Tidbits from the week

It has been a good week. Abby continues to enjoy school and Andrew has finally settled in to our life and routine here at RVA. He enjoys going to school and wishes he had school more than 2 mornings / week. But it is a good schedule. Our mornings are as follows: preschool Monday, playgroup Tuesday, preschool Wednesday, and Kindergarten music on Thursday. And he LOVES going to staff chai. The whole school (teachers, staff, students) have chai break from 10-1030. Children get snacks (usually amazingly yummy snacks like cookies, breads, cakes, etc.) and play on the playground. Older children get chai and snacks and have a break in their day. They play too, though not on the playground - its not unusual to see a teenager climbing a tree at chai break. They especially love to climb the loquat trees in order to enjoy the sweet juicy fruit. The adults have chai and yummy snacks and meet together to cover any school business and to pray for the school, the students, etc. It is an encouraging daily gathering. Guess why Andrew likes it? A big piece of chocolate cake at 10 in the morning - what's not to like? They do serve fruit, too, which he also loves!

Alex was sick this week, but seems to be doing better. He is on the men's retreat with about 25 other men from RVA and other AIM missionaries from Kenya as well. I'm hoping its a refreshing time for him. He has definitely had a full schedule with teaching and coaching JV soccer.

We are looking forward to Chris and Sam's arrival this week on Thursday night! We are headed to the Masai Mara for safari from Sat-Tues for mid-term break. It is about a 4-5 hour drive from here. We are excited to share in this experience with them and to show them all about our life and ministry here at RVA.

In music class, we will spend the next few weeks preparing to sing a song in swahili at Multi-Cultural Day (in October) and preparing to perform a Christmas musical at the end of November (on the final Sunday before students leave on Thanksgiving day) called Angel Alert. It is the Christmas story told from the perspective of the angels. We will work in collaboration with the 5th and 6th graders as well. I continue to love teaching music. It has been a true joy to get to know the children and to sing with them! I also spent a little time in the second grade classroom this week, which was fun and brought back a flood of memories of my teaching days.

We are very blessed by David and Scovia, our outside and inside workers. They are a huge help to us in maintaining the household and are both very dear, sweet people. They have each invited us to their homes which we will look forward to in the next month's time. David keeps up the gardens and lawn and watering (all with non-power hand tools). Scovia helps with laundry, cleaning, baking, and sometimes childcare. She is an amazing baker: tortillas, bread, banana and pumpkin bread, cookies, english muffins, etc. Andrew enjoys both of them very much and especially likes taking chai break with Scovia! The household chores take up a lot of time here since there are very few labor-saving devices and since everything is baked/made from scratch. We have no dishwasher. We have a clothes dryer, but haven't used it until yesterday when our laundry hanging on the line was half dry and it started to pour rain. We quickly pulled it in and finished it off in the dryer. I have to admit that it was very satisfying to have soft hand towels, fresh out of the dryer, as opposed to the scratchy stiff ones we usually take in from the line. But we have all adapted to stiff clothes, which soften up as soon as you start using/wearing them. Line drying is quite "easy" here since it is usually 70s, dry and sunny, though it takes a considerable amount of time to hang/take down the laundry.

We are thankful for the rain that fell yesterday. The land in Kenya continues to be dry and barren. There are parts of Kenya where the drought is much more severe; the local people continue to suffer because of a lack of food. Its amazing and quite a paradigm shift to live in a place where people rejoice instead of complain when it rains!