Let’s Go Fly a Kite!

This week had that uncertain busy feel of trying to remember all the plates that were spinning and keep them going. I was already a bit behind this week, coming off of a busy week of ministry last week. My bathrooms didn’t get cleaned last weekend (except for the sinks—bless Caleb’s chore chart!) Is that too personal? 😀

Home

In spite of the hubbub, we had a great week of learning in our little homeschool. We are learning about the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness in Bible and began a new read-aloud on Ruth.

The boys are memorizing most of the book of James this year, along with our church (the boys and I are memorizing in English!) Last month they learned James 1:1-8, and this month we’re working on vs. 12-18. It’s amazing how much little minds can learn. They have memorized the Westminster shorter catechism for children, Caleb three times already, so we’ve just switched to using the catechism Seth and our coworker wrote for the Tsonga people. We teach those questions in both English and Tsonga to give them more practice with Tsonga.

Caleb began his 14th lesson in math, and we’re only in our 9th week of school. I figure if we finish one lesson a week, he could finish this level this year. I’m glad to be ahead, as we might have to go slower later. The second half of the level covers subtraction, a new concept to him.

In history we learned about Ancient India and began Ancient China. Caleb really enjoys the maps and gets upset if there isn’t one to work on that day. Today he’s going to practice getting the right mixture of sand, clay, and grass to make mud bricks, like the ancient Indians did (and like some Africans still do in the underdeveloped regions of Africa!) I recruited his father to help with that.

For our studies on the 3rd day of creation this week, we are observing a bean experiment, we prepared and planted a little garden, and we began reading an unexpectedly exciting biography of George Washington Carver. Caleb can even read bits of it himself. It’s probably at a third grade level, though.

And our most favorite activity this week was flying kites! Colin learned the letter K (“is for kite”), and we happened to have some kites their grandpa gave them. They are just old enough to fly them with help, and the wind was perfect! I think I flew a kite one time as a little girl, but it’s been over 20 years, and it was so fun to do!

You can see the little garden Caleb planted in the background.

It was naptime, but Callie still enjoyed watching.

This is how Colin looked most of the time, the kite bumping along on the ground behind him. 🙂

Callie still raids the food pantry at her own discretion (I’m trying to break this bad habit), and Carson got another tooth this week, making him not quite as congenial as usual.

Ministry

And here’s what the hubbub was…

We had farewell dinners with a college student going back to his university, the children’s room’s in upheaval with newly laid tile still needing grout, our own little Bible college opening next week to prepare for, and the big news of this week—our teammates came back from their furlough in America. Tuesday I cleaned their house with some ladies from their church (not too bad, but the floor was littered with dead cockroaches and bugs), and Thursday I took some dinners and groceries over for them.

Our favorite college student. Bye, Tiyani, we’ll miss you!

Then yesterday the backhoe was delivered to continue clearing our new church plot today, and a former LBI student came for an overnight visit. At the same time, we received a call that the place we had found for the LBI students to board in (thank you for your prayers for a place!), which Seth just set up and paid for this week, was broken into and some items were stolen. But we couldn’t check it out just then because Seth was at youth group, and at a teen boys’ work effort today, with the bulldozer clearing our land, which we had to be here for.

Limpopo Bible Institute (LBI) begins next week! We had seven potential students, but only four have paid. You never know until the first week is over how many students exactly there will be, so I won’t guess at a forecast.

And do you think my husband is crazy to try to take an exam for his distance seminary course in the midst of all this? I do! He’s going to attempt that tonight.

We send our love from South Africa, and I hope you all had a great week!