Water Water Everywhere... Except our Cistern.....
This past week it has rained almost everyday. We are so grateful it has been mostly during the night and the early hours of the morning, that way the missionaries can still go out and do their work. It was raining hard on Sunday when we attended our meetings at the Mpaka and Aéroport Branches where we were gone for 6 hours. What we didn't know was that our toilet had been running all of that time and when we arrived home around 4:30, we had no water in our cistern, which means we had no water in our home!
For the last 11 months, Elder Bailey has gone every day but Sundays to get water to keep the cistern full. He fills 30, 5 gallon jugs and dumps them into the cistern each morning. It holds 2000 gallons of water which is enough for us and the Elders upstairs. We have never seen the bottom until this past Sunday.
So because this was an "ox in the mire", Elder Sperry and Elder Nkulu helped Elder Bailey go get water on Sunday. We are so grateful for the "well" at the church which is where we get our water. They did one trip on Sunday night, and then two trips on Monday morning to get our water back up to where it should be. I am so grateful that Elder Bailey has been blessed with the strength to do this. He loves the challenge and the exercise that has helped him loose almost 20 pounds.
This is our empty cistern. What you can't tell from the picture is that it goes about 6 feet back from where the top of the picture is. Elder Bailey took the opportunity to scrub the tiles and clean the sediment that had accumulated on the bottom.
It was raining and dark as he worked hard to clean and prepare the cistern for the new 2000 gallons of water that would go in.
This is a picture of the floods "coming up" around our house on Monday.
I loved the ripples in this picture. The little yellow pot catches the water from the Elders air-conditioner on normal days. It has been anything but normal for the past few weeks.
Elder Sperry was trying to get to the "Cyber" to e-mail home. They made it just to be told that there was no electricity. So they were able to use our computers to write their emails.
This is just a normal day in the life of the people in Pointe Noire.
Elder Etherington walked to get a sandwich. He decided that he is not going to do that again. We cut 5 Elders hair on Monday, so they were all at the house waiting for their turn.
Elder Andri has only been here one week...... He is trying to keep a positive attitude on all of this!
This was my favorite picture of the day. Children are the same all over the world. This is just what one of our boys would have done!!
This is the front of our home after the rains started to recede. Our poor neighbors on each side were flooded out.
Preparing for Thanksgiving...
This Thursday we will be celebrating Thanksgiving with the Elders. We will do two blogs this week so that all of the families can have some pictures of their missionaries. Because we have no pumpkins here, we are going to use squash to make a puree for a pumpkin pie. I have never done this before, but the Elders are very forgiving in that they will eat most anything!!
It looks like it will work! We will let you know1
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We have said many prayers this week, which have been heard and answered by a loving and kind Heavenly Father. We are so grateful for Him and for the love and trust He has put in us to be here to watch over the Missionaries and to help the members and leaders of the Branches.
The Church Is True!
Until Thursday............
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