Thursday, August 26, 2010

Ferguson Update

Hi Friends and Family!

Thanks so much for hanging tight as we've just had Baby Benjamin here for a little over two weeks. Would you like to meet him? (Any excuse to throw up pictures of our adorable little one!)




Josiah and Christopher just adore their new little brother. Josiah often asks me, "Is Benjamin staying for a long long day?" They are both very protective over Benjamin. I walked into the room where Mary, our house lady, was holding Ben and Josiah said, "Hey! Get your own baby!!!!"
We are adjusting well and getting plenty of sleep. This month has been a great time for adjusting with the baby. The Bible school has a break in December, April and August. So Jonathan has been taking care of Josiah and Christopher while I've been able to focus on the baby.
Thanks so much for keeping us in your prayers. Please continue to pray. We've recently had some warfare between our water situation (you can see the previous post for details), Christopher just had his second seizure here caused by fevers and I (Adrienne) have days where the homesickness can seem overwhelming. Especially with a new baby.
God Bless you guys!
Adrienne

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Water Wars

So here in Nairobi, we only get water from the city once a week. We have a large tank the water is pumped into, and another in our attic. We also store a lot of water in water containers that we store in our carport.

So late Friday night this week, the water starts coming. The problem was that we had no power. No power meant that we were unable to pump the water into our tank in the attic, and had to siphon water off the main tank into the smaller containers, instead of using the pump.

Saturday morning came, and there was still no power. I started looking for any containers we had to fill with water. I filled trash cans, the baby bath, buckets, pots, pans, whatever we could find! The tank in the attic holds 2,500 gallons, so without power, we would be short that much water!

The funny thing is that usually, the water shuts off around noon on Saturday, but this week it stayed on until after 4:00. It was like the water company was taunting us with all this water, that we were unable to use.

I turned the pump on, so that the water would begin pumping as soon as the power came on. We had to run an errand, and so left, the house. While we were gone, the power came back on, and pumped the water from our outside tank to the attic tank. Our quick errand took longer than usual, and when we returned, the outside tank had been emptied. We figured the upper tank was full. We went inside and I turned on the sink to wash my hands, but no water came out.

I checked the other sinks, and found that a faucet had been left on the whole time. 2,500 gallons of water had flowed through the sink, and down the drain. I had spent 12 hours that day trying to save as much water as possible, but to no avail.

So, this week, we have a total of 2,500 gallons, where we usually have 3x that amount. The best thing - We have three guests staying with us this week - 3 extra people using 1/3 the water as usual!

Welcome to Kenya!

Jonathan, for the Ferguson Five