We Are Connected!!!!! ... and a funny story ...

I won't even recount the numbers of phone calls made and people we've had to our house "working on it" to get our internet connection up and working, because all of that doesn't matter now ... we are back.

whew, that's so good to be able to say.

It's so nice to be connected to the other side of the world again. Everyone there means so much to us!

Don't worry, I've been 'blogging' in word documents so that I wouldn't forget about the experiences that I wanted to share. I will just copy and paste these blogs I have written over the past month and post them for real now! There has been so much happening and so much getting done. Just to say that something got done here is quite the accomplishment!

For instance, the other day I drove an hour and half just to get bug spray with deet in it. The mosquitos here are vicious and I haven't been able to find bug spray with deet. A friend that we've met here said she had some and that we could have it.

So off I went. An hour and half later I returned with my precious bottle of Skintastic Family Summer Splash Off! bug spray, with deet.



So, you can imagine what it is like to get a whole house set up when it takes that long just to get bug spray!!! HAHAHAHA

We are getting it done though.

We have started our language learning already, which we are very excited about!!! The language we are learning has more the 4 words just for the word 'you'. BUT we know ALL 4 words! woo hoo!

We have a couple that comes to our house everyday and tutors us. Then the phrases and words that we learn, we go out into the village and talk with people and use these phrases. The people here LOVE their language, it is very important to them. So, when we walk up and say hello in their language and ask how are you in their language, they always get huge smiles and their eyes just light up! They cannot believe that we know their language. The problem is that we say just this little bit and maybe a sentence or two more and they take off and start saying all kinds of words that we don't know yet! But, we write down what we hear them say (phonetically) and then take this back to our tutors and they tell us what it means. So then we have more phrases that we have learned as responses to what we said. Clear as mud? It sounds complicated, but really it's simple, just talk with people and we will learn .... immersion.

We certainly are immersed, right outside our gate is a whole village ... live chickens being cut for meat and bicycles and rickshaws everywhere! We love it. We purposely choose to live outside the main city a little bit because we wanted to have full access to an area that didn't speak a lot of english and areas that we could practice our language a lot. It has worked out really well.

We spend a couple hours a day going out and talking with people and learning and then a few more hours with our tutors. We hope to have a very good base and foundation of the language within 3 months. We need His perfect strength for this, but we know it will happen. It is so important to us.

So, thank you for continuing to lift us up and we are so sorry for the long interruption in our communication. But, we hope, that is over now and we can stay connected!

ok, I just thought of one funny story that I have to share ...

Our kids our getting immersed in the culture and language really well too. This became clearly evident to me the other day as we were driving out of our gate and the 'Call to Prayer' was being played on the loud speaker in our area and I realized that our youngest was singing along with it!!!!! I have to say that's something that wouldn't have happened if we weren't here!