March 4

Things are getting back to 'normal'. The kids are counting the days until Spring break [7] and we have a school open house and parent teacher conferences to attend tomorrow afternoon. A huge praise from us is that Eli has turned into a reader. He reminds me of myself at his age-trying to hid from mom so I could finish the next page or chapter. Thank you to those of us who joined us a few years ago praying for Eli and his reading. While spelling is still a struggle we are adapting.

Anna is also doing well in school. She has finally reached the point that she needs to spend a few minutes a day reviewing phonics and spelling. Without her top front teeth some of the pronunciation is hard but we know that is a temporary problem.

I enjoyed clinic in my new room yesterday, seeing 8 patients. The room is brighter after the new paint job. I have a new shelf for my books, a table replacing the desk that the administrator needed and steps for the patients to use getting onto the exam table. I prayed with several of the patients and handed out tracks to two of them.

Today there weren't may people so I spent another couple house in the depot sorting through the pile of donated supplies. I'm very thankful that the pile is smaller thanks to the team's help. I did miss them-hard to go back to my lonely task. I almost quit after the first box but Cory came in behind me and startled me [I had my headphones in]. The energy rush got me though the next box-which thankfully had bags of already sorted supplies.

Cory has been working on office work the last couple days. Not fun. He also put up the boxes of clothes that Mom, Dad, Gene and Gerda store with us. The boxes are now above the drop ceiling where we hope it will be hot enough to prevent mold growth. Yesterday he had to look at our propane refrigerator when it started to smoke! He found that spiders had made webs in the burner air intake so it was a quick fix after cleaning out the soot that had formed.

Today he walked down to clinic to pay mom's IV bill [2 Ringer's Lactate and 2 Normal Saline with dextrose] which came to $17. While there he stopped to learn a bit about well repair from Pastor Pudwill who had come to repair the hand pump closest to the road. We are grateful for his willingness to help and his team's skills.