We spent several hours this morning at the GRA (tax) office. There was a problem with everyone’s annual returns except Zorash’s. The officer was a bit put out when he saw us there again this morning. Not only was there a problem with the annual returns but we could not solve the problem with Amama’s account. The officer thought he had it fixed yesterday but it was not. We took Amama with us this morning. They entered a new phone number for Amama which helped because the old phone number that she used to sign up the first time was no longer in service. When they put in the new number we were able to access her account. The officer finally told us that he did not have time to sit and go through all the forms and make all the corrections and he wanted us to just file the forms with the mistakes and later he would go in and make the adjustments and zero the accounts. We told him that last year we had the same problem and we went ahead and filed the returns with the mistakes and now most of the accounts had the “RED” box and were in arrears. He never went back and fixed last year and we are afraid he will not do this year’s either. He assured us that he would take care of it and that it would be easier once they were filed. Seeing is believing but at this point we have no choice but to file with the mistakes.
Adamu, the little 1 year 5 month abandoned girl who only weighed 5 kilos came back to the Center this morning. She had not gained any weight but she was much stronger. Today she could sit up by herself and she had strength enough to twirl around on the floor when she heard Zorash rustling the wrapper on the cereal packet. She started smacking her lips because she knew it was time to eat. We mixed up about ¼ cup of the cereal and instead of taking her 30 minutes to eat it she finished it all in about 3-5 minutes. There was such an improvement in her strength! We were very pleased and the teenage girl that is caring for her said that she could see her getting stronger every day. We encouraged her to add an additional feeding for the child each day. Ideally it would be good if she could be fed at least one time during the night but they say she sleeps all night. Today was a good day!
A dust storm blew up so we had to hurry and bring in the corn and soybeans that the ladies washed today. Sometimes we get a dust storm before we get a rain. It has been very hot today. The high temperature today was 113 degrees with a heat index of 128 degrees. Sometimes when it is terribly hot we will get rain but so far all we have gotten is dust.
The wind blew down a bucket of mangos; we went out and picked them up so that we will have them to share with someone.
Thank you for all you do and please keep us in your prayers.
In HIS Service,
Steve and Kandie
