Where did everybody go?

Our present, crowded kitchen:)

Well Mikaylah finally asked, "where are the kids?" The dorm kids have been gone since June 13 and the Smiths left Monday night so we have been really alone for almost a week. Well not really, Tim's brother Doug is here right now helping making new cabinets for the new dorm kitchen.

This is the wall we will knock down!




And yes, there will be pictures as soon as Tim has time to help me download them. I love the MAC but it doesn't have a port to import pictures so it is a bit more complicated and I haven't learned how to do it yet... Anyways... that is a story in and of itself! Doug and his wife Danette were both set to come June 19th, but GOD had other plans for the other Phillips'. On Wednesday June 11 Grant Douglas Phillips was born and on Saturday June 15, the day before Father's day, Doug and Danette brought him home, all signed sealed and delivered! The story of How God orchestrated Grant to be in their family is nothing short of miraculous, but suffice it to say, Danette had her hands full with a new baby! So Doug graciously came by himself (and away from his newborn son) to spend these ten days with us. They are going by fast, but all the lower cabinets are made, they are working on the upper cabinets now. I must admit I feel pretty fortunate to be able to design my own kitchen, pretty overwhelmed, too. So glad that Chris and Diane Marine have done this before and are giving their expert opinions and know-how!
Doug has put on one of Jayson's diapers so he doesn't miss Grant too much (ha ha) and Danette has been great in sending photos of their precious little boy. I am going to try to upload one, so be patient if no picture appears!

R.O.U.S. (Rodents Of Unusual Size) I don't think they exist!

We may not live in a fire swamp but we do have R.O.U.S.s. Tim was up in the wee hours of the morning Tuesday morning and saw an animal under our desk. He scampered out into the dorm but Tim couldn't find him so he simply closed the door to our apartment so he couldn't get back in. Later in the morning we discovered a half eaten potato from the potato bin on the kitchen floor and there was broken glass all over the floor. We didn't see hide nor hair of him all day. We took four of our last five kids to the airport in the afternoon and still no sign of a critter.
Adam, the Smith's oldest son went to bed Tuesday night and soon returned to the common room. The R.O.U.S was trapped in his room! Tim Smith told him to close the door and go to bed, we would deal with the critter in the morning. So we kept him trapped in the bedroom, the rat, not Adam!
Wednesday morning we were telling our workers about the rat trapped in Adam's room and our plans to get rid of it. They protested us letting it back into the wild and begged to have a turn at it. It was caught and handed over to our friends for their dinner! Here is a photo of our little pal. ALIVE

Rains down in Africa!

Well we did get rained on. May 20. Rianna won the free French fries!! Here we are almost two weeks later and Mikaylah still talks about the dust storm. Dust storm? Yes Dust storm. As the wind picks up speed before the rain comes down it whips up a lot of sand. Tim's Aunt Julie called it a Haboob. I don't know what the locals call it, but it was VERY sindy, sand and wind!! Then the power went out so I was bathing the kids in the dark by candle-light. When we awoke Wednesday morning Mikaylah looked like a racoon, apparently I didn't do a very good job cleaning her up because she had two circles of dirt around her eyes and her scalp was still full of sand!! Jayson didn't fare too badly since I took him in earlier, he wasn't to pleased with the wind!

THe basketball court filled up with water in a hurry and all the dorm kids and some of the off campus kids (who came over to campus to celebrate the first rain together with us) layed down in the water. Tim took a picture of them playing in the water. Our video camera bit the dust so we only have the still camera now.
Our kids love being in the dorm. Jayson is our little music lover. He loves to play the African drum, like his Papa. He also loves playing with the boys. Mikaylah loves when the kids are home from school, I am afraid as they all go home the end of this week (except for five who have later flights) she will go into withdrawal. She already knows all their names. Jayson has a different relationship with each of the boys, he has a different handshake or growl for each boy, it is funny! Our kids are getting lots of attention and they are loving it!
Now we are still waiting for the second rain... already little shoots of grass have come up. It would be welcome anytime but Thursday evening when we plan to have the graduation ceremony out of doors. The junior girls don't want rain tomorrow night either because the JSB is tomorrow night and they will be dressed to the hilt! We will try to get some photos up of their special night.

