Helping at the Children's Center

Hi Everybody,

Bom Dia! That is good day in Portuguese. Its one of the few things that we are able to say. It is usually followed by, “how are you?” and then the response is completely lost to us. As we reported earlier, things are going well. We continue to be in good health, are eating pretty well but beginning to tire of rice. We usually have it for lunch and dinner, well actually we have had rice for every lunch and dinner except for one. It is complemented with some type of sauce, such as beans, cabbage, goat etc. Breakfast continues to be a roll and sweet tea. I pass on tea and have coffee, provided by me. Out days start very early as the sun is up at 5:00am and when the sun comes up everybody gets up and the semi quiet of the night gives way to roosters, goats and many, many voices. Our classes start at 8:00am and go until about 12:00-1:00. Our afternoons are kept busy with feeding the street kids, playing with the children, helping on some projects like the one starting next week, the digging of about 40 latrines! There is a great danger of a cholera outbreak if they don’t do something about the village children and the workers using the hillside as their toilet. It is a pretty serious problem and we will be working practically on solving it. The Children’s Center called the Village of Hope is hope to about 200 children, 100 pastors in training, 120 of us missionary students, about 50 native staff workers and about 30 full time missionaries. So this children's center is like a village of about 500 people. It’s a busy place, especially since it is open to any village child to come to school or lunch during the daylight hours. It’s a challenge to keep track of which kids are Iris children and which ones are street kids. Additionally, we will continue to go on weekend outreach where we show the Jesus Film, pray for sick people, dedicate churches and baptize people. We were in two villages this past weekend doing just that and we probably baptized over 100 people. It was a great time. I’ll sign off for now as my time here at the internet cafe is about up. Thanks for your prayers, we’ll try to keep you posted. We love you all!

Ron and Jan