Sonia leaves to return to Calgary tomorrow. We leave the compound at 3:30 a.m. to drive her to the airport in PaP. We would like to be able to return home by mid afternoon. That will still make for a long day. While in Port we must return to the store where we bought the new stove with the exploding cover and explain and show photos and see what they have to say about it. Likely nothing!
Sonia wanted projects to do so I gave her two, which she completed extremely well. She cleaned all the tents, and I mean cleaned, and put them away. They look like new, other than for the little holes in the bottom of some of them. Mine and Ti Luc’s have been in constant use for almost 3 1/2 months so it might take awhile to clean those when we again start sleeping inside.
Too, she removed, cleaned and organized everything in the messy supply cupboard in our office. Wow, it has not looked like that since the first time I set it all up. Now to keep it that way. Yeah, right!
The plan now is to pour the roof on the water tower on Wednesday, since we are off to PaP tomorrow. While waiting for the correct size blocks for the roof the floors in the new house were done. I purchased some red, blue and yellow cement dye to add to the cement. That makes the house look nicer than if it had plain grey cement floors.
Don Wilson (Dr. Don) of Comox, BC (& Calgary) is presently volunteering at the hospital nearby for a month. Don is an OB/Gyn and his training and expertise is being put to good use there. He has joined us twice to enjoy Martha’s cooking and to see the children. Don was surprised and seemed to be pleased to see the changes and improvements at HATS since he was last here in December 2004. He visited Saturday morning with two ladies, Michelle and Tina, (OR nurses who were volunteering there from the US). We had a short but enjoyable visit and they appeared to enjoy their time with the children and seeing what we do here. I would not be surprised to see Michelle visit us here at the mission at some point. I regret that I did not get a photo of Michelle and Tina.
I can’t blog without bragging about Ti Luc. Ti Luc continues to amaze us. Yesterday he walked the whole distance from the clothes line behind the Kid’s home to our place without falling. Totally awesome. Friday night he decided he was going to sit at the big table and eat like Sonia and I. He proceeded to pull one of those heavy chairs out from the table using his hands – that’s right folks, his hands – and then used one of his little chairs to climb on so he could put his little bum up on the big chair. He turned and grinned at us like the cat that swallowed the canary. Now he has claimed that chair and that spot at the table as his. I have been teaching him that he needs to speak politely all the time – to say ‘No, thank you, Mama’ and not just ‘No’. Well, on the weekend I told him he needed to go and brush his teeth. He responded with ‘No, thank you, Mama.’ I tried not to laugh. I then told him, yes, he needed to do so and get ready for bed. Again, I got the sweet gentle response of ‘No,. thank you, Mama.’ Now what was I supposed to do with that. First I laughed.
Time to stop working. It is 9:30 p.m. I leave for PaP at 3:30 a.m. and am not yet ready to go.
~Karen
