Update 6/14/11

Check out the pictures in this album:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150217289568161.310779.673568160&l=b92ccbbc4c


Thursday- Shopping Day! We went to over 9 stores gathering supplies for the chicken projects that the missionaries are doing, supplies for the Mt Hagen Missionary Home, and Brandon and Becky’s personal food and supplies. The cost of living is very high here, especially for food. The produce is very inexpensive- you can get 8-10 carrots for one kena, which is about 40 cents in America. A cucumber is less than 20 cents, and fruit is also less than a dollar. But the actual food is very pricey- a bottle of juice is 10 US dollars, a box of cereal is also around 10 dollars, a bar of chocolate can sell for up to 90 kena, which is 40 dollars!! Chicken Breast is about 6 dollars a pound, even a jar of mayonnaise or pasta sauce is around 5 US dollars. Thursday was also the first day that I got internet, I take for granted being able to check my email any time I want. The internet is also very expensive here, and a lot of times you pay per MB that you upload. It was taking about 10-12 minutes to upload each page! Sometimes I have to remind myself I am in a different country, because it’s not as "rough" as I pictured, the food costing a lot and internet being slow is a small price to pay for having hot showers and toilet that flushes and a store right around the corner! There are many missionaries in this country that come over 5 hours to the Missionary Home to get supplies to last them over a month! Sometimes the 5 hour trip becomes an 8 hour or impossible due to the horrendous road conditions.
In the evening we played games with the Gades and Taylor families who were visiting here at the missions home.
Friday- This day was one of my highlights so far. I joined Brad and Deborah Wells to go for their first time to do Religious Instruction at an International school. They have done it at other schools, but not recently. It sure reminded me of CHOICE Kids Club a lot! Singing, lesson, personal time…a year ago I would have been so amazed that they were able to do all that inside the school, but praise the Lord we have been able to do the same thing in America! Next week I will possibly get a class of my own because there are 3 classes that have no instructor. After the school, I went out to the Wells’ house in the new van that just got donated to their church. It was a blessing to catch up with Deborah and remind her that we were at her wedding! J She was also talking to me a lot about foreign missions, and we had a great conversation between laundry, dishes, and other things. I also photographed all of the workers that are building the college, finishing the kitchen, and digging a very deep hole for a hot water tank. It has been raining a lot here, and I almost got caught in a downpour with my camera!
Saturday- A day of rest! We had a lot of preparations to do for Keren’s big birthday party that had gotten postponed from the week before because of sickness. Cupcakes, cake, veggies all cut up, soup for dinner the next day. I walked to the market and Best Buy (their grocery store, not electronics!) with Brandon. Best Buy was already closed, the business close very early on Saturdays. No 24 hour service here!
My medicine has not made much of a difference with me yet, even though I have almost completed 2 weeks of it. I was very sick on Saturday night, in a lot of pain from my stomach. L Bummer. I was up most of the night.
Sunday- I could understand a lot more Pidgin at church today. You kind of get used to the language, how it sounds, but I cannot really use any words in a sentence yet. Brad preached a great message on Traitors. In between services I saw Sandra, my deaf girl, again. She was very happy to see me, and remembered a lot of signs from last week. I taught her a bunch of new ones, she really liked counting with the numbers I showed her. She thought it was funny to sign good and bad as I acted each one out. After church was choir practice- we were singing My God Is A Rock. Deborah played the piano, and Brandon was leading and helping everyone figure out where to sing and making sure they understood what the song meant.
We had gotten another huge rain storm, so Keren’s party ended up being mostly inside. I was the "game director" because I lead games a lot at CHOICE and girls camp, so we played colored eggs, and doggy doggy, and a relay. The favorite game of all was pin the necklace on Keren. Becky had drawn a true-to-size picture of Keren and the kids and some adults had a lot of fun trying to be the closest necklace. We had about 15 kids there for the party.
After the party ended, we all stayed and fellowshipped with the Wells’ family for the rest of the evening. Brandon and Brad had a long conversation about leadership, which was fun to listen to. I had not seen the Wells’ girls previously because they had just gotten back from staying with their grandparents. I had fun getting to know them, they are very sweet. There are 5 of them- Emily, Johanna, Charity, Amy, and Jennifer, and then the two boys’ names are Marshall (the oldest) and Torrey.
Monday- I stayed at the house on Monday and helped Becky with the kids and cleaned up from the busy weekend. I played a couple games of Chutes and Ladders with Keren, but then it got boring because we kept sliding down the chutes. While the girls were napping, I read through a 2nd book since I have been here. It has been nice to have time to read, even though I am not really a big reader in the states, but I think because of the absence of internet and phone, you get creative with free time! When Brandon arrived home it started my "busy time." I had some stuff to type out for Brad Wells, I am going to be typing out an entire institute course for Brandon, and I also started teaching almost all of the Wells’ children piano on Monday evening. It is neat to see the Lord using my skills and talents to serve Him here, also. It shows me that no matter where you are, if you have a heart to serve, He will use you. As I was reading over the last week, I have been able to use my main interests for Him- photography, teaching, typing and secretarial stuff, sign language, singing, working with kids, running game time, even going in to a school just like we do in NY. I am even going to work with Torrey Wells to teach him how to train his 6 month old puppy. It’s like every aspect of my life in NY is being able to be used here on the foreign mission field. What a blessing!