Too Long

It’s been too long since I (Mary) last posted. It has been a crazy busy month! With multiple visits to the hospital, surprise visitors landing on our door for three days, a convalescing teenager who’s spending a week with us at present, sleepovers, baptism services, preaching, midterms, our school banda finally getting finished, helping out with special reading times in the primary school, and Kevin’s 7th birthday (tomorrow) we have been a bit occupied.

Yep, Kevin turns 7 tomorrow, but he doesn’t want a party. Instead, he had a friend over last Friday to spend the night and that was just enough for him. They ran around like wild monkeys, watched cartoons, iced cupcakes and stayed up late. Tomorrow morning I’ll make dutch pancakes for him for breakfast, yum yum. Oh, he also lost both of his front teeth this past month.

I’ve been to the hospital many times lately as one of our dear girls in David Family, who has an abnormal bone growth, needed a biopsy. We won’t find out results for another week at least, and for this week she is staying with us so that I can change her dressings and keep on top of her pain and antibiotic medicine schedule.

Two weeks ago a young man arrived at our door unannounced. He was interested in studying at the vocational school and had traveled from Sudan! He stayed with us while he spent a few days getting acquainted with what is available to him here. It was a very pleasant time, though “not on the schedule.” Often life-the way it plays out, is not according to “our” ideal schedule anyway, so it’s best to grin, ENJOY it, and praise God for His timing!

Since early this year a number of our children and church members attended classes on baptism. The class culminated with them getting baptized a few weeks ago--it was an exciting Sunday, especially because four of our girls were part of the celebration!! Geoff and three other church leaders performed the baptisms in our local dam.

And finally we are in our school banda!!!! We put our finishing touches on the paint two weekends ago and moved in!!! It is so helpful to be out of the dining room and out of the highly trafficked area of the house!!!! Our house sits on a main path and we frequently had people stopping by to greet while we were trying to “do school”. Now that we are at the rear part of the compound, out of sight, we are getting so much more accomplished in a day!!!!! The kids love it, too, because we have room for each of them to have their books on their own shelves.

Because we moved out to the banda, I left all the reading books we’ve finished in the house library. The David Family kids have been voracious readers lately and they love all the new selections! As they come and choose books, often their siblings come to play the piano or guitar.


I love that they feel welcomed into our home!!!

I wanted to include more pictures here . . . of the baptism Sunday, Kevin's little "one-friend" birthday party, and some miscellaneous photos, but my patience ran out! I truthfully spent more than four hours trying to upload pictures and finally gave up!!!!!

As I end for now, I want to ask that you would please pray for our girl who is awaiting the news from the biopsy. Please pray that whatever is there is benign. Pray for her strength and our wisdom as we guide her through her healing. Thanks so much!