From Parkers August 20, 2009

From Parkers August 20, 2009

Dear Friends,

We have really settled in now and we are well on our way with a bit of a schedule. Our duties start as soon as we wake up. Sometimes we have people knocking on our door and those duties start before we are ready but that is just something we are getting use to being on a campus. Especially right now we seem to be a little busier with James and Sarah gone. They will not be back until mid September. I told Cory and Brichelle that they are not allowed to climb any Mango trees until they get back since there would be no one to fix them up if they fell and got hurt. JK! I am finding that it takes a lot of energy to manage a home here. I guess in the states I was busy too but it is so different. I wake up to making sure the door is unlocked for the cook to get in. (He gets here by 7) I have to make sure Brichelle gets up by at least 6:30 to feed the horses before the guard takes them out to graze for the day. Then breakfast and dishes have to be done. By then I always have someone knocking on the door either to sell me some food or ready to work doing laundry. Also there are volunteers coming in for this reason and that. Mornings seem to be very busy. The lady that has helped me with our laundry since we have been here just lost her baby to malaria this week. I was so sad for her. She had 7 children and last year her 6 y/o died and now this one. She is trying to feed 5 others all on her own. Unfortunately this is very common here. The lady Naomi I have mentioned before is going to have to be a name you remember like part of our family. I love her so much already. Without a doubt God sent her to us. All of us love her but I spend the most time with her. She is so good at getting me out to meet people. As I have said before she knows every language here and is always interpreting for me. We go to the market together every Monday. This last Monday we were walking to the market and crossed paths with another lady she knew that was Arabic. A young girl but very tall and slender. When we stopped to say hello I noticed a very distraught look upon her face as Naomi was talking to her. I found out that her 6 month old daughter is very weak and tiny due to the fact that this woman is having problems nursing her baby. She has been to Bere hospital but they had to do surgery on her breasts and now she is only able to feed her baby on one side and even that is very painful for the mother. My wheels are always turning trying to think of ways to help people and when I heard this I just knew the answer. A couple weeks ago Jamie and I were in Kalo a town about 30 min from Bere. While there we were able to go to a store that had a few items that we thought were recognizable. After getting home we noticed the item that we thought we got lucky to find was not Nestle strawberry milk mix but baby formula. We were disappointed at the time but we knew with all the children everywhere we would find someone that could use it. God is so good! I have been able to see Him so clearly here in so many situations. Obviously this was the lady that I was to help. Everything worked out perfectly in Gods amazing timing. I knew I had the formula but I had no bottle and they just don’t seem to have things like that here. While in the market God showed me a bottle to buy. I couldn’t believe it. I really didn’t know if the child would take the bottle or not and I showed how the mother should give it to the baby holding it close to her body. The child drank a whole large bottle and was ready for more. This may seem like such a simple thing and it really is. But the people here just can’t seem to see simple solutions like this. It was really great to be used by God to help another mother in need. She was so very grateful and happy. Something else happened recently with us that I believe worth mentioning. Last Saturday night we were preparing our passports and extra pictures for Stefan, another volunteer, to take to the capital to get our visa extended for a year. He was going to be leaving Sunday morning. Everyone had two pictures except for me, I only had one. I thought one was all I was going to need but I was told there was a possibility that two would be needed. Well here it is Saturday night and people don’t get to the capital all the time because it is 6 hours away and also the rainy season. I thought that the only other picture I had was one on my international drivers license and it matched the other picture I had available. Jamie and I tore this house upside down that night trying to find it. It was to the point of frustration and just being overly tired. Jamie still had malaria so he was really feeling bad. We had both prayed about it and thought that there just wasn’t anywhere else to look so we decided to give it to God. If anyone knows me would know that things like this bug me and I would rather stay up all night looking for it. But I have been reading the book Passionate Prayer by Brenda Walsh and decided to put it in Gods’ hands and just not worry about it any further. I actually had peace and just told God that I give it to Him and if He wants us to find it He would have to show us. So we went off to bed. As soon as we woke up, in silence, the first thing Jamie and I did in the morning was look for the license. I checked the one place I could think of where there were papers, my bible. No, it was not there. Jamie said he was led to Brichelle’s room. He looked on the floor almost behind her door and there it was. Praise the Lord! That was such a great lesson for me. I learned to give it all to Him. God is taking care of us with all the big things and what is amazing to me even more are the little things. God is working miracles in all of our lives. We just have to look for them and give God the glory.