Back in touch with the world.

Strange how disconnected you feel from life when you have no access to the internet. It was nice for the first day, not worrying about checking email and getting work done. But three days later I found myself turning on my computer only to realize there isn’t a whole lot to use it for when you don’t have internet-unless of course you’re in school, and thankfully those days are over.

We are officially all moved in. We have running water, power, electricity, internet…the whole shabang! We’ve now spent four nights in the new place. I have to admit something, now that we are moved in, I have actually been dreading this move. And the underlying reason? Simply, the change. I normally love change, look forward to it, thrive off of it-and so does Brandon. Except for some reason, I was dreading moving into this new house. I think it was a combination of things: a new neighborhood with new new people, the house was super dark and creepy, and a few other reasons.

So, after having moved in and been here only a few days,  I am rather pleased to report that the new house is much better than I thought it would be! We are just getting to know the neighbors, the house looks amazing with paint all over it, and we have tons of fruit trees and amazing lushness outside our place. I already have a few favorite spots and I will show you later.

Here are some photos of the finishing touches being done to the house…

Three Haitian guys worked non stop for an entire month making all the bars for the house-36 windows,and 7 doors- and this is them hanging them up. They did such an amazing job!! (And yes, that is fresh paint on the outside too!!)
This is Nasso-the boss-who worked so hard, was very sweet, and always had a smile on his face!
This guy was pretty quiet, but did a great job.

So, I have been having way too much fun mixing paint! I used to love painting, until I painted our old house in Fallbrook, all 1600 square feet, two coats, all by myself. It did look amazing when it was done, but it was a ton of work. This house has been so much work too, but the fun part has been mixing fun colors, and seeing the amazing instant results But, sometimes I do get a bit carried away. For example, I painted all the bathrooms yellow, just to keep things simple. But, I didn’t love the yellow in the downstairs baths, so I lightened it a bit for upstairs. Then, after I mixed a great green aqua color for another room, I decided I wanted that in the bathroom instead! So, I compromised and just did two walls the fun green. It was kind of like back tracking, but well worth it!

The new pretty aqua green color..love it!!!

 

Moving?

Just wanted to let you know we are hoping to move today! We’ll see if we can move the batteries and inverter set and get it all re-plugged in and figure out. If that goes successfully, it’s possible tonight will be the first night in our new place. We’ll pry be offline for a few days, so please keep us in prayer as we move. Yesterday, this sweet guy (who is doing gardening work for us) was picking the dirt around the house to plant some flowers for me, when he happened to dig up some water pipe. Oops! So, we are hoping to get that all fixed so we can move in and have running water too! Please pray over today and tomorrow-that the move goes well, and everything gets up and working like it needs to!

I’ll keep ya updated as soon as we get back online!!

The new drill rig.

Today was a big day.

Several of you were praying over this day, and it was obvious. Today we got the new drill rig for Living Water cleared out of customs. The Lord did a might work in a) getting the rig all the way here from Texas in one piece, b) it cleared customs and in fact was never even opened by them because the correct paper work was done to have an official inspection done in TX -which was a total pain but worked out in the end, c) we got out paying ‘minimal’ fees-still a lot-but about a quarter of what they asked for!! d.) it was safety transferred from the docks to our house along with all the other materials in the container. So, thank you for praying over this rig. How exciting to think we’ll be able to provide clean water to communities that don’t have any.

Brandon driving the new rig in, it's all set up on a trailer.
Isn't she beautiful?? I don't know how any of it works-yet-but we are both pretty excited!
Brandon was pretty excited to check it out, as was Todd too. They were such boys gawking over all the machinery, engines, hoses, and other boy stuff.
LWI even shipped in shiny new matching hard hats.. the boys loved em!

Every time I came out from the house the rest of that day, they were just standing around it, staring at it. I think it’s pretty cool and all, but the excitement levels are much different between us. I’m excited like I love the thought of bringing people clean water who don’t have any right now. Brandon is excited for those exact same reasons, but in addition he gets to work with a big machine getting dirty and working hard.