P.S. I am having trouble loading photos right now so this one of Jayson will have to suffice until further notice... sorry!

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.

Out and about Sahel

We had a long squishy flight from Indianapolis to Niamey. This picture was taken on the last and most squishy of the flights. Thankfully it was only three hours long and Jayson slept the whole time!

Mikaylah loves having a playground she can walk to. It is conveniently located just outside the front door of the dorm. The day students play here while waiting for their parents to pick them up.
Jayson is just happy to be outside! He doesn't have to be doing anything special just being outside is enough for him! He has already figured out how to open the doors so we have to keep them locked in order to keep our little boy inside! Both our kids have adjusted to the new time zone and Jayson enjoys his nap during "sieste" our noon rest from 1-3pm the hottest part of the day.

We have arrived!

we have arrived here in Niamey! Praise the Lord! We know so many have been praying for
this to happen for so long and many of you literally prayed us here during the actual
flight. We thank God for so many people who have helped send us here to Sahel Academy.

The trip over here was rather long, but thankfully, uneventful. The children did
wonderful as we found our way through JFK airport, the Casablanca Airport and then here
in Niamey. Mikaylah really wanted to go ride the belt that took the luggage back to the
handlers, but of course, wasn't allowed:) Both kids did quite a bit of sleeping which was
super for us. On the second leg of the trip to Casablanca, we were given the bulkhead
seats, which allowed us to put Jayson on the floor, and he slept for almost the whole
flight. Mikaylah played her leapster and then slept for a few hours. The kids were great
when we had to wake them up to move. Mikaylah was fantastic in taking her own carry-on as
well.

Some more things to praise God for are that all of our luggage arrived with us. AND, the
customs agent only looked into one bag full of Jayson's toys and sheets and waved us
ahead. As we understand it, the customs agent usually likes to get some cash for big
loads, so this was a huge relief to not have to pay anything. We finally got to bed about
4 in the morning on Saturday and had a few hours sleep. Of course, the kids woke up
earlier than Janice and I because they had all that good sleep on the plane. Today is
Friday and all of us had a normal nights sleep last night, which is fantastic. Hopefully,
we are all on African time already.

Now we have the task of unpacking some of our things. Since we are in temporary housing,
we won't unpack everything until we move into the dorm. We did have a great reunion with
friends here at Sahel. There were so many things were waiting here for us. From a
beautiful sign that the Totman kids hung on the outside wall of our house to welcome us
to the campus, to toys and fresh flowers in every room, "princess sheets" on Mikaylah's bed and
the case of cokes that the Bliss’s left for us in our house.

Tim is out with Dave Totman, our field director right now getting a lesson on driving in Niamey. I am
home with the kids as Jayson is having his noon rest and Mikaylah is doing a puzzle. The kids love
being outside and already feel at home here!

Visas arrived!

Hey it was a good day today, our passeports arrived via DHL with our visas for Niger... yeay!

Packing, packing, packing!

We only have twelve more days and we thought we were doing well until yesterday...

The vehicle we thought was going to take us to the airport is going to be in the shop that day so we have to figure out some other way to get all our extra baggage to the airport. Tim called the airline to let them know in advance that we would have extra baggage and they told us that since our ticket from Indianapolis to NY is separate from the rest of our tickets that we only get 50lbs per bag and each additional bag will be $300.00... a far cry from what we were expecting. Air Maroc allows 70lbs per bag and only charges $120.00 per additional bag. This was the reason why we chose Air Maroc over Air France!! Just another opportunity to develop grace, right? Since we already have 13 action packers and six bags packed we sure don't want to start over!! Yikes, well, now you know how to pray... pray for understanding on Delta's part and graciousness on our part!

We have tickets!

