Outings
During the kids school break I had planned a whole bunch of fun outings. I was really looking forward to doing a lot of stuff with the kids. But unfortunately I was quite sick during the kids break. So we only got to do a few of the planned outings. Here are a couple pictures from the ones we were able to do!
Dakar Zoo
Its costs the kids 15 cents each to get in! But I think they should raise the prices so they can actually feed their animals!
Hann Parc
There is a new park in town. Its super awesome. Its about $2 for 30 min of fun! We tried it out with our friends the McMartins.
Big Changes – Newsletter
This week we mailed out a very important newsletter to our friends and family regarding our future. Even if you do not regularly receive our newsletters, we encourage you to take the time to download our newsletter found below and read it. We have also included a letter addressed to you, our supporters, from our NTM leadership here in Senegal.
Thank you for all the love, prayer and support that we have received during our time in West Africa as Debra has struggled with various health problems.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
Mom! Can we do a project?!?!
My computer is up and running again! Thank the Lord! And thanks to Norm! I have many many fun things to post about! So hopefully over the next week I can catch up. I really want to post about our week and a half school break and all the fun things we did. So for now I will start with the fun (not so professional) crafts we did. I tend to be a bit more of a perfectionist. But I found that when doing crafts with the kids I would want to make sure all the colors matched, went well together, was symmetrical… etc. And over the years I realized that my kids want to show their creativity in different ways than me and its so much more gratifying to see a not so perfect craft done the way the kids want them done! =)
So here are some pictures of the kids creations! Mom holds the glue gun and the kids do the rest! Enjoy!
We did a few other crafts… mostly painting and coloring. But I didn’t end up with pictures of those. We did one that Canaan really liked. We opened up a whole bunch of different tea bags used the tea to “draw” with. Kinda of like I did as a kid with glitter. This was the yummiest smelling craft to date! =) I hope if you have kids you take the time to do some fun crafts with them. Its the greatest! Do you have any fun, low cost, low supply craft ideas? If so please feel free to comment and share! I am always looking for fun crafts to do with the boys.
Sick computer. Sick mommy!
So sorry for not updating lately. My computer crashed a week or so ago. I have no been able to get pictures from my camera and also I have been very sick. A very nice pastor is flying into Dakar today and he picked up a new hard drive for me. So hopefully in the next couple of days my computer will be up and running again! Praise God!
We have been keeping busy. The kids are on school break for both a Catholic holiday and a Muslim holiday. So they have a week and a half off of school. Normally this would be awesome. I had so many wonderful plans of great things to do with the kids. But my health has NOT allowed it. I have been very sick, sore body, migraines and all sorts of stuff like that. So its been a struggle to look after them during the break and look after myself.
Hopefully I will be able to post some pictures of the things we have been able to do. Like going to the park and making crafts. Norm is getting off work early so that he can take us swimming. He knows how hard it has been for me to cancel all the plans I had for the break, so today we are going swimming. I hope! I have been in a lot of pain today and really fighting a migraine. But hopefully a little sun, sunglasses, pool and laughter will help me feel better. Even if its not physically feeling better it will be good medicine to the soul!
Thanks for your prayers and friendship. We look forward to updating you all more in the near future.
Rainy Season vs Dry Season
The rainy season is coming to a close. We had a surprise small rain last night. I wouldn’t be surprised if its the last of the season. We are truly enjoying the benefits of rainy season. Everything has turned green again, there is less dust and plenty of flowers on all the random bushes.
We really miss the turning of the seasons back at home… feeling that cool fall air, sipping on hot tea or peppermint mochas, hot soup on the stove, fall leaves.
But we are learning to enjoy our new seasons. We have rainy season and dry season. We live in Sub Saharan Africa so we get some very interesting weather and we certainly get a lot of dust and wind storms, and some pretty spectacular rain storms.
Here are some cool pictures that show the difference between rainy season and dry season.
Our grape vine: rainy season
Our grape vine: dry season
A view from the lighthouse: rainy season
A view from the lighthouse: dry season
Another view from the lighthouse: rainy season
Another view from the lighthouse: dry season
Some other random shots:
Bushes by our front door have to be trimmed on a regular basis during rainy season… so that we can get in!
Our neighbors back balcony has grape vines growing as a shade but the wind/rain storms knocked a lot of them down. Its starting to look a bit like a jungle over there!
A beautiful view of the ocean by the clinic Norm stayed in when he had his kidney stones. I can only imagine how beautiful it is right now at the end of rainy season. This was just about a month before rainy season started.
October is probably our hottest month of the year. High temps, high humidity. But its the most beautiful month of the year. So if you are willing to brave the weather… you HAVE to see the beauty of Dakar in October! Come on over and visit us next October.
Emmaus’ black eye
Poor little guy came home from school today with a nasty black eye. They didn’t really tell me what happened when he was dropped off from school today, but Canaan said he slipped off of the slide. It looks painful but he hasn’t complained one bit.
Dust mites! Be gone!
