1 Month To Go...

At times I can hardly believe I have only a month left, and other times when I think about all I've experienced, it seems like such a long time since I was home. …I will leave here a very different person from when I came.

You wouldn’t believe little Sarah! She’s getting so big and improving daily.

As you can see, she now smiles and laughs! I love this precious girl, and it breaks my heart that she doesn’t have a mommy. I pray that the Lord will provide a wonderful family who will adopt Sarah as their own. Whether it’s a family member or not, I trust that the Lord will show Renee when the time comes, where Sarah’s supposed to go.

When Sarah first came to us, she was getting up every hour in the night to eat. After a good week, she went to eating around midnight, again at 4AM, and then at 7AM. ...But, much to my surprise, the last four days she has slept all through the night!! Here we thought it would be months before that happened, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. :) Being on Plumpy Nut, Sarah is now satisfied longer after eating. She now eats around midnight/1AM and then sleeps until 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning!

As a result of Sarah’s wonderful, new sleeping habits, I have been sleeping really well, and although Renee is still gets up some with Selah (5 months old), she’s getting much more sleep than she had been. Thanks for all your prayers!


On most days after school, I’ve been calling the children (those who live here in our compound or who happen to be around) for a story. At first I was a little nervous to start this, but the children seem to love it, so that’s given me boldness to continue. I don’t know how much of the story they understand, but I pray that if nothing else, that through my spending time with them they would maybe see a love that they’ve never known. (Not mine, of course, but of He who is in me.) The language barrier is a challenge, but I know they are some things that can always be communicated, and I pray that I would do that well…
I had hoped to post a picture of this, but I haven’t yet gotten a good one, so it’s coming soon!

I experimented today… the ranch dressing that my mom sent over had just ran out, and Renee and I were super bummed! You can’t find good lettuce here, so we’ve been eating a lot of veggies dipped in ranch, and the thought of veggies with no ranch is very sad indeed, so I decided to try and make some.

I started by looking up a recipe for making sour cream from plain yogurt, and set that up to do its thing overnight (a process of straining and adding a small amount of lemon juice). You can't always find sour cream in the supermarkets, so I thought I would try making it myself.

I woke up this morning and was very happy to see that the sour cream experiment was a success! ...Next came finding a recipe for the Ranch dressing. It wasn’t easy because there are so many out there, but I soon chose one that uses both sour cream and mayo (easily bought here) along with spices we own.

The mixing began, and on the first tasting it was super bland, so ditched the recipe and started making up my own. The result…delicious! (That is, it’s not Hidden Valley, but tastes more like ranch dip…I’m so proud of myself!)