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.

Wedding Pictures

Recently A'I, who works for Grace, had a daughter get married.  She asked Grace to make a 5 layer wedding cake.  This is very difficult because of the extreme heat and the effects on the icing.  Grace did a lot of tests to come up with a durable icing.

The first picture is Grace with A'I.  The second is the ladies putting the cake together.  Ignore the date on the pictures, I guess I made a slight error - it should be 2012.