I can't believe Christmas is next week! Time has really flown by. Christmas at Esther’s House is going to be celebrated as Jesus’ birthday. Because Christmas is on a Saturday, we will be holding the feeding program for all of our children and the widows with some special Christmas food and Cindy and I are going to make a birthday cake. Our kids are practicing Christmas songs, traditional dances and some of them will be performing a Christmas drama. Although some of the songs are sung in English, they’re unlike any songs you would hear in the U.S! They actually have more to do with the reason for the Christmas holiday than songs like “Little Drummer Boy” or “Old St. Nick” do! =) We will definitely be taking pictures and videos throughout the day to share with everyone.

I decided at the end of November that I wanted to make all the kids a book bag as a Christmas present. When Cindy and I went to Blantyre I stopped in the fabric store and bought as much material as I could afford--I bought it believing that I would have to buy more at some point, but after cutting out all the bags it ended up being EXACTLY enough to make 48 bags, with absolutely no material left over. That was such an unexpected blessing! When we arrived back at our home, Cindy gave me a quick “hand-stitching 101” lesson before I started on the first bag. It took me two days to finish the first bag. That bothered me a little bit considering I still had 47 more bags to do in about 3 weeks time. After showing the bag I made to Jane, she told me that she had a sewing machine that she would let me borrow. That was such a relief! I kind of learned to sew when I was younger, but the only things that I succeeded in making was an apron and a shirt that ended up being wider than it was tall. It took a few bags for me to catch on to the sewing process, but I now have a little assembly line of bags going. The project has kind of overtaken all of my time, but seeing how it’s the rainy season and we’re stuck indoors quite a bit, it’s been nice to have something productive to occupy my time with. I can’t wait to give the bags to the kids!

The kids are doing so great!

School just ended, so all of the kids are on break until January. We're going to have to find some new activities to occupy their time with! Cindy's been teaching them the hand slapping game (which they love!), and I taught them how to make jewelry out of grass. Of course Peter decided that he wanted to make handcuffs to tie his hands and legs together with instead of bracelets and headbands, but I guess boys will be boys.

During church on Sundays, the abusa (pastor) will talk about a Bible lesson, and then say "halleluiah?" to which we respond with "amen." Elford’s new favorite thing to do is to scream in his high-pitched squeaky voice “Halleluiah!” at random times which makes all the other kids respond with “Amen!” His ‘halleluiah’ sounds more like ‘alliah,’ and it’s so hilarious to listen to him squeaking it over and over! Precious finally got tired of saying “amen,” so he tackled Elford before he could say it again and started a tickle fight.

I didn’t know it was possible to love these kids as much as I do. They’re such amazing little people!

Ntcheu is known for having the best soil in Malawi--I love seeing the endless rows of crops popping up everywhere. I love how green everything is becoming; it seems like it almost happened overnight! We had some of our kids plant beans in our garden for Esther’s House. It actually started raining the day the kids went out to the field….so I decided to stay at Esther’s House under the protection of a roofed porch with our little ones. Cindy roughed it though and walked through the jungle (well, maybe not a jungle but a lot of mud and tall grass!) to help Bruce and the kids pull weeds and plant the beans.

The roof over the girl's dormitory has officially been completed, which we're so happy about! After we get the water damage cleaned out, the girls will be able to move back into their rooms. The carpenter is going around to all the roofs in the compound and securing them with extra roofing nails to make sure this doesn't happen again. Unfortunately last week the brick security wall around our missions house in town fell down. Apparently when the wall was built they used too much sand and not enough cement, so 40 feet of the wall just kind of toppled down. We're thankful to have 2 night guards keeping watch over our house, and hopefully the wall will be fixed within the week.

It's raining almost every day now in an inconsistent way! Some days it's a torrential downpour of rain all day long, while other days it only sprinkles in the morning and at night. One thing is for sure though--regardless of what kind of rain we have, the internet always goes out. And sometimes the power. Luckily our water is working again (hopefully for good this time!). The hot water started running for the first time since the beginning of September. Anyway, all of the rain has made the landscape of Ntcheu so beautiful! I wish I could take a picture that really shows how beautiful it is, but I haven't been able to yet. This is a picture of the fields in Madzanje on the ride out to Esther's House.

♥ S