Tina and I woke up both thinking the same thing (she said it out loud first): “another day on the mission field...”
Tina is doing better – almost rid of the cold or used to the air here, one or the other. Lou and Carter seem to get up when we do which virtually eliminates the 1+ hour of quiet time we used to get. Carter can find something to do quietly, but Lou is pretty demanding. He wants food right away, yet is slowly getting better about his demands.
An unfortunate aspect of his health: Tina and I (Tina more so because she is with him 99% of the day) is getting tired of smelling either like poop and diapers or, if that’s not it, than smelling his breath which always smells of vomit. It makes it hard to hold him – especially when he likes to stare at us and smile (which does make it better). We have a paper from a doctor at the mission to go visit another doctor and are told to plan the whole day for it. It is first come, first served. It won’t be the highlight of the week. We have to do it before we leave for camp for two weeks on Saturday.
Camp is looking to be an adventure for sure. Tina has been asked to help prepare some activities and she is working through how to handle any additional responsibility on top of the wife, mother and house necessities. We really don’t want her to have anything else to do at this point: getting used to the way of doing things, taking care of Lou, and adjusting should be her top priorities. She may be able to get more involved later. I am going to be keeping a close watch on this, so she doesn’t get overwhelmed.
Back to topic of the camp: There is an outhouse. It is going to be real hot (which is not something that we are real used to because the temperature up here in the mountains is very comfortable). The beds are not too great. There are two diesel generators – one that works. The other is completely apart and not all the parts are there supposedly. We’ll be bringing that back for me to work on here at the Mission. Part of me would rather stay here and help out because so many missionaries are going to the camp (6 of us and 8 children – which leaves the director and his wife). But, it will be good to go and help out and see what it is like. They have great training planned and fun activities including swimming in the ocean. They told us to be prepared to help remove sea urchin stingers…
Kayla and Carter have been having a great time with the kids here – almost too great. There are days where we don’t see them much because they are out playing or upstairs playing at their house (which has more toys – we don’t have much and aren’t looking to add to what we have). They play with a couple kittens that live up there, play hide and seek, tag, capture the flag, and things like that. They are told to play only where the grounds are marked private and not where the public can go, but I don’t know that they are following that – we need to have constant discussions with them. We have heard too many stories here that are concerning regarding kidnapping. Also, some of the guards are not Navy Seal quality. Some of the night guards will apparently sometimes find places to sleep during their job. When the dogs are barking like crazy, the guards should be coming to check it out, but they are not. They need to be reminded of their responsibility once in a while. Here is a picture of the kids enjoying the airport (they really enjoyed the plane ride):
a picture of Tina and Kayla having to go potty (they had to wake this big guy up):
The church service is good, but it is hard to praise God when you are trying to read a french psalm book. The message is in creole, so we don't get much out of it. It is real nice to be others and here and see how they do church service. I'll try to get a picture next week.
We are probably going to download our St. Paul home church's messages, but it will take over an hour to download it. I'll be attempting to get yesterday's this week. I do have some older messages on my iPod to listen to so we can get some Bible learning in on Sundays. Also, on Sunday evenings we go to the directors house for bible study. We have been going over revelations and did chapter 11 yesterday.
Len and I replaced a recepticle to the water pump at the church after service Sunday. It was totally fried and melted. No job is too big or too small... :-)
Today, Tina will be working on finding out how we get to the doctor (which is an hour away in Port-au-Prince). I will be working on replacing four shocks and eight bushings on a Mitsubishi Canter (ours isn't nearly this new and nice):
A number of people have asked about sending things to us. There is another missionary family from the Mission that has been gone on furlough for a few weeks/months and will arrive back in 2-3 weeks. They are the ones that will set up an account for us with a service that brings us mail (MFI). If you wanted to mail something to us, you would mail it to a Florida address and then they will make sure it gets to us. We pay for the shipping from Port-au-Prince to here which amounts to about US$1.50 per pound. We'll have this information near the middle of August.
There are more things that I was going to write, but I have to go eat now. I'll give more family updates later.
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