Doings

Here is Elias helping his Papa in the garden. I think they were pulling out old tomato plants.

Our neighbor, Parnell, was given two deer. Jacob joined the guys in cutting up the meat. Mom said that they had the venison in Thai food today and it was good! We certainly have piles of it to eat, so that's happy news.

Maia is now eating something beside milk. Her list of foods is sweet potato, potato, rice, banana, and apple. For such a little girl, she is a very eager eat-er. Notice Elias' sweater? His great-grandmother from Sweden made it for Jacob.

Greens, cars, and wisdom

One of the verses from from my devotions really stuck out to me the other day: "He gives wisdom to the wise." Kind of a funny verse, because the stupid need wisdom, not the wise. What's that about? But all this week, it's like God has been showing me what this means.
Take the greens, for example. The more we cut, the more they grow. If you don't cut your greens, they grow slow. If you don't use it, you lose it. Or, think of this . . an acquaintance of ours had a car that broke down on him. At the time, he didn't have the money to fix the car. So he just let it sit there. He let it sit for a year. He just didn't take the initiative to figure out what was wrong with the car or haul it to a place where it could sit legally. So, then a friend of ours bought the car off him, for 200$. He repaired it for about 300$, put a week's worth of labor during evenings and the weekend, and sold it for 1600$. Talk about making a profit. My Dad says "When you snooze, you lose." It's like God says, if you try to use my gift of wisdom, I'll give you more. If you don't try to use it, if you don't appreciate my gifts to you, you won't get no more!!

Legos

A father-son creation, this one is. Our little two-year-old is building on his own though! His cars tend to have lots of wheels, unevenly matched, and the windshield on the wrong way round. But he's having fun, that's what counts.

Jolly Jumper

around the house

Laughter coming from the porch-- Elias was doing something funny!


Lola was sewing. Elias was busy putting the pins away.

Making a fire

It's fall now in Virginia. You realize how many trees there really are in the yard when the leaves start to fall. Anyways, I was thinking about all the brush and leaves we had in our yard, and how my Dad is going to put in a wood stove, and I said to Dad that all that stuff would make a big fire. Thankfully he didn't hear me. And the next second I remembered what country I was in: America: where people usually put logs in their wood stove, not brush, and certainly not piles of fall leaves. In Bangladesh, most people who live outside the capital cook every day with leaves, brush, jute sticks, and dried cow dung. When I was outside raking leaves, I couldn't help but think of Khala, the lady who we lived with for two months out in the village, how every day she would get a big basket and disappear for an hour to collect bits of wood and leaves for the fire. Wouldn't she like my big pile of leaves.

These pictures are from our village stay. That's Khala's pile of leaves for the day. She'd stir the pot with one hand and shovel in leaves and brush with the other hand.

Friends

While on our trip through New England, we saw many dear friends. My sisters' teacher, April spent years with us in Thailand --so it was incredibly fun to see her again. April is one of the only people who have seen me in 4 different countries. She now lives in down-town Lancaster, so we got to take a walk and see a fun water fountain.

We also got to see a friend from Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Nafisa is an old Dialogue student and my former voice teacher (before we both got busy with babies!). She and her husband have since moved to New York City. Life is much harder for them now, though she can still cook Bengali food!