The weekend

The kids have school on saturdays right now now to make up for lost time for the swine flew outbreak. So saturday I kind of just chilled until they got back at 1:00. I Ate some lunch with them then cut Gerson's hair. After that we played some video games. In the evening I went to dinner with 8 kids and Maribel. It was the 8 kids that recently got declared abandoned. Gerson, Yhonson, Joel, Sibila, Betsy, Nelson, Lurdes, Marcielo. After that I came back and had some kids over to watch a movie, but the movie didn't work so we played more video games instead.

Sunday was church and visitation day. We had a lot of visitors, and once again I got filled up with snacks that the parents brought and the kids wanted to share with me. Nothing out of the ordinary for Sunday.

I just got back from the Market, I went to buy some movies, and Cellphone minutes. While I was there I ate some papa rellenas (fried mashed potatoes rolled in balls stuffed with meat and hot sauce on top...SO GOOD) and some Cake from some of the stands there in the market... you can tell I'm starting to get brave when I'm eating food from stands. Later today I'm going to take Yhonson to go get a haircut. Maribel talked with me the other day and suggested that I spend more one on one time with Yhonson because he is not doing so well right now.

I also have a prayer request. I ask everyone who reads this to pray for Avis. She is very sick right now. The doctors say it is anemia and she is on some iron supplements right now. She returns to the states September 4th and I think she is planning on visiting another doctor there. She hasn't been able to do much of anything this last week, so please pray that she recovers.

Happy Birthday Joel

Yesterday was Joels birthday, and for a special celebration I took him to the emergency room to get stiched up. He was running around the house and slipped, fell, and hit his head on the corner of a wall. So Maribel comes knocking on my door at 5:30 in the afternoon and said "I don't mean to bother you...but can you take Joel to the hospital, he cut his head open." So I just grabbed the keys and we loaded up and I drove them down the hill to the Center of Health.

We got there and the doctor laid Joel down on the table cleaned him up, and said that'll be 20 soles. We also had to provide the supplies from their in house pharmacy. So we went bought the stiches the gloves and the needles brought them to the doctor and he stitched him right up. The entire emergency room visit took 20 minutes and cost us $12. Joel did great, he was a little nervous and wanted to see what the doctor was going to stick in his head, but we kept him from moving so he couldn't see the needles.

More good news, is that on Wednesday we finally got the official legal document declaring the Rojas Reyes abandoned. So if there's anyone out there that might want to adopt 5 kids aged 13, 11, 10, 8 and 6 let us know.

Utilities Crisis of 09.

So this last week we've been fighting some battles with our utilities. I found out that we haven't been getting our fresh water from the city about 4 days ago. We usually get a little bit of fresh water everyday at 4:00. We use this water for the kids to drink and cook with. The rest of our water we get from our well which is a little bit salty. So Fred and I carried some buckets of water in the old van over for them on Sunday. We had a meeting today with the water company and they told us that they put another line in that is lower than ours that goes to another part of the city, hence there is not enough pressure to make it to us. So we have another meeting later today with the boss of the water company to see what we can do about it.

At the same time we are trying to get more electricity in to the orphanage because we don't really have enough right now as it is, and we are wanting to build more volunteer houses and more houses for kids in the future so will we need more. The process was going well until a couple of days ago. Then we got a call saying that the company thinks we have enough electricity so they are not willing to put another line going into the orphanage. So we are in the process of waiting for the answer to come from our appeal.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon on top of the church installing an new antenna for our wireless internet because our signal has been very weak lately. Right now it seems to be much better so hopefully at least that problem was solved.

Tomorrow one of our kids is leaving. Maria who as been here since February is going to go live with her Aunt and Uncle in Chimbote. When she came to us she was on drugs and very unstable. She was living a very hard life. She is returning to a different place so hopefully her old habits will not pick back up again. She has made so much progress since she arrived. Right now I think that she is very sad and a little nervous to go. Please be praying for her.

Maria

Pictures

Flying a kite

Washing the van

House Mom Gina helping Fatima practice walking

The picture that will go in the twins adoption file; Jonel on the left, Lenny on the right.