Rain!

       This past week has been quite eventful as will the remainder of this month. Saturday we had the blessing of seeing two friends from HDC (where we trained to come here). Jess Mengel had went to visit the team in Guinea Bissau and travelled up here with one of the team members who will be staying here for the next month and half! So on Saturday after going to Gunjur Beach, to find that no one was there for studies, we headed home, showered and headed off to Pirang. We spent the afternoon enjoying the company of Jess and Bree, Jess who we haven't seen since November and Bree who we haven't seen since January. After a supper of spaghetti we said goodbye to Jess and headed home. Sunday we had church at home and then headed off for Kiti in the extreme heat and humidity for studies. We were able to see the pig house, which is almost finished! It just needs a roof and the floor, but since no one knew when the rains would start the roof was the first priority. Tiu Jon was disappointed that we couldn't stay and eat, but it was getting late and we had to ride our bicycles home. Monday we were preparing for our cook, Agnus, to come when we hear someone at the door. We went out to see some other missionaries that we had met a couple of time from the Netherlands had stopped by. Ester and Anor stayed for a couple of hours and it was nice to have another white, young couple who is going through the same things as us to talk to. Hopefully we can continue to build this relationship and support each other until we leave.
         Monday night was quite hot. We both took cold showers before bed to try and cool down enough to at least fall asleep. At around 4 or 4:30 in the morning I was half awake when Elias starting tapping me and saying "listen!". The sound we heard was, you guessed it, rain! It wasn't just a light sprinkle it was a hard rain that brought a wonderful cool breeze with it so that I was able to cover up! The only thought that crossed my mind about the rain not being good was, "what about the pig houses?". We prayed that they wouldn't be affected by the rain before the roof could go up. Tuesday morning was nice and cool as we got ready to go into the city for groceries. But once the sun came out, the humidity was higher than ever (in the 90% range). The day was sticky and hot, but we got done what we needed to get done including get a new, real, mattress!
       We them came home and sat under our ceiling fans until around 6 pm when the electricity went off. This isn't uncommon, but there were other houses in Methodist Mission with their lights on. Apparently the provider for the city had an issue and the power didn't come back on until 6 pm yesterday. This made for miserable sleeping and a hot day yesterday, plus we didn't know when it would come back on and we needed to keep Elias' medications cool. Thankfully we got a cooler from Pirang some places in the city still had frozen ice. So we loaded up the cooler with medications and prayed for the electricity to come back on. Needless to say, last night was much nicer sleeping.
         Also, the director of the church stopped in last evening and was asking about how our youth work was going and asked Elias if wanted to go to Kiti today to put the roof on the pig houses. We asked if they were affected by the rain and he said no! Praise Jesus! So Elias is now off to build a roof while I catch up on work here at home.
        I apologize for the length of this post, but there has been so much going on, I haven't had time to update. Here are some of our latest prayer requests:

-That we will know how to best mentor the youth into leadership and how much we should or shouldn't do when it comes to leading at this point
-That God will open doors for new chances to share the gospel with other outside of the youth, I have a special heart for the women
-For travel:
     -Jordan and Jeweli Ritz, team leaders for the team in GB, as they come up next week
     -Elias' parents and sister as they come in 2 weeks!
     -Gary and Denise as they return here in three weeks
     -Lori will also be traveling next week to Germany to see her sister-in-law

Praises:
-The rains have begun!
-We have another young couple to share and fellowship with
-We will have family visiting very soon!
-Some of the youth are really flourishing and excited about what they are learning, which makes us excited to teach them