Making of a Missionary
• You are getting ready for a hot summer, or, you are already in the middle of it! We are preparing for our winter which is really called the Dry Season. It will be gray often and cool at night--well, let's say 60's are VERY COOL when you've been VERY HOT!
• I have sent you a number of photos recently showing the splendor God has put on DR Congo. This beauty is magnificent and it comes with MUCH rain, heat and humidity so characteristic of the tropics. I found out recently that I REALLY AM LIVING in the tropics and DR Congo is part of the great tropical rain forest. Pretty interesting, huh? Well, you probably knew it--but I forgot my 7 th grade geography!
• We are in process of drying hundreds of seeds from our plants--spinach, bitekuteku, ngai-ngai, papaya (my tree), green peppers, and my beautiful sunflower sue. I NEVER KNEW where you got seeds to plant except out of a packet at Walmart! Don't forget--I am NO farmer--I went camping twice in my WHOLE LIFE! I was the oldest of the nine children who wouldn't even play outside--I'd rather read a book. My mother had to force me out in the summer. I think God is pretty amazing and a little humorous to choose someone of my "caliber" for such an assignment! We are teaching the boys ALL of these things so they can take care of themselves well and teach others how to garden well in the future.
• Recently, I was given a large basket of fresh lemons and I have 11/2 quarts of fresh lemon juice! What a treat. I need a couple of good recipes--quickly including--pudding for a pie.
• My friend, Najma, bought me a 50Kilo sack of whole-wheat flour. I am sooo happy. It cost $80-90. I can bake my heart out! Truth is I have to bake after 9pm when my other work is done--not much time to bake too often. Besides, then I eat it and I don't walk like I used to now that I have a jeep.
• My life is such contrasts and I am fairly flexible but sometimes lurch!!!! I received some Bath and Body Works body splash as a mother's day gift from my daughter, Heidi and family. It is the same exact color of my hair spray and also in a clear bottle. Yep! I sprayed myself with hairspray and it was TERRIBLE in this humidity. I had to bathe again. I wonder what credentials are necessary for a missionary???
• TASOK is the international American school here. I have been substituting some. One couple left and so I get to do the library most of the time. It's great. They asked me to work fulltime until the end of the school year the 16 th of June, but, I can't do more than two days a week with all that is going on and with no one to coordinate the home but myself. At least I get to the internet once a week now! I get to read Newsweek and get back in the loop. For a few hours it is like I am in the USA. Their compound is much like an American public school except enclosed in walls with nicely manicured grounds. The superintendent gave me a volleyball net and basketball rim (used) recently. I was so grateful. They are going to try and buy me balls as the boys are so many and they play so rough I use a ball every two months! I am on my 5 th or 6 th soccer ball and the volleyball is destroyed. I bought them a basketball at Christmas in hopes of getting a rim. Now all I need is the mesh net!
• There are three young men from Canada and one from US doing an 8-month missions tour before finishing college. They are with a group out of Canada-much like Youth with a Mission or other youth groups on longer-term missions trips. They come weekly to teach the boys volleyball, basketball and Frisbee. They helped me find a way to mount the basketball rim with two 10 ft. 3x3 redwood posts. They don't speak much French or Lingala, but the boys have a great time. Sports is surely a universal language!
• The pain and difficulty with Christelle is ended for now. She did not accept a plan of reconciliation, which I worked out with an advisory board member whom she cares much for and who is a doctor and saved her life twice. Perhaps, I know a little more, how Jesus must feel for the price He paid at the cross and those who just plain reject His love and His plan. We just seem to want to do things our own way too often--I can tell you, it is painful.
• However, God has given me good workers for the moment and several young people who are teachable, working well with me and who express their appreciation and gratitude and love at times. I have already shown you the photo with my name planted in sand by my young night worker, Raphael--25, who himself is an orphan. I have a real "David" in my life too. A young man of 28, his name is David, who is a wonderful musician and worship leader at a very large Assemblies of God church. He teaches the boys weekly music/chorale. They have learned so much and there is such a Spirit of worship in our night devotions and Sunday services now. For Valentine's Day he wrote a song and the music to express his love for me as a caring 'mom' in his life. Just recently, he produced it on CD and several really like it and want to buy it. It is in French for sure! Yves--24, is a prayer warrior and takes care of miscellaneous tasks or information I need and prays daily for this work. He asks for prayer requests, weekly and monthly. His family with 11 children and parents has been really kind to me. They are all a gift to my life.
• My chicken project is going well and we will expand. The 5 chickens still give a flat of eggs weekly. The two young chickens are doing great. I have a chance to buy 5 more young ones so that I will have seven new ones laying eggs all about end of June. The lady who sold me the baby chicks has more again, so I may buy another 10 but will buy them after they have had the medicines for the gomboro which killed the others. They will be closer to 4-weeks old. I really want the boys to know all aspects of raising chickens too. Then, no matter what happens to me, they can grow food and chickens to feed themselves and even work for someone else who does farming or gardening.
David's House of Refuge
Boys are doing great and have really studied well this year. I am super pleased with their progress. Most have progressed two grade levels in one year. I have really monitored and directed their studies strictly and carefully all year. I have a couple who don't want to work as hard, but they all can read fairly well, and that is important. I set aside time for them to read their Bibles several times a week. Everything I do I constantly think how I can help them succeed--if something happens to me! I did that with my own children as a single mother. Can they love and serve our Lord and take care of themselves if I am not there to guide them. That frame of reference pushes you and them to excellence and responsibility to fulfill our role in the Kingdom of God. I feel this frame of reference is really important since we live with constant threats and dangers of war and fighting again. This is just not a stable place to live! Not sure any place really is--but we are just more volatile for the moment.
Boys are really growing. I don't know if they will ever catch up to normal size, but I am pleased with the progress. They are all closer to my chin than they ever were last year. I had to change several of their long pants and they have all outgrown their sandals we bought last August for school! Every 4-6 months I increase the quantity of food. Pretty soon I will have to find bigger bowls! I give them a very large bowl of hot maize or rice cereal everyday but Sunday which is bread and tea. I put a full cup of sugar in the cereal and I add whole powdered milk equivalent to 2 liters of milk--just to make it really high protein for them. The milk is such a valuable gift as I just could not afford the quantity, so the Indian family helps me and bought a 100lb. sack of whole milk powder. They really enjoy their cookies and fruit each lunch. Sometimes I bake a cake or boil eggs, but we only reduce the cookies--not eliminate--they just seem to enjoy their cookies and fruit. The cookies are big round ones with a type of "animal cracker" kind of dough and they get 8-10. I buy 5-10 cartons of cookies at a time direct from the factory here. There are 90 dozen cookies in a carton and we use a carton about every 8-9 days depending on number of workers around and whether we have cake or eggs. We are eating papayas from my tree and oranges which are in season right now. We have a mango tree and saffron tree which is great when they are in season. I wish our avocado tree gave more than 5-6 avocados! Bananas are often in season, so we get lots of potassium. They are really fresh and come direct from the tree to the table. I big bunch still attached to the branch (about 110) is $5 in high season. We can hardly eat them fast enough as they ripen all at once and quickly in the tropics. I made lots of banana bread a couple of times!
The Sunday church service is growing strong.
CRVF is the Congo branch of FLRC, Inc. a 501© 3 corporation. All donations are tax deductible for USA income tax purposes.
