Desire of our Hearts

Hello All,
I have to say it is funny writing my blog on Friday, but it is a necessary evil!  I am heading out to a ladies retreat in about an hour so have to get it done today. 

Do you see something wrong with the picture below?

 

 

This was Jim's salad with lettus from the neighbor's garden. I guess I didn't wash it well enough and this little guy on top thought he was in heaven! Glad I saw it before Jim began to eat it!

We had a good week with the BK project.  Jim and Evans (the clerk of works) caught a very significant problem that could have been very bad.  They found out the column bases that were being put together were too big!  Why?  Because the contractor had the wrong revision to the construction drawings!  This is a big deal.  In the Navy, revision control was a huge issue.  You have to work with the latest update or there are always problems.  But, the outcome this time was good.  They went back and reworked 18 of the columns but they caught it before they were poured.  And now, everyone is more sensitive to revision control!  Here are a few pictures from this week:

 

 

these were some that were too large

 

this is a site walk through and all the important people!

 

This is the hole for the new fuel tank for the hospital

 

 

 

notice how they hand lay each base stone!

 

 

After taking this last picture, it was noticed that these stones were not in spec.  They were too large.  The contractor had to go back and pull it all up and break the large pieces down.  I sure am glad it is not me with a sledge out there in that hot sun!  These men work hard.

 

This last week end was Titchie Field Day (Elementary school).  Sallie and Timothy had a great time in the hot sun getting wet and playing games.

 

 

 

 

They also had Titchie Sunday last week.  That means that the kids get to come up and sing and some get to lead the worship.  Timothy has a great voice and he was brave enough to lead worship with 8 girls and 1 other boy.  Way to go Timothy!

 

Sallie with the Titchie choir

 

Timothy leading worship with 9 others

 

Timothy also turned 12 this week.  It is amazing watching these kids change so fast.  Below is a picture of him and his birthday Tiramisu (Mom thought that was a great choice)!

 

 

 

Our house help, Rose, recently took a class called farming God's way.  Craig Sorley of Care of Creation taught it to some of the local ladies.  It taught her some innovative ideas about growing a garden.  She is now experimenting and is amazing all of her neighbors!  They are very doubtful in what she is doing, but she wants to persist and just see what the outcome is!  She uses a lot of mulch now, and here are some pictures of Sallie and Emily having fun in the pile and then the pile contained and loaded up for the ride up to her place:

 

 

 



 



Last week at chapel, a good friend, John Axelson, spoke about the desire of our hearts.  We can not know what the big picture is that God has set for us.  Very few people do anyway.  But, we are called upon to be ready.  To be ready to do what He wants when He calls.  In practicality, that means living every day knowing that He wants the best for us and if we learn and wait and watch and listen, we will be ready and hear the call.
Prov 13:12
12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.
I love this proverb because it is really how we humans work.  If you are passionate about something, you thrive.  If you sit dejected and not hopeful, you wither away!  So, be passionate and learn and listen to God.  He will guide your every step!



One last interesting picture.  This is a giant hornbill.  They come around sometimes and are very noisey.

 

 

Trevor is taking another SAT test tomorrow.  He is also applying to a summer program at Yale.  He will need to get a scholarship to be able to go, and we ask that you pray about that with us.  Banquet is coming up fast (Feb 15).  "The Asking" is taking place this week.  All the boys in the senior and junior classes get together and decide who is going to ask who.  Once that is done, they come up with very creative ways to ask their dates.  Trevor's asking this week involved pizza, cheesecake, bruschetta, a picnic blanket and a pie in the face (not necessarily in that order)!  But, bottom line is that she said "Yes!" 

Hope you have a great week.  We have had a lot of people come lately with medical and school fee issues.  Please pray that we will be able to help with the little we have.

In His Hands,
Jullie T.

Quadruplet Miracle!

Hello All,

 

Can't believe it is already Saturday and past the middle of January!  Time is flying by.  We had a quick week for sure.
The above is a picture of the Duka community. A Duka is a store and this is where we can go to buy groceries.  Notice the red building.  It is actually sponsored by coca cola and we can get coke in glass bottles there (without high fructose corn syrup)!

Liz arrived yesterday.  She is a young lady from Washington state that is in between undergrad and graduate school and will be staying with us for a while to experience what it is like living in Kenya.  We are happy to have her and I think there are some aspects of life here that will really open her eyes!

Take a look at this hole:

 

This is actually the pit that the hospital is digging to put an underground fuel tank in.  It is now 4 meters deep!  It was having some problems with ground water seeping in, but they seem to be winning that battle.  It is right up next to our generator building and we are a bit worried about the foundation there.  Hopefully, they will get this tank in soon!

