Prayers for Beacon House

From the director of Beacon House Children's Home where we believe our next children will come through. Please pray with me for this situation as you may read this and later each time you use water in your house or property, that God move the workers along efficiently and successfully to get the water back running for the Beacon House and for the others affected by the pipes being out?
Thanks!

Water situation.

We've been blessed for the past 2 years to have water. Many places in Accra experience water shortage but we've had it flowing most days. And when we've had 'problems' ie a day/two without water, the American school nearby lets us go to their taps to get water. So the kids march down the road with buckets on their heads to collect the necessary water.



Last week Beacon House and the American school had no water. Work is being done on the road and someone broke a pipe. It's taken one week to fix that. On Friday, I went to see the water department and was told that on Tuesday (26th August), they will be closing all the pipes in the East Legon area (that is where we are located) for 10 days while they work on upgrading their pumping system. Now my experience in Ghana tells me that 10 days is NOT 10 days but could be 2-3-4 weeks.



Already this week we had no water, so our tanks could not fill. We did find a teacher - Ms. Sally - who had water so again the kids made 3 trips to her house (not too far away) to fill their buckets. But come next week, the school will most definately have no water ... we are praying that Ms. Sally (the teacher) is connected to a different line and will still have water but we won't know until it happens.



Beacon House is now in 'water conservation mode' which, I must say, the Ghanaian staff is good at. But our children are not. They have been use to water flowing. To the point where I often find the little ones - eg 2,3, 4 yr olds at the taps just 'playing' with the water.



We pay about USD 100/month for water from the mains. We have never had to pay/buy water from the water tanker trucks. But the cost of that is about $80 for one container full and that will not last us but a week. The cost is not too bad for a week (although one week is almost equivalent to one months water budget!!) but our concern is that it will take several weeks. I base this experience on the electricity situation. Whereby they told us they were taking it off for a few days here and there and then we ended up for one year having no electricity for 12 hrs every other day.



Ghanaians in general do not like to give you 'bad news'. They don't like to tell you things that might 'upset' you. So they don't. We can only pray that when they say ten days, they mean ten days and that in ten days the work that needs to be done can be done and that they won't find some other 'fault' which will prolong their work.



We'll keep you updated as to our water situation once the pipes close. Keep us in prayer.

Frogs in my bathtub

My fun loving Huckleberry Finn aka Malachi, 20 and his pals went frogging tonight. They were very successful. Currently hopping in my bathtub are about 30 bull frogs of various sizes, some QUITE large.............Isaac, 12, said "WOW SO MUCH MEAT!!!!!!!"
I do not have any idea how to prepare bull frogs, I know in Cambodia they roasted them on sticks over a fire. That's how I buy them at the Vietnamese deli too..........
Malachi is having 4 wisdom teeth taken out tomorrow so I doubt he will be roasting any frogs till at least Saturday or Sunday. Ah but NO. My should- be- sleeping husband is doing "barbeque prep" in the kitchen even now!!!!!!!!! The plan I hear , is that they will baste the froggies in bbq sauce and roast them on the grill for lunch. The science project of the thing??? When you cut a frog open, as I just witnessed, the heart continues to beat for a little while. Aren't you glad I told you that??? NEVER a dull moment around here......even at 11:30 PM!

One more reason to love my life!

Being part of the international adoption cyber community is so fun!! Some times ones cyber friends become face to face friends. We were blessed with a visit from fellow Cambodia and Vietnam adoptive family friends the Brenner family: Mike , Susan, Zach, and KallieAnn who live in California. Its becoming a sort of tradition that when they are one one leg or the other of visiting relatives in our part of the country, we have been able to get together. We have a lot in common, from similar aged bio children with similar interests to similar age/gender adopted children and of course the COUNTRY ties which bind us are special too. They are also believers so we have EVEN MORE to share together. This time Susan's husband Mike got to meet my Charlie too. Last time they were here Charlie was on Part 2 of his second Iraqi tour of duty.
It rained so the kids didn't get to ride the horses or mess with the goats but they had a grat time just hanging out and getting reacquainted. The time for them to leave came far too quickly. We could have munched brownies and water melon far later into the night if it were not for that drive -back thing!!!
Susan and I "met" through the agency group from which we both adopted our Vietnamese daughters, but then got double introduced when we discovered we were both members of a prayer and fellowship group called PRAISEmoms.
God has blessed me with some fantastic friends since I got over feeling that I didn't need a computer!!!!!!!!! GREAT LAUGH TAKING PLACE AS I TYPE THOSE WORDS!!! I have had the awesome privilege of meeting a number of my cyber friends and while cyber is not "second rate" by ANY stretch, it is certainly a great perc when face to face visits become a part of any relationship. I know all too well that many of my cyber-met friends I will not phsically meet this side of Glory. (OK, I won't really meet them physically there either will I?) I am just taking this moment to thank my Heavenly Father for His blessings to me in the way of the wonderful friends He has led me to, and in the variety of ways He has brought them! A big part of why my life is so great, in my mind, is how long my list of blessings is when I start counting my friends!!!!!!!!

I am going to be a GRAMMA again!!!!!!!!!

Yes I am!! Hannah and Jon are expecting our next grand child on about April 20, 2009!
As iwas talkin to our Ghana adoption coordinator on the phone Hannah calmly asked me to come and look at something............sh ehad her laptop in front of her so I peeked over as I spoke about home studies and our hoped for new children and OH MY.
Hannah said quietly but with a hint of amazement in her voice, "Am I pregnant?" and all I could do was hoot into sweet Carrie's ear," OH MY GOODNESS !! MY DAUGHTER IS PREGNANT! I AM GOING TO BE A GRAMMA AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
We may just have our own free lanced version of the movie
" FATHER OF THE BIRDE PART 2".........if our new Ghanaian children come home at about that same time! Our daughter Kari and I thought we had that worked out in 1999, but she had twins and I miscarried. Its OK.God had adopted chlldren in our future, we just didn't know His time frame rught then. What a great life where a mom of 14, gramma to 8 can be the expecting gramma again, while she is waiting for her own new children to be coming home!
So to Emily, Ethan, Zachery, David, Blake, Cody, Chloe, and Mady we will be adding Zoe Elizabeth or Eli David to our family tree.........newest neice or newphew to the as yet unidentified Keren Jubilee and Samuel Elijah !! I happen to know that son Caleb and daughter -in-law Courtney are hoping to add their own branch to the family tree soon too, so WHO KNOWS what all 2009 holds for the "pot" of "SMITH SOUP"??? God is SO SO good ...ALL the time!!!