Now the random

Now that I've already posted a ton today, here are some random pics. I was trying to get a picture with the boys. couldn't get it to work, but we had fun.

Here's my sweet boy. He just wanted to smile for the camera and since he looks so great, I wanted to just add it, just because.

The boys wet sidewalk chalk and decorated the door. I actually love it. I know I shouldn't advocate coloring on walls and doors and such, but I just love this.

So I guess I shouldn't be surprised, when to Dawson, the whole world is his canvas. :) Today the three of them were also painting a batman cave and Superman house. As you can tell, they had fun. :)

Brett went biking with the kids the other day. He brought home a baby chicken. The boys love it. Silas makes us nervous the way he holds him, but at least he is doing it out of love. The boys are anything but gentle, especially Silas. But they are sweet.

He just loves chickens. Here he is admiring one a village gave to us one day.

And literally as I write this, Brett has come home with this. what?

now I have to learn how to feed a little 2-3 week old puppy.

This is the boys sleeping at Field Forum. There weren't enough pillows so they had to share. It was cute.

As we passed this little bridge, Dawson asked, "Is this the Cooper bridge?" Um, no, just a bit different in size.

that's the whole thing. Not quite the bridge in Charleston, but cute that he remembered it.

Field Forum 2010

This past week we had our annual Field Forum in Sikasso. All the Christian and Missionary Alliance missionaries in Mali come together for a week of meetings as well as worship and fellowship. This year I can say that it was actually good! The childcare was AMAZING!! We got to sit in EVERY SINGLE meeting. (Previous years I maybe sat in one or two). It was so great. It was long and tiring, for sure, as the kids didn't sleep well but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

Here is our team that is currently on the field.

Our team with the CCC team that came to lead us.

The little kids sang for us the last night. It's a big, big house...

where we can play football! (love that Dawson kicks with his left foot. He is a lefty.)

Then there are times like this.... our new pediatrician Jason.

And Jake following after Jason... (this was for a Survivor game one night)

Our fearless leader, Al, and Jason, once again looking crazy.

We had a spanning the decades banquet the last night. Mary, Jason, Jake, Jessica and Kristen.

It takes courage to wear shorts that short! We will miss Dusty and Julia as they head back to the States this December. check out their blog sababuclothing.com

the 70s

the 80s. Had we done this two years ago, I would have been the only one standing there for the 80s. Thankful for the great group of "young" people that are here now! :)

Again, all pictures are thanks to Angela Wenger.

Dedication of the new buildings

Last weekend we dedicated that last three buildings of the hospital. One million dollars was given by Christ Community Church in Omaha. Some of their church were out in Mali for our field forum so the Saturday before we had a dedication. It kind of spiraled into a really big thing. It was fun though. Kids were lining the street to the hospital.

Invited guests waiting for the ceremony to start.

The minister of Health of Mali came. Quite a big deal. He is the lighter guy on the left with sunglasses.

More up close view of him.

All the toubabs (white people) who work at the hospital. From left to right: Jake Tillet, nurse education, anesthesia; Jessica Schaeffer, Nursing Director and anesthesia; Dan Nesselroade, OB-GYN, medical director; Ed Bonvillian, Lab/Pharmacy director; Jason Foster, new pediatrician currently in language study; Brett and then me.

Here they are cutting the ribbon to the new buildings (one is in use, two are not yet finished).

On the far left is Daniel Thera, the Directeur General/CEO of CPAM (the NGO that our hospital is a part of). Next is the deputy to the American ambassador. Next Director of Health, then Mark Ashton, the pastor of Christ Community Church.

Must say thanks to Angela Wenger, as I didn't bring my camera that day and these are all from her.

Redecorating, part one

While we were home in the States we packed stuff up for a container to be shipped over. (we get a certain allotment in the container). I packed paint and various other items to make the house a little more homey. So here is the start of the redecoration.

This is our laundry room. It was a porch and we closed it in a year (maybe two) ago.

The walls have looked like this for way too long. (I won't mention that the outside of the house looks the same way and hasn't been painted).

The painted room. It was supposed to be a very pale green. It turned out bright. Don't know why but thankful it's in a room that I don't care too much about.

Our kitchen. The original kitchen photo would actually have black cabinets. We changed that two years ago. This time we just added paint.

This also came out a little brighter than I was anticipating. But it's growing on me everyday.

