April 25-26, 2013
I’ve been having a hard time finding Samuel (the physiotherapy person) so I decided to try to get a French lesson from a willing patient. Yesterday I bought a nice quality tract from the print shop store about the prodigal son. I asked a woman in the “infection ward” who had a nasty jaw abscess but has always had a beautiful and ready smile. I saw a Bible on her bed so assumed she had the joy of the Lord. She agreed to be my teacher and found my assumptions to be correct. First she read and I imitated and then I began reading and let her correct me when I made a mistake. It was a good way to interact without actually conversing (which I unfortunately can’t in French).
(Written Fri morning):
Then last evening we had a lunar eclipse party for the missionary community. Word was that we were going to have a full lunar eclipse last night. Just about everyone came for the pizza and soda first and then we all went outside to watch the eclipse. Well, someone had gotten incomplete information . It was less than spectacular to say the least. What was interesting, however, was being able to see the fruit bats in the trees with the full moon in the background. Those animals are quite large and quite abundant and we found out early in our stay here quite noisy. We hadn’t yet actually seen them so we saw them in action last night. The eclipse, on the other hand, just clipped the edge of the moon but it was a great excuse for a party after all.
The rainy season is in full swing now. First there were brief afternoon rains, then they began earlier, came down harder and lasted longer. Then last night for the first time, rain began during the night and is continuing this morning. Along with the rains comes cooler weather which is nice but also the opportunity for mosquitoes to breed more which is bad. This is a malaria area and most missionaries have had it. Could I ask you to pray for protection from malaria? We have well screened rooms, try to avoid times when they are more active and will use repellent if that is unavoidable. However we are not doing the prophylaxis due to side effects.
Thank you.
All for now,
Jackie