November 29, 2010

Monday evening. Almost time for sleep. A very relaxing time of day.

This morning started out by sleeping till 8am. I have been waking up a lot during the night with this silly cough, but it seems to be getting better. Crazy to come to tropical weather and have a cold for a week!

Today, Mary and I worked on our various projects around the house. I did some correspondence with Mike (VOH) and John (FBCR) and found out some good news about some missions support. I talked with Nana Ruth back home in Rogers and she is fixing me up with some money from my donation account to wire down here. I really appreciate having her take care of my 'business' stuff for me. She did this all through my time serving in NYC. It's such a help.

Today was sunny and beautiful. I stripped my bed and washed sheets and towels. The cleaning ladies were here and did the bathroom and floors in my room. It is much nicer now. The floors need to be swept and mopped often with all the sand and dirt that come into the open house. The terra cotta floors make it easier to keep clean.

I spent a few hours working on the information for the classes we hope to start tomorrow at the Sewer Ponds. Mary and I will work together teaching and German will be our translator. I think we will have fun. I'm looking forward to spending many days at the Sewer Ponds and another area that we are targeting for ministry in the next few weeks. It will be good for VOH to have a presence there continually.

Lunch today was whatever we happened to be hungry for. I had some tuna out of the can and a salad. It was good. Then a banana and some watermelon. I think Mary had the canalone chicken stuff and some melon. For dinner, we baked chicken breasts, potatoes, carrots and onions. It was soooo tasty! We have left overs for the next few days. The oven just has settings "1, 2, 3, 4", so I brought down an oven thermometer and we could tell how hot it was. It seemed to do the trick! We may try our hand at baking next!

We went for a walk along the beach before sunset. Saturnino (our guard) was home for the afternoon, so we locked up all the doors and gates and took off walking the beach. The sand was actually cool enough to walk without shoes. Usually the sand is so hot it blisters your feet. We enjoyed walking the length of the beach. We ran into a lady who is working with another missionary we know here (John Speigle). We noticed her "Go Hogs" t-shirt and stopped to ask where she was from. She was surprised that we knew the ministry she was here with and the Speigles. Small world. Then we saw John on the beach and had a chat. It was nice. We went back to the house and realized that the backdoor lock didn't open with the key. The lock has been kind of messed up lately. Anyway, we had to walk back to the beach and down a few houses to an alley kind of thing. Then we walked back to the front of the house and sat on the curb until Saturnino was due to arrive. We called German to discuss tomorrow's schedule and by the time we finished talking, Saturnino rode up on his bike. He looked at us kind of funny and we explained that we had locked ourselves out. He thought that was funny. We got all settled back inside and had dinner.

This evening we worked more on the classes for tomorrow. Mary got on facebook to do some catching up with her family. I'm glad that she can do that. I know she misses them when she's here.

Time for me to get to sleep. It's been a good day. But I'm ready to get out and get some work done at the Sewer Ponds tomorrow. We'll see how everything goes. Many of the people don't read or write and many are not Christians. Also, many will have their children milling around during the class. With just the 2 of us, it's hard to have something going on for everyone at the same time. We'll see how God has things planned for tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the day when we can start having some weekly Bible studies at each little village. How awesome!

Thank You Lord for all the blessings You pass my way. I love You.