A Letter Home

Lundi 10 Aout 2009-

Dearest of Mommas,

Megan is here! I enjoy her very much (like I've said before, she has great theology) although we are extremely different. She will return to Evansville (home for her) in September for two weeks & then back there again for a month- Thanksgiving through Christmas. Apparently, House Managers (such as she was until Jack & Marcia arrived in April) receive(d) a small salary for the work they (did) ((I’m using parentheses here because HMs are now obsolete with J&M serving as they are)) and soon her salary will be terminated & she will, like me, need to raise support. She told me today that she feels like Haiti is home and wants to return to continue with her work for Three Angels. She just needs to determine how long she will be staying. I think Colleen’s visit will help her with the timeframe.

Mamma, I got to work out this morning using the exercise bands –Thank you SO MUCH!!!- and the jump rope in my normal workout clothes! This is a small but such a significant blessing to me,,, Marcia OK-ed it. (I was concerned that the short Nike running shorts & skin-tight tops wouldn’t meet “dress code” but she said that Tara, an American missionary here for 20+ years who trains here & runs marathons in the states, wears the same gear on her runs,) Praise God! because to wear anything else in this heat would be prohibitively uncomfortable. Oh, and I can’t say enough for iPods! Mine is incredible- I loved listening to my tunes (Family Force Five this morning!)… just the motivation I needed to get pumped; although at this point, should God restore my ability to run long distance again, I’m still a stubborn adherent to listening only to the sky on a run- that’s the magic of it.

I am loving my room. A mission team sent by Woodstock Baptist Church in New Brunswick, Canada, transformed it from the bachelor pad it had been for 4 years (Junior & Jimmy, staff members of TA, formerly occupied it) to a sweet little sanctuary. One of the girls even wrote “May God provide you with quality rest in this room.” Oh, Rebekah, what a prophet you must be to know I will need it!

This morning I awoke to a beautiful sky… maybe I’ll describe such a sky and the trees and rooftops that frame it from my window in a later message. I am excited to include pictures of this room and the warm-hearted wall the children created for me when Dr. Jack brings my camera in a few weeks. Unpacking is pretty much complete. Just need hangars for the clothes and a few nails to mount my message board.

My day thus far has been spent pretty leisurely and I have invested more time in this ‘lille Note than I anticipate will be available to me in the future (so don’t get used to this lengthiness). Colleen, my home school coordinator (who is an adoptive mom & is based out of Chicago), comes in this afternoon & I expect we will get right to work!

Hopefully future correspondence will require fewer parentheses- their over-use is aggravating me as a writer. I just feel like so much background info is necessary to fill you in!

Love you much, Your-
abbey