will be here to teach all the children (and me!) French for an hour each morning for two months.  In the three missionary families, there are 6 children who will be involved.  She will also be tutoring Bennie, our Country Director, and the Scholarship children who attend local schools.  For information about the Scholarship Children see http://garrett.with.sim.org/links.html

Pray for our French classes and for Alexia’s adjustment to Senegal from Switzerland!

Thanks so much for your prayer and financial support!

We are sliding into the hot and dry season where the dust creeps in every nook and cranny; you clean and turn around to find a fresh layer of fine dirt all over the items just cleaned.  Temperatures are climbing and the sun beats down hotter.  I am told it will get much hotter, up to 115˚F (46˚C) so I am not looking forward to this season of weather.  We are very fortunate to have a cool and convenient home.  Corey and Katie have learned how to trap the cool night air in their house during the day, so temperatures stay 10 to 15 degrees cooler inside than it is outside.

The two other short termers here are really assisting the team to accomplish their tasks.  Both will be leaving in June or July and we all dread their departure.  Silas works with one Christian family helping their children study outside of school hours.  Josiah goes to the village with Corey and Katie and is building relationships with the young men in the village and hopes to be able to have an opportunity to share the Chronological Stories as well as model a Christian life in front of them.  These young men are also very lively and the girls love to play with Silas and Josiah when they come to the house.

Last week Silas went to the next town, Kaolack, to renew his and my visa for the next three months.  Imagine our surprise and joy when he came back with both renewed until December instead!  Such a blessing it is to not have to worry about this for 10 more months!  Thanks for your fervent and effectual prayers!

We have increasingly experienced more difficulties with our generator.  Corey spent a good part of today working on it as it continued to break down repeatedly.  His motorcycle has also had mechanical difficulties lately, so it seems like something is constantly in the repair shop.  Thankfully, my car just keeps running!

The new English-speaking Wolof tutor has been quite refreshing for me, and has done a great job teaching Josiah.  I have made slow progress and currently am not taking classes.  With my full-time work with the girls, my opportunities and necessity for speaking Wolof are quite limited and so I am taking a break from Wolof and thinking and praying about how to go forward.  We have a French teacher coming for two months to teach members of our team French and our girls will have lessons.  I will be joining them to see if any of the French I learned in high school is still there.  French could be quite useful here in Kaffrine as well as in Dakar.

Last weekend another SIMer, Susie, who is also single and close to my age, came from Thies to visit me.  The journey is about 3 ½ hours by car, and it took her 6 hours on public transportation to get here and longer to get back.  She was here for just about 24 hours.  We had a lovely time together getting to know one another and look forward to spending more time together in the future.

March 30-April 2 we will go to the coast to gather with all the other SIM Senegal missionaries for an annual Spiritual Life Conference.  Speakers are coming from a home church of one of the other missionaries and we are all looking forward to this time of fellowship and spiritual renewal.  Susie and I will be rooming together, so it will also be a bit of a break for me and the girls.

Meanwhile back at the daily schedule, Emma and Molly and I usually get a ride to the post office with Corey when he takes Wheaton to French school and walk home.  This gives us some exercise, and we can still start school at a fairly decent time.  We all enjoy doing this and have wild excitement when a package arrives!

We are enjoying our Bible studies.  The girls thrill me when we finish our reading of Acts for the day and they scream, “Don’t stop!  Read some more!!!”  We continue to learn the books of the Bible and their content.  Both Emma and Molly can identify a book when I read from it.  They also thoroughly enjoy Bible Drills.

Currently we are memorizing long passages from American history.  Emma is learning the preamble to the Declaration of Independence and Molly is learning the conclusion to Patrick Henry’s famous speech to the Virginia Legislature that ends with, “Give me Liberty, or give me death!”  They both know their script and we are now working on presentation and body language and gestures.  We plan to present them on March 22 to our team at our weekly meeting.

We have embarked on a month-long series of experiments with planting radishes, and our radishes are just not responding appropriately.  We must not have enough light in the house, or our seeds are not healthy, or something is making them sprout, grow very tall and then die.  We are still learning lots and the girls are interested and excited about what we are doing but it is disappointing to have our experiments fail because our plants die.

Overall, I can see in the girls discernable progress in ability to do their work, attitude toward their assignments, comfort level with me, and joy in learning.. (Even if Emma does still occasionally declare, “I HATE school!)

Be sure to go to the Pictures tab for more pictures of the last two months!

