The Coriolis Effect

by Rachel

Ever wonder if the coriolis effect is true… if water spinning down a drain spins one direction in the northern hemisphere and the other direction in the southern hemisphere?  A few weeks ago friend of ours put us in touch with a girl on one of the Mercy Ships (currently docked in South Africa) to help her with a science project on the coriolis effect.  She was looking for people in the northern and southern hemispheres to help her out and take pictures of which direction the water spins when it drains out of a sink or tub.

Coriolis Effect Counterclockwise

The idea is that it spins one direction in the northern hemisphere, and the other direction in the southern hemisphere.  Well… the picture above is our bathroom sink.  Counterclockwise.

Coriolis Effect Clockwise

And this picture is our kitchen sink.  Clockwise.  I’m afraid we weren’t much help with the science project.  Maybe we’re too close to the equator?  Or maybe the coriolis effect on draining water really is an urban legend…

Love from the Kids

by Rachel

A few times now we’ve been able to write to kids about being missionaries.  Kids in  Awana Club contact a missionary every year to ask them what they do, and it’s so fun to write back to them!  Sometimes they’ll write back to us again, and sometimes they’ll draw us a picture and their mom will take a photo of it and email us a copy!

Picture from Sam Oct 09

Bonus points to the Keller family for that great idea!

We got to write back to one of these kids last week, and here’s what we wrote:

Hi Grant!

My name is Rachel. My husband Matt and I have one little girl named Abigail and we are missionaries.

We live in the country of Malawi, Africa. Do you know where Malawi is? It is very, very far away from America. We have to go on an airplane for 35 hours! Malawi is very different from America. Most of the houses have walls made out of mud and roofs made out of grass. The people here eat lots of corn, and sometimes they eat mice! (You shouldn’t eat mice. I’m sure your mom makes much better food!)

The most important thing we do in Malawi is help people learn about Jesus. Matt is a pastor at our church, so he does many things at church. He organizes Sunday School for all the kids, he meets with people in the church who want to know more about Jesus, and he teaches the big kids and adults about the Bible every week on Tuesday night, Friday night, and Sunday morning. I tell people about Jesus too. On Tuesdays I help with a Bible study for ladies, and sometimes I have special classes for the ladies to help them learn how to study their Bible better and how to be more like Jesus. Abigail is a missionary kid, but she doesn’t do much yet because she’s still a baby. But when she gets bigger, she can tell the kids about Jesus too.

Thank you for letting us tell you about Malawi. You can pray for us, that we can tell more people about Jesus and that we will be more like Jesus every day.

Rachel Floreen

Church Christmas Parties

by Rachel

We hosted the church Christmas parties again this year and had a great time with the church family.  We read the Christmas story, we sang Christmas carols and played games, but most of all, we had a chance to be together as a church family and enjoy a time of fellowship and friendship.  We love our church!

We had 90 people come to the Christmas parties, so split the group up over two nights.  Here are a few pictures of the evenings:

Matt reading Luke 2

Matt read the Christmas story from Luke 2.  Pastor Brian had taken a few weeks to preach from this text, so we all had a greater understanding of the passage as we listened to the story together.

Christmas Parties Photo Booth 2010 2

Christmas Parties Photo Booth 2010 3

Christmas Parties Photo Booth 2010 4

Matt had set up a photo booth in our dining room and left a remote control for everyone to take their own pictures.  A few Christmas hats and garland only added to the fun!
101222 Christmas Party Group Photo
A quick group shot from our second night.  We had a great time celebrating our Savior’s birth with our church family, and we’re already looking forward to next year!

A Full House!

by Rachel

We have visitors!  The Taglieres and Vances came to stay with us on Saturday, and we love having them in our home!

Taglieres and Vances

It’s been a trip full of the unexpected for them, so we’re glad to give them a place to stay and use as home base while they figure things out and get to see a bit of Malawi.  You can read about what brought them here on Laura’s blog, and then please keep them in your prayers as they make decisions and arrangements about when to head back to the States.

Margie Vance and Abigail

An added bonus of these great visitors – Abigail is soaking up the grandmothering while she can!

That Rings a Bell

by Rachel

We’ve needed a bell for church.  We have tea time before church, and it’s difficult to get everyone moving into church on time, so we started looking for a bell.  The only one we could find was about $40, and we decided that was a bit much for a small bell for tea time.  Who knew it could be so hard to find a bell?  Then our friends the Taglieres found this beauty for us:

IBF Bell

Isn’t that great?!  It’s the top half of a wine bottle, and the clapper is the very top part of a soda bottle.  Add a string, a cork, and a little bit of wax to hold it all together, and you have a bell!  We’ll try it this Sunday!

Out with the Old Geyser, in with the New

by Rachel

First of all, it’s pronounced “geezer,” like the disparaging name for an old man.  And secondly, most of you will know it as a water heater… though what you see here probably in no way resembles the water heater you have in your house!

Geyser 1

That’s right, it’s a metal box.  This is our brand new geyser, just waiting to be installed.  It’s to replace the old geyser, which our plumber made by himself – it was 5 sheets of metal welded together.  But this one… it’s state of the art!

Geyser Insulation

It even has insulation!  I kind of feel bad calling this one a geyser now.  The old water heater deserved its nickname, but this one is so nice and new, and it works so well!

It lives in our roof (gravity = water pressure) and I just wish I could have been fast enough with the camera to capture the plumber and his assistant raising it to the roof outside Abigail’s room.  They didn’t bring a rope, so instead they borrowed the most “rope-like” item in our yard to hoist it up – the garden hose.

A Big Change to Our Blog

by Rachel

Newsletter

We’ve decided to entirely change how we do the blog and our newsletters.  Here’s what we’re going to try: The blog and the newsletter will now cover the same things.  We’ll try to blog more frequently, on a wider variety of topics: latest news, picture of the day, day-in-the-life, stuff we’re learning, prayer requests, etc.  Then, we’ll still email out a  newsletter about every other month, which will encapsulate everything that’s gone up on the blog since the last newsletter.  The idea is that the newsletter will be a digest covering all the headlines, with summaries of the recent blog posts, and links to the full story.  In other words:

Blog = Random collection of up-to the minute content.

Email Newsletters = Periodic summary of all blog content.

So, unless you want to read the same thing twice, you probably want to follow either our blog OR our newsletter.

Don’t have a lot of time to read stuff online?  Prefer your news condensed and organized in your inbox?  If so, you want our newsletter.  You can subscribe to it here.

Want your news in bite-sized snippets throughout the week?  Prefer to read the whole story, when it happens?  If so, you should follow our blog.  We’d suggest subscribing to our blog by using an RSS reader (like Google Reader) if you haven’t already done so.

Some of you have been receiving the blog posts in your email inbox.  With these new changes to our blog and newsletter, we’ll no longer be sending out blog update emails.  We’d suggest an RSS reader for you too.  If you’re not familiar with RSS readers, Google has a very informative video about their reader.  Once your reader is set up, you’ll want to subscribe to http://www.testing.africastories.com.

Can’t decide?  Not sure which one is best?  If so, you should probably subscribe to our newsletter for now.  We’ll be sending it to your email, and if you find that you always end up at the blog anyway, you can change later.

And by the way, let us know if you have suggestions for our new newsletter or blog!  If there’s something you love about the way we do things now, or something you’ve always wished we did more of, click comment below and let us know.  We’d love your ideas!

Whichever way you follow along, we’re looking forward to sharing with you more of our lives and ministry here in Malawi!  We’re thankful for each one of you, your interest in our lives and service, and for the encouragement you give us to keep on going.