Today is our daughter-in-law Lindsay’s birthday. Sure wish that we could be there to celebrate with her!
We woke to the sound of rain. It rained heavily all night; we were so surprised that the electricity did not go off. Around 2:00 this morning I got up to see the rain and to check on my tarps that were hanging on the line. Well, the wind was strong enough that it had knocked off several of the pens and one tarp was only hanging on by one pen and one side of the other one was dragging the ground. I contemplated going out and re-hanging them but it was raining too heavily so I just went back to bed. This morning I hung them back on the line and rinsed them off with water from the cistern. Someone left the lid off the cistern last night and lots of leaves and flowers from the trees blew into it during the rain storm. Steve strained out as many as he could catch with the net. If they are left in the cistern the water will sour and it will take a couple weeks before it clears up again.
Amama did not come to work yesterday or today; her son Basset was admitted to the hospital. They are treating him for Malaria. He had Malaria a couple weeks ago and evidently this case was more serious than his last one. Malaria is not something that you can build up immunity to. It is caused by a parasite that is put into your body by a mosquito. A person can have Malaria many times; it all depends upon how many times he is bitten. Not all mosquitoes carry Malaria. We are in the middle of the rainy season and this is the time of the year that people have lots of Malaria. It can be prevented but the medical profession here does not recommend that people take the anti-malaria medicine to kill the parasites; they just treat it after the people get sick. We faithfully take our anti-malaria medicine and we have never had Malaria so we know that it works.
It rained off and on all morning so we did not have many mothers come to the Child Center. Zorash came to the main house and helped me with some of the cleaning. Then they washed medicine bottles and got everything ready for Monday.
Tichak was back at work last night. He said that his main problem was that his back was hurting; it was probably from working in his farm. I thought that his problem was that he had a cold and cough but that is not why he did not come to work.
Steve spent part of the afternoon clearing the dirt off the sidewalk; he was not working on the sidewalk that we raised; he was working on the sidewalk on the other side of the mission house. This ground is so soft and sandy that the sidewalks have sunk over time. We might have to raise that sidewalk in the future.
Thank you for the love, prayers and support.
In HIS Service,
Steve and Kandie