There was another building that fell down last week here out in the west in Kisumu.  They don't know the reasons yet, but the reporter who's article I read thought very strongly that it was another example of poor contractor works.  I say 'another' because last year there was a very large building in Nairobi that came down.

This past week Kenya held nominations for the upcoming elections.  Things did not go perfectly and there was some violence in Nairobi and Kisumu yesterday.  This is a country that is trying to elect 6 layers of offices and it is extremely difficult.  The ballots are electronic, but there is wide scale cheating involved of all kinds and people get upset.  The elections are to be held on March 4th and I am sure we will be feeling the pinch of it all till then and during the aftermath!

This is a picture of the confetti hedge out in front of our house.  It is in full bloom now and is beautiful.

Another funny site is the one below:

The one on the left belongs to Timothy and the one on the right belongs to his friend JT.  I think they are having a race to see who can go the longest with the least amount of shoe!

Last Monday night the kids had 'Coke Date.'  It is a time where they can get together with their big brother or sister (from the high school) and hang out.  This is a picture of the kids playing on the upper field with the sun set over Mt. Longonot (on the right).  What a beautiful evening!  It is very encouraging for them to get to know some of the high school kids and have some free time together.  Last Saturday, Sallie went on an outreach with her big sister Tegan.  They went to the House of Hope orphanage to play with the kids.  They had a great time!

Jim has been busy with the children's wing this week.  They are laying some colunm bases and we should see colunms in a week or so. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a good rain the other day and that has hidered the effort a bit, but they are still moving along nicely.

We started up our weekly meeting with the engineering and facilities group this past week.  There is a lot of stuff going on around here.  I am involved right now with getting the ENT building off the ground.  We met with an architect this past week that will take my design and refine it so that we can have some construction drawings.  It will be good to get that one underway.

 

Above is a picture of Regina Wangari.  She delivered quadrupletes at the hospital on Jan 1.  These were not aided with fertilization techniques!  It is very rare.  They are doing well and will remain here for several months.  You can see 2 of them in the background.  This picture was taken by a man from RVA who presented a check to her to help with fees.  His right up is below:

Hello, everyone this is Regina Wangari (on right). Recently as of January '1st' a mother of four brand new babies. Yes, she had quadruplets naturally at Kijabe AIC maternity ward. Today I visited her together with Nelson Kimilu the head of Marketing and Public Relations for the hospital. I was blessed to present her a check of 20,000 KSH (about $240) from all of you to help with her many hospital bills. The babies all girls are all doing well and it was very interesting seeing them in their little incubators wiggling all around. Two of them are pictured behind the ladies on the left. Their names are Angel, Victoria, Precious, and Joy. Keep praying for this mother who is blind in her left eye! She has her work cut out for her. 

Please pray for her as she is also blind in one eye and having trouble with the other.  She is nervous about having the good eye looked at because it was the procedure that was done on the other that caused her to loose her sight.

Hope you have a great week.  Our plate is full but we wouldn't have it any other way!  God has blessed us beyond measure.  Please pray for this country of Kenya as they face a big uphill battle with the upcoming elections.

In His Hands,
Jullie T.

Story Telling - a Must!

Hello All,
We have had a busy but productive week.  Mostly involved with things like building a children's wing, figuring pressures based on flow and head changes, designing houses, looking for flooring for houses, overseeing excavation (no digging involved for us!), organizing 68 kids to work preparing and serving food, but that's all!

I found these pretty little birds on our porch eating some rice that was for the cats.  They are weavers.  The second is a black masked weaver but I am not sure what the first is:

 

Some kind of Weaver bird

 

 

Black Masked Weaver

 

 

I have noticed that it is the first picture that appears in my blog that shows up when it is posted to Face book, so I try to make the first one something nice.

 

Now, below is something not so nice, but some of you (on the sick side) might find it interesting.  Apparently, some of the septic pumping companies around here don't really know how to pump a septic tank!  Look at all the sludge left on the bottom of this tank and they took 5 truck loads out of it!

 

 

 

 

No, Jim did not get into the tank to take these pictures.  I think he just lowered the camera (I hope).  This is our worst tank around the hospital campus and is the only one we are going to keep in operation with our new tankless sewer system.  We are still waiting on a contractor to be hired to do the oxidation pits, but the cost for that is somewhere in the $600,000 range!  So, we may be waiting a while.

Jim spent some time this week doing flow calculations.  The contractor for the Children's Wing had a run of supply water pipe put in that is a different variety then what used to be there and a different diameter.  The pressure in the pipe upstream of this is now higher, and hence causing problems with breakage, and the local workers were thinking that it was the contractor's fault.  Low and behold, the locals had also added some supply tanks and rerouted things a bit, which was really the culprit because the tanks are about 140 ft higher then they used to be!  That is about 60 lbs of pressure.  Anyway, hopefully, calculations and not emotions will prevail in this discussion!

