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.

Christmas blessings to you all!  Katie, Emma, Molly and I are at home waiting for Corey and Wheaton to return from Dakar bringing our best and biggest Christmas gift this year: my daughter, Julie, and her husband, Jeremy!  We will have our gift exchange tomorrow.  We plan to pack a lot into that time: 3 days in the village, some time in Kaffrine, and a little vacation time all together as a family at a hotel near Dakar.  All this packed into two weeks!

December has flown by.  We had a week’s trip to Dakar for SIM team meetings and Christmas Party!  Corey and I took a trip to the American Embassy to get the police clearance needed for my residence visa, and were in and out in 15 minutes!  We need one more paper that Corey needs to print out and we will have everything that we THINK we need to get my permit.

The girls did an excellent job in doing school on Saturday and we completed our entire schedule in good time.  Emma and Molly have completed 16 weeks of school.  Wheaton, because she attends the French school in the mornings, is continuing school through the holidays and is on week 12.  She has read her first book and is well on her way to being a reader!

I have resumed Wolof lessons with a local lady named Aunt Angel.  She was the girls’ teacher at the French school the first few years they attended there and a well loved friend of the family.  The hurdle I have to get over is learning Wolof – in French!  Aunt Angel speaks Wolof and French and I speak English…  So I get long and detailed definitions and descriptions of vocabulary and grammar in Wolof or French, and when that fails, we use the language of “Charade” and act it out.  With little and short encounters with Wolof people, it is difficult to remember the things I am learning.

Pictures will follow shortly!

I pray Christmas Blessings on you and hope that you will experience the joy and grace that Christmas announces.

Prayer Points:

Christmas Holiday: Praise that Julie and Jeremy were able to come!  Please pray that they will be well rested and that our time together will be a good time of renewing relationships and growing closer together as a family.

Residence Permit: Praise for the ease in getting the police check at the American Embassy.  Please do continue to be in prayer for the completion of the paperwork and processing of my residence visa.

Wolof Lessons: Praise for Aunt Angel as a teacher.  Pray that I will retain what I am learning.  Also pray for time and opportunities to reinforce and practice what I learn.

Health Concerns: Please continue to pray for my breathing and congestion to be healthy and settled.

Homeschooling: We will have an extended break from regular school until Julie and Jeremy leave around January 8.  Please pray for our continued good progress when we resume school in January.

Typical……… Routine……….. Usual………..

All these are terms you just can’t apply to life in Kaffrine!  No two weeks ever end up the same, but there is a basic structure that we ‘plan’ our lives around.  Tuesday afternoons, we have Team Prayer Meeting.  There are two other families and another short-termer (a young man about 20 years old) with SIM in Kaffrine.  We have an opportunity for worship IN ENGLISH followed by a time of prayer for the Wolof.  Then each person shares his or her concerns and is specifically prayed for.  We have refreshments together and a time of fellowship as well.  There are 7 children from the three families.  They participate in the worship but play outside during the prayer time.  The Garrett girls recite the Bible passages they memorize in school at these meetings.  On Thursday afternoons the long-term members of the SIM team meet for a ministry/business meeting.  This is without children, so the girls and I stay home and do school work or fun things and sometimes we make supper.  On Friday afternoon Corey, Katie and the girls all head out to the village to spend the weekend in their huts within the compound of their host.  They return late Monday in time for dinner and bed.  Sometimes, one of the girls will stay in Kaffrine with me for a weekend treat.  We get to spend some special together time, work on some ‘catch-up’ or ‘get ahead’ school work, and do some special projects.  Last weekend Molly and I made matching pants that look like skirts.  This weekend Emma will stay and catch-up on some work and I think make a pair of fancy pants for her, too.  Of course, these weekends always include a movie and popcorn, special rare treats!  Weekends I spend alone include extended quiet time and worship, more unpacking and settling, sorting and arranging, sleeping, advance school planning, and a little pamper Janie time!

A ‘typical’ school day starts at 8:00 with Bible reading, scheduled prayer for different American Indian tribes (part of the curriculum), practicing singing a biblical passage, and prayer for our day and any concerns the girls have.  Next we do Math drills, Science, and US History.  Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we also have Art, Poetry, or Orchestra Appreciation, one per day.  By this time, it is snack time, and the girls come back to their individual seat work in Math, Language Arts, Handwriting, Creative Writing, Reading and Spelling.  I then do their individual lessons in Reading, Spelling, Creative Writing and answer questions they have about any of their work.  We also have Literature we read aloud together.  In a perfect world, this is all completed by lunch time.  In Kaffrine, it is many times completed just before bed time.  Tuesdays, we try extra hard to get done with our school work early, for the girls do not like to take their work with them when we see the other kids on the team!

After lunch on Wednesday and Thursday, Wheaton is ready to do her Kindergarten work.  If I do not finish morning school, Wheaton doesn’t get home school.  However, when Katie has time, she will do school with Wheaton.  When they go out to the village, the girls either take school work for Monday, or do it ahead in Kaffrine so they do not need to do school in the village.  Molly is skillful in completing her school assignments so she can go work in the fields with the villagers, weeding or harvesting.  Katie regularly takes 2 days of school to do with Wheaton, as there is so little time for it in Kaffrine.  The girls are currently doing an extra day of school on Saturdays to lengthen their Christmas holiday.

