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Remember Flat Tendai??

Remember Flat Tendai? The life-size cutout of Tendai that our home church has been hosting, one family at a time since September? We hear she is doing fabulous and has been going on lots of adventures. Hopefully we can get some of the pics from her travels soon and will be able to show you. In the meantime, we are going to introduce you to Flat Stanley (from which this whole idea originated!)  After starting our own project, we did some more looking into the Flat Stanley original idea, and signed up to host one from somebody else. Our Flat Stanley is from Annie, a little girl in Isreal! We will take him on adventures for a little while and then send him home. We also sent a Flat Stanley to her so she could take one on adventures too!

 Tendai decided to take Flat Stanley with her to meet some of the Orphan kids when we delivered the orphan's monthly food in January.

 Checking out the Maize. (corn)

 And the oil and beans and soap.

 Tito thought this was hilarious. Stanley was glad to meet him too. Tito wanted to keep him, but Tendai was not about to let him go. Since Annie's family checks our blog, hopefully they will get to see these pictures!

Remember last months photo of Pastor Mariano's hand guiding Mae Lolieta in writing her own name? In the month since, her two sons have taken it upon themselves to teach her how to write her name.. here she is proudly showing off her new skill!

We are praying that the grannies and widows in our program will join the Mission's SIMUKAI (which means "STAND UP") Womens Literacy program and learn to read and write, while studying scripture at the same time.

 Things have gotten very green around here since we have had LOTS of good rain in the past week. You guys must have been praying hard! Now we are to the point where we need a bit of a rain break so we crops dont get washed away! :) 

I got a bit distracted by the crystal clear drops of water on the grass, during orphan food delivery last week. So small, and yet so beautiful.

Thanks again for the prayers and support. We are grateful to have had a wonderful holiday season, health, safety and times of good fellowship with our coworkers. Please continue to pray that the rains will come when needed, that the crops will thrive. Pray for the children in our school and in the orphan program who will be entering school soon. Praise the Lord that pretty much all of the kids in the Amigo Orphan passsed their grades, with a few exceptions, and are excited to go back to school! We have a short VBS for the Orphan kids this coming week, which promises to be lots of fun as well.

 Storm clouds rolling in, as seen from our airstrip.

I love Rainbows!

On another note, please pray for our house to be completed, and soon. Our funds at this point are depleted to the point where work will need to stop fairly soon. We still need to paint the walls, install the tub, toilet, shower fixtures, sinks, light fixtures, glass and screen in the windows, and install all of the doors (which are already made, just waiting for the floor to be done to be installed). We also need to build all of the cabinetry, but we have had a donor cover the cost of that project already. Unfortunately we can't do much for the cabinetry until the floors, and painting and some plumbing have been completed! Please join with us in praying that the funds will come in so we can free up the cottage for short term visitors and be settled enough in our new home to jump headlong into the Childrens Ministry Training seminars we have planned for later this year! Our hope is to be in and settled before (a good time before) our 12th Anniversary at the end of April.

(me putting the first coat of stain on the main room floor)

Currently, we have almost finished the floor- and it looks GREAT! Ill post a few pictures of that hopefully this next week. All of the window frames are in and the frames for the glass parts are almost complete and ready to go in as well. The doors and windows have all been made by Gabriel and Pindurai in the mission's carpentry workshop and are lovely. They are made out of hardwood- its cheaper here than pine! The entire house has electricity- Rick hooked up all the plugs and lights last week! (right now there is just bare lightbulbs hanging, but at least its some light!).  I hope to do a full update on the house next week, complete with tons of pictures!

 What it looks like after stain, but before clear coat.

Stained and wet- which is sorta what it looks like when the clear coat is on, but you will have to wait till next week for photos of that!

Thanks again and God Bless,

Rick, Heather, and Tendai