Pausing to celebrate God's goodness

When the semester at Gideon Theological College wrapped up 2 weeks ago Eli wasn't really sure what these months would hold for him. We had really hoped that he could work on building our new house during these "free" months but we kept running into road blocks. So Eli has tackled several other projects and I want to recap some of them for you. When you sit back and think of it all, he's been very very busy. :)

The first project began when the UN loaned us their forklift (with driver) to move some of the shipping containers we have on campus. It turned out to be a little interesting because each container had hives of bees living underneath it so for more than 24 hours all of us were kind of stuck indoors because the bees were angry and needed to find a new home. P.S. The upside was that we recovered honeycomb 1 foot wide and 8 feet long!!!

The next project concerned this boat. This boat belongs to a local NGO but the motor wasn't working and it had multiple leaks and holes in the bottom of it. Eli spent a few days on the motor and got it working beautifully and the holes are patched. Now we just want to hunt down the water skiis that are rumored to be stored somewhere in Melut!

Once the bees calmed down and moved away, we decided we needed to fill in the spaces under all the containers at their new site. Mud is local and free so being a woman's job (as I wrote previously) I joined the ladies to smear several layers of mud along the bottom foundation of each container.

Eli also installed electricity in 2 of the containers that we are hoping to use as guest houses. The 3rd container will serve as a storage place and probably won't have lights.

Not pictured here is the UN "honey-sucker" that arrived yesterday. Due to the high water table in Melut our pit latrines/toilets fill up very quickly, mostly with water. All the latrines on campus have been almost full and we were starting to get very worried. :) Our UN friends came to our rescue yet again and brought their special truck over to drain our latrines. We weren't able to do them all but it was a huge help to at least empty some of them!

And finally today, another forward step toward building our house! The UN forklift came back to help us move this old empty water tank which has been resting in the exact spot where we want to build our new house. The forklift moved it out of the way.
Another development is that Eli found a new contact for getting truck loads of sand and rock so it has been ordered and one load of sand has already been delivered. The area where our house is going to be built is starting to look like a construction zone now! Praise the Lord!

We are so thankful that in all these crazy projects we have had no injuries except for a few bee stings. It is really amazing to see God working and to see His timing in all this. I want to close with a beautiful quote I read this morning by Oswald Chambers:
     "FAITH IS DELIBERATE CONFIDENCE IN THE CHARACTER OF GOD WHOSE WAYS YOU MAY NOT UNDERSTAND AT THE TIME."