Day 4

Wow – when I type Day 4 as the title of this post I think to myself, “you mean we’ve only been here 4 days?”  But then I put it in perspective 2 days are missing due to travel.  I always expect too much too fast!!! It’s an urgency issue.  I want everything done right now.  My mom used to say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Today we woke up early  -  7am ( that would be 1 am according to our internal clocks) and headed to Kumokwanne.  The village is about 30 minutes from where we are staying.  When we arrived the villagers were gathered awaiting our arrival.  We introduced ourselves to all of the kids and tried to learn some names.  We sang a few songs and they taught us a couple.  The kids were very  intrigued with Josh and Joe’s Ben Ten light up tennis shoes.  They huddled around  them to see the shoes in action.  My children were very friendly.  Parker even took the lead to teach them a few new songs.  He did the silly shark song and the fruit song  (I didn’t even know both of these.)  The village kids loved it.  We met the Chief of the village and went into the building that used for their court.  There were probably 200 people gathered inside.  There was a small service – a few songs, a couple of speakers, a prayer and Scott did a brief lesson.  He spoke about God knowing our needs.  He explained temporary needs verse eternal needs and those needs only being  met by Jesus.  He did a wonderful job! At the end of the service the clothes were distributed to the village kids.  They were very excited and grateful.  We look forward to returning to the village to see all of the kids again.

We were treated to lunch today at a pizza place – that’s the closest thing to American food we have had.  It was very delicious – even the little boys loved it.

The afternoon was spent back at the potential rental home negotiating the lease.  Please pray for our discernment in this situation.  The lease price that we thought was already agreed on was already pushing our budget limit for housing and the lessor asked to increase the rent today.  We told him we would pray about what we needed to do and get back with him.  We don’t have any peace about this sudden change in rent.  We will go tomorrow and look at another possible rental and try to make a more informed decision after that.  Please Pray that we would know exactly how to handle this situation.

We have been so blessed to be hosted by a wonderful couple  - April and Jeff Sukup – they are missionaries here from Tampa FL.  They have been so accommodating and very gracious hosts.  We returned home from lease negotiations to a wonderful dinner of Lasagna, fresh baked bread and homemade chocolate cake.  When I say homemade I mean from scratch.  I keep telling my kids that April is spoiling them – they are eating like Kings!!  The boys love living here with the 2 dogs.  I’m not sure who is most tired at the end of the day -  Josh and Joe or the dogs J 

Tomorrow we head to church for the 8am and 10am services to be introduced to the congregation.  Thank for all of your prayers.

Love, Tonya