All these carefully laid plans are also constantly interrupted by illness, other commitments, or necessary trips to Dakar or the like.  Katie and Corey’s September trip to Thailand for a SIM Conference is a good example of one kind of interruption.  Last weekend, Katie and I attended an annual Missionary Women’s Retreat near Dakar and Corey stayed home with the girls – SuperDad!!!

This is also a week of interruptions as the people are currently celebrating Eid (called Tabaski in Senegal).

Be sure to take a few minutes to see the pictures on the home page for recent antics!

Prayer Points:

Residence Permit: Praise for favor in the eyes of the officials when Katie and I went by the police office in Kaolack last week to extend my temporary permit to stay here.  We still need a police background check, but they graciously extended my original one-month visa for three more months.  Please pray we will be able to complete this necessary police background check before the current visa expires.

Senegal Missionary Women’s Retreat: Praise for a wonderful time of refreshment in many different ways, new friends made, and other relationships strengthened.

Health Concerns: The rainy season here in Senegal is over, and so the area is drying up.  This means the dust is increasing, so every where is covered with dust and dirt. I am allergic to dust, so this irritates my breathing.  I am already back on all the asthma medicine I had in Abu Dhabi, but still have a cough and chest congestion. So far, all members of the family have been sick at one time or another, except me (if I don’t count the chest congestion). Please pray that I will be able to adjust to this dusty place, my breathing will be stress-free without congestion and I will continue strong and healthy.

Homeschooling Issues: The work with homeschooling is going well with Emma (8 years old, 3rd grade) and Molly (7, 2nd grade) and we have started our 12th week of school.  Wheaton (5) is just starting week 8 of Kindergarten.  Please pray that school will continue to progress well with Emma and Molly and that I will be able to do more with Wheaton.  Pray also that I will be a faithful and godly example for their overall development.

Our trip to Dakar turned out to be much longer – and more productive than we had originally thought.  We planned to be in Dakar for 4 or 5 days and ended up being there for two weeks!  But what a lot we accomplished while we were there!

The SIM Team Council meetings went well and lots was accomplished.  The girls and I also were able to get a lot of school done, even thought we brought school for 4 days and ended up doing two weeks of school.

Wheaton’s passport needed to be renewed and that was accomplished smoothly.  A trip that usually takes all morning was completed in two hours.

Corey and Katie and the girls went to the Wolof Youth Camp held for believing and seeking youth in the Kaffrine area and had 65 youth attend.  Visit http://garrett.with.sim.org/prayer for more about the camp.

I was able to order a new pair of glasses.  They had to be sent to France to be made, so we left Dakar without them, but I have received them now.  Thankfully, just at the right time since the super glue holding the others gave way and I ended up with the old ones taped together till the new ones arrived.

Two of the girls were able to get the 1^st and 2^nd in a series of rabies prevention shots.  Katie, Emma and I visited the dentist and got our teeth cleaned – and NO cavities for anyone!  I was also able to get some of the medicines I take on a regular basis.  We had been told they were not available in Senegal, so finding this pharmacy in Dakar that carries them was a real blessing.

My car was worked on by the mechanic and all the check engine lights go off and it starts up with ease AND I got new shock absorbers installed.  It rides like a new car now!

My shipment from Abu Dhabi was reported in the dock, but wasn’t delivered to the guest house until 3 days before we actually returned to Kaffrine!  Corey hired a truck that brought all my boxes to Kaffrine.  I have unpacked most of them and discovered some things I wanted discarded were included, and some things I needed were not.  So I am figuring out how to manage with the parts I do have!  Overall, I have most of what I wanted and needed and need to find a place for everything.

My leg is well on the way to recovery, and I can tell it is improving in strength every day.

I have been in Senegal for three whole months!  It has gone so fast, but now we need to have the paperwork in place for my residence permit, and we are missing some documentation that is required.  Oct. 21st: I have a one month extension so I can get the police report from Abu Dhabi.

We have a few weeks ahead of us that should follow a regular schedule until mid November.  Katie and I will go to the English-Speaking Missionary Women’s Retreat in Dakar, November 12-14.  We are looking forward to seeing friends from other missions who live and minister in different places around Senegal and having a spiritually refreshing experience together.

Check out new photos on the Pictures tab!

Praises:

• Thanks for all the things accomplished in Dakar: SIM Council; Wolof Camp; Wheaton’s passport; car repaired; dentist visit; glasses ordered; and my boxes delivered.
• Safe travel to and from Dakar, and safe navigation for me driving in Dakar.

Prayer Requests:

• Timely completion of unpacking – that it won’t drag on and I will quickly be able to discern what to keep and what to discard.
• Acquiring the paperwork needed for my resident’s permit and getting everything processed in a timely fashion.
• Protection for my health.  Rainy season is over so dust is increasing.
• School schedule will settle down and I will be able to get a whole day of school done with all three girls on a regular basis.