Gifts that Keep on Giving!

One thing that I love about Burkina is the simplicity of life.  I love that even the smallest things bring pleasure  to our children.  I love that they do not ask for the latest technology.  They do not ask to go here or there.  But that they consistently greet me with a hug and a smile and then offer to carry whatever I have in my hands into the house.  Sometimes it is the little things in life which bring us so much pleasure. 

We recently received two HUGE gifts from two different sources.

One was a gift of hand-crocheted dolls from a 92 year old grandmother  Such a labor of love and look at the delight on our children’s faces!  Each of our babies received a baby doll and even our tiniest ones have a little dolly waiting for them in their bed for when it is time to snuggle and to sleep.  

The second was call from a friend in Ouagadougou, asking whether a team could come to Yako bringing Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes.  Well, YES!

This past week Joel Hayslip and his team came and delivered gifts to each of our school children.  Before distributing the gifts, Joel and the team presented the Gospel through stories, drama, art, and puppets.  They captured the attention of our 200 children and many of them raised their hands wanting to ask Jesus into their hearts.     

After learning that Jesus is the free gift from God,  the OCC gifts were distributed and just look at the happy faces! 

I am so thankful for the many, many friends who share the burden of caring for the orphans of Burkina Faso with us and who make our children smile!

Painting the House--

After struggling for many years with a leaky roof which got a little worse each year, we decided this year to replace the roof on our staff house.  The old roof was completely removed and a new one was put in place with a 2 foot high beam in the middle making more of a slant so that the water would run off. 

As you can imagine, replacing a roof causes all kinds of dirt and dust, mud and muck, throughout the construction process.  Raising the roof like this also meant new cracks and crevices as well as an extended wall on both side of our house. 

Knowing that our whole house needed repainting anyway, we waited until after the construction project to even think of new paint.

Then, fast forward to today—what do most short-term teams who are down to their last day of a mission trip usually do?  They usually plan a ‘down-day’ of maybe sightseeing and souvenir shopping, packing up and getting ready to return home.  But, today we received a team of visiting angels from a CMA Envision team from Ouaga.  This team had already spent a whole week in the bush building a new church building and then they came to Yako to scrub and sand and put a coat of primer paint on our living room walls.

Putting the scaffolding together

The team came with ladders and portable scaffolding, buckets, brushes, rags, and LOTS of energy.  They went to work as soon as they arrived, took just a short break for lunch, and were on the road by 3 PM after scrubbing and sanding and painting the top half of our common living area.

Scraping and sanding--

                                                                                                                                                                                                 Thanks so much to the John and Betty Arnold for bringing the Envision team to Yako   We are so encouraged!  We are going to get our house back in order!