Thanks for water control and the building fund...

WATER IN OUR HOUSE UPDATE

Well, last Saturday night after church some of the guys from church came and busted up the floor in Joni's room and made a drainage to the outside wall so the water would go out of the house instead of all over the house. I think the guys really enjoyed using the pickaxe. When they first broke it open the water sprang up like a geyser. It was pretty cool. Joni was away for the weekend when they did this, which was probably for the best. It's not fun watching your own room get destroyed. Joni has had to move to another room, which is a bummer, but at least there's an extra bed in another room for her to go to. This has stopped most of the water from coming in to the other rooms. But now we have an indoor babbling brook, and that's pretty cool. :) I'm not sure when they'll be able to fix her room, they need the weather to dry up some in order to do it. But it has been sunny the past couple days, and that's good.

Other good news about our house: they finished putting the false ceilings in this week, and that has really made the house much cooler in the day and warmer at night. It also cuts down on noise, and makes it feel much more homey. Hooray!

DONATION TO CHURCH BLDG FUND

In other news, we had begun building a new church building on the property about a month ago, where the little cafeteria was, and we had about half the funds for the first building phase. This week, Family Church of West Monroe Louisiana took up an offering for our building fund and the people there donated all that we needed to finish the first phase (about $14,000) and made some pledges on the next phase. THANK YOU FAMILY CHURCH!!!!! THANK YOU LORD!!!!!! It's so exciting that we'll be able to move forward quickly with the building, because our church building is just too small. We use that building for school functions too, and this Friday when we had the talent night for grades K-4, a lot of parents had to stand outside and try to watch through the windows. Below is a picture of some of my first grade students performing in the talent show. They sang "El capitan de mi barco is Cristo" (The captain of my ship is Christ).

Send the rain- a little bit later, please!

Well, the good news is we have plenty of water, in spite of the fact that we still don't have a new well dug. The bad news is our house has sprung a leak. We have water coming in through the floor of one of the bedrooms and it's spreading into other rooms too. Thankfully, someone has loaned us a shop vac to suck up the water. But yesterday the power was out almost all day so we couldn't use it. They say they need two days without rain to fix the problem. I heard that this month is going to be one of the rainiest they've had in years. Eeek!!! Looks like another opportunity to practice being content in all circumstances. :)

Please pray for a break in the rain because besides our problem, there are people who live close to the water and have problems with flooding. We have friends who have sewage backing up into through their shower and bathroom. So I'm thankful our problem isn't worse in our house, and I hope God will be merciful and the rain will let up for a few days. Also there's the possiblity of bigger problems in some places, like mud slides and major flooding.

To the right: Trying to stem the rising tide with sandbags in front of Joni's room.

Below: Me with my new best friend, the wet-dry vac.




To the right: Our new waterfall outside our house.

Thanks NCCC!!!

My home church in Oswego, New Covenant Community Church, took up an offering for me recently to raise some funds so I can stay here until October (which is the end of the school year). Originally I had planned to leave in July, but I felt like the Lord was leading me to stay longer. Thanks to everyone who contributed! I hope you're reading this website, and know that I appreciate your thoughts and prayers and financial support and I'm looking forward to visiting this fall. With this recent offering, it looks like I'm in pretty good shape financially until October. It will depend on the price of my flight home, so I'm hoping I'll get a pretty good deal.

By the way, Aunt Brenda and Uncle Jim- I know you're reading! So don't neglect to say hello in the comment box. I love you guys! :)

In other news- we have a group coming today from Virginia, including my housemate Erin's parents. One of their tasks is to put the false ceiling in our house. Hooray for ceiling helpers! This will be our last group visiting this year, I think. A couple weeks ago we had two groups visiting at once- one was a singles ministry group from Wichita, Kansas and the other was from Illinois. It was neat to have them here. They did a lot of dramas and taught them to our students too, and ministered in our school and in town. We heard a lot of testimonies from the Kansas group and that was really encouraging. Plus, they were a lot of fun.

On a personal note, I am recovering from a bad cold and I missed three days of school so I have a lot of work to make up because we have end of phase exams next week. So pray that I feel better fast and can get my work done fast too!