Sleeping in quick sand.

I was lured out of a blissful slumber at 1:00 this morning by the ever growing awareness that my body weigh was not perfectly centered. The ground had sunk slightly in one corner at the head of my bed. It’s amazing how our bodies can pick up the slightest discomfort in a state of unconsciousness. when the attempt to ignore it only resulted in more tossing and turning then I was willing to endure, I grudgingly got out of bed and tried to fix the problem with a chunk of scrap wood. Satisfied with my efforts I slid back into bed and dozed off. It didn't take long for my body to notify me that my ability to level my bed with a sleepy eye was severely lacking. I spent the rest of the morning readjusting these wood ends a number of times. After one of the small wood chunks slid from it’s position, sending my bed to the ground with a loud thump, I gave up and got up to start my day. Besides, it was already 5:00 and there wasn't much hope of making up for the sleep that was lost. This is just one of those things that you learn to deal with when you live in a tent.
while others where trying to prevent catastrophes from fire, i was creating my own with a element called water. we have what is called a twin tub for washing our clothes. this handy little machine is the luxurious way have hand washing! all you have to do is fill the tub from the hose, let the machine do the spinning. when everything is clean you wring out the clothes and hang them to dry. on this particular day....my first time using this machine i might add.... the water pressure was extremely low because of complications with the water pump on the farm. i secured the hose in the tub and felt that i had more than enough time to wring out the first load and hang it out to dry. i did, however, check on it a few times...just in case. apparently i wasn't cautious enough. the hose fell out and, oh, look at that! the water pressure is back! this is out side the kitchen. the inside of the kitchen looked more like a wading pool. i had to push the water out with this large squidgy which was this was a bit of a challenge since the floor is not completely level (sounding familiar?) and it slanted down away from the door. Here is another fun moment. 25 Mozambique pastors traveled from afar to attend this years pastor training conference. I didn't have much of a hand in this even other than stamping together these booklets. Sounds like a easy enough but many seemingly simple tasks can be a challenge when liveing in the bush of Africa. The dilemma was that I didn’t have a stapler long enough to staple the middle of the page, or rather, the cress of the booklet. (very high quality pamphlets we make in Mozambique!) and with the lack of a office supply store down the road I was left to improvise using the staple side of one stapler, borrowed from Alta, against the metal guide of the other another stapler, borrowed from Lynn. It had to be done just right to prevent the hole contraption from slipping out from under my hands sending papers and staples flying.

Just a few weeks ago I purchased a top of the line bicycle from Chimoio. With three trips into town serching high and low, negotiating prices, and excepting broken promises to have the bike ready “tomorrow” we finally narrowed it down to what we felt was a quality bicycle that maybe needed only a few adjustments. Those few adjustments turned into the breaks being tweaked, the seat raised, the chain replaced and then later shortened, the gears tightened, several spokes removed to straighten the back wheel, ugly mud guards removed, the front wheel aligned with the handle bar and pretty much every screw on the bike tightened. After all that, the bike still served me well on our 72 km ride to Vanduzie! And the chain only fell off twice. Not bad! This warning on the front of my high quality bike should have been my first clue to what I was getting myself into.