Many of you know about my severe allergies here in Senegal, and that we have been wanting to get a dryer to help with these terrible allergies. I have very bad allergies to dust mites. And we live in a VERY dusty part of the world… very dirty dust none the less! We have been searching and praying for a dryer. A dryer would really help rid the dust mites from our clothes, sheets, pillows, towels, etc. After a long search we finally found a used dryer. Here dryers run nearly $800 new, for a small run of the mill dryer. And they are not easy to find either. But this one was only about $170. Praise God! When we got it we found out it was really full of lint all through it… almost like they had not been using the lint filter.
So that evening we tore the whole thing apart, trying to get to the place that was full of lint. After a few hours of trying to figure things out… we were able to vacuum it out… a bit. It was rather complicated. Then we had to figure out why it was tripping the circuit breaker. So after messing with the amperage to our apartment (changed it from 20 amps to about 22 amps) and the dryer runs great! We quickly realized that with the extreme heat and humidity here in Senegal, running the dryer in the house was not really a good idea. So we put it out on our balcony and plugged it in. Ran a load or two… and the rain came. We covered it with a tarp. But we realized we needed a better way to protect it… not only from the rain but the massive amounts of dust. So Norm quickly drew up some fantastic plans for a nice little dyer tent/hut/shed thing.
Then one Saturday afternoon, Norm, the boys and I built ourselves a nice dryer tent. We are really quite happy with it.
I really feel like the dryer is helping a lot with my allergies. God is so good to provide that for us! It has been so fun to dry stuff in the dryer that had been hung dry for the last few years… all that yucky dust and stuff that had built up. It felt so good killing all those dust mites! =) I have a new love for laundry!
New beds!
We have been wanting to move Emmaus from a toddler bed to a twin size bed for a while. But furniture here in Dakar can be very pricy and not necessarily very good quality. I have been keeping an eye out for nearly a year for a set of two twin beds that match… for a reasonable price.
The other day at my ladies Bible study one of the ladies mentioned she had two twin beds they were looking to clear out of storage. I told her I would LOVE to buy them from her. Much to my surprise she said she would give them to us for free!!!!!!! I was so excited. The boys are really loving their new beds. I am just waiting for the first scream in the night from one of the kids… I know one of them will fall off during the night at some point. Canaan has had a double sized bed since January and Emmaus’ bed had a bar on it to keep him in his bed. So tonight may be interesting. Luckily I put a bunch of pillows around Emmaus’ bed just in case.
And now we have an extra double bed… what will we use that for? A GUEST BED!! So… PLEASE come stay with us!! =)
Before:
After:
Long Lost Suitcase
Back in July, Norm flew home (to Senegal) from Canada the morning after Ken and Jannah’s wedding. We were very tired and just glad to get him checked in on time and in one piece. Just as the suitcase went off on the conveyer belt I looked at Norm and my face just dropped. We were so tired and exhausted we forgot to zip tie the lid onto the the bottom of the action packer. The lids stay on normally just fine, but when traveling internationally its really important to be extra careful. So at that moment we prayed and trusted the suitcases and everything in them to God. We knew it was possible we would never see either of them again… but we just prayed that God would protect them and deliver them to us safe and sound. We were especially worried about a VERY expensive pair of glasses that we were brining back to Senegal for our co-workers daughter. But we just trusted it all in God’s hands.
Fast forward 24 hours later when Norm arrived in Dakar… Only one suitcase arrived. We were terribly disappointed, but we figured a day or two and it would show up… like always! But week after week after week…. NOTHING. No word. Countless phone calls… and nothing. So we eventually just realized it would not come home. We replaced a fair bit of the stuff that was lost. But some things just can not be replaced.
Just a couple days ago Norm called the airline to finally go ahead and make the claim in hopes of getting a little bit of money back from the missing stuff. And what did they say??!??!?!?! The suitcase was FINALLY waiting for us at the Dakar airport. A few hours later and it was in our possession! YEAH GOD! What a miracle.
First thing that was noticed was that the lid to the action packer was no where to be found! They replaced the lid with a makeshift cardboard lid. But guess what!?! Nothing was missing! How is it possible that a lid falls off and nothing inside fell out? It was all packed just the way I had packed it two and a half months ago! WOW! There are no words for that! =) Other than God did that!
It was so fun unpacking our long lost suitcase. It was so cool to find the many things that we figured we would never see again. One funny thing is that we packed some english muffins in there… and they looked and smelled and felt just like they did when I bought them back in July. GROSS! And we had packed some of the cake pops from the wedding… and those were ALL NATURAL… we know that because they were a liquified green mess! haha!
Canadian Thanksgiving
This year we hosted a big Canadian Thanksgiving bash at our apartment. We managed to cram 46 or so people into our living room! =) It was a bit of a challenge but it worked out well. Here in Senegal we try to invite all the Canadian missionaries to a Thanksgiving celebration each year. Each year someone hosts and we all bring food to share. It works out really well.
We can not just go out and buy Fall decorations, nor can we just go get pumpkins or fall leaves. So we had to get creative. I cut out over 100 leaves from construction paper and we made a tree on the wall. When everyone came, I asked them to write what they are thankful for on them and tape them to the tree. It worked out so well. With nearly 50 people in a small space it would have been hard to do anything organized game wise. So it was a great activity that everyone could do at their own pace!
It took over a week of preparations and a lot of hard work in very hot and humid weather. But it was so so fun and VERY worth it. Here are a few pictures we managed to get amongst the busyness!
Thanksgiving tree, the final product!
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