Issue #13
March 8, 1999

Dear Friends and Family,

It has been a good week here in Africa. The weather has been completely crazy. One of the other teachers said to me the other day, "Can you please tell me what season this is?" Well, it is supposed to be dry season. It should be very hot at this time with absolutely no rain. It does still get pretty hot during the day, but it has rained 3 times just this week. They weren't just little showers but nice big thunderstorms. I enjoy rain and storms in Oklahoma. I love rain in Africa. I haven't heard anyone complaining. It is usually seems unbearable about this time and everyone is just dreaming about rain, so the rain is very welcome. We did have one rain mishap this week. One of the 4th graders was playing in the water on the petit poteau court. (The petit poteau court like a small soccer field, but concrete and it has about 3 foot high walls. It is a great place to play in the rain at, because the water doesn't run off of it very fast, but it is very slick.) Eric slipped and fell and ended up with several stitches in his lip. They sang the VeggieTales song, "I Love My Lips," to him this morning in Sunday school.

As many of you have probably already heard, Mike Cousineau got out of the hospital on Thursday. He traveled back up country to Bouake on Friday. He is doing well, but still in pain. It will be a slow recovery for all of the broken bones to heal. (3 breaks in the collar bone, fractured shoulder blade and 4 broken ribs.) He made a brief appearance at one of the basketball games on Saturday but is mostly at home trying to recuperate as quickly as possible.

A couple of prayer items from the week.
Pray for Jeeter Livingston. He is the father of one of my students. His car was stolen this week in town. He was leaving another missionary’s house. When he got outside his gates there was a group of guys. They asked for his keys and took the car. Thankfully he was not harmed, and they didn't make him go with them. The car was not theirs. It was one they were borrowing until theirs arrived. Pray that the owner of the car will be understanding and for Mr. Livingston as he deals with the police.
Pray for Ingrid Davis, the mother of one of the fourth graders. She and her husband are missionaries in Mali. She hurt her back and has to stay in bed for 15 days. Her husband’s ministry demands a lot of travel so she will be home alone a lot. Pray for a quick recovery.

I had an interesting happening in class this week. We have been reading "Where the Red Fern Grows" in class. We finished this week so on Friday we watched the movie. At the end after the dogs died (ok, hopefully you have all read the book and know the dogs die at the end.), the mother is trying to console Billy on why the dogs had to die. They were thinking about leaving him behind with his grandfather so he could keep his dogs when they moved to the city, but now they wouldn't have too. The mother says, "Maybe God doesn't like split up families." One of the boys in my class piped up and said, "But he splits up our families." I was surprised. I had never thought about that before, but the a lot of the kids do see going away to boarding school as their part in their parents mission work and where God wants them to be.

My class is excited this week. We have been having "Multiplication Mountain." They would take a multiplication test with 100 problems that they had to answer correctly in 5 minutes to climb to the top of the mountain. So far all but one has made it. I'm going to give him another chance on Monday. They are all anxiously awaiting their prize now. I have some American candy that I brought from home, that they will be very excited to see tomorrow.

We had a big basketball tournament this weekend. We played International Community School of Abidjan and a local club team. There were very good games and lots of people showed up to watch them. Our teams played well. The girls didn't lose any games, and the boys only lost one in the finals. The little kids got to stay out later than normal to watch the games. You would have thought someone gave them a big present. I'm sure there were lots of naps today though.

We have less than three weeks left of this trimester. It is going by quickly.

Thanks for you prayers and support.
Traci