Hello! We hope and pray that you are doing well. It is hard to believe that it is already the end of July! Things are going wonderfully here in Eket. The painting of the school is going more slowly now. This is a picture of one of the classroom blocks. We are doing mostly trim work, which takes much longer. It will look very nice when we are finished with it. They use oil paint for all of the trim and the stripe on the bottom of the buildings here. Their water based paint is not very weather proof. It makes cleanup slower, but it will last longer. The construction of the hostel is coming along very quickly. Though it has been raining quite a bit, they have been able to nearly complete the foundation. When it is finished, they will pour the floor and be able to begin building up the walls. It is very exciting to see it begin to take shape. This is the beginning of the foundation. You can see the trenches they dug, the block they have laid to bring it to the floor level and some of the rebar reinforcements for the support pillars. It is looking good! Six hundred bags of cement arrived yesterday, along with some gravel and sand, so we have all the supplies needed. They mix their own concrete as they go, and a couple of guys have been working hard on making blocks. It is very different than the way we build things in the States, but they all seem to know what they are doing. When we are not working, we spend time reading and playing games. It is really nice to be able to come home and rest at the end of the day. There is a church that meets in the front yard, so sometimes we come home and there is a service going on. The pastor lives in a house on our compound, so we hang out with him and his wife sometimes. They have several children who keep the place from getting too quiet. It is a very nice house, we are very happy here. We hope that all is well with you, we enjoy hearing from you! Thank you so much for your prayers and support. Have a wonderful week!

Hello! We are doing well and we hope and pray that you are as well! We are getting quite far in our painting of the school. It isn’t quite looking like we thought it would, but it is nice. Apparently, color charts here are not as accurate as they are in the states. Also, just because two kinds of paint have the same number does not mean that they are actually the same color. In this picture, you can see the Administration Building, the brown color on the bottom and the pink color on the

walls are supposed to be the rust brown color. They are also supposed to be the same color. We are just happy that it looks nice. We are undecided on if we want to use blue for the shutters or the dark brown color. We are going to test them both and see if which one we like more. While we are doing that, the workers have begun digging the foundation for the dormitory. In this picture, you can see the trench they have dug, and the stakes they have put in. They are going to pour cement up to the top of the stakes, then begin putting blocks on top of that. Everything is built of block here, and done by hand, so it is interesting to watch. We are enjoying being here very much. Thank you again for your prayers and support. We miss you!

Hello our wonderful friends and family! We hope all is well with you. We are doing well here. We are now in the southern state of Akwa Ibom in a town called Eket. This is where the Sortors started their work in Nigeria. Here they live in town, so close we can walk to check our e-mail. Their house here is very nice; I can understand why they were excited to be coming back here for a time. Our project here is painting the school. There are two Nigerian men that are helping us, but it is going to take some time to get it all done. The school is quite large, four classroom blocks, an administration building, an assembly hall and a dormitory. This is Jamison and Phyllis checking out the unpainted assembly hall. While we are working on that, Jim and Phyllis are overseeing the building of a second dormitory. The school is going to be a rust brown color with cream trim and bright blue shutters and doors. It is going to look very nice when we get it all done. We are greatly enjoying our time here. The people are very friendly and easy to get along with. The second picture is Jamison playing hopscotch with some of the school children. They are so beautiful! Kristie hasn’t been feeling well, so pray that she remains healthy. Also, pray for her family. We recently found out that her father has non-life threatening cancer. It is scary news at any time, but especially to hear when you are on another continent. We miss you all more than you know, and love you dearly. Thank you for your prayers and support!

Hello! We made it here and we are happy. God has been so good to us. We arrived on time and the Sortor’s were at the airport to pick us up. We stayed the first night in Abuja, the capitol, and arrived here in Lokoja on Friday. We will be here until Tuesday, then we will drive down to Eket, where we will stay until September. Then we will come back up here for the start of school. Check out this map to see where these places are, Lokoja is just south of Abuja, which is in the middle of the country. Eket isn’t named there, but it is down in the southeast, near Port Harcourt. Things are very nice here. We are living in an apartment that is attached to the back of the assembly hall here at the school. It is quiet here now, but I imagine that once school gets started this becomes a very busy place. They have almost completed the building of a second block of classrooms here that would allow twice as many children to attend school here in the fall. We are waiting for wood to be planed for the door and window frames. The power is very inconsistent here; we had just an hour of it yesterday, so it has been difficult for the planers to do their work. We are hoping the power stays on for longer today. There is a back up generator here, so when the power shuts off, we still have lights and fans. We have begun planning for a project we will be working on in September. We will be building a Busoma. It is like a workshop for making a very nutritious cereal for the children. We are very excited to be heading this project. To learn more about a Busoma, you can got the International Childcare Ministries web site, where they have a video explaining how it works. It is the Burundi Food Fund video. We love you and miss you greatly. Continue to pray for us, we need your prayers now more than ever. Thank you!