The poinsettia trees bloom here starting just before Christmas.  Yes, the poinsettias are trees here!  Below is one up by the maternity wing:

 

Beautiful!

 

Our friends from Care of Creation are finally getting their house started.  They are just now getting the land excavated.  The local tracker is broken (again) so they were frustrated at having to start late (problems from the get go)!  But, our Children's wing contractor has an excavator and they were able to hire them when they are not using it on the project.   That and about 20 guys with shovels will get them dug out soon.  Here are a few pictures:

 

 

They have a few large boulders to deal with and a pretty steep slope but it is going to be a beautiful spot.

I was listening to a podcast of David Platt this week about telling stories.  It is so important to instill in our kids the stories of our history;  Family, and the bible.  Psalms 78 talks about .....teaching their children so the next generation would know them, and even the children yet to be born and they in turn would tell their children.....
I would love to know the complete story of my ancestors.  They came to America a very long time ago and settled in the south.  I have heard that some even owned slaves.  I have 4 great, great..... uncles who were in the Civil War.  Three of them died and the 4th became the commander of his regiment at a very young age (14 I think).  But somehow this kind of information gets lost and muddled with time.  What were they like?  What did they think of life in the south?  Did they know God?  I would love to write down my history someday so that my grandchildren can answer these questions about me!  Does thinking about these kind of things mean I am getting old?  If so, that is fine with me!  I love how the Africans' tell their stories.  It is mostly with song and dance.  David Platt was here in Kenya one time and he said that when he gets to heaven he wants to sit on the Kenyan side because they worshipped God with song and dance so well!  They are so used to telling stories based on a dance with the whole tribe.  And these dances get passed from generation to generation.  That is just cool and a shame we have lost that in our culture.

Hope you have a wonderful and blessed week and please make time to tell some stories to those kids!

In His Hands,
Jullie T.

 



 

Big Hairy Thing!

Hello All,
Hope you had a great first week of 2013. Most people that we work with are still not back, so we think next week we will actually get rolling on most of the projects.  I thought this was an interesting picture of a wheelchair that I found at the hospital.  It was out back and, I think, no longer in use:

 

Jim turned 51this past week! Wow, is he old! We had a nice gathering at a friend's house. She cooked dinner and made dessert. I had a lovely day. Jim only got 5 candles on his cake because we would have needed a really big cake!

Jim's 51st Birthday

I forgot to post last week about what a nice time we had at Rose's house at Christmas (actually the 23rd).  We went to church with her, and we actually got up and sang Noel, Noel with her family.  Then we went to her house for a really nice meal.  She was so gracious and had roasted goat and gave Mom and I each a very nice bag.  It was a big deal for her to prepare all of that.  The boys each got a car (from Timothy of course) and they were so excited!  They were "brumming" all over the house.  Yvonne received a really nice doll that Mom had brought from the states that some of her friends helped buy.  It has long hair and Yvonne was so excited! (I don't have a picture of her with it - sorry).

Rose and Yvonne

 

The boys getting cars

Rose opening her gift

This is something that I intentionally did not post till my mother got home (to Arizona - far from here!).  My neighbor posted something that made me really laugh back in November.  It said, "You know you're in Africa when your neighbor yells 'Its Big, Its Hairy and its in my house!' and she is not talking about her husband!"  Then she had this picture:

I found this on my front door as I was trying to enter the house!  We were getting ready to leave and Trevor was inside and very confused as to why I was screaming.  He thought is could be a snake but it was only a spider as big as my hand!  In our research, we found out it is a tarantula, or a baboon spider as they call them here.  It is harmful, but will not kill you and they are not super fast.  Jim was able to catch it in a Tupperware container and send it up to the science lab of the school with some sophomore boys that were next door.  They thought it was very cool.  I did not!  I wanted to leave this little piece of news till Mom was gone so she could sleep at night!

The Bethany Kids Wing contractor started back in full force this week.  They had been gone for 2 weeks and came back to find the holes for the foundations had filled to the brim with water!  This got them to source a big pump that they had been needing to pump them all out:

Jim is gearing up to hit the ground (literally) hard this next month.  We hope to be showing you columns soon.

Sallie found this recipe in our cookbook:

"Recipe for a Happy Family"
1 Husband
1 Wife
children
1 Bible for each
3 cups of love (packed)
Generous portions of prayer
1 package of play
1 T of patience
1 T of understanding
2 T of forgiveness
1 small paddle
1 C kisses

Mix all well and sprinkle with awareness.  Bake in the moderate oven of everyday life.   Turn out on plate of cheerfulness.  Garnish with tears and laughter, and in large servings serve God and one another.

We thought the patience should be 1 C and not 1 T!  And we needed to add some hugs!

Have a great week.

In His Hands,

Jullie T.

One last picture of a cool dragon fly we saw: