Please God, not Africa!

Maybe you'll remember this sweet baby boy that I've talked about.  He came into the hospital very ill and undernourished. Because his eyes were so big in his head, we called him Baby Bird. He was skinny and scrawny and miserable. This is the earliest photo I have of Baby Bird. Many of us have had the joy of holding and feeding and loving on this little guy.  Because he was sick, he had to be fed by NG tube slowly.  It took a lot of time. Which meant a lot of holding and snuggling and singing and squeezing. And praying. Sleeping though a feed just before Christmas. Shortly after this feed, Baby Bird was "Baby Jesus" in a Christmas play.  He performed perfectly. Baby Bird was improving, albeit at a snail's pace.  The doctors wondered if he had a problem with his lungs and so an amazing visiting surgeon took him to the OR to fix the issue.  But the problem wasn't THAT problem and we all continued to wonder at why he just wouldn't...

Things have been going well over on this side of the ocean and we're thrilled to let you know the many ways that God has been working and answering our prayers! In the mornings, the kids and I do a short Bible study and keep a journal of all the people and situations we're praying for, including space to see when and how each request is answered.  In the past 2 weeks, we've been filling in that "ANSWERED" column multiple times.  God is at work and we are so grateful to watch Him working in the lives of the Togolese people. You might remember a story I told of Little "G" and his grandmother who is from a dark and evil village.  Here's a photo of him that I posted a ways back. If you don't recall his story, he was living in his village (about 2 hours away from Mango) and fell out of a tree and was paralyzed.  That was a year ago.  He arrived at our hospital after suffering for a couple of months, just lying of the floor of his home.  ...

This week's Mango Moment is brought to you by Pottery Barn. Mango is a small town that sits in a bowl. Because it sits lower than surrounding towns and cities, it's  very dry and very hot. We get far less rain than the surrounding towns and there are times in the year when Mango is actually the hottest place on earth. Today feels like one of those days. But Mango has much to offer.  And if you'll take the time to visit us, we'll happily tour you around.  But since that isn't likely to happen, I'll bring Mango to YOU! The downtown of Mango is made up of a central market with small boutiques on the surrounding "streets" - I put the word "streets" in quotes like that because I'm kind of afraid that you're picturing a street.  Like paved and wide and smooth and clearly marked out.  That would be the wrong thing to picture.  For example: A street in town. Its hard to see the pot holes from this angle. Because a lot of the bo...

Sorry it's been so long since I've written - the internet has been especially lousy over the last couple of weeks.  In order to create a new post, I have to have a long stretch of time with decent internet to upload the photos, then write the post and then actually publish it.  This is no five-minute task, my friends!! But there's much to tell you, so enough excuses already.  Here's what we've been up to: CONSTRUCTION! The houses are coming along great.  Nate and Bruce have been working hard with the Togolese men. House #1 now has the trusses on and House #2 has walls to the roof line and window frames going in.  The crew hopes to have House #1 completed by the end of April!  That's some great timing if it all works out like that.  To think that we got here in mid-November and it was just getting started.  We had to wait for the container from the USA to arrive (which it did, just a couple of days after my birthday which meant that I had the...

It's been another busy week in Mango.  And I have lots of photos to share, showing you the ins and outs of life here.... Construction update: I mean, really, that's why we're here in the first place so it seems a pretty good place to start.  Remember that the plan is for Nate to help build 2 (or possibly 3) homes for doctors who will be arriving to work at the Hospital of Hope full time.  When we arrived in November, House #1 was simply a foundation.  Here it is today - I just took this photo this afternoon.  Now that looks like a house! The next thing to go on would be roof trusses. The trusses are almost complete (they build them here) and then they'll put them up. After that, roof steel goes on, interior walls get built and so on.  There is a container coming from the USA with most of the construction material required to continue building the house - the good news is that this container is supposed to arrive this week!  Jus...

I have to admit that Christmas here is just plain weird. I mean, we're Canadian, right?  So for us, the Christmas season is evidenced by things like cold, snow, candles, fire in the fireplace, cozy blankets, hot chocolate, lights, trees... Celebrating Christmas with the heavy dust of Harmattan falling from the sky rather than snow, and sweating buckets rather than shivering....well, it didn't seem very Christmas-y. But it was a lovely Christmas and I mean that.  We enjoyed many festive events in the days leading up to Christmas: a Christmas movie night, Christmas cookie delivery and carollers (seriously, a group of young missionaries knocked on our gate and serenaded us with carols), a children's Christmas play written by our own MK teachers, and more. Oh Christmas tree. When I was in Lome in early December, I found a little tree.  It took about 4 minutes to decorate it, but with that and some Christmas music playing, it was beginning to feel a little like Chris...

We’ve been in Togo for exactly one month today.   And you know what’s even crazier than that?   It’s exactly 4 years ago tomorrow that Kylie hurt her foot – and to think of all that happened after December 16, 2012 and now, here we are, by God’s grace, back in Togo and Kylie is healed.   How incredible to look back along the path and see how God worked on our behalf!   We weren’t sure we’d ever be able to come back here and look – here we are. So it’s been a quite a month.   Man, if you could just pop over for a cup of coffee I could tell you story after story, some funny, some not-so-much.   Since you likely aren’t popping over and I don’t drink coffee anyhow, let me tell you a couple… Furniture Shopping in the Middle of the Night Our house here in Togo is great.   It has three bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living/dining area and a kitchen.   I’ll show you photos some day so you get an idea of what it’s like. The one thing we don’t ha...