Home Sweet Home

We've been back in Mango for just over a week now, at least I think that's what it's been.  The last few days in Tsiko, the trip up, and the first few days in Mango were all a bit of whirlwind tour.

We left Tsiko on a Sunday morning and headed north.  We arrived for supper on Sunday night and then later that week moved from our house to a house on the property.  Our team-mates, Dale and Jody Davis had to head home to the US for Jody's mom, so that left a big hole on the hospital project which meant that Nate, Jim and John all got "promoted" to work together in running the site.  I like to think of them as "The Evil Triumvirate"  however when I told them that, they said, "The Evil What????"  So I just told them they were bad guys.

We had a new team of workers arrive from the USA this past weekend and it's been great to have this group of nine men working on site.  Yesterday, Dr. Kelly (who is visiting Mango) and I took nine men to market to shop for fabric.  Doesn't that last statement seem rather absurd?  There are a few problems with it:

1.  Taking nine American men to an African market attracts a fair bit of attention

2.  Taking nine men shopping

3.  Taking nine men shopping  FOR FABRIC TO MAKE CLOTHES.

Let me just say that it was quite the process.  We then took them with their newly purchased fabric to the sewing school to explain what each man wanted made.  That took a couple of hours right there.  These guys were pretty daring with their bold patterns and colour choices.  When in Rome...

On a very amazing note, I want to inform you that Ethan is now walking without crutches.  He is three weeks post-accident and walking around with just a small limp - amazing!!  His incision scars are mostly healed and already starting to fade.  We did find out recently that Ethan has to wait until he's done growing to get the rod out of his leg, and because he had that fancy schmancy Sign Nail procedure, he won't be able to have the rod taken out back in Canada - we don't have Sign Nail there.  So I guess he's coming back to Africa at some point for a little medical procedure!!  In the meantime he gets to carry a medical letter around with him since he'll be setting off metal detectors wherever he goes.

Kylie is another story however.  Our new plan is to head north to the city of Dapaong (da-pong) to get another SED rate blood test.  If those numbers are still higher than normal, we'll then head south to Lome for an MRI.  If the MRI shows good news, we'll be staying put and just walking the slow road to recovery.  But if the MRI shows anything weird or fishy, Kylie will probably have to head home to Canada for care.  Likely surgery, but really, we have no idea what.

So praise God with us in all these things!  We praise Him for our safe return to Mango, for the timing of it all, for Ethan's really quick recovery and even for Kylie's slow one.  If we've learned ANYTHING in these last few weeks, it's been that God is totally in control and we trust Him.

Here's a couple of quick pics.  We were on site only a couple of days when some Tuareg men went by on camels.  They were coming south from Burkina Faso as part of their cultural tour of the area.  We flagged them down and Noles and Jack got to sit on their camels.

Nolan thought this was pretty cool.  

Jack and Noles were the brave ones.  Kylie and
Teddy were happy to watch from a few steps back!