Missionary Associate Needed!

Hello friends!

Hmmm...I think this blog has been a little too quiet.  We've been very busy with school and life the past couple weeks.  While I wish that I had lots of fun pictures to show, I actually only have an announcement/request to put out here.

As many of you know, we regularly have Missionary Associates come to help us out.  Our MAs are a huge blessing to us.  They help us with school, cooking, babysitting and anything else that needs doing around our home and compound.  Life tends to be a bit more difficult here than life in America:  We have regular water and power outages, shopping is not quite as easy, we have more visitors coming and going, and everything just takes significantly more time.  Because of all of this, it is a huge blessing to have an extra set of hands at home.  It helps relieve my stress and therefore assures that Eric can focus on the work of the mission, without worrying about the details of life at home.  In this way, our MAs are a very important part of the work here and we are so very thankful for each one of them!

We have been truly blessed that the Lord has provided us with Godly young women.  Our MAs have shared a love for the reformed faith, believe that children are a blessing, that there is value in homeschooling and that the making of a godly home is a good thing.  They have also loved on our children and we have been so thankful for their love!  We also believe that this opportunity is a great blessing to the young ladies that come.  They are able to experience the mission field, life in Africa and a taste of God's work here, but all under the shelter of a family.

We are praying that the Lord will provide us with someone who is at least a high school graduate.  We need this person for the Spring semester...starting mid January through the end of May.

Do you know someone who might be interested?  Please forward this!  Do you have anymore questions?  Feel free to contact us at ericdianna@hotmail(dot)com.

Football Tournament

Last week, Wednesday night at about 6 PM, my husband decided to host a football tournament for all our neighborhood friends.  On Thursday at 12 PM, we had 8 teams and an afternoon of football.  How he manages to pull these things off, I still can't understand...but I love him for it.

He set up three small fields on our compound, painted lines, secured goal posts, found three referees (hailing from Kenya and South Korea), and set up the playing schedule.

Each team had to have at least 1 girl and have less than a 45 year cumulative age.  That opened it up for everyone to play.

There was lots of cheering...

lots of goofing off...

Shoes were optional...

But mud wasn't...

The final games were exciting as the last two teams had one set of brothers against another set of brothers...

And the sports commentating was a bit hilarious...

Rubber boots and rain coats were a blessing through the afternoon showers...

Finally the results came in...Adrian, Emma, Jimmy and Rebecca...after two overtimes and two sets of shoot outs... won...

The winning team received notebooks and pens for school...

And everyone (about 50 people in all!) finished the day with ice cream.

Fun times!

A Joyous Day!

Eric was recently blessed to be able baptize Abdallah...a former Muslim.  Abdallah was converted under the care of some friends who are missionaries with Engineering Ministry International.  What a blessing to be able to witness the symbol of Christ washing sin away, turning darkness to light and causing the blind to see.  After so much "not-fun" stuff this summer (no water, malaria, typhus, friends leaving, etc...) it is this kind of "amazing grace" stuff that puts a spring back in our step and encourages us to press on.  

May God always bless Abdallah with a simple sweet trust in Jesus.

The Littles

When we were in Kampala a few weeks ago, we stopped by KFC for a treat.  There was a lady that was doing ballons and face painting.  She gave the boys each a sword and gave Talitha an animal.

Talitha was slightly miffed.  She wanted a sword too, of course.  And felt no shame in taking the air filled lioness back to the lady and asking for a weapon.

These three...who are now my "littles"... keep me on my toes these days.  A very precious bunch.  A very busy bunch.  But I do love these years.

Summer Vacation is over...

My kids seemed to have had a crazy fun summer this year.  In addition to getting chickens, going to Queen Elizabeth, and visiting with Grandparents, they got pretty creative outside.

Timothy and our friend Joel, with a little bit of help(both manually and financially) from the sisters built this house.  In Ugandan culture, when the boys reach about the age of 13 or so, they move out of the main house (where they would often be sleeping in the same room/bed as mom and dad) and they build their own house there on the compound.  It's actually more like building one's own bedroom.  Of course Timothy has his bed and room inside our more Americanized house here, but that didn't stop him from still wanting to build a house.  So he bought bricks, made mud for the mortar, bought tin roofing and even laid a concrete floor.  (And Mama dealt with loads of muddy clothes and many muddy footprints into the pantry where the cookies are kept.)  They also made a loft and ladder, so they can cram more people into the little hut.  His friend, Joel helped show him how to do it all and they worked side by side.  They are super excited to spend the night out there some time soon.

But in the last couple days, they have been minorly majorly distracted with thoughts of building a zip line.  They plotted and planned and tried this and that and finally found the "perfect" rope and stick.

yea...it starts pretty high up...have I mentioned we live in Africa?

I said to Eric, (after I was eagerly called out to watch my children jump from terrifying heights putting their trust in a rope that they tied up and a stick to which they frantically call to each other, "Whatever you do, don't let go.")

"I think this is the point at which we are probably better off buying a real zip line."

And he quickly and wisely responded, "I think this is the point at which we are better off starting school so they stop building zip lines."

Ahhh...so true...

...although their creativity makes me smile...

but still...it's time to hit the books kids!

A few pictures from the last couple weeks

Here are a few more pictures from our drive back from Queen Elizabeth.  We happened upon a lovely coffee shop where they had the most amazing hamburgers in Uganda.  The kids enjoyed them very much.

And we drove past the equator.  Even though we were short on time, we still popped out for a quick picture.  I think we got things mixed up though...shouldn't my Canadian husband have been on the North side and this Georgia girl been on the South?

A few Sundays ago, it rained in the morning for the first time in 19 months of meeting on our compound for church.  We shifted everything inside and by God's grace it went well.

We also welcomed a man into membership who had started attending as a direct result of our evangelism efforts a few months ago with Dr. Krabbendam.  We praise the Lord for growing his church and pray for continued blessings in that area.

Fun times in Kampala

Where did our feet take us yesterday?

Katelyn and I drove to Kampala with just the two of us to pick up our new missionary associate (and her mom who will visit with us for a week before she returns home!).  We decided to make a day of it by going to an adventure park that has a high ropes course.  We parked on the Kampala side of Lake Victoria and took a boat across the lake to the camp.  We had a great time anywhere from 10-40ish feet off the ground.  There were two courses and they each ended with a zip line.

So thankful for this girl... :)