Staff Meeting:
We had a great staff meeting on Monday. It actually went about 2 hours! We got so excited talking about the church that we got side-tracked!

Mr NeNe was actually the head of the Sunday school department in the St. Louis church. He has agreed to start a Sunday school program for us and train all the teachers. Each Saturday he will meet with the teachers and go over the lesson so that everyone teaches about the same thing. He said more importantly – the teacher should be knowledgeable about the material they’re teaching. So he wants for them to ask questions and really know they’re doing! I love it!

Remember that the church didn’t have any weekly activities except a prayer service. This is the weekly schedule our staff came up with:
Monday – Men’s Bible Study – led by Mr. NeNe
Tuesday – Women’s BIble Study – led by Momma Gigi/Jody
Wednesday – General Bible Study for anyone – led by the Pastor
Thursday – Prayer Service – led by the Pastor
Friday – Teen’s Service – led by Jocelyn/Pierre
Saturday Morning – Children’s Service – led by Mme Kaz

Whether Beth has realized it or not – she’s basically started a sport’s ministry! It started with her just loving on some kids. Now she runs, plays basketball, plays frisbee, and finds teachable moments each day.  We are excited to see how it develops.

Women’s Conference
Magdala came on Tuesday and we spent most of the afternoon/evening planning the conference. We will have 4 sessions in the daytime – 9-10, 10:15-11:15, 2-3, and 3:15-4:15. Then we will have one large evening service from 6pm-8pm.

We have an evangelist already! We found a band and a place to rent all the instruments! Magdala will be bringing 15 people with her from St. Louis to help host the conference. On the last night we will have a concert and special praise time.

The theme is He Knows Your Name. In a country of millions of people – it’s easy to feel like no one understands us. That no one knows our struggles or our problems. But HE knew you before you were even formed in your mother’s womb. He knows the number of hairs on your head. So He knows us – but do we know Him? The conference will be about developing an intimate relationship with our Creator!

We are expecting about 350-400 for the daytime sessions and about 3000 for the evening sessions. Please begin praying for our speakers. That God will put His words in their mouths.

Chicken Ministry
When I wrote about the chicken ministry a few months ago – I never dreamed it would take off like it has. So far we’ve given 10 families each – 9 chickens/1 coop/1 rooster – to start a small business for themselves. While this has been a huge blessing – you still cannot find many eggs or chicken in the market.

So at the staff meeting we had another idea. What if we take the money we have right now and start a chicken farm. If we spent the next two months focused on the farm – perhaps what was once enough money to help 20 families – we could now help 40 or even 60 families!! 🙂 With us helping that many more families – surely the market would completely change.

One of the employee houses has a huge fenced-in yard. We’re going to Marouge next week to purchase a truck load of chickens and roosters. We will start building all the chicken coops so that when we’re ready we can still give them all away. This might be a huge nightmare! Who knows! But we’re excited about the possibility and the dozens of families that this could help.

Schooling:
The girls are back to school. They LOVE it! They have homework each day. Malaya and Mikela have a memory verse to write, spelling words, and a worksheet. Rosie is working on her numbers and letters. She started writing her memory verse a few days ago. It takes her about 45 minutes to write it. She’s a little bit slower and needs lots of guidance- but she’s learning more and more every day.

Gabriel has class for one hour every Monday/Thursday. He has been upset because he hasn’t had homework. Remember those days? When homework was fun?? When he came back from school on Monday he told me he had so much fun with Beth. He’s asked me all day if it’s time for him to go to school! He goes at 1pm!

Settling in:
The truck came on Tuesday with our stove, dryer, water heater, inverter batteries, window fans, food, school supplies, office furniture, etc. We’ve spent the past few days trying to get our solar set up. They’re sending an electrician from St. Louis today because it’s still not working correctly.

Grant came to visit us yesterday! Always a pleasure to see him!! We got to learn all about the wedding plans! We can’t wait for the big day!! He and Jose have been working on putting all our office furniture together! Not such a simple task!

Asher hasn’t had any more seizures since his ride in the truck. The weather has been nice and with the fans we’ve been able to keep him cool.

Well that about wraps this up! Still much to do….