We are relieved to come back to life, back to public life, online life. The craziness of our life has pushed the Blog to the back burner. But I'm going to attempt to give you some of the highlights here.
PERSONAL STUFF: Our family spent the first couple of weeks in July in the capital city, Ouagadougou. Andrea needed her gall bladder removed. Another missionary family, the Greys, whom we've recently befriended were going on vacation. So when they heard we needed a place to stay, they let us house sit for them. Our baby sitter Koro is originally from Ouaga and so this was an opportunity for her to let her son spend time with his grandmother. This way she could watch Daniel and Dylan while I was at the hospital with Andrea. The surgery went perfectly, and Andrea enjoyed all the extra care she received from me and the nurses, mostly the nurses. The kids really enjoyed playing with the Grey's kids toys. We also enjoyed getting to video skype with family and friends in the states thanks to the Grey's high speed internet connection.
After a brief recovery time we where already getting ready for the annual trek down to Ghana for the West Africa Missionary conference. This took three days of driving and almost 25 hours in the car each way. I don't know whether it was all the travel or the change in climate, but I got a nasty sinus infection starting from the day before the conference up to today. I'm finally starting to feel a bit more normal after over two weeks with this thing. But the worst thing about it was that I passed it on to the rest of my family. I'm also afraid that despite our best efforts we also passed it on to many at the conference. We also missed much of the conference and time at the pool and beach being quarantined in our hotel room. The parts we did experience, Randy Harris's words and worship led by the Burnams, was very encourging. One of the highlights of our trip, oddly enough, was going to see the new pixar movie "Up" in the mall (seriously, an honest to goodness mall fully air conditioned and with a real movie theatre with popcorn, and cushy seats and cup holders in the armrests, etc.). We also really enjoyed getting to know the Kennels better and spending time with the Ruffs in Tamale, Ghana (pronounced tah mah lay not like the Mexican dish). Then while we were waiting in Ouaga for Andrea's followup appointment, Daniel had a sleepover at Josh Grey's house. They had a great time playing video games and then pretending their own live action video games.
One more funny story. Dylan was playing guns with me. He kept shooting at me and saying, "bang, bang . . . Your dead, Daddy!" I decided I would try to channel his gun play into more appropriate pretend activities, so I said, "Let's pretend that we are hunting rabbits, o.k.? So, let's find some bunnies!". Without missing a beat, Dylan says, "Daddy you're a bunny. Bang, bang. You're dead!"
MISSION WORK: As you could imagine, we've had a few interruptions in our village ministry. However even in between two long hiatuses from our home in Dano, I've been able to facilitate one church leader, Romain, in starting a new preaching point and help another one of my students, Kpe-zuo, to take a new student under him and explore another preaching point. We're also making lots of preparations for the leaders conference scheduled for just a little over a week from now.
