Whew.

So today...
It's real hot. Wow. Maybe the hottest day yet. We've been in our new home now for about 5 days.

My house is so cute. It's tiny -glorified dorm room really- but way above what I had expected. No kitchen, and a three-in-one bathroom...about the size of your coffee table. Still, my home is much above the average living conditions in my town- which I have really mixed feelings about (mostly negative, except the selfish ones that make me glad that I'm comfortable). It is on a hillside overlooking a banana plantation. I have two house lizards, one anole and one gecko. The gecko's tail looks like the Wicked Witch of the West's tights. It gives me the creeps...but it has cute little suction cup fingers and toes!

On Saturday and Sunday we went to the village that our team works in. It doesn't look like it at all but it's bigger than Central Lake - about 1,900 people live there. They have a really iffy water supply now but our team is working on a water supply project that should finish at the end of this month. It's really cool how the program is set up, Mercy Teams International (our organization) is basically loaning them the money to put it in, and they will slowly pay it back, giving them ownership over this huge project.

There is also a medical clinic, school, and children's home in this village that our team help run. This village is where I will be working. I'll be landscaping the school grounds with help from some of the older boys in the school. I'll be teaching them a little about agriculture through this landscape project. I'll also be teaching a few classes on agriculture.

My project is very overwhelming and intimidating. The area I'll be landscaping is a huge mound of dry, cracked clay, there isn't much extra water, and all the plants are foreign to me! But I was reading in Matthew this morning - the story of Jesus feeding the crowd of five thousand with just five fish and five loaves of bread - and I decided I might only have five-fish-worth of horticulture knowledge, but God will use that five-fish knowledge and multiply it enough to do the job, just as he multiplied the fish to feed the crowd. If I commit myself to Him and give Him my five-fish-knowledge, I know that something amazing will happen...and it probably will be nothing like what I expect, but way better!