Okay, here's a picture of a mosqito who is.......................................

NOT

my friend!!!

Last week I, Holli, got malaria! And let me tell you it was not fun! Right now in Malawi it is the rainy season so the risk for Malaria is pretty high. James sees many cases of it daily at the clinic. We are on preventative medicines but I got lazy and hadn't been taking mine! It was a hard lesson to learn! I started feeling some joint pain in my fingers and then had a slight fever of 100, that's all, last wednesday.

By that night it was on! I woke up so nauseas I couldn't sleep and my whole body started to ache, and get the chills. By thursday morning I went to the clinic and was tested positive. Thursday and friday I was really sick with fever reaching 103.5 at times. I don't remember my fever letting up at all on friday. It makes your whole body just hurt. My legs throbbed, my back. It took me until about the following tuesday to feel somewhat like myself again.

I am all better now, praise the Lord! Some of you knew about this and prayed me through it, so I am so grateful! We were unable to get this on the blog here at the time, James was a little busy being a single parent and juggling work as well! We have some really great neighbors that took Ashley everyday for us though. I am so blessed to have you, Connie and Amy, in my life! thank you!!!!

I would ask you to pray for us here that none of us will get this dreaded illness. It can be really bad, but God was certainly gracious to me. Please pray esp. for our children, that they would be protected. We sleep every night with a mosquito net around our beds and try to stay inside at dusk. It's tricky getting Ashley to take her medicine. Thre are pills they take everyday and we have to hide hers in oatmeal or yogurt, the pill tastes so bad!

You can believe I am back on my preventative meds now! :)

thank you for praying specifically for this!

holli

Wes' 8th birthday party

Wes celebrated his 8th birthday on January 11th. He's opened up several packs of gum and that's why the HUGE smile!

Here is the light saber cake.

So we had 10 boys, outside (yes!), running around with light sabers and guns.


Wes wore his goggles part of the time. gotta love him!
We had a friend donate bales of hay for the boys to use.

I thought the funniest was James walking around with Chad's bike helmet on as a joke and none of the boys even said anything!

They wore themselves out!
Grandmama and Papa, these pictures are for you!

Hiking Dedza Mountain

Last week we decided to hike up Dedza Mountain as a family. It is about an hour and a half drive from Lilongwe. We had a lot of fun.

Chad started off carrying Ashley in the pack but that didn't last too long. James carried her while I carried a backpack of energade or gatorade. Notice how clear the path is!

You can see a soccer field in the distance.
I loved this view. The weather was perfect.
Again, you can how clear our path was and how tall the grass was! I was nervous about snakes the entire time and kept saying, "make a lot of noise guys!" When we got back that night our neighbor told us that the biggest cobra he's ever seen was on Dedza mountain. Thank God for His protection. We saw none! Who knows if they saw us though.


rest break, they love to climb rocks.
I love this, at the bottom when we were walking to our car, a bunch of kids were following us.

Here they are with Chad and Ashley. Not sure what kind of pose that kid on the right is making?

SOOOOO.......you're probably wondering what this mountain feat looked like, right? well below is a picture of it.

just kidding, that's actually Mount Everest! didn't get a good picture of Dedza but I'm sure it's pretty close!

ABC Christian Academy

ABC Christian Academy

The boys have had a really great semester. Both boys learned to play field hockey in their P.E. classes and Chad played on the team. Both boys played tennis and soccer after school. It was a lot of fun!

We live right down the street from school so they can ride their scooters, bikes, or walk to school!

INTERNATIONAL DAY

International Day at school is a day when all the children got to dress in their traditional clothes from their home country. Each child then brought in a sample of a typical food to taste. It was a special day.

there were so many delicious foods to eat
the boys dressed in typical American clothes


Wes is standing here with his teacher, Ms. Bowman, from England. Mrs. Brueninger the other second grade teacher is holding Ashley.

hmmm.......wonder where he's from?

READING DAY

On this day the kids dresses up as a character from a book. I took Ashley as a princess, of course! Here she is with Wes, the Star Wars Jedi.

The Academy also has the Accelerated Reader program. Here is a picture of Chad getting recognized at Chapel time for all the points he’s earned in reading. He has the most points in the lower grades!

CHAPEL TIME

Each friday morning the kids have chapel time. The younger grades are focusing on the promises of God. I was asked to speak one friday so I did the lesson from 2 Samuel 9 on Mephibosheth. The middle school are focusing their chapel time on a passion fro God. James was asked to speak and share some of his testimony.

Rice for Ruth's Shawl

Rice for Ruth's Shawl

God has brought something to us that we are very excited about. It is a ministry called Ruth's Shawl. It was started by a couple from the states and it is a ministry with widows and orphans. The village where they are ministering is right here in Lilongwe.

ago and James went with them to hold a medical clinic to see all the children. There are about 19 widows and 60+ children.

We talked a lot with Steve and Nora who started this and they mentioned how amazing it is to see the difference in the ladies faces now after meeting with them. Such joy, many have accepted Christ. They have even started literacy classes and a bible study with them. James asked them if they are able to do anything special for Christmas, a party or presents for the children. They said no, that at Christmas time they get rice instead of nsima, a type of porriage. They can only afford rice twice a year. Here are some pictures of our family as we went to visit the ladies and give them each 5 kg. bags of rice.

Here is a link to their website as well. www.ruthsshawl.org

This was were we bought the rice.
I thought this little girl was so cute. I would love to have had a new dress to give her.
They would put the rice in bags and weight the bags on this scale.
Here's Wes helping load the rice bags in our car.
The women gave a a welcome song and dance when we got there.

They had a small Bible study showing us how their literacy classes were coming along. They closed the time with prayer.

Here's Chad carrying the bags of rice inside Freida's home, one of the widows.
They were so excited to get the rice, again they sang for us.
Here is a picture of me and the boys and my friend Jeannette who's a second grade teacher at the academy. The ladies were so proud of their uniforms!
This is just some of the children at Ruth's Shawl. They were so precious and sang some songs for us.