We're Baaack!

We had a great visit in South Africa, and are enjoying being back in the States.

I will now be updating this site more frequently

See ya soon:)

Sick House

In Asia-Pacific language the word "hospital" is "Rumah Sakit" which literally means 'sick house'.

Well, we were able to experience the sick house first hand today. Today is a public holiday due to Chinese New Year, so we were taking the opportunity to sleep in and Gideon was actually cooperating with this. At 8:00 am he was still sleeping and Raquel was in our office watching a movie while sitting in the office chair. We were awoken by a crashing noise and screaming from Raquel. She had pushed her feet against the desk to roll the chair back, but a wheel got caught on a play mat and the chair flipped over. She was holding her arm and wouldn't stop crying. When we looked at it, it was already bruising and starting to swell. After talking to a friend who is a nurse and consulting with a family here with 6 kids (5 of them boys:) we decided to take her in for an X-ray. We went to the public hospital in town. Ken and BJ came with us (some of the staff at the hospital know them by name due to their frequent trips there:) to show us the ropes. They did an X-ray and everything was fine, Praise the Lord! Raquel did a great job and is feeling better now. She has a couple bruises and her arm is a little tender, but we're so thankful it wasn't fractured.


We only went to this hospital for an X-ray. If she had required treatment we would not have her treated there, but would have gone to a better hospital in a city about an hour away. I took the picture below on the way to get the X-ray. These disposable (but apparently reusable) surgical gloves were were hanging in the sun to dry.



Since we started out in triage we saw a couple people come in to be treated. It was very sobering to see the suffering of these people who don't have the resources to seek better medical care. While our visit ended well, my heart was heavy for those we left behind.

Raquel

My mom sent Raquel a science kit for Christmas and she's been having fun doing different experiments and learning about making different colors from red, blue and yellow.

She has a three week break from her school, so we've been spending lots of quality time together:)

Today we were running errands in town and she said "Mommy, when we are sweating, that's God. I asked if she meant that God made our bodies to sweat and she said, "Yes, our sweat comes out and that's God on us."

We went to a sewing store to buy some ribbon and she saw little packets of sequins and glitter and wanted to buy them all. I told her that we could think of a project to do and then come back another day and pick out a few things. As we were driving she was trying to decide what she wanted to make. We were stopped at a stop light and she pointed to a sign and said "that's what I want to make" it was a poster with a picture of a muslim lady who was running for office and Raquel wanted to make a head covering (a lot of times they're pretty fancy and sparkly:)

We were at another store and Raquel saw a type of candy she had never seen before. She wanted to buy it, but I said no and offered her some chocolate candy (like M&M's) that we already had. She sighed, took it and said, "I guess I'll just get diaweewa" (I had told her the other day that eating too much chocolate will make you sick:)

Life with her is always entertaining:)

Merry Christmas!!!!

We really enjoyed our second Christmas in Asia-Pacific. Even though we missed our family and friends from back home, we had fun celebrating the birth of our Savior with good friends here.

Raquel was very excited on Christmas morning. She had been counting down the days for a couple weeks.

She got lots of fun presents

Gideon wasn't quite sure about all that went on, but still had a good time:)

Raquel's neighbor friends came over after she opened her presents to help try them out.

For lunch we went to our house helper's house and visited with her family.

Then later the Teall's came over for dinner and we feasted:)

Raquel and Kendra were matching!

It was good day:)

Now, on to the New Year!

Happy 2011 everyone:)!

Idul Adha cont...

My friend is the "mother" for about 50 girls at an orphanage nearby. They had recieved beef and goat meat and we were invited to go and eat sate (meat on a stick:) with them.

Here the girls are getting the meat ready

Some of it all ready to go.

Then they lit fires in these little grills outside and started to fan the flames

Raquel had a blast playing while the the food cooked.

When the fires were hot enough they brought the sate out to be grilled.

It takes awhile to cook sate for 50 plus people. We got there at 6 and didn't eat until almost 10. Gideon fell asleep:)

this picture makes me laugh

and then we ate! (and then we went home and went to bed- it was a long night)

Idul Adha

Idul Adha is holiday "celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a ram to sacrifice instead." You can read more about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha

The mosques were singing all night, and then all over the city today, goats and cows were being slaughtered. We no longer live across the street from a mosque, but there is a school by our house that was sacrificing a cow in a field nearby.

They skinned it and chopped it up right there, and then split up the meat for all the people.

We explained to Raquel that that's where hamburgers and biltong come from:)

Gideon was almost more popular than the cow.