School Days…

Greetings!  School has begun in the Williams household.  So far, so good.  It has been a challenge trying to get all of the materials needed since we have not been Stateside for close to 3 years now.  Slowly I have gathered things and continue to do so even today.  Our trip in town was extended a day so I could photocopy materials borrowed from other missionaries and the school where I worked last year.  Hopefully these new resources will help next week to go a bit smoother than this week has.  What a challenge to teach 5th grade and 9th grade at the same time.  It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with it all, please pray for me!  The kids are being patient and working diligently, and don’t seem overwhelmed at all – I could learn from their example. 

           

Martin has been busily working on his thesis the past three weeks.  We have seen him only a day and a half during the past 3 weeks.  He has had to stay in the village of Las Minas filling out long survey forms trying to gather data for the thesis.  He is due home today and we will all be glad to have a long weekend at home with him.  Though he works on the computer much of the time and makes trips into town to meet with other classmates, he is still home to tuck everyone in at night.  This week he is supposed to bring home a puppy for the kids from his neighbors in  Las Minas.  It’s a white mutt that they named “Gringo”, but Rachel could care less what kindof dog it is and is beside herself with excitement that this may be the weekend that Gringo comes home!  I think the name is hilarious and we have decided to keep it.  I’ll have to post a picture for you when he makes it home.   He is going to be our watch dog and hopefully keep snakes out of the house and clinic.  We killed our second poisonous one INSIDE the clinic on Monday.  Enough, I say!  I felt like quite the mountain woman when cutting off the head with a machete! ha/

We’ve continued to work at cleaning up the clinic inside and out.  What a big job it is just to keep the grass cut and raked.  It has taken three cuts to slowly clean up the rocks and limbs and garbage.  But it looks great now.  We had some problems with trespassers at the clinic and on the property farther into the village where our house will one day be built.  So we have been building temporary gates and repairing fences.  At the clinic our trespassers were visitors to the neighboring  cantina/bar and were  quite drunk when they came walking in and started firing their weapons.  So a temporary gate was put up the following week to stop that from happening again.  So far it has kept out not only the unwanted horses, cows and pigs, but the cantina drunks as well.  I’ll show you a picture of our new gate (along with the newly cut and raked yard). It certainly needs to be replaced with a metal one soon, but for now it’s working!

     

Well, I need to run for today.  Martin continues to say he will write the next entry, but it has been hard for him to make it to a computer the past month.  Soon you will hear from him and about all the medical stories.  You’ve heard enough about cleaning, snakes and homeschooling!  I still love Rio Viejo, even with all the critters.  We’ll keep in touch!

In His Love,
Wendy