The art of settling in

We have now been at Fort White for 3 weeks, yes only 3 weeks!  It seems like we have been here much longer than that.  To update everyone on the crazy 1st week: 1) We have not had another major wind storm like the first week we were here, thank you dear Lord.  That was so crazy and it brought very cold weather.  Our weather has been quite nice during the day, even hot sometimes, and then very cool to chilly at night. 2) Our hot water heater works great!!!  AND our electricity has been sorted out.  Galvus, the light magician as Thomas called him, spent 3 full days reworking the wires that had been crossed and installing new circuits so we could run more than one appliance at a time.

We did celebrate Thomas’ 7^th birthday on July 9^th.  Our friends, Leo and Linda O’Connor took us on a safari to see all sorts of animals.  We saw zebras, giraffes, wart hogs and a lot of deer looking animals (they call them Bock).  The lions were in a double fenced cage.  They were excited as our Thomas and the O’Connor’s Thomas got on all fours and crawled around like a lion.  I thought that the real lion would pounce if they could get through the fences.  We had a great day.

The day normally looks like this:
7:00 Get up, or at least make Philip get up
7:15 Eat breakfast, or at least make Philip eat breakfast
7:30 Work has started for the day – the guys usually are working by 7:30
Later-ish The rest of us drag ourselves out of bed
10:30 Tea time or diet coke
1:00 Lunch
2:00 Back to work
4:00 The guys decide they are done for the day, Philip still working
5:30 The sun is setting so Philip must come in for the day
6:00 Dinner
6:30 Now what do we do?  No TV, no computer for the kids and it’s dark outside…
8:00 Bed time because we are out of ideas

Right now, I (Becky) am living the life of a farm wife.  I get up, make breakfast, wash dishes by hand, put a load of laundry in, clean up the house (this wind makes my house very dirty), take the laundry out to hang it on the line, start lunch, eat lunch, do the dishes by hand after lunch, go work a little at the school house, feel overwhelmed with everything that still needs to be done, go take down the dried laundry, fold clothes and put them back into the suitcases (still looking for dressers), start dinner, eat dinner, make the girls do the dishes by hand after dinner, get on the computer to chat with friends or update blog, watch a movie that we downloaded before we left (we are running out of movies so I’ve repeated some of them), go to bed.  This will change when the school starts.

The kids day starts when they get up, it is summer break for them.  Thomas usually races out the door to go help Uncle Festus.  Not sure how much help he is, but Thomas loves it.  The other day we were eating lunch and he raced through it.  He asked to be excused and I asked him what he was rushing off to.  He relied, “The chickens aren’t going to feed themselves, are they?”  He’s becoming a great little farm boy.

The girls will go out and play on the wall or sit in the house reading.  We didn’t bring a lot of books with us because they are heavy and we didn’t have the room in our suitcases, so they have decided to read through the bible.  That works!  We’ve got 5 more weeks here, they should get through at least the Old Testament.  All the kids have helped with the school house.  They have scraped old paint off the wall, swept up the old paint, taken down old tile from the bathroom and other odd jobs.  It will mean so much more when we are done for them since they helped do it.

In the next 3 weeks we will have 3 different teams here to help.  I can’t wait to have them here and hopefully will see a great improvement after they have come.  We thank you for your prayers and thoughts of us, and ask that you continue.  We wouldn’t be able to do it without God’s hand in everything we do.  We still have much to do before we can start a school in January.  The paperwork has been sent off for the second time to get a school approved, we’ll wait to hear about that.  We are still trying to decide what grades to teach and who will be teaching those grades.  It seems to all be unsettled at the time being, but it will be exciting to watch as God works it all out.

We still have many projects to complete and the cost keeps adding up.  Please continue to help financially or pray about becoming a part of our financial supporters.

We love you all and would love to hear from you as well.
Becky, Philip, Emily, Allison and Thomas