Feast and Famine

Sorry I'm sooooooooo late about posting something! We've been happily busy. We took a quick weekend trip to the port city of Lae (about 3 hours away) over my birthday this past weekend, and I'm busy getting ready for Thanksgiving with Gavin's parents and some close friends who are like family over here.

The kids are so big and talkative and funny and stressful (sometimes - let's be honest!). Life around here is always hoppin'! We have MUCH to be grateful for, including food, when many of our neighbors in the villages outside of our local valley don't have anything except greens to eat. The greens grew quickly after the rains started up again (although it's been awhile since we had a good rain - please keep praying!), but the root crops take a long time to mature. There is a 4-5 month period yet during which the subsistence farmers have to just wait and try not to starve. We need wisdom as we share the abundance the Lord has given us. If we do this in the wrong way we'll cause more trouble than we'll helped alleviate. We can't stand the thought of kids being hungry, so we're trying to work through our PNG friends who actually live in the harder-hit villages to identify families who most need supplementary rice and oil. We really appreciate your prayers for discernment and God's direction over who gets what and how much, etc. We can never feed all the people who really need it, so this is a matter of "It will make a difference to THAT family."

I taught an introductory statistics class to the health board from the villages that are being hard hit by this famine. They wanted to learn how to collect appropriate statistics of how many unemployed families need government food aid in each village. Unfortunately, there is no encouraging word on any forthcoming government supplies in our area.

On that heavy note, here are some cute pictures:

4th of July dresses that fit now - I didn't realize how tall the girls were getting!
THANK YOU, Mickey! (Len is now with the Lord.)

The girls LOVE to go on shopping trips with me. I love taking them!

Marcie diapering her favorite doll with diapers from the kids' NICU days!

Marcie continues to be the "little mommy" and a great cook's helper

Yes, these tiny diapers fit on our tiny preemies! We even had to fold them over to make them fit okay on all but Will.

From the motorcycle conversation video time

Will, David, Marcie (I don't know where Seth or Gracie were at the time. Gavin took these.)

At Isaac's school's Friday family picnic. We go every Friday to eat with him, and the little kids really look forward to and love going! David asks every day if it's the day we go to Isaac's school to eat.

The whole family. It's hard to catch us all together these days!