Summer Days

Another week of summer is gone, and it doesn't seem like we're really doing much.  But when I think back over this past week - we've been busy!  Here's a glimpse:
Is there anything better than a fresh home-made bagel?  Well, yes - a store-bought bagel. But seeing as we can't buy bagels, I made a batch this week. It was labor-intensive, but so very worth it.

We can buy some super-fresh eggs from a local ministry.  So fresh they still have lots of yucky chicken poop still on them.  This week's flat of eggs seemed poopier than usual.

Sorry to be gross, but this is just the reality of buying eggs here.  Thankfully I have kids who are looking to earn money this summer, and one of the possibilities for income is to wash the eggs.  Rubber gloves make it possible.

Our garden that we started about two weeks ago started to sprout.  The tomatoes, sunflowers, and okra (pictured below) are taking off.  I am hoping to eat fried okra by August!

We finally got the tires fixed on the kids' bikes, and Zoe, who hasn't been on a bike in a long time - and never on one without training wheels, took right off.

Luke has long been wanting to assemble a catapult, so we spent one afternoon working on that.  We don't really need more weapons lying around, but this one turned out to be pretty innocuous.

One evening we had this lovely family over for dinner.  Gustaf was a class ahead of David at Moody Aviation, and the last time we saw him, he was a single guy.  He's been flying in Papua for over 13 years, and it was fun to reconnect with him and meet his wife and kids.

One of the highlights of the week was getting to meet a living legend of the mission world, Don Richardson, the author of Peace Child and Lords of the Earth. He and his sons have returned to Indonesia to visit the village they first reached out to years ago.  They were staying at the MAF guest house, and even though I handled their reservation for their stay, I didn't realize it was THE Richardsons until they were here.  And it's very timely that we met Don now, because we're reading Peace Child aloud at night with the kids.  When I told Don's son Stephen, who was an infant during the time featured in the book, that we were halfway through the book he said, "Oh you're almost to the part when I fall in the river."  The kids thought that was funny.