Prayer Points:

Please pray for a way through this coming hot season, with temperatures hitting 115˚F (46˚C).

Praise for a long renewal on my residence permit – through December!

Please pray for mechanical reliability for our generator and Corey’s motorcycle.

Pray for wisdom for the future of Wolof learning for me.

Praise for a good visit with my friend Susie who came for the weekend.

Pray for God’s blessing on our Spiritual Life Conference scheduled for all SIMers March 30 – April 2.

Pray too for continued progress with school; science projects; Bible learning, and character building for all of us.

We had such a lovely Christmas with Julie and Jeremy here!  Our Christmas was delayed one day since they only arrived in Kaffrine the afternoon of the 25^th, but we coped – and rather well!  They went out for a couple of days in the village with Corey and Katie and the girls, then a few days of all of us just hanging out here in Kaffrine, followed by two nights at a nice resort all together near the beach at Saly, south of Dakar.  We ended up with two days of sightseeing in Dakar.  It was a packed two weeks, but lots of fun with many fond memories of good times and lots of laughs.

All the work on getting my visa completed is done!  I now have…… well, as much of a residence visa as I will probably ever have.  I am registered till the middle of February, and Corey says it will be just a rubber stamp activity for an extension, which will probably have to be renewed every 3 to 6 months.  So, praises to our God and to you for your constant prayer support!

The girls have all gotten back into school after our vacation with Julie and Jeremy with sweet attitudes.  We had such a disjointed schedule last week that we just did some catch-up activities for school and we will start back in earnest tomorrow!  Please do continue to pray for their continued enthusiasm and attention to school lessons.  We have added a simple Bible History survey, and the girls love it!  We are surveying the content of each book of the Bible, memorizing the books of the Bible, doing some activities (from ECC!) to try to help make the information stick, and doing Bible Drills in which we race to see who can find a particular book first.

Another exciting event here is the addition of a used piano keyboard in our school room.  The girls are all keen to learn to play, and have been anxious to get in their practice time each day.  I know just a very little, and so have started them off to see how well they will follow through.  When they get past what I know, one of our teammates is a piano teacher and hopefully may take them on for lessons.  Maybe she will take me on as a student as well!

I had a Christmas break from Wolof learning, and today another prospective Wolof tutor came to the house.  This Senegalese man is an English teacher at the local high school with a master’s degree in English!  He is quite pleasant and we will start classes on Wednesday.  Please pray this tutor will work out, not only for me but for other interns coming in the next few months.

Upcoming, I see an unbroken schedule of school.  No holidays, trips to Dakar or special break days until April!  Corey is going to the Men’s Retreat at the end of January, but Katie and I will stay here and school will march onward.  However, we do have two birthdays in the next little while.

My health seems to be stabilizing with a mild head congestion and occasional cough.  This is pretty standard here with all the dust.  My energy level is pretty good but I have not had much opportunity for regular exercise with our irregular schedule and the fall I had in August that left me with a weak knee and sore ankle.  Those seem to be healing well now.  The post office where we get our mail is a few blocks from our house and I will begin walking there before school to check the mail, get some exercise and contribute to the good of the team.  The girls are welcome to join me, so it could very well turn into an educational experience as well as exercise!

A dear couple who were here in Kaffrine for 28 years but left last March came by on a visit today.  It was so good to get to visit with them, and to realize that I am now a settled member of this team.  I have also just recently had some Skype contact with some of you and have enjoyed reconnecting!  Please email me if you are interested in connecting that way and we can arrange a time to chat!  Also, be sure to look at the pictures (on the Pictures tab) I have posted of our Christmas and recent school activities.

Prayer Points:

Christmas Holiday: Praise that Julie and Jeremy were able to come!  Thanks that we all had such a lovely time together and they had a safe trip back home.

Residence Permit: Praise for the completion of the paperwork and processing of my residence papers.  Please do continue to pray for smooth renewals.

Wolof Lessons: Praise for this new tutor who speaks English!!!  Please pray that I will retain what he teaches and for time and opportunities to reinforce and practice what I learn.

Health Concerns: Praise that my health seems to have settled down.  Pray for continued health and the success of my morning walks.  Please also pray that my skin won’t become damaged from the extremely dry weather that is approaching.  I have dry skin to begin with so cracking and bleeding is a real threat.

Homeschooling: Please pray that I will be a godly example to the girls and we will continue to work together well.  Pray that the long stretch of continuous school will be appealing to the girls and will go quickly with much interest in what we are studying.