I made the curtains this summer- with extensive help from my mom.

The living room and dining room. Note the nice dirt line across the wall thanks to the boys.

And the hand print that Dawson put there years ago. It's in every birthday picture because that seems to be where we eat the cake. Kind of sad it is gone now...well, not really.

My problem with this room was that it was just too open. No matter how much I put in there I couldn't "fill"it. So I went with darker colors to close it in some.

The camera doesn't do justice with all the colors. But regardless, it looks better than before!

The living room with the "accent" walls that I had to teach Brett about. We also got laz-y-boys on the container. It was a splurge (though we got them on a buy one get one free sale) but we enjoy them. I also got fabric to reupholster the couches.

Here's an up close look of it.

In general I wouldn't call myself a red person. I don't think my house would look like this in the States. I prefer blues/greens/yellows but this is pretty. It has to be darker and tan or red to cover all the dirt. So it works and I'm very happy with the room. Jeremie, our house guy, did all the painting and made the couch covers! So thankful for someone who can do everything! :) He's great! And I'm thankful for a newly decorated house. Hope I don't have to decorate again for another 20 years! :)

Hard lessons to learn

we have just gotten the ability to do HIV tests early for the babies
of mother's who are positive. We've done several lately and just got
the results back this week. One was positive. My heart sank. It sank
even more when I heard the name. It was the child of a lady who has
been positive for several years. Her husband was a doctor and as he
was dying, he told her that he was positive and had been for awhile.
He never told her before or did anything to protect her. So she tested
positive. She was actually able to marry again and her new husband is
amazingly gracious with the illness. He wants her to be treated. He
himself is not positive. When they had their first child together, the
father had a job. She never breastfed the child. He is negative. They
had the second child, Samba. She always asked me for formula. I told
her that I thought she would be fine. She had been on medicine for
years, her husband was negative, so to me, that meant she had a low
viral load and her risk of giving it to her son was low. According to
Mali protocol, women are to breastfeed for 6 months then abruptly
stop. This is hard for several reasons. It is known that women stop
breastfeeding at 6 months when they are positive. So people don't want
to do it. Also, formula is expensive. They can't buy it. We try to
give them a special recipe of a cereal type thing that has a lot of
nutrition but a lot of kids won't eat it. I helped several women with
formula but thought at the time that it was not a doable thing to give
out formula to all my HIV ladies. Now, I'm just not sure that that is
a good excuse. It's probably about $300 dollars for each woman for 6
months of formula. Yes, this is expensive, especially in Mali, but I
think it's worth it. I can't help but think that it was because I was
unwilling to give her formula that her child is now positive. She put
her trust in me that I was telling her the best thing to do. Now, no
other woman who has breastfed has yet to pass it to her child, but it
just makes me wonder. Maybe she passed the illness during labor and
delivery. We'll never know. We didn't have the test to do early on and
know at about 6 weeks of life whether he was positive or not. So now I
have to face this mother and tell her her child is positive. I just
cried at the thought of having to talk to her, to look her in the
eyes. It turned out she had to go to Bamako for a funeral and was
unable to come see me the morning I wanted to talk to her. Her husband
came instead. He took it better than she would have. I won't be able
to talk to her until a week from now. When I talked to the Pastor that
I work with, he assured me that I shouldn't feel guilty. I had done
all I could do. Things happen. I guess the problem lies that I'm not
convinced I did my best, that I did all I could do. There came a time
when I chose not to give formula to every lady and it started around
the time she needed it. Now, maybe this choice was wise at the time,
or maybe it was just selfish. I think maybe a little of both. I
remember being overwhelmed by the needs of all the ladies and the
financial burden that it was. Now I have to deal with that in the
light of a positive child. Money shouldn't be a limiting factor.
Something has to change. Even if this is all a lesson for me- to
consider the life at stake even when I'm tired and overwhelmed. To see
the necessity of getting formula to each of my ladies, no matter what
the cost. I don't know. I'm saddened by the case and pray that this
doesn't have to happen again, though I know in reality it will.

A tree house

Sweet visitors who come from Ohio built our boys a tree house. Erv, Jerry and Earl worked really hard to make our tree friendly house (no nails into the tree but it uses ropes and limbs for support). Now it is basically just a platform but hopefully we can add on to it and get sides and maybe even a roof. But we are thankful for what we have now. The boys will have lots of fun with it.

Here's our first family picture in the tree.