Steve has been fighting with the battery in the old van for a couple days! He cannot seem to get it to keep a charge. Late this afternoon he gave up and put in a different battery. A few minutes ago I heard the van start so at least that is something positive!
Zorash’s volunteer group is in the process of mosquito net distribution. First the volunteers had to go house to house to register the number of people that live in the house so they would know how many nets to order. Today they started the actual distribution. They will distribute it for the next two weeks. Zorash will distribute this weekend.
Mr. Iddrisu took the day off to help his wife and kids harvest corn. He planted the sorriest crop of corn in the back field of the mission property. It was just pitiful. The land is so sandy and lacking in nutrients that it will not grow corn unless it is heavily fertilized. It will grow cowpeas, soybeans, peanuts and cassava but Mr. Iddrisu and Nazo don’t like to grow those crops because they are cash crops; not eating crops. Excuse me you could grow a cash crop and buy corn! They did not finish husking the corn today so he is going to take off tomorrow too.
As soon as we finished our walk this morning we went to the back field and reattached the razor wire that the masons removed a few weeks ago when they opened the cement wall and installed the “upside down” gate. While we were at it we fixed several places the razor wire had been cut. They cut the razor wire so their families can crawl over the wall to poop! The stench in one of the areas was so bad that it would take your breath away. Some day when we can find the money we want to raise the wall to about 7 or 8 feet high with the razor wire on top; that would make it very difficult to scale the wall or to cut the wire.
Abochi, the guy that orders formula for us, called this morning to let us know that he had been successful in getting us 11 cases of formula. We were proud to get it! That will be enough to last for several months.
We ran the generator all night and ¾ of the day because the electricity was so low. It should be running around 240 volts but last night and today sometimes it was only running 158-175 volts. That is a good way to ruin the electronics.
The little goat came back. Someone had removed his rope necklace and his piece of firewood. He came up and sat on the veranda; just to announce that he was back. The problem is that she is sick! She is a mess; she has a serious case of diarrhea. She did not want to go out of the gate. Finally Mr. Iddrisu caught her and physically put her outside the gate. No one wants a goat hanging around, especially a sick goat!
Keep praying for us!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
