Porch

My sister has been bugging me to put pictures of our new porch on the blog so here they are.  This is a busy day for posts so keep going down to see the other new posts from today.

This is the new addition to our little house which we greatly appreciate and enjoy.

 Grace does hold daily morning devotions with the compound workers here.  The box sitting on the table is actually hymnals and Bibles.

 Just throwing in some pictures of missionaries moving furniture to set up a house that was recently fixed.

Christmas at The local Church

Dec 25 Christmas was a combined service between the 2 local evangelical Churches.  The place was jam packed.  Could not even get out to take better pictures.  Always interesting to see all the windows filled with the faces of people trying to get in on the service.  It was loud and it was active, lot's of fun.  We did not stay for all of the approximate 4 hour service.

 

 Galmi Day School students and teachers singing a song.

 Leaving the service - outside the Church.

All the people are at the alley entrance that leads to the Church.  Lot's of venders and beggars.

Compound Staff Christmas

This year Grace did a Christmas meal for all of the compound workers including househelp, gardners and her guesthouse staff.  We had the little party in our porch and all together 29 people showed up for some singing and some food.  Food was rice with a meat and vegetable sauce.  Grace then gave them some cake and a bag with popcorn and peanuts to take home.

Dining room was set to dish out 29 plates of food.

Sara's catering bringing in the food on a motorcycle - how else.  At least she did not have the pot on her head.

 

 Sara and Severine dishing out the food and taking it out to the staff.

 

 They like the curtains in our porch because it keeps the wind down and is warmer.  As you can see they are actually quite bundled up.

 As they were leaving Grace handed out the bags of popcorn with peanuts at the bottom.

What a blessing it was to receive a whole bunch of messages via cell phone text to our email.  Our thanks to our home Church for arranging this.  We came home from Sunday evening service and found all these Christmas wishes texted to us.  This really meant a lot to us.

Thank you Southridge Community Church.

Wanted to pass on more pictures to you.

Here are 2 new short term missionaries getting into the mood of Christmas decorating.

Sara and Sani bought papa a new purple outfit for Christmas.

Sara does have a baby bump.

 

 We are doing pictures for some of our staff as a gift.
This is Ousmane, who is the compound gardener, and his family.

 

 This is Souley, who works with Grace at the guesthouse, and his family.

 

 This is Ibrahim, who is our gardener, and his family.

It was fun doing the pictures and then spending time with each family at our home.  All three are M families so it was a great joy to have this time with them.

Updates

Sara is doing much better.

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving Day.  There were about 70 people from the compound.

Yesterday we started the day by visiting a M friend of Sara who just had a baby.  It was a great opportunity to greet these folks and show that we care for them.  Below are some pictures.

This is the mother with her new baby.

Here the grand mother is holding the baby but does not seem to want to show a smile for the camera.

Grace loves holding babies.

 

 The mother and the rest of her children.

 

After the visit we went back to Sara's place.  Below are a few pictures of the compound Sani and Sara live in.

The picture below is the street in front of their home.

After this we went to see Sani at his new farm.  Sani actually had to come back and lead us through some winding country trails to get to his farm some 7 km away.  Once we stopped we had to walk a little ways to get to the actual farm below.

The young man below works for Sani.  Here he is working on irrigating the field.

 

 It is hard work putting in a crop. Below a young boy drinks some of the ground irrigation water. Not the most healthy choice, but then again they do what is necessary to survive.

This is the well irrigating the field.  The pump is down in the hole.  There is another hole with tubing attached going down to the water.  SDani indicated there was not a lot of water in the well.

 

 As we headed home we stopped and picked some cotton.  Cotton is sold in Galmi where it is processed and then sold to Galmi hospital as cotton swabs.  Galmi hospital helps the local community in a lot of ways.

 

 Below Grace is holding one of the staple crops of the area - Sorghum, the other staple is Millet.

 

Everyone basically lives in villages, like Galmi, and then travels to their farm by walking, riding a donkey, bike or, as Sani does below, by motorcycle.  Last year Sani had most of  his crop stolen during the night.  He has moved to a new location and will guard his crop more closely this year.  What a struggle.

Thank You

Saturday we travelled to Konni, which is about an hour from Galmi.  We went there to buy text books for the local public school.  Seems they have not been able to get some supplies so we thought we would be able to help.  Thanks to some very generous friends in Canada we had the funds necessary to purchase a complete set of text books for the four levels in the school.  We also bought some chaulk and some blackboard paint. 

What we were surprised at was the lack of books actually availablein the market. We did try a number of locations and although we could not attain all the books the one store would get the books and send them out to us.  We hope they will arrive by Tuesday.  We will take the books we have to the school early this week.

We rejoice in sharing the love of Christ by giving to those in need.  We also enjoy sharing the news that these gifts are because of the generosity of our friends and family in Canada.  People here really do appreciate the generosity of the gifts and effort.

Blessings to all.

View of the school buildings and yard.