Colton is a teenager!!

Hey;                                                                                                                   Sept.16 2010
So we’ve settled back into the school routine. Colton is in year 8 and enjoying it. It was much more fun to start this year compared to last year when we didn’t know anyone.
Isaac is crazy busy from 7:00 AM till past dark many days, plus Saturdays. This should slow down soon once everything has been built/fixed for the schools, teachers’ houses, CRIB (ongoing), etc.
My teaching schedule is only a little fuller this year with the addition of one more class per week. It’s really busy, but it makes the time go by quicker.
So… Colton is a teenager!! I can hardly believe that we have a young man and not a little boy any more. He very much enjoys standing in front of me and measuring up to where  he measures on me…. Not so long ago he was up to my mouth, then my nose, eyes… well, he’s got less than 1 and ½ inches to go and he’ll have sprouted past me!!
He had a good birthday, his second here in Burundi. He made a long list of friends that he wanted to invite to his party. I again made my boys’ favorite cake, and I’m telling you, the texture is sooo different here. It just wants to fall apart. So once I had inverted the top layer, it split down the center vertically and horizontally. We christened it “the Christian cake”, ‘cause of the cross that adorned it. ( In the past, the old perfectionist me would not have found this funny at all, but praise Jesus, He’s helping me to be a little softer around the edges.)
I want to publicly say a huge “thank you sweet Desirae!!!” This lovely lady (Colton’s cousin) spent a lot of time into a scrapbook that she put together of her life over the past year, and mailed it out for Colton’s birthday. He was so blessed to receive a package from our other home. Just the fact that he’s not “outta sight, outta mind”, is nice to know, with the huge added bonus of such a personal gift. Missing grandma’s, cousins and friends is sometimes hard for Colton.
Remember my blog from a number of months ago about this tiny little cat - Belle -  that was in dire straits that we spoon fed for 5 days, it died in my hands while feeding it, Jesus raised it from the dead, and it permanently died the following day? Well, our friends Travis and Astrid’s cat had 5 black babies ( Colton and I witnessed the births of the first 4), and the momma cat stopped feeding the babies on the fifth day and died on the sixth. Knowing about our very limited knowledge about feeding an orphaned kitten, they asked if we wanted to take one. Long story short, we’ve had Zima for over two weeks, and he’s doing great. Colton is the best at feeding him out of the three of us. ‘Zima’ is short for ubuzima, which means ‘life’ in Kirundi; speaking positively into the little critters life. Colton is pretty confident that Zima will get to stay in the house permanently; “after all,” he stated, “ he’s worked his way into your heart already, next it’s into the house.” Even Isaac enjoys holding the little guy, listening to Zima’s “motor running” -  Isaac’s terminology for purring. I thought cats have an aversion to water, but this feline seems to enjoy his two plus baths per day.
All three of us are in this awesome Bible study. We started about two months ago, and we meet every Tuesday;  we’re doing an audio series by Bill Johnson and Chris Vallotton.  There’s a couple from South Africa, Tim and Jeannette (he teaches pastors here), three Korean ladies that are starting a local NGO, Olivia, who’s  from Denver Colorado, manager of King’s Conference Center combined with lots of different ministry involvements, Marieke, part of Travis and Astrid’s team, but currently working with CRIB kids, and Travis and Astrid. These people are very near and dear to our hearts. We have wonderful and deep personal ministry and prayer times together; we feel so blessed to have these friends. If Jesus is done with us here in Buj. after our two years, it will be very hard to say bye to these wonderful friends….. I don’t even want to go there just now.
We have to move out of our house by the end of December; our land lord wants it back so his son and daughter-in-law can move in. This is a pretty huge prayer concern as rental houses are very hard to find in this area. And it has to be furnished which makes it even harder to find. So please pray that we will find a house that is suitable, and that God will kick in the added blessing of a yard that allows Colton to play soccer in the back yard. For example, often yards are not even big enough for a trampoline.
Our fridge hasn’t worked in months - at least 5 months. There are brief times when it cools so much that it freezes the food, the odd time it cools a little, but for the most part it just doesn’t cool at all.   We’ve told the land lord a number of times, to no avail. So moving will bring a stop to me attempting (and failing) to keep the fridge cold with frozen water bottles. (The freezer section works fine.) It used to be that if we put food in the fridge it was the one place that the ants couldn’t get to - this is no longer the case.
Man, animal and land is greatly looking forward to the rainy season. Since April we’ve had one light sprinkle on June 29th (the day after elections; kinda’ symbolic of the Father cleansing the country). The temperature is consistently hot, hot, and hot -  low to mid 30’s. Nights are a few degrees cooler than day time. However, last week Sunday we had a gentle shower, as well as a few more times during that week. Two of those mornings it was so cold; the temperature dipped down to an all time low that we have witnessed -  both mornings it was a mere 23.8 degrees!!!  We sat at the breakfast table covered in goose bumps. Colton put his long PJ bottoms on under his school uniform.  This cold yet wonderful respite from the heat dissipated after about an hour.  (Till last week the lowest we’ve experienced is 24.8.)
 The same thing happened last year; we had a few “teaser” showers beginning of September, followed by another few months of harsh, dry heat. But hopefully we won’t have to wait that long this year, as last year there was a ‘mini famine’ up country because of the delayed rains.
With the dry season come the unpleasant and very unwelcome electricity and water cuts. The novelty?? tolerance?? of not having hydro and water wears off after months and it just gets old and very frustrating. Try as we might to have and maintain a godly attitude about it, we just simply fail sometimes. It really wreaks havoc with the fridge situation if I can’t freeze water to somewhat keep the fridge cool. And in this country of sweat and dust and filth, water is even more essential than just for cooking/drinking. We’ve had a lot more water cuts this year than last; for washing we store water in pails and for drinking in jugs.
When you are aware of incredible govt. corruption it makes it pretty hard to just ‘live with it’, when you know that things could be drastically different; but the public, it seems, isn’t important enough to supply them with basic necessities, as long as some of their pockets are thickly lined… Televised promises by top govn. personnel to make a complete stop to cuts go unfulfilled.
What’s especially annoying is when water and hydro are cut at the same time, which happens frequently. Aarrrhhhggg!!! No hydro, no fans!!! Yeesch that’s hot.
 Sept. 22 2010
“I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.” Luke 10:19
Isaac has prayed into this almost daily for many months…
Colton found and captured a scorpion at school yesterday. It is currently approximately 4 feet from where I’m sitting in a clear plastic pencil case. I took it to school today to show some of my students. It seems most people don’t know that there are scorpions in Burundi. Aime, a colleague of ours, was down a few weeks ago and we told him that Colton had stepped on one in the shower about a month ago, and he could hardly believe that they exist here - he had never seen one - and he’s a local.  And we’ve had two encounters with them in the span of about a month. The one Colton stepped on was much bigger than the one he caught yesterday. We also get snakes and centipedes in that same shower.
I’ll leave you with that warm and fuzzy thought. ;-)