Sin los Jefes

Well, the last few days have been...interesting.

Our director and staff managers (Sharla, Ann, Garrett) left for Sudan on Friday. They are talking with some people who want to start a school there, since the country is in some sort of "peace" time for 3 years or something like that. Pray for their safety and that God can use them there to be a light in that nation.

Also, side note, why do they call it "the" Sudan? Seriously. We can't figure it out, even after consulting Google!

So, the next day was beach day, the final full day, for the mission trip group that was here for about a week from the Austin Stone. We woke up on Saturday to find that we were out of water. My roommate Ashley called the city to come fill up our tank, so after waiting around for that, we finally left for the beach. It rained off and on that day, but we still had fun. The tweems took a nap on the floor of a patio cafe, and after that, I took them back out to the water. They have these swim diapers that are reusable that pretty much just...hold in poop. (Thankfully, we avoided that). As it turns out, two kids are harder to move around than one, so I had Jakob by the hand and was holding Isaak. Then, something warm dripped all the way down my stomach/leg, so Isaak peed on me during the 30 second walk from the patio to the beach. I changed and spent the rest of beach day in shorts and a windbreaker I brought for the rain. It was pretty hilarious. I think either Ashley or Kendall has that documented on film somewhere for our "first official roommate picture."

After all 20 of us got back from the beach, we discovered that we still had no water. We could get a low-pressure drip from the outside faucet, so we filled up a few buckets. Basically, what this means is: the group of 16 people went to beach day, took a rag bath in a bucket they shared with 3 other people, came to church Sunday morning, and took a flight home...all with no shower. I believe the water was just returning literally 15 minutes before the group left the house, so we were forced to employ the "If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down" rule. Too much information? Sorry, but that's how it worked. We later found out that our pipes were probably just overheated from working while having no water in them, so by Sunday afternoon, we were up and running, which is about the time the internet disappeared. Ashley and I made some awkward, semi-understood phone calls to the company, and eventually decided to have a technician come out Tuesday morning. Apparently, when they say they will come, that doesn't really mean anything, so they didn't come. BUT, when I got home from preschool on Tuesday afternoon, our internet had miraculously appeared again! Hallelujah!

Other than that, all is well. The tweems used the potty on Monday! Hopefully that starts happening more often. We might make a sticker chart or something for them to do, even though just being able to flush seemed like a pretty exciting reward...

More to come later!