It is snowing again in Indiana! Not as much as our friends in Quebec are getting, but enough! We have so much to be thankful for this month. God is good all the time…even when our son is hospitalized for dehydration or just trying to cut off the tip of his pinky finger. The month of February has been everything but what we had planned. Of course as we get ready to head off to Niger, Jayson has been in and out of the hospital. But, that is when our life verse becomes even more real to us….For I know the plans that I have for you, plans not to harm you, but to prosper you, plans to give you a hope and a future. We are so thankful that those two experiences happened on this side of the pond.
As we get ready to go, we are also thankful for all of you, people who lift us up before the Lord in prayer. Without the faithful prayers of all of you, we are convinced that we would not be in the position we are in today…ready to depart for the Niger. We are also thankful for all of our faithful supporters financially. Because of your faithfulness, we have enough to be able to leave. We have been busy getting all of our doctor’s appointments, shots taken, visas bought, etc. We just finished our first round of shots and have applied for our visas. We also just got new prayer cards ordered with Jayson on them so we will send those out to our churches before we go. When you get ready to move across the ocean, you just have in the back of your mind that you are forgetting something very important. Please pray that we remember the super important things so we aren’t running around like chickens without heads at the last minute!
God has been good to us by providing all kinds of things through people in our church. From food showers when we first arrived, to watching our kids while we pack or do other things. February has been fairly eventful for us. Our plan was to sort through all of our stuff in storage and get rid of much of it. That didn’t get accomplished for three reasons. First, we were always on the road. Although it was wonderful to get reacquainted with our supporting churches and meet new churches, the travel took its toll on us, especially the kids. Mikaylah would go into a home and the first question was, “Where is my room?”
Second, Jayson became very sick at the first of the month and had to be hospitalized for dehydration for 24 hours. Then a couple weeks later, he decided to go pinch his pinky finger in a door and had to have minor surgery to reattach the mostly severed tip. Thirdly, I counted on weather in Indiana to cooperate with us and warm up a little so I wouldn’t freeze up at the storage shed. It seemed to snow almost every day that I planned to go up and work. That ended up being good though because it left more time to get all the shots we needed, do the paperwork, write emails, and play with the kids before the rush hits. Well, the rush is now here. We are busy trying to sort, pack, throw away, and pack some more. We thank you for all of your prayers that we would be organized through all of this.
I hope you are still reading! Lord willing, we will be flying out of Indianapolis April 3rd and arriving in Niamey Saturday, April 5th. Our church is commissioning us at a service on the 30th of March at 5 pm at Bible Baptist Church www.bbcministries.org Our goal is to be all packed by then, so we can say our good-byes and leave by the 3rd. If any of you would like to attend that service, you are more than welcome! We will have lots of family in town that weekend to wish us good bye.
We do thank each and every one of you who have, through prayers and finances partnered with us in loving and modeling for the next generation.

Prayers for Jayson

Just a quick note to ask you to pray for Jayson. His baby finger on his left hand was caught in the hinge of the door and was almost cut off right where his finger nail is. We spent four hours in the emergency from 8-midnight. We are taking him to the Indiana hand center in Indianapolis Thursday morning at 8 am for surgery since his bone was exposed. The ex-rays showed that his bone was not broken, but he will probably lose the entire nail, they will try to save the finger tip in the surgery. I have no idea how long it will take. He was scheduled to get his yellow fever shot tomorrow. We have to postpone that for now. He just woke up at 4am screaming and I gave him some more Tylenol but I couldn't nurse him because he must be prepped for surgery, so he was angry about that too. He is finally asleep now (4:50) and we will probably have to wake him and Mikaylah up tomorrow morning for our trip to Indy. Please pray.
12 hours later...
Thank you for your prayers for Jayson. We just got back to Kokomo from the Indiana hand center in Indianapolis. He went into surgery at 9:57 and the surgeon was all done at 10:20. He lost the nail, but the surgeon is confident that the finger-tip will recover. She put in two very tiny sutures in the nail bed itself which was crushed and three more sutures in his very tiny pinky. They allowed both Tim and I to be in the operating room with him. He was under conscious sedation as it is safer than general anesthetic, so he could breath on his own, he was just loopy! Even though he will not remember the surgery it was comforting for him to have familiar faces in an unfamiliar place. John Rogers from EBM came over and kept Mikaylah company in the very kid friendly waiting room so both Tim and I could be with Jayson. He ate some grapes and drank some water so they discharged us at about 11am. He fell asleep in the car and is still asleep now (1:15pm). Actually both kids fell asleep on the way home! He has a humoungous bandage on his little finger that is supposed to stay on for ten days! We also discovered he had an ear infection so we got antibiotics for that too! Poor kid! Thank you for your prayers, and please continue to pray that he recovers well from the trauma.

