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| Tuesday, February 28, 2006
"Summer has arrived"
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Whenever we say it: "summer has arrived" our shoulders do a big heave and we sigh and try to think of something positive to say. Yes, the fans are on and winter is over. We will face many hot sticky months now, but winter is only 10 months away...
posted by Colleen at 9:40 AM Soccer match
Friday, February 24, 2006
 The Home of Love girls had another soccer match with the girls from William Carey Academy. Everyone loves to watch, coach and cheer at these games. Although the outcome was not so bright for WCA, they taught us much in losing well. Thank you to Tysha who made the arrangements to bring the girls out.  congratulation HOL! posted by Colleen at 8:59 AM Torture village style
Thursday, February 23, 2006
How can I explain the noise torture that we have in the village? One would think that it's quiet and peaceful in the village, away from the hustle and bustle of the big city and that is true to some extent. We don't have buses horns blaring or throngs of people around. What we do have is music from loudspeakers. Not just a little and for certain intervals but often for days on end, yes even at night during sleeping hours. It gets to the point where we think that we are going crazy as there is no respite. The music fills each room of our house and corner of our property. It's difficult to read, pray, talk to each other and just survive. The music permeates our life to a degree that is hard to put down on paper. The music comes from nearby religious festivals. I have come to the point where I believe that it's on more often than it's not and the unfortunate thing is that they have generators so it's even on when there is no electricity.
posted by Colleen at 10:05 PM Barbeque
Saturday, February 18, 2006
 One night we had a barbeque, the first ever for the orphanage. They had never barbequed anything before? Can you imagine? Thomas' brother was visiting from Germany and is a former cook for the army. He made chicken, on the grill they had constructed and everyone marveled at it all. The kids had huge pieces of chicken and told me that they had never tasted the likes of such delicious food. Of course, because this is Asia we had rice with our barbeque.  posted by Thomas at 12:08 AM Shelves + ? = Library
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
 We have fantastic library shelves with a capacity of about 3000 books. Now, we need to continue to work on filling the shelves so we can have a library with a nice room, shelves, couches, fans/lights and BOOKS!!! If you have any used books you would like to send us, please contact us. It is cheaper than you think, especially if you send it by ship and use a special postal rate for only books. Thank you to the New Zealand DTS team that sorted and filed our books so nicely in the library shelves. You transformed the room! Sara, Demara, Julia, Johannes, Lukas, Rahel, Mary, and Will; you have been a blessing to us! Send us more volunteers like you! posted by Thomas at 8:57 AM Look, it's finally here!
Monday, February 13, 2006
 Finally the playground in ready to be played on! Today was the first day that we let them loose on it and it was a glorious sight. The older ones were helping the littler ones on the slides, the boys were doing gymnastics on the bars and the girls were everywhere. The road has been bumpy, but thankfully that is all behind us now. Thank you again, to Darren who came to oversee putting the playground in. We couldn't have done it without you! Thank you to Bev, who helped us order and purchase and ship the playground; your help has been essential!!! Thank you to those who made it a point to pray for the situation to get the playground out of the port. Thank you to all who made it possible to buy the playground. You have been an exact fitting puzzle piece in the scheme of this project. Thank you to God for giving the means, favor with men and idea for a playground.  posted by Thomas at 11:50 PM Fish for supper
Friday, February 10, 2006
 Here are some of the kids showing you the fish we caught last months from the pond on our property. This time they got 170 kilos of fish from 2 ponds. The children eat fish twice a week with their normal rice and potatoes. The interesting man in the photo is the fisherman.  posted by Thomas at 9:23 AM Birthday Party
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
 We had a birthday party together with a Korean team that visited us. The team was made up of elementary students and some teachers. They performed taekwondo, dances, dramas and songs. We were impressed! posted by Colleen at 9:03 AM The playground has arrived
Monday, February 06, 2006
The playground loaded on top of two big lorries arrived yesterday evening at 9pm. Darren from Hawaii rode on top of one of the trucks and got many interesting looks. We had no electricity and village nights are pitch black. The trucks were unloaded with a few flashlights and a bunch of candles held by all the girls. They held them out in a statue of Liberty pose. If we would of had time we could of taken some great photos! The kids were so thrilled all they could do was jump up and down. Thomas spent another 4 hours at the port before the container was finally released yesterday. To sum it up I will close with Luke's (14 years old and blind in one eye) quote that he shouted as loud as he could after the playground arrived, "Thank you God!" Please pray for us as we put it together.
posted by Colleen at 8:43 AM It will only hurt for a minute!
Saturday, February 04, 2006
 Joly, our housemother took little Abraham to get his first injections. Abraham is our newest child and is doing well. We pass him around and he is never lonely or gets left in his bed much. posted by Colleen at 9:05 AM Patrick
Thursday, February 02, 2006
 We would like to thank Patrick who was a major help to us. Here you can see him on one of the projects he worked on. Patrick used his work vacation to come here and build the workshop and make library shelves, among many other projects. A normal day for him had about 12 hours in it surrounded most of the time by his subjects (the kids) who thought the world of him. Its one thing to be an awesome carpenter, but another to patiently teach and demonstrate Godliness at the same time. posted by Thomas at 10:11 AM Playground
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
 If you are like us you are kind of tired of hearing or talking about that playground! You would have thought it would be long over by now, but unfortunately that old saying about things taking a long time in Asia has been proven exactly correct. We look forward to the day we can put up the picture of the finished playground on the website. Please continue to pray. At the moment, Thomas continues to fight bureaucracy at its worst. There has been days when he has stood in an office for 4 hours waiting to talk to a port official. Slowly we are inching towards finalizing the port papers and getting it out of there. Most of the construction crew that came to put in the playground are now back in Hawaii. They helped us though in tons of other ways like putting in book shelves in our library to hold up to 3000 books and setting up the entire workshop. posted by Thomas at 11:16 PM Our anniversary
 On Jan. 15th, Thomas and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. The kids surprised us with a huge bouquet of flowers, giant card and one of the volunteers had carved us a carving of two praying hands with the kids' signature all around the base. It is very pretty and we felt so special that everyone had remembered. Thank you to Jere, the Hawaii team, and the Home of Love children for a sweet memory. posted by Colleen at 7:25 AM
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