September Update

It is now September 7, which is a bit longer than I planned to wait between writing blogs. We’ve just been a tad bit busy here, which is the norm, but it seems like each day brings its own kind of busy.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been dealing with a lot of sickness, mostly cold and flu type stuff. The youngest baby, who is 6 months old today, was one of the hardest hit. He was vomiting, had diarrhea, a bad cough, runny nose and fever. One of the teenagers also had something similar and the rest of the kids were just run of the mill miserable. Thankfully we seem to be on the mend although Darin said this afternoon that his throat is a bit itchy and his eyes hurt…and here I thought we were in the clear!

We just enjoyed a wonderful week with my dad. He is back in South Africa for 3+ weeks doing Timothy Leadership Training, which is a pastoral and church leadership training course. Today we brought him down past Soweto to a town called Eldorado for his first week of training. Unfortunately it isn’t going to work for us to see him again while he is here, but we are thankful for the time we were able to spend together and have a lot of happy memories stored up until the next time we see him.

We do not have water right now. I totally should not even complain because a large portion of the world, probably a majority, either has insufficient, unstable or very poor access to water. It’s so easy to forget that not everyone has the luxury, and it is a luxury, to turn on a tap and get cold, not to mention hot! water with just the flick of a wrist. While we were still in the states there was another water situation like we are now facing, only Tshepo ya Bana was also without electricity for a week! The water ran out a little over half way through that ordeal, so at least everyone around here knows just what to do and have been able to give us Feys a crash course. We are now using pool water to flush our toilets, running across the road (where we used to live) to fill up bottles and containers with drinking water, driving baskets of dirty clothes across the road and going back to pick up the clean stuff, and learning how to be a bit more patient for that morning cup of coffee after realizing you used the last of your water supply to brush your teeth last night! So, it is an adventure, but we all hope that the electrician can come tomorrow and sort out what has happened to the pump so that we can have easy access to our water once again!

I took my dad along for a visit to Jubilee Hospital. It was interesting having him along as the things that he found annoying and frustrating are the things that I am now more or less used to. It was nice to have him there as he kept Miss O occupied while I ran from PT to OT to dietician to outpatients to pharmacy to Peds OPD and more. Papa and Miss O sat out by the playground eating snacks and making friends. While they were busy I managed to get a couple appointments set up for Amo, which will take place this week. She will (hopefully!) be fitted for a special wheelchair called a Madiba Buggy and we will also be talking to the doctor about a feeding tube. Please pray for Amo’s mom as she is going to have a big decision to make for her daughter. Since we are Amo’s primary caregivers right now, there is a lot that we see and experience that she has never dealt with. Hopefully the doctor and dietician will be able to give her clear explanations about what is going on in Amo’s body and will help her to make the right decision for Amo’s long term health. As I write this Amo is sleeping on the floor on a bed made from a beanbag chair and a big cushion. She’s been vomiting quite a bit in the evening and with only one mama and an auntie who’s not feeling 100% in the main house, we thought we’d help them out and keep Amo as our houseguest. Cleaning up vomit with a limited water supply is not so fun, but for now I’ve just tossed the clothes and towels in the corner and will deal with it tomorrow!

Last week was career week at our kids’ school. They had a lot of fun dressing up as a doctor (Tyson), singer (Jori) and teacher (Thato) and also enjoyed visits from a pharmacist, workers from the Spur restaurant and a very impressive talk by a Sawyer water filters distributor, complete with a demonstration of dirty water turning crystal clear before their eyes. J In case you didn’t know, the last visitor was Darin and he really did a great job keeping the attention of the 3 classes he spoke to. In addition to speaking in Tyson and Jori’s classes, he was asked to speak to the 6^th/7^th graders as they had just learned about water filters. I decided to go down to Thato’s room to see if they had anyone speaking in their class and no one else had showed up. I gave a rousing speech promoting the glorious work of being a social worker. I must have done a pretty good job because I had 5 kids wanting to be social workers by the time I left. J It was a fun time and we are glad that we are able to participate in events like this at the school.

I am sure there is stuff I am forgetting about, but as I said, the days are busy and we are constantly moving from one thing to the next, sometimes remembering to finish the thing we were working on yesterday, sometimes forgetting about it until we get a reminder, which means we push something else to the backburner and then try to play catch up another day!

Please continue to pray with us and for us. We are happy to be back in South Africa and for the most part our kids are happy as well. Some specific things you can pray for are:

• Jori who has had a cold in one form or another since we’ve been back. The dark circles under her eyes are proof that she is just not feeling the best.
• Tyson as we are trying to figure out the right medications to help him best cope with ADHD. We go back next week and feel like we have a pretty good idea of how the slow-release Ritalin is (or isn’t) working out for him and we hope that there will be a better solution for him.
• All of the kids at TYB. Whether they are 6 months or 16 years, each child here is vulnerable and hurting in one way or another. There are some heavy issues that we are currently dealing with, which is understandable given the circumstances that most of these children have come from. Please pray for wisdom for the grown-ups and peace and protection for the children we care for.
• Amo and her mom and the appointments coming up on Wednesday.
• That the water pump would be fixed ASAP!

Thank you for praying!