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| Four cousins and an aunt show their dusty feet. This is why foot-washing was a special event in Bible times! |
After a New Year's celebration of fireworks on the hospital compound put on by a couple of 13 year old boys, we have settled into the hot and dusty dry season. Lots has been going on, but we were split between two locations for a month.
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| Fireworks exploding in the moon! |
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| Teenaged boys, fireworks... What an awesome combination. At least the bucket was the only thing to sustain damage! |
Christine was up in the north of Togo in the city of Mango teaching at the Togolese nursing school of the Hopital d'Esperance (Hospital Of Hope), the sister hospital to our home at HBB in the south. She spent time in the hospital and teaching the boys some home-school programs, too. She was extremely busy! Christine will be teaching the same course here in the south school in late February and March.
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| Boys and dirtbikes. |
There were a couple of rough patches while the family was in Mango, when Logan and Hudson contracted malaria. They were knocked down for a few days each but are back to their 'normal' selves now. A month is a long time to be separated, so I made the trip up to surprise them after three weeks. It was a quick visit but lots of fun.
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| I think she was happy to see me. The surprise worked. |
While they were north, I was by myself working away down in the south. The house was very quiet and stayed quite clean! Fortunately, some of the other families on the compound showed compassion and invited me over for a meal and some social interaction. I appreciated the hospitality greatly!
In January we had a team from our home church, Stoney Creek Baptist Church, stop by on their way homeward after they spent a couple of weeks working at the Hospital Of Hope. It was so nice to have a bunch of familiar faces show up and spend some time. We appreciated some of the stuff they brought for us, the work they were able to accomplish at HOH, and the chance to spend some time chatting. Their sacrifice, generosity and hard work was a blessing. Their collective sense of humour and volume was recognized wherever they were!
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| Not really a 'selfie' guy, but when you solve the water tower problem, you have to show some love. (Old Man Schinkel, Brent and I on top of the tower.) |
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| Farewell at the airport! |
Burn For You
We experience a 'burning season' during the dry months. Farmers burn stubble and brush from their fields to prepare for new crops. You can hear the crackling and popping around the mountains as fields are ablaze. Normally there isn't any risk to us as the burns are small and relatively contained. However, one windy day things changed. The fire right outside the wall of the compound was whipped over the wall into a corner of our property. Normally no one is down in that area during the day but this day one of the ladies was in her house and heard some crackling rather close to her house compared to the normal distant sounds. She looked out the window to find a large section of grass and brush on fire. I received the call and we had guys take off with buckets, shovels and rakes to the nearest house and garden hose. We were able to put out the fire with no damage to any property, just burnt grass and a lot less leaves to rake. Thank God that was all to report!
(Pro tip: Do not try to put out fires while wearing sandals unless prepared to move quickly!)
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| Some of the burned and charred brush with the nearest house in the background. |
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| The fires at night create some really dramatic scenes in the surrounding mountains |
Hope Radio
Our friends at Hope Radio in Mango hoisted the last sections of their new antenna tower into place while we were there. Adam and Faith Drake, along with Adam's mom and dad, the Justison family and the Lethers family are looking forward to initial broadcast testing and getting material ready to put out on the FM airwaves in northern Togo and surrounding countries. It will be exciting to see the scope of this new tool to reach people with health education, some news and the message of Jesus Christ.
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| Two guys, 90m in the sky, attaching the last sections of the tower. |
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| Lots of support to keep this tower in it's place. |
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| In one of the studios at the station |
The First Flight
While the radio station is big news up in the north, the plane is making some noise of its own in the south. Just this week, final stamps and signatures were received from the Director General of Aviation in Togo to permit the plane to take off and land. after being assembled, tested and checked over, the first flight was an event for the community. Lots of people stopped by to watch the plane fire up, take a short rip down the runway and disappear into the sky! This was the culmination of more than ten years of work for a couple of families down here. What a joy and relief this moment must have been for them!
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| Ryan (the taller one) and Joe, the two pilots for this first flight. |
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| Taxiing out onto the runway |
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| Airborne.... Awesome! |
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| A fly-by for everyone to see the plane in action |
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| And back on the ground - safe and sound. A successful first flight! |
Other Happenings...
A team of nursing students from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia invaded HBB for three weeks. It's always fun to have groups of college kids come, but these guys and girls were loads of fun and had great attitudes. I think we would welcome them all back any time!
While preparing the roads and drainage around the compound for the impending rainy season, Doctor Fred became Farmer Fred as he helped out on one of his days off. A change of pace from the hospital for him, and some welcome help for me!
One of the guys who works on the little farm on the hospital compound in Mango was building a small coop for some guineafowl. Using traditional clay bricks and rolls of grass for the roof, he would have it ready to fill in a couple of days time.
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| The braided pattern keeps the grass in place and makes for a mostly watertight roof. |
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| Someone had a birthday in January! |
Logan was able to capture a couple of birds - digitally. He has been trying to get a good picture of 'this black and red bird with a weird beak' and the Abyssinian Roller. While in Mango he was successful! The red bird is a Bearded Barbet, the other is the Roller.
Lastly, here is a really huge baobab tree. There are lots of big ones, but this one is massive. It had several bee hives dripping with honey inside its' limbs. Three lovely ladies posed beside it for a sense of scale. I doubt 20 people could reach around that trunk.
As always, we are in need of medical professionals here. If you can spare two weeks or a month - or longer - please contact us. We would love to have you come and help us out. At the same time, you could witness firsthand what working at a Christian mission hospital in West Africa is all about.
Feel free to contact us at Penny Missions for more information, or if you just want to send a quick note. Most of the time we have reasonable internet (barring any political protests or another power outage) so we try to reply to everyone who sends a note.
