Happy New Year

It’s nearly a month since Christmas –my, how time flies! Much has happened this month. First we celebrated the New Year again with a joint Worship Service in Magaria. It’s good to be together since both groups are rather small.

As New Year’s was on Sunday, that meant we had Monday off. Silke, a German doctor, and I have a tradition now of making New Year’s Cookies together. I have raisins in mine and she fills hers with jelly. At 10 a.m., we invited everyone over to help us eat them. At 11:30 the plane arrived with 4 doctors. So they all came over for round two.


From January 11 to 17, I was in Niamey for our annual Spiritual Life Conference. Our speaker serves with Navigators in French speaking Canada and Africa. The theme was Discipleship and Disciple-Making. Stuff I have heard many times before, but really do need to think of how am I disciple-making anyway?


PDI ministry: We’re focusing on the importance of baby-weighting through awareness building meetings with the men and the women in our villages. We took two women and two men from the Magaria health community to help us do some skits. As they have had success in the community being involved in baby-weighing. This simple act of weighing a baby or child every month and marking it on the growth card really makes a difference in their health. The mothers are encouraged and persevere in care and they are also instructed what to do if the children isn’t gaining weight or is sick.


Puppies: They are each in their new homes in the village. It was sad for me to see them go but it had to happen. Two weeks ago, Linda and I took two of the puppies to their new owners. The next day another two. The third and fourth day they came and picked them up, except for one. Spark, the last to go, got to stay one more week. He really enjoyed having his mom all to himself. They both got into wrestling, Cali did so in such a gentle way. Now it’s just Cali and me. And it will be that way for a long while.