New Well at Hospital

We have now installed a new hand dug well on the hospital grounds to help with the water shortage during the hot season. We had been running out of water for both the construction site and the hospital building itself. We have one deep well right now that serves the existing water tower and we would like to take this well and add another water tower and a wind mill for pumping the well. We usually have wind here at the hospital since we are completely open to the south and west. Bob and I have been brainstorming trying to come up with a wind mill that we could make from things that we can find here. If we use things from here, then when the hospital gets turned over to the nationals, they can repair it with parts from here if they understand the mechanicals. The well cost us about $25 a meter and we went down about 17 meters. We sit right on top of a big aquifer so the water is not that far down. The problem is that our property sits next to three of the city's wells so our water table is unstable depending on how much the city is drawing for their towers. The picture was taken when we hit water. We had it dug another meter down after we hit water. It will be a real blessing once we get it up and running the way we want. Click on the picture and you will get a close-up view.
Be in prayer for the hospital as we go through some growing pains. We want everyone to be on the same page as we go forward for Christ's sake. Pray that His name will be glorified.

Internet down

It is amazing how tied we are to our internet and computers. We have been down for about a week and I feel disconnected from the world. I don't get any world news here that I can understand. I really need to learn more French.
The Hospital building is coming along nicely. We have all the main trusses up and are starting on the stringers between the trusses for attaching the roofing material. All the trusses and stingers are designed and built here on the grounds of the hospital. We buy the different sizes of angle iron and cut them to length then weld together. We kind of have a little assembly line going with trusses. We keep Roger, the one handed painter, busy with all the metal work. Next week we have a team from Zepher Hills Florida coming to help install the metal roof on pod one. We are looking forward to them coming and getting a lot accomplished. I really enjoy spending time with teams and getting to know their stories of how God has brought them to Africa and what he is doing in their lives.
We had a little girl come into the hospital last week bitten by some kind of cobra as I understand it. The parents brought her in 5 days after the bite occured and she was in bad condition. The mentallity of the people here is that you bring a person into the hospital to die, not to get better, so we usually don't get the people here that have just come down with something but rather are almost dead. Thanks to God, the girl is still alive and is recovering. From what I understand, not many people have lived through the bite of this type of cobra, but our God heals. Pray that the family comes to know Christ through this.
Pray for this next week as I will be very busy with the work team and that we will be safe.

Burkina Faso

This last weekend we took a little vacation to Burkina Faso and did some hiking, swimming, and wildlife watching. The trip took us a little over 4 hours to get there by the time we filled out our visas and all the other things we had to do at the boarder. Burkina is one country south of us in Mali. They are a little farther from the desert so it was quite a bit greener than it is in Koutiala. We were just tagalongs with Barry, Terri, Ben, and Jake. One of the first things we did was go shopping for the items that are not available to us here in Koutiala which are things like cheese, hamburger, and just the normal kinds of things you would buy in a grocery store. Then again, we don't have grocery stores here in Koutiala. We even got to eat out at a great Korean restaurant owned by a christian Korean woman. We topped it off with ice cream from the Dany Ice Cream store. For our day trips, we went to some water falls that had little pools of water that we could lounge and relax in not to mention cool off in, and the next day to see some hippos in the wild. The day we went to the falls, it started to turn dark and storm while we were up there. We had a little hike to get down from the falls and we were high tailing it down. We no sooner got down and into the trucks and it cut loose. We made it back safe and sound.
The next trip was to go and see the hippos. It was about an hours drive from the CMA guest house to the lake out side of Bobo. We rode in an aluminum boat that three natives using poles to push us along navigated us to the spot where saw the hippos. Jeffrey counted 48 hippos. We got within 50 to 60 yards of one group of hippos. A few of them were not happy that we were there, but we kept our distance. This place that we went said that in the hot season there are elephants there at the lake to stay cool. We will hopefully get to check that out also.
The hospital building is coming along nicely. We have all the main trusses up and are staring on making the stringers between them. By the middle of July, we should be installing the roof.
Thanks again for all your prayers.

We grow 'em big round here

Take a look at this rat that we killed at the mission. The house keeper, Botoma, at the guest house caught 7 of them in the attic in one day. On Wednesday evening during prayer meeting, we would hear something crawling around up above us so we told Botoma to find and kill whatever was up there. Little did we know that there would be so many rats and mice. The Malians working at the mission compound ate this rat. I really don't know what happened to the rest but I believe that they wouldn't let them go to waste. Anyone hungry?

Last week we put up the first trusse on the first of three buildings. The project is going well and we are getting a lot accomplished. Bob really keeps things rolling. He is a great project manager. Keep praying that the project continues to go well and nobody get hurt. Have a great week.

Picture of Termites

I did get a picture of the termites today that the Malians eat. Doesn't it make you want to eat some? Enjoy.

Termites. Yummy

Last week I walked up to the shop area to get a tool and saw a 3 ft.x 3ft. piece of metal with hundreds of large winged termites on it. Alex, my Malian apprentice, was standing there picking the wings off of them. I asked him what they were and where did they come from. He said they were termites and they came from our shop office. That was comforting. I then asked him what he was doing. He said they will soon die and the guys were going to eat them. He looked and acted so excited, I thought he was going to pee himself. He said "All I need now is some salt." I thought, All I need now is a trash can. I really wish I would have thought about taking a picture of the termites, but I didn't. They ate every last one of them. I take that back. Alex did throw one out because it was "bad".
We received a Samaritan's Purse container on Friday with a lot of medical supplies for our hospital. I believe there were over 950 boxes of things in it. We even got our first working X-ray machine. I just hope we don't need to use it on our boys! This will come in handy in a lot of ways. The only other X-ray machine in town is at the government hospital and it only works part time. Seems that when we need it, it is broke down. Samaritan's Purse gave us the 40 ft. container as well. We will use it as storage for the excess medical things that we are not using right now. We have to have duplicates of alot of equipment because if something breaks down, we can't get the new parts to repair it in a timely manor. It could take months to get parts. Bob said he was going to start making a "container village" and start housing people in them. Look out new missionaries. I think he was joking. A container sitting in full African sunlight get to be like and oven inside, but we do cut windows and door in them and use them as offices, workshops, and the like. Our "termite office" is a container. It does work well if we get breezes to cool it off inside into the 130's or even 120's with a good breeze (during hot season). The pictures are of the container being set on its foundation blocks with the cotton factory's crane. The good working one in town.
We I hope you all have a great week and don't eat to many termites. They might give you a belly ache.

Turkeys?

We had a new experience this weekend at church. We were sitting in our small church service that was spoken in French and Bambara (the native language) when I heard something off to my left. I looked up and saw two turkeys just wandering around in the service. They had come in through the side door from outside. I think that was the first time I have been in a church service with turkeys before (at least the animal type). I was not quick enough with my camera to get a picture to show you. Sorry. Happy turkey hunting!