Desert Gills

  Enjoyed this wall hanging at a local official's office.

Some recent glimpses of our life here. The local trader has many nicknacks that are mostly uninteresting, but he looks out for old coins for me.  This Napoleon III French Emperor coin was from 1855.  Makes one wonder how it made it all this way here.  Gave me a great opportunity to lecture my kids on a fascinating period of history, and give them a 'piece' of it (No French pun intended). Here are some photos from our most recent 4 day seminar.  This was actually the 7th step of the 'Timothy Training' and those who had been through the various steps were rewarded with a recently published Hausa Bible commentary.  After the Bible, there are relatively few rich theological resources readily available in Hausa, so we were glad to be able to distribute these. We recently inducted a new PAACS (Pan African Association of Christian Surgeons) resident into our program.  While I am not one of the faculty for this program, I do appreciate these do...

The kids have never had the opportunity or been allowed to go Trick or Treating... but with some new cool MKs moved in, they got the opportunity to go "Tract or Treatising" in celebration of Reformation Day.  Ir dressed as a Jedi, A as princess.

From a repeat colleague and friend here.    “Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.”  Psalms 30:5

For J's 5th Bday, we hired some donkeys for a Donkey Birthday party.  Donkey races, Donkey feeding, and Donkey cart rides were enjoyed by all...

G's Fun Run is an annual tradition.  J (and I) placed _1st_ in the 0-5 yo category!

Through sweeties... Ir and auntie's creation

    Our kids' school had a friendly soccer game recently.  The kids' teacher played goalkeeper, and had our 4 year old J tag along with her in goal.  After observing for a little bit, J figured he knew a better way to help his team.  Finding some large-ish stones, he piled them into a small wall across the face of the goal.  The teacher was perplexed, but he explained that this would help keep the other side from scoring.  (Seems much more efficient to me than her method!)  After a few minutes, the sagacity of J's idea was confirmed.  A ball beat the keeper and was rolling in for a goal, when it was stopped by his little wall.  'No Goal!' he cried with glee.  His teamates cruelly undercut him by deciding that the goal ought to count.

 

I was gazing out the window, sighing that, "Its sad to have Thanksgiving without my family."  Al. overheard me, and approached with a concerned look in her face.  "Daddy, *we* are your family!  We are *here.*" When I explained being away from her Aunties and Uncles, she understood, that I missed "my other family... of far descended relatives."

Over dinner this week, I was explaining to the children how World War 2 represented a shift in naval warfare, as aircraft carriers took the ascendency.  I explained how, "Battleships could fire shells at targets 20 miles away," but this proved to be no match for naval aviation. A scrunched her nose and looked at me.  "Why would they fire shells?"  It didn't seem very effective to her. We had to explain that I was not talking about the seashells we enjoy collecting at the beach.

Sometimes it pays to do things the old fashioned way.