Hows Hilary?

Hilary has been doing great at Dakar Academy. I thought you'd like to see some pics from her setting at school. Her dorm dad puts pics up on http://www.photobucket.com/ that can be seen under vantlanddorm. Each weekend there are new pics to see about Hilary's dorm life...

Here is Hilary with her roomate, Amanda Lee.

Here is a pic after the girls ran out into the rain. Rainy season is winding down in Dakar, hot season is now there. If you were planning on buying an air ticket to Dakar, put it off for a couple of months until things cool down again!

Here is a pic from one nights' dorm devotions. The other girls' dorm came to Hilary's dorm, and they asked each others forgiveness for rivalries, and prayed together.

It is so neat to have Hilary in a school setting like this.

Of course there are so, so many other things we'd like to tell you about Hilary's school time.

We'll just suffice it to say that God is blessing her in many ways there.

Here is a final pic. Ninja night. (The girls had this photo taken on their way out to prank the boys...) Can you ID Hilary?? It took us a while to do....

Thanks for praying for all of us. :-)

God Bless,

Tom & Lisa Seward

Kadiolo life- New gas pump!

We now actually have a gas pump in Kadiolo! As you can see it is not very automatic. The boy here has to hand pump all of the gas into the car, but at least it counts the litres for him.Gas is 525 cfa a litre. That is about $1.20 a litre, wich would make about $4.80 a gallon. Cheap, huh?




And when you are all gassed up and ready to go, you get to drive on great roads like this. Our roads really deteriorate during rainy season. They are graded for dry season, and hold up for awhile until it rains again.They are getting quite bad now, sometimes the water covers the road in lower places.



We're in Bamako this weekend. Lisa came up for Women's retreat. She enjoys the chance to get to know other women from other missions. It is a good chance for her to ask questions, and pool responses from many different people. Because all the women were coming up to Bamako for this missions conference, we took the opportunity to have a meeting. This group, minus one couple in America right now on furlough, and another couple trying to raise their support to join us, is World Venture in Mali. It is a joy to have good friends to share and partner with. We all go back home early next week after womens conference is over...



Here is a pic we took before leaving home. Ben & our dogs,Lulu, and Ocho. Ocho has taken to killing fire crickets. If you've ever heard a fire cricket about 2 am disturbing your sleep, you'd know what a gift this dog has been giving us!(A fire cricket is a bit like the sound a cicada would make if it was on steriods.)



I also wanted to report on that Pastor's training seminar we had written about. It went very well, in spite of the pastors being stuck on the Cote D'Ivoire side of the border for the night, and sleeping in a bus. Their response as they came back home was: “That was like a breath of fresh air,” said the excited pastors as they returned from a workshop in nearby Ivory Coast. These pastors, from isolated villages around Kadiolo, had been able to attend a workshop geared to
helping pastors prepare sermons and preach to Senufo people. We all could see the joy on their faces. They had just spent five days together fellowshipping and sharing with one another, and studying the Word together.They needed the encouragement. They work in villages that are hard ground for the gospel to take root, with small congregations. They make $50 a month. That is a bit small even for Mali salarys. They have to complete their funds by growing corn, beans, and other edibles.Pray for them, they are the future of the church in Southern Mali among the Senufo peoples...A BIG BIG thank you to those who helped give so they could attend the seminar!
Thanks for stopping by:Tom & Lisa Seward

Seward Family

Here is a couple of pics of Caleb. He was a bit active in the house the other day, and ran into a door. (Why dont we run in the house?) Anyway, he came running into the kitchen with his eye banged up, "I'm blind, I'm blind!" No he wasn't. Thankfully, his little cut didn't even require stitches.

I also heard from Hilary's dorm mom in Dakar today. She said that Hilary was a bit under the weathertoday. Pray for Hilary this week as she is trying to get back to normal in her body, and get a good start on school as well.

Lisa is having a fairly good start at school this year, but only because she is using the end of last years' curriculum. Our new curriculum has not yet arrived. It is coming by the slow boat, apparantly. Please pray for it to arrive sooner rather than later.

Thanks for stopping by,

Tom & Lisa Seward

Hello in September!

Hello. We've not published for a little while now, Sorry.
What have you been doing? You ask. It has been 3 weeks since we've updated the blog.
We have re-started school, (Homeschool for the boys.) Hilary has left for Dakar.

Our friends the Curry family are leaving to go back to America. We've been helping them move.
(Actually between us, Eadelmans, and Karin, we've bought all their furniture. So we've been sharing it around. Curry's leave definitively for the US in 3 weeks. Our kids will really miss them. Their two, Jared and Caleb are each 1 year older than our Ben and Caleb. So for example, we shared a joint birthday party earlier this month. We also had an overnight last weekend to kind of give the kids a hurraugh to say goodbye. (Note the title of the book Ben is holding? Every kid should get a book like this from his parents, no?)







It is the heighth of rainy season now. It has rained a lot. I imagine the farmers are enjoying it.
The rain has done wonders for our garden. We can't remember ever having so much rain in Africa. It rains every day. A couple of weeks ago we got 2.5 inches overnight! Wow!


It makes our muddy roads even muddier, but helps our plants to grow. Lisa's flowers around the house are really blooming!




Here is a pic of Lisa and Jonas with a huge sunflower that we had planted. Also, today at noon we enjoyed American sweet corn! What a treat. (People here eat field corn. Not the same thing, is it?) Our garden actually produced enough sweet corn for three meals, and maybe we'll get another tour of corn! That would be so nice!


Lisa's mom sent us the American corn seeds as well as lots of others. Here are some pics for her to see that we actually were able to eat the corn she sent!

Ministry is going on as well. You may remember that we had a woman meeting at our classroom for literacy because her husband didn't want her to meet at church with "those Christians." Now we are up to 4 women meeting at our house. (The other two in the picture are women from church who are teaching!)

We are so excited about this ministry meeting a need, as well as a first real contact with these women for evangelism. (We didn't know any of these women before the class started. In fact the class at our house started because a woman heard about the classes at church, and knocked on our door asking to be taught!) So God is at work!

Thanks again for stopping by,

Tom & Lisa Seward