It could be a lot worse

Praise God! We are back in Colombia and our trip went without a glitch.

I would appreciate it if you would pray for Heather. She is feeling very tired and very overwhelmed. I asked her to take a nap, so she and our two youngest are sleeping. Coming here is not just a matter of unpacking our suitcases. Our apartment is very tiny (by our standards at least; I would guess 760 square feet) and we were packed in tight as could be before our new baby. When we came in our suitcases nearly covered the entire floor of our living / dining room and that is nearly a third of our entire living space. Then although our dear national pastor had washed down our entire apartment it is still infested with mold. They had also rearranged our room to keep the rain from dripping from our ceiling onto our bed while we were gone. We started by our first day going straight to bed (at midnight) and then the next day by going out and buying groceries and new plastic organizers and then throwing away bunches of Heather's baskets which were infested with mold. Also most drawers that we open in order to unpack our suitcases are infested with green mold and is in much of our clothes we left and in much of our stuff. So we have bags of trash (moldy clothes and things we are tossing). My only suit that I left here was green with mold, Heather's shoes, my books, the boys pajamas, our furniture, etc, etc. We are taking out all our drawers and emptying out our closets and washing them to rid the mold. Then there is the pile of clothes to wash, lest the mold spread. We are reorganizing Kimberly and Sarah's room to make room for Mary. So at this point we are only half way unpacked. We are all working together to make this house as mold free as possible.

We are asking God to protect our children from the mold and heal Elijah; his eyes are puffy, red, itchy, and draining. I am not asking for sympathy for we are honored to be serving here. Nor am I asking for advise for we are praying for God to lead us and the situation is more complicated than could be understood and advised by someone on the outside. At this point we are all too tired to even consider moving again. We are grateful that the rain season has just ended and the dripping ceilings and crazy mosquitoes are at a minimum right now.

A testament of God's grace is that our children are happy and in the midst of all the washing, sorting, tossing in the trash, and unpacking I heard Heather sincerely say, "Thank You, Lord." And then she said to me, "It could be a lot worse." But please do pray for my precious wife.