Brave and Tough

Mikaylah is a big girl now! We went to Claire's in Markland Mall in Kokomo this afternoon where Mikaylah picked out the earrings she wanted, watched intently as ten year old Allie got her ears pierced announcing that she would be brave and tough like Allie. Then aften the ladies with their loaded earring guns approached her ears she promptly clamped both her hands over her ears.
Five minutes of persuading and promises of lollypops and stickers she bravely removed her hands and submitted to the piercing of the ears! She was brave and tough and didn't even say "ouch!"

She is now the proud owner of pink daisy earrings! Six weeks before we leave for Niger!
If you click on the picture you can see her earrings up close! She is so proud!

Wow it is February!

We just got our computer back from the computer repair shop. There were lines on our screen (our Dell laptop) and Kurt the computer repair shop repairman said we needed a new video card that would have to be ordered from Dell. That was January 15. Today Kurt called. Our computer was ready to be picked up. BTW the harddrive had to be replaced and we couldn't salvage any information from your old broken down hard drive... ARGGG and it must be the screen that is bad because the new video card didn't correct the problem, but don't worry we didn't have to pay for the new unnecessary videocard! Yikes! Well, here we are again at square one, No email addresses, no favorites on the bookmarker... nothing so if you are reading this and you know us, drop us an email so we can keep in touch! Thanks oh yeah, no pictures because all our picture files are lost too... boo hoo... but we still have access to our blog! Yeah!

Mary and Joseph Revisited--Room in the Inn, twice!

Nous avons termines nos etudes! Tim and I finished our language study on December 14. We were glad to be finished but we absolutely fell in love with Quebec. (desolee que je n'aie pas une clavier francaise avec les cedilles et accents, etc. Pardonez moi) We love our church in Beauport and we will greatly miss the many dear friends we have made.

Our friends in Kokomo who loaned us their truck and trailer for our move to Quebec volunteered to trade vehicles with us again for our return trip. Toronto is a very convenient half-way point between Kokomo and Quebec City as my parents live there and enjoy hosting our friends! The plan was for Paul and Sherrie to bring their truck and trailer from Kokomo and we would bring our caravan from Quebec and trade in Toronto. We planned to do the trade on the weekend after classes were done. We also planned on leaving Mikaylah with Grandma and Grandpa in Toronto while we went back to Quebec to pack up our apartment. We left early on Saturday morning December 15. However a snowstorm in Kokomo prevented Paul and Sherrie from leaving Kokomo. They finally made it on Monday December 17. We traded vehicles and Tuesday Paul and Sherrie took our Caravan back to Kokomo and we brought the truck and trailer with Jayson up to Quebec.

