Prayer

I thought I would also pass along some prayer requests for those of you who do frequent our blog. Obviously, we do live in a very Muslim country as you see from the prayer time. While it is all around us, it seems that Christianity is also growing slowly, but surely. I hear the call to prayer all over the city and even next to our EBM office is a school to teach how to do that, so they who work there hear that everyday, almost all day. I sure hope none of them go home to NA and begin their presentation with these chants:) Just kidding guys! I thought that I would pass along some pictures a little church in a small village. It seems that there are many of these little churches just thriving out in the bush. You can see the boys who just had to have their picture taken so they could see their picture in the camera. Thank God for digital:)
Please pray that these little churches continue to thrive and "Make Streams in the wasteland"(Isaiah) here in Niger. I also sent along a picture of a family just outside our school that Mikaylah and I met while on our walk to the bridge. Please pray that as our language gets better and better that we will be able to get off campus a bit and build relationships with our neighbors. This lady takes care of not only her kids, but also her brothers kids. He passed away last year. Life is hard, but yet, I see such a happy people in these Africans, especially the Christians.

Life around our house

Life around our house is sometimes just trying to keep cool. Jayson sportin' Mikaylah's sunglasses, while Mikaylah finishes off a nice cold coke on a hot day. (Yes, Amanda, we do let her have a small drink or two of coke.) For some reason, the cokes taste better out here than in NA. Maybe because it is about 60 degrees hotter here than Indiana today.
It does get rather windy as you can see by Mikaylah's reaction on the bridge. But, the wind is not that refreshing here. Imagine, if you will, that you are walking through a car wash without the water. At the end, those big blowers come on to dry you off. yeah, that is what the wind feels like here, a giant hairdryer. Unless we are swimming and as soon as you get out, you stand in the shade. That is refreshing at times that lasts about 3 minutes until you are dry again. We are not complaining, mind you, we are simply trying to giving you a mental picture of what life is like here and how we live. Can you see the dust devil in the 3rd picture. It reminded me of a little tornado in Indiana, but just blowing across the plains picking up dirt as it went. Unlike a tornado, it is harmless. We are looking forward to seeing our first sandstorm which should come right before the rain. We just hope this happens during the day so we can actually see it.

Thanks for looking at our pictures. We have so many to post. I have to find a place to put a whole album, so I can just download them all and let you all look until you can't look no more. We are thankful to be here. We should be moving into the dorm later this week to help out even more with the transition there. We are excited because there are ac units there:)

Kennedy Bridge---the only bridge for a city of 500,000

These pictures are of the only bridge in town to serve so many people, donkeys, camels, bicycles, motorcyles, mobelettes and pedestrians. It is nice to just walk down there at times and just look over the Niger River and see everything that is happening. Kids are swimming, people are doing laundry, some are bathing, cows are grazing where the river has dried up for now, and fishermen are out catching fish. We cross this bridge every time we have to go shopping or to the market. So, this bridge is very important. When there is a traffic jam, it can be very frustrating unless your car has a good air conditioner!:) Then you just relax and enjoy the reprieve from the heat.

Right now the river is very low due to the season, but the rains are due to hit anytime, from what I am told. I looked at weather the other day and it said 20% chance of rain for Saturday, 60% for Sunday. It did thunder on Saturday, but no rain. Sunday, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. While it is hot, the kids seem not to notice. We do have several pools around town, one of which at the American Rec center where the kids love to go. Jayson has no problem just walking into the big pool. He seems to think it is fun because pappa always pulls him out. He loves to go under. Mikaylah likes to play in the shallow end and just have her little games with friends(some imaginary). We don't have any pics of Jayson in the pool, sorry. We will try to get some of those. I also wanted to post a picture of a camel carrying his load, but each time I go to the bridge with the camera, there are no camels. Each time I drive across with no camera, there are usually 3 to 4 camels just strollin' across the bridge.