garden, chicks and preparing for newcomers!

We are looking forward to some new faces in town over the course of the next week. Within a few days, we anticipate the arrival of some special colleagues--Brian and Rachel and their five children. They are new members of our team, and their primary initial job description here will be Sango language-learning! We feel really privileged to get to help them settle into life in CAR, and to get to have them as our neighbors for a while.

The Bhogoto Bible translation team is also expected here next Tuesday, to spend two weeks working with Adam: he's been preparing for a consultant check of the book of Esther with the three team members plus one back-translator.

Meanwhile, a few shots from the garden and of kids and friends.

A yellow tomato and okra flower in our garden:

 

A humongous walking-stick (difficult to tell how big it is from the photo!)

Precious chicks! We have two mother hens, Gingerbread and Sugar. Gingerbread is still sitting on her egg, while Sugar's four eggs hatched a couple days ago. I'm enjoying the cute little chicks because (in my opinion) chicks turn un-cute pretty quickly. They sure are adorable at first, though!

Jacobin and Frieda:

Lois, Elsa and Helene:

The three little girls with Mama Fané and her sons Adam and Exaucer:

Tychique and Lois:

Frieda sitting with Princicia, who is Jacobin, Tychique and Helene's Mom. She recently finished a medical degree in Bangui and will soon be beginning an internship at the hospital here:

I'm thankful to have friends around. When the busiest part of the workday is done, and before the final busyness of supper and bedtime with all the kids, it is nice to take a little walk and have friends pull chairs out into their front yard and invite us to sit down for a little visit.