Category Archives: Life in Africa

Around Our House… The Other Day

by Rachel

We’re a bit busy around our house these days… which would explain why the post entitled “Around Our House Today” didn’t get written for a couple days and so didn’t qualify as “today” any more.   =)  But like we said, we’re busy, so late is better than never! 

Here are a few of the things going on around our house right now…

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Ladies’ Bible Study meets at our house every Tuesday morning.  We’ve averaged about 8-9 ladies every week, and we’re still enjoying the study through the Bible one book a week.  We just finished Psalms, and are on to Proverbs next week!

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As 2 1/2 year olds, these three little ladies make our house a busy place!  (Yes, they were all born within a couple months of each other!) The Ayres family has been living with us for about 2 1/2 weeks, and Moriah Ayres is fitting right in!  Abi is, of course, enjoying playing host and general rabble-rouser.  And Rejoice, our housekeeper’s daughter, looks sweet and innocent, but she’s right in the mischief with Abi!

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It’s rainy season, so the grass is green, the gutters are flowing, and the ferns, palms, ginger, and heliconia are lush and happy.

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The grenadilla are happy too.  We’re picking fruit off the vines almost daily and enjoying grenadilla lemonade.

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You know the people who collect spare cars in their front yard?  I feel like we do that with laundry appliances.  No really, there’s an explanation for the 3 dryers and 2 washers on our back porch.  2 dryers and 1 washer are broken.  And the one washer that does work isn’t ours – it’s the Ayres.  The guys mistakenly brought it over to our house when the container was unpacked.  We do have a new washer that came on the Ayres’ container, so it will come, the Ayres’ washer will go, an old dryer will go to be fixed, and then… somehow we’ll still have 5 appliances on our porch.  We are those people.  At least it’s not cars…

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Titus (4) and Caleb (6) Ayres jumped right into school the week after they arrived.  School starts at 7:15, so they are up early every day!  And then they come home just before 1pm to work on homework – these guys are busy learning and making friends!

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Matt and Abi had a special father/daughter project morning.  It was a bring-your-own-toolkit kind of event.  They were blocking up holes under our gate and in our drains, because…

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We got a puppy!  The Ayres got one too, so it’s puppy town around here now!  Samson is our new little guy, and he looks very much like his dad, Simba, did when we first got him!  Simba’s a little jealous of all the attention everyone’s giving his kids.

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Mac and Cheese night.  With all the kids in the house, we’ve eaten a few more kid-friendly foods lately.  The big kids didn’t seem to mind either.

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And we still get our regular, and not so regular, power outages.  Here Bethany’s looking over Jim’s shoulder to see pictures of light fixtures he found in town during the day.  Those two are spending a good part of each day, and several hours each night, working on plans and changes for their house.  It’s coming together, and I know they’re all eager to open all the boxes that came on their container and make that house their home!

Day Away

by Rachel

Pastors don’t usually take Saturdays as their day off.  Saturdays and Sundays are busy days for those teaching, preaching, serving, counseling, and overseeing in the church.  So we picked a different day as our day off: Wednesday.

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Last week we decided that not only did we need a day off, but we needed a day away.  A night, in fact.  So we rented a cabin on a small dam west of town and spent about 22 hours there.

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We took advantage of the canoes and Abi’s new lifejacket for a little boating excursion.

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Some friends of ours live just across the dam from where we stayed, so we canoed over for tea about 4pm (“official” tea time).  We’ve never canoed anywhere for tea before, so it was a fun experience!

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All in all, a nice day and night away.  We even made it back in time for 9am meetings on Thursday, so now we know it’s doable!

A Mommy Fashion Show

by Rachel

Abi and Rejoice are sporting the two most common ways of baby-wearing here in Malawi.  Rejoice shows us to “under both arms” method, used more commonly with smaller babies.  And Abi is demonstrating the “over one shoulder” method, used with larger babies and toddlers.

Abi comes by her preference for the over-one-shoulder method quite naturally.  She spent a lot of time there!

Ngumbi

by Rachel

Look at what we woke up to this morning!

We call them ngumbi, but you’d probably call them termites.  After the first big rain of the season, all the termites come out of their hills and look for new places to live, preferably places that have lights, like our house. It’s been raining off and on for the past couple days, so the termites had their annual “night out” last night and found their way into our house, despite closed doors and windows, and mosquito nets on the windows.

Would you believe that the Ministry of Health actually promotes eating ngumbi as a good source of protein?  Minus the wings, of course.  I think we’ll pass this year, but I will let you know that Matt’s favorite way to eat ngumbi is with a light sprinkling of cajan seasoning…

Kwacha

by Rachel

If there is one man God has used to encourage our hearts in ministry in Malawi, it is Kwacha Simwaka. Matt and Kwacha met over 10 years ago in Mozambique where they were both doing missions, and have stayed in touch over the years – even being roommates in South Africa for all of 2005.

Kwacha Matt and Abi

Kwacha is finishing up his Theological Masters degree at The Master’s Seminary and planning to graduate this coming May, after which he will return to Malawi and join us in ministry in his home country.  We are so looking forward to this day!  God has blessed Kwacha with wisdom, diligence, and a heart burdened for his country.  Those are just a few of the things we love about him, and a few of the ways that he encourages us.  In fact, he’s so loved around here, that as Abi is learning her alphabet, she has declared that “K” is for Uncle Kwacha. =)

Kwacha and Rachel

Kwacha is back in Malawi right now for a few weeks to extend his visa to America so that he can continue with his studies through May.  We’ve loved the chance to spend time with him! Please pray for him as he prepares to return to Malawi in the not too distant future, and that he can finish his thesis and the master’s program with excellence!

This is Not a Cooking Blog, But…

by Rachel

I have a new obsession – drying mangoes.

My friend Mirjam taught me that you can dry sliced mangoes on a piece of cotton fabric, draped over a clothes drying rack and covered with mosquito netting, in the sun for 1-2 days… and you have wonderful dried mangoes.

And since it’s mango season here in the southern hemisphere and you can get local mangoes for about 3 cents apiece, my “dehydrator” has been in use all week.  We’ve done quite a few mangoes, but also some apples and peaches.

My sticky assistant likes dried fruit, but especially favors the apples.  She never turns down dried mango though, and now we’re looking forward to having mango all year long!

Water, Please.

by Rachel

This sight makes for a good morning around here!

The water has been off about 1/2 the time since we got home.  It goes off without warning for anywhere from 2 hours to 4 days.  As of this morning, the water had been out for about 2 1/2 days, and then at 8:30am, it was back!  It gurgles through the pipes in the house, and the quiet noise has as dramatic an effect as a fire alarm.  “FILL THE WATER BUCKETS! FLUSH THE TOILETS! TAKE A SHOWER! HURRY!!!  BEFORE IT GETS TURNED OFF AGAIN!”  I watered the house plants finally, and even started a load of laundry.  Started.  We’ll see if we get to finish it!  =)