Lisa's update Sept 17, 2005

No big events happened this week in the life of the Kadiolo Sewards.
Just a few news notes and prayer updates.

We started home-schooling with the three children. Mostly book work for now until we find more resources in town like artisans and musicians who can help with those areas. They did have a couple of extra-curricular type subjects. Our yardman, Marikot, took Ben out into the bush one morning to find rabbit food. He explained what vines and branches they eat and how to find them. Hilary had some Home Economics on Thursday when another missionary couple from about an hour away came to shop at our market and can tomatoes with Lisa and Hilary.


Here are Lisa and Hilary with Hilary's two new kittens.

We've had ladies and girls selling a variety of fruits and vegetables coming to our gate to offer their produce, which we often buy. We had two unusual items come this week, however. One was a home-made toy boat that a young man had carved and painted. Ben thought it was interesting enough (or inspiring, perhaps) to spend his own money on it.

Someone else came by wondering if we were interested in buying a small, red monkey.
After Lisa's bite experience in Cote d'Ivoire, we weren't interested, but we did laugh at the opportunity.

We met with the landlord of a newly-built house we are interested in buying here. He had planned to rent it, but we asked him to consider selling to us. Friday morning, we met with him and his mediator and our mediator, Pastor Youssouf, and another friend, and discovered that he was willing to sell, but his price was more than double what we thought we could afford. We will still have plumbing, electrical, and expansion to put in, so we need to plan some finances for that, so his price was way over our budget. He wasn't really willing to come down much either, which our friends thought was unreasonable. We told him we'd keep looking, and would consider a slightly higher offer if we could find the finances, and we'd meet next week to see if he'd reconsidered his asking price. We'll update you on that next week.

Lisa is going to Bamako again next week, Wednesday through Sunday, for a missionary
ladies' retreat. It should be a good time of worship and fellowship, and getting
acquainted with the missionary community here in Mali. There are a few names she knows from our ICA days, and a precious few others who were Cote d'Ivoire missionaries before the crisis there, but there are many new people to know. She's looking forward to days of air conditioning and some pool time at the nice hotel where the meetings will be held. For now, she's trying to put some food in the freezer for Tom and the kids to fall back on, although we've discovered that Aminata, our house helper makes a delicious spaghetti and great french fries!

Tom says it would be a little bit easier to cook if we were closer to McDonalds, Dominoes, and Bandido's in Ft Wayne. We do have a lady who sits under a tree, and she makes sweet potato fries that are pretty good. Sometimes fried bananas, too.