Back to Business!

 This little princess "Julina" lives next door to one of our orphan homes.. what a sweetie!

Well, we have survived our first two weeks home, pretty well actually! Tendai has adjusted back to life and schedule here on the farm very well, and we have even started potty training finally... we shall see how that goes! (luckily for us its quite normal for kids to run around half naked in these parts so im cutting down on laundry by allowing her to "run free" so to speak!)

Tendai...playing in the dirt, in her pretty shoes.. yep. shes a diva dirt queen!!

We have been able to get back into things pretty quickly, including the orphan programs, food delivery, construction projects galore and of course... umpteen trips to town to try and organize our DIRE (residence permits) paperwork! Nobody likes taking trips to town more than the once a week grocery drive... but when you are trying to get paperwork done its a must! 

 Vira, one of our orphan girls decided to "read" my Pretoria street atlas... wonder if she figured anything out? Both girls in this picture are decked out with hair pretties donated by the wonderful folks in Fort McMurray Alberta.

 At the orphan group meetings the kids STILL love to play Frisbee just about every time!

Pastor Mariano, in charge of our orphan programs, loves to hang out with the kids.. and hes pretty good at jumping rope too!

We are also very excited that our garage (the storage part) is nearing completion, and the floor is almost ready to be poured on the actual parking part! We are also hiring the builders we will need for the foundation trenches and walls for our house. Please pray with us that the funds will come in for our house- we are pretty squished in our cottage as is, and we already have our name in with Social Services here to adopt another baby! We have no idea how long it will take to be matched with another child- it could take days or it could take months, but whenever they come this little cottage will be very squishy so we are really hoping to get our house started... and fast! We appreciate your prayers for the money we need to build, that we can find a good and efficient builder who will build straight and level walls, and that the supplies we need will be available! (Mozambique has a cement shortage half the time and a deisel shortage the other half.... other stuff like wood for trusses, baked bricks, etc are usually available, but not usable if you dont have the cement!)

 Rick and one of the guys working on our house lot get the storage room roof on.

Rick brought this toolbelt from Canada- and is LOVING it.

 Gabriel gets the door put on our storage room.

Some of the first few items in storage! YEY!

 Tendai, Magnum and Daddy hard at work.

Tendai having a Tea party with her baby doll!

And, because I know I haven't really posted pictures before, here is a few of our current cottage. There is a main room that has the living area, dining room, kitchen, entry, "hallway" and Tendai's sleeping area, and then one bedroom that also houses our filing cabinets, printers, etc, and a bathroom. Up until now the back verandah has been for storage, but now that the garage is nearing completion we can move stuff over there to the storage room and use our verandah for other stuff... like sitting outside and enjoying the cool air.

 The back verandah in mid sorting/rat disaster cleaning/laundry day stage.

 The front of our cottage, to the left is our bedroom, to the right is the main room. Behind our bedroom on the left is our bathroom.

Kitchen at the back, dining in the middle, living room in front, play area to the right, hallway and front and back entry on the left side of photo, further left and out of the shot is Tendai's sleep area. (her bed sits in the corner of the main room as there isnt space for it anywhere else.)

Lord willing we can get our house started and finished in record time, so the short term cottage we have been long term renting can be used as intended.... for short termers!! :)

Thanks for all the prayers and support, we appreciate you all and miss everyone back home already!

Blessings,

Rick, Heather & Tendai