the riverbed last sunday

Arold took this video on the way to church Sunday. He sais he was 45 min late to his Sunday school cllass because of the road/riverbed. Looks scary to me!

Family Picture

Thanks Deb for the picture!

Prayerful Tuesday

Sorry this is a day late, but yesterday afternoon I had to make a critical choice. Isaac went to sleep and my options were A) write the blog post I just opened, B) make something to eat, or C) take a shower. Food won that round... kind of. I got to make lunch, but it took a while longer before I could eat it!

Anyway, here's what we're praying about this week.

• The IN/CA team is wrapping up their week in Haiti today. The California group is going home to discuss projects they'd like to get involved with here at MTM, and the Indiana group is going to Dumay today. Praise God for the work they've done this week (mini clinic, abstinence teaching in the high school, food distribution, sandal distribution, etc). Pray for both groups as they travel home tomorrow.
• Hurricane Sandy was worse than we expected. We had three days of heavy rains and intense wind. Beth said it was one of the worst storms simply because it lingered so long. We're thankful the sun is back out this week, but there were homes damaged by the storm here on the mountain, so I know the damage in the city and lower lying areas was bad. 
• All the rain from Sandy really messed with the riverbed. (Arold took a video I'll try to share later this week.) We're thankful for God's protection as the team (and students) crossed the riverbed this weekend for clinic and church. Pray for continued safety as the students and villagers brave the racing waters this week.
• We're still waiting to hear from the Embassy. I called yesterday and didn't get anyone helpful. Hopefully today is a different story.
• Arold's Sunday school class seems to be going well. Keep praying for the musicians to have genuine hearts of worship.
• I was able to Skype with one of Arold's computer classes. I can't tell you how exciting it was to talke to my students. I miss them. Praise God for technology!

Livestream Video of Church

A couple Sundays ago some cool people from Florida live streamed the church service from Gramothe. It was awesome for me to be able to "be" at church while sitting in my house. I loved seeing my students and worshiping with my church family! Here's a video of the singing time. You can watch the rest of the service on the Livestream website here.

Prayerful Monday

Things to pray about this week:

• October has bbeen a busy month for us. We've had two medical teams, a miscellaneous team that handed out school supplies and distributed food in Dumay, and later this week another team comes in that will do a mini-clinic, abstinence training for the high school kids, and a leadership training of some sort. I think there were 4 whole days that someone was not staying in the guest house. Pray for God to be glorified in all of this, and also lift up those of us who are here full time. 
• On Saturday I'm teaching some of my students how to crochet a project. We're hoping they can then sell it and make some much needed money for their families. Pray that I can communicate clearly with them and that this new skill would be a blessing in their lives.
• Praise the Lord for the good appointment we had at the Embassy last week. Now we're waiting to hear from them regarding Arold's visa application. Pray that they would call with good news soon!
• Pray for God to prepare the hearts of our high school students for the message about abstinence that they will hear next week. 
• Praise God for the construction work that's being done in Dumay.

Dumay

I don't often talk about Dumay on this here blog because, well, I don't generally go there. And for me, out of sight is out of mind. For those of you who don't know, Dumay is a village about 2 hours from Gramothe where MTM has an elementary school. I think the plan was eventually to develop more there, but it just hasn't happened.

Earlier this year a group from Nebraska partnered with MTM to jump start the ministry in Dumay. They have already started building a wall around the property and a work group is scheduled to be here later this year. It's exciting to hear about what is being planned there!

This month a few people from Nebraska were here and they did a dry food distribution in Dumay. The story is that as they approached the village, Willem stopped and told two people what they were planning to do. Those people ran to tell the neighbors and this is what ensued. Sorry you can only see half of the video; I can't figure out how to resize it. (Also worth mentioning is the fact that everyone reported the distribution went very smoothly. People only ran to get in line, they didn't cause any problems once they were in line.)

snuggles

Isaac and  Daddy like to snuggle at night before bed.