Christmas in the Air or not!

Merry Christmas. Here's a picture that Aidan colored. We wish you all a Merry Christmas. Wherever you are and whatever you're doing.

Elianna's Coloring. She called it rainbow. Making wreath cookies. Cornflakes are readily available and recently we've been able to get marshmallows as well. These were one of my favorites growing up.

Cookie Fun.
Notice the long sleeves, the mornings have been quite cool mid to upper 60's but the afternoons are hot with temps flirting with 100F.

A Nativity set that we had carved here in Guinea.

Our Tree

Getting ready to make gingerbread cookies. One of Elianna's favorite stories right now is the "Gingerbread Man." She runs around saying, "run, run as fast as you can you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man."

Since we didn't get any pictures in the mail for you all, here's one the Aidan colored the other day. His coloring has improved a lot.

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Catching Up

I haven't done too well at keeping up lately. We've had some busy times, don't we all! So now you'll get a bunch of pictures at once.

This is my house worker and her daughter. The other day was a holiday here. The people are socially obligated to get new clothes and get their hair done all nice etc. Pray that we will be an influence in the life of Adama.

They love to have pictures taken of their kids.

Another, fete, holiday tradition. The women who've had children in the last little while, I don't know the exact details. They dress up as men, with sunglasses and big mens shoes and come around asking for money. They sing etc. and are called in french, les comediens. I'm sure even the english speakers can figure that one out!

A couple weeks ago I got to go with Pete on a supply run. A fellow missionary family kept our kids for the day. I had never been before so I got to meet all the guys he buys from etc. Here he is in one of the stores with 2 of his suppliers. It was a fun, tiring day. No one would let me do anything like load boxes into the truck etc.

Another recent excursion. I got to go to the village up the road with a friend. She is a missionary who lives here on base for part of the week and part of the week she lives in the village with an African family in a room in their house. We rode bike for about 20 min. to get their. My first experience riding in a skirt, trying not to get it caught in the chain and to stay modestly covered, my knees. We walked out to the rice fields where they were harvesting rice. Here's some bundles of rice still on the stalk.

One of the ladies working. They lay the bundles on the ground and use their feet to twist/break off the stalks and take the rice kernals of the stalk.

A chicken house. Isn't it cute!

A platform they built to dry/lay the rice bundles on.

Another big crop her is peanuts. This is in the village with my house helper. She roasted the peanuts and we're taking of the skins.

family

It's been a while since I've posted and since I've posted a family pix. This was taken about a month ago for our Christmas cards.

We're doing well but have been very busy. Last week was our annual field conference. A great time but tiring. Recently several of us have had a stomach bug and colds.

Aren't they cute!

Flower Jam

These are called bissap. They are flower petals. When you boil them you can make jam or juice. The flavor is a lot like cranberry sort of tart so you need to add sugar. Approximately 3 quarts of petals, the amount in the pitcher makes 3 pints of jam.

I don't think the Guineans make jam, they make juice or dry the leaves to make a sort of tea.

Our new vehicle

Ok, here she is...missionary white as Pete calls her. There are a number of missionaries who have white land cruisers.

We just need the mechanic to check the brakes and we're good to go. We also need to get a roof rack built. When Pete does supply buying he'll completely fill the inside with several large coolers on the roof. And the picture wouldn't be complete unless she was a tad bit dirty around the edges. This vehicles has 2 specific things we were searching for, seatbelts and good AC. It has many other good things as well!:)

Ladies Retreat

A couple weeks ago I had the privelage of attending a ladies retreat specifically for missionary women. Eight ladies from the U.S. came to do this retreat for us. It was held on an Island off of Conakry. Here's a picture of all the NTM ladies that were able to attend. One aspect of the conference was that there was child care so I took Elianna and Aidan stayed with Pete. It was a wonderful refreshing time. Great teaching from the Word and good fellowship with other women from our mission and other missions working in Guinea.

A beautiful sunset.

The little princess. She got lots of attention during the conference but did very well.

Guinea is not a country that looks tropical everywhere. You see lots of palm trees but other than than not a lot of the tropics. However this island is one place that does look tropical, as you can see.

Eli talking to Daddy on the cell phone.

Me with 2 other NTM ladies who live and minister at the same place as we do.

Eli with her new 'cheesy' smile and chin up in the air.

Comediens

One morning we told the kids to go pick out clothes or something. A few minutes later they come into our room and busy up laughing. Aidan had dressed Elianna in some of his clothes. They both thought it was great and she wore the clothes for the day! Sorry, the picture is not real great.

Part of the Team

Not only do we get the chance to serve missionaries in the villages by buying supplies etc. From time to time we have other opportunities to minister. A couple weeks ago we had Aidan's little friend Kelsey stay with us for a week. This allowed her mom and dad to travel with another missionary friend to a distant village to do some work. They traveled about 10 hours on dirt, pot holed roads! Here's a couple pictures of the truck when they got back.

Ants

Lately we've had several nests of ants that we've uncovered. You'll be sweeping and sweep under the endge of a piece of furniture etc. and they just come pouring out. Here's a couple pictures. This nest had a lot of eggs as well, the whitish yellowish things. Ick.

Photo Op

Once you bring out a camera you have a following and everyone wants a picture.

The lady in the middle is Ami, she works at our guesthouse. The lady on the right is her sister. Several weeks ago she had to have a C-section delivery. We were able to help her out finacially so we went to go visit her and see the baby. Lori on the right is a fellow missionary and Guest House Hostess.

produce

I know it's a bit hard to tell but these cucumbers are huge. Ok, I just thought of a comparison. Think of the diameter of a medium size zuchini. Some of the produce gets huge. There are no seedless english cucumbers, long and perfect!:) No seedless watermelons either. We had some watermelon last week that was really good but seedy. In the front is a small head of cabbage. Just right for a small family. And yes, we do eat the bananas green. There are some that get yellow but the majority are ripe when they're like this.

Autumn

Autumn is one of my favorite seasons. Here is Guinea, we don't really have seasons. Mainly just dry season and rainy season. Each has different characteristics at different times. Right now we do see some things that remind me of fall. It's the harvest time, there are a lot of gourd or squash type vegetables. The nights and early mornings are cooler. Anyways all that to say I've tried to bring a bit of autumn into our house. As you'll see in the pictures below.

These are all squash/gourds that I've bought from the village.

The white one looks just like a pumpkin.

A couple weeks ago we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with some fellow Canadians.

A sign I made for our door.

We had a great meal complete with turkey, stuffing and pumpkin (squash) pies.

Rain

I know another post on rain. It's part of our lives for a good chunk of the year! Now we're nearing the end of rainy season. It gets quite hot and humid during the day and then often breaks with a big thunder storm late in the day. Here are some pictures. Look in the distance you can see how much water is on the ground. This can happen in seemingly a matter of minutes.

The kids always want to play in the rain. Eli loves holding Jack. He usually looks quite uncomfortable.

This is sort of off to the side of our house.

This is behind our house.