Birthday Celebrations

The end of December is a time for celebrations around our house.  Yesterday we celebrated Kyrk's birthday. 

 This is the cake that we called Kyrk's "Birthday Cake"  Yes it was given to him just like this, with a couple pieces out of it and the words on the top say Merry Christmas. 

Robert's Birthday was today and he enjoyed being King for the day.

 Enjoying the air hockey game from Grandma Campbell.

 He wore this hat almost all day.

 Enjoying his gift from Gerben and Ellen.

No birthday in our house is complete without Ice cream. 

Great Start to our week in Atrel

We traveled up to Atrel on Friday so Kyrk could work with the local guys to pour the walls of our cistern and hopefully the bottom floor of our house.  So far it has been a great time and we are enjoying being here as a family and continuing to get to know the people of Atrel.

 Friday night pizza night, even in Atrel!

 On Saturday we decided to put some rocks around our fire pit.  But when we discovered it had great dirt around it we didn't want to cover it up.  So we dug all the good dirt out and then filled it is with rocks.  It was hard work, but we had fun working together as a family.

The men have been working on the entrance to our property, preparing to put up a fence soon.

 This is the entrance to our property.

Today they started pouring the walls of the cistern.  It was a lot of work to get all the forms ready to go, but today they were able to get one side all finished.  It was a huge blessing to have a cement mixer to make the job much easier and efficient.

We have been doing school each morning while we are here, but in the afternoons the children get to really develop their creativity.  We have no toys up here, so today they made things out of rocks and pieces of wood.  Rebekah made a phone from a rock, Naomi made a doll from a rock and Anna was pretending that her little piece of wood was an telephone. 

Great time in Atrel and Progress on our House

As you may have read from our recent updates, we spent the past 2 weeks in Atrel with a group from World Servants in the Netherlands. 
For our family it was truly an answer to prayer to spend the 2 weeks continuing to build relationships with the people of Atrel.  Each day we would walk from our little house down to the school.  It is about a 15 minute walk and it was a great opportunity to interact with the local people.  God used these conversations to continue to confirm to us that we are supposed to be in Atrel.  Overall the people are very welcoming to us and they are very thankful that we are willing to come and live in their community.  The last thing that Pastor Fritz asked us as we were leaving was "When are you going to stay here?" 

During the 2 weeks that we were in Atrel we were able to have the men continue the work on our cistern.  They completed the rock walls and prepared all the iron for the walls and floor.  The last day they poured the floor.
Now the plan is for us to return on December 7 for 1 week with a cement mixer and pour the concrete part of the cistern walls, the bottom floor of the house and if time allows the top of the cistern.

We are then planning on returning in January to begin building the actual structure.  It is so exciting to finally see all the planning and preparing coming together.  Beginning in January we will mainly be living in Atrel.  From that time on we will just come back to Fermathe to get supplies and our belongings as we have place to put them.

 The rock walls being built for the cistern.