June 13-20
As I become acquainted with more people life does become fuller. I have had to take care of school business which has involved making connections with people in specific areas since Willeke has gone for 7 weeks to Holland. She has already been gone for 10 days, and I have made a number of contacts with new people solving problems like finding housing for the new teacher who will take over the 4 year old class that I have been teaching for over a month and like contacting the accountant who manages our check writing. I have had to contact and invite about 20 people to a luncheon at my house after the dedication of the new school building on June 21. I have meet with new people in planning the dedication service and have had to solve some financial problems in making the last payments on the new building. I’ve begged for a letter from the Synod stating that the Synod is authorizing Ebnezer to build the teachers’ houses on their land.. Last Saturday we interviewed for two more teachers to begin teaching in September. We were an hour and a half late in starting the interviews, for one interviewer didn’t show up and another person had to go back home (walking of course) to make copies of the forms needed to interview. All these activities are done on Malawian time, and that reminds me of books on Africa which often use expressions like “TIA” (This is Africa) and “AWA” (Africa wins again). The missionaries often use these expressions. Some of you may recall that I was saying that I would probably live in one of the new teacher houses when Barbara Nagy returned to Malawi in July. Well, the money for the houses could not be requested for by the school until a letter had been received from the Synod stating that Ebenerzer was given authority o build on the Synod land. Today I learned that the letter had been actually received. Now with the pusher (Willeke) behind the project in Holland who knows when the building will start. Another big problem is that the contractor being used has been a missionary from Holland who has done the contracting as a gift of love. The contractors in Lilongwe are extremely expensive. We are praying for another missionary with a contracting background. ,
I am excited about the children in the 4 year old class beginning to respond beautifully to the alphabet, shapes, colors, numbers, and the names of the days of the week through play. They have taught me a neat song, “There Are Seven Days in the Week,” and we sing it daily as we talk about what days it is in the week. Today we introduced a whole toy box full of dress-up clothes. Linkin was at school last week bringing us the clothes trees he made for the 4 yr. old class and the kindergarten class. We hung up some dress-up clothes on tree in our class and that got the children extremely excited, boys and girls alike. We had boys in Elvis Pressley clothes with a crazy lady’s hat on one boy , a doggie outfit with a lady’s hat on another boy, and a red choir robe with a lady’s hat on yet another. Boys had on all kinds of jewelry and girls had on fancy dress-up clothes that they wanted to take home with them. Lots of socialization and lots of practice in getting dressed took place. It was a hilarious morning. Teacher Grace and I laughed until we had tears. Not much reading, writing and arithmetic was done in that hour, but ghe socialization was great