We had pretty good weather but ran into traffic in Montreal that kept us at a standstill for three hours! So we didn't arrive in Quebec until 11:00 at night. Tim's Quebecois friend Marc graciously drove over to the church (where we were storing the truck and trailer) and brought Tim back to the apartment. How thankful we are for good friends. We made quick work of packing the apartment and our friends helped us to empty and clean the apartment. We were all packed up by Friday and Saturday Tim loaded the truck and trailer. We planned to leave after church on Sunday morning December 23 and be in Toronto on Christmas Eve with our daughter and my parents. Some other friends, Norm and Debra graciously loaned us their car and their home as all our possessions were packed in the trailer and there was no place to park the truck and trailer near their home. Sunday morning our dear pastor Rene Labbe invited Tim to make his adieus from the pulpit. We were so thankful for the opportunity to say goodbye to all our dear friends. we were on the road by 1:30 Sunday afternoon. But we were only on the road for about an hour when Tim noticed that the brakes on the trailer were grabbing! Tim pulled over and discovered that the wires to the trailer were shorting out. So he disconnected the wires and we were on our way again but without running lights to the trailer. We were on the road about 15 minutes when one of the tires on the trailer blew! It was cold out and poor Tim was changing a tire on the highway! There was a Canadian Tire store (Like Menards or Home Depot but with mechanics) in Drummondville so we decided to stop there and get a new tire and find someone to fix the wires for us. Drummondville was only another 20 minutes away but before we got there we lost all electrical power in the truck! No blinkers, no dashlights, nothing!
Thankfully we made it to Drummondville without getting pulled over by the police or having anyone plow into us! It was only 3:30 but it gets dark in Quebec by 4:30 so we had to find a hotel for the night. We got a new tire at CT and found a hotel across the street! Tim called Paul to ask his advice and Paul told him to check the fuses! Good call Paul! Four fuses were blown! Tim was able to get new fuses at CT and we had power in the truck again! Hallelujah! But there were no mechanics to be found on Sunday or on Christmas Eve.
We were on our way again Christmas Eve morning hoping to make it to Toronto but without running lights on the trailer we had to stop again, this time in Kingston, Ontario. The hotel had a Denny's attached to it but they were closing early for Christmas Eve. The staff felt sorry for our little Mary Joseph and Jesus family on Christmas Eve so they came out in the lobby and offered to feed us. We were the only ones in the restaurant and the staff was giddy to get home to their families so we ate an early supper at 4:15!! Jayson was properly feted and they even gave him a Tou-tou (stuffed animal in English).

We only had 3 hours left to Toronto so we arrived at 11 o'clock Christmas morning. In time for Stockings! We had a great reunion with our daughter and a happy Christmas with family. My sister and brother in law and their three little boys came for Christmas dinner so we had a big jolly time!
We didn't have time to do any Christmas shopping for our family but it didn't seem to matter. Everyone had a great time and we were just glad to be together!

Snow, snow, snow!

We have actually received more snow than has ever been recorded in Québec at this time of year. Mikaylah loves the snow, she asked Tim if there would be snowstorms in Africa. She would not take no for an answer. Hopefully she will be tired of the snow by the time we get to Niger. Besides she will have all that sand to play with!
We are going to Toronto on Saturday after Tim's exams are finished tomorrow. Mikaylah has been counting the days. Yesterday she asked if there were two weeks until we go to Gramma and Grampa's house and I said no, there were only three more sleeps... she complained, "I don't want to go to sleep!"
Jayson struggles just to get into his snowsuit and then to be tied down in his carseat is almost torture for our active little man. So Sunday afternoon he finally gave in and went to sleep!

Saturady night Mikaylah was able to say goodbye to some of her buddies here in Québec and Jayson found the potato bin! To each his own!
Mikaylah and her Sunday school teacher and beloved babysitter, Rachel
She had to say goodbye to some of her church friends, funny how she knew all the boys' names! Remy, Jacob, Thomas and Gabriel.

Bonne Fête!

Yes, the little guy turned one last week. Hard to believe that our baby is already a year old! My parents came down from Toronto to celebrate with us.


Québec also celebrated with our first snowfall of the year and Mikaylah was SOOO happy to go out and play in the snow!



We are starting to wrap up around here. We had some people come and look at the apartment (potential renters) so I made sure the dishes were washed and they were only here for about five minutes! I was actually a little disappointed! But now my kitchen is spit spot! Mom and Dad left for Toronto this morning and they took Mikaylah's trike with them, since it is snowing now she got the sled out!

Three more weeks before we pack up and move out of here! Hard to believe but we are very excited!