Blog

January, 2007

GETTING IT DONE

We had a rather 1st world encounter as we began the process of getting our driver's licenses for Malawi. But, before I get to the 1st world it was a 3rd world process at the start.

 
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January 17, 2007 | 0 Comments | View or add comments
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HOUSE #9

It is house #9, but it is OUR house in a sense.  The housing on campus is short and so the plan was for us to help ABC by raising both monthly support and funds for a new house that would be ours for a period.  We didn't end up doing that but using some of our house sale in the US for this house.

 
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January 17, 2007 | 0 Comments | View or add comments
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FACING THE FINANCIAL PICTURE

One of the missionaries on campus told me today of a man in the States that found out that he was a missionary in Malawi. "Oh, the cost of living is very cheap there," he said. My friend said, "If you buy pineapples and mangoes, then it is cheap." Vegetables that grow here are cheap. Crackers that are made in Blantyre are very cheap. Cookies, called biscuits here, are very cheap.

But, the tires for my van that I bought yesterday, are $115 per tire. It took me some time to find a place that had the right size of tires (a size that would be carried by anyone in the US). Finally, I found ONE (1) store with them...this in a city of nearly a 1,000,000 people!
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January 11, 2007 | 0 Comments | View or add comments
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BOKO...BOKO...

We had fascinating wildlife encounters while at the lake this past week.  We had decided to go to the lake on Christmas afternoon and be there in a free beach house for 5 days.  It was a wonderful place and it was good for us to go somewhere different for part of Christmas, helping to get our mind off of what and whom we were missing.  We arrived in the evening of Christmas and soon after arrival Shea was standing in just the right place and a bat flew into his head!  Bonked him good - he is just fine - but, the bat on the other hand, was lying on the ground for quite awhile!  We had tons of bats enjoying the billions of insects flying around the lights at the house.  It was fun to just sit out and watch them and duck every now and then.

The second encounter was a bit more thrilling.  On Thursday the kids and a couple of the Academy teachers were out in the lake.  It is very shallow so they were quite a ways out.  A Malawian woman came running down the beach yelling in Chichewa.  I was on the shore and finally figured out she was yelling about a hippo that had been around a bit during the week.  I yelled at the kids to come in to shore.  As they were moving as fast as they could, the hippo stuck his head out of the water maybe 20 feet from them.  Hippos and water buffalo are supposedly the biggest killers in Africa so all of us were a bit shaky after that.  We were thanking God for sending this woman to help!  And we thanked her extensively as well.
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January 2, 2007 | 0 Comments | View or add comments
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