For many years on this date, Sarah has been getting up early and serving a special breakfast for the family in keeping with St. Lucia's Day. Although she didn't have any white clothes to wear, she did provide a scrumptious Scandinavian Tea Ring for our breakfast this morning.
Almost every night this week, the bell has sounded around 8:00 or 8:30 calling children to choir practice. They usually get started around 9:00 or 9:30 and sing for a couple of hours. Almost every morning this week, we've had a big storm move across Marulaon anywhere from 3:00 to 5:00. Sleep has been a little bit hard to come by this week!
Just after Morning Prayer, Kiko stopped by to see if I was going over to Karumulun for the Bible Story workshop. I laid out my concerns to her, and she and I both decided it would be best for me to stay in Marulaon and continue to heal. I really wanted the ladies to go without me, but I asked Kiko to walk around and discover everybody else's opinion. I wanted the decision to be theirs. A little while later, Kiko returned saying that the ladies were going! I offered to buy one of the liters of petrol (about US $3) they would need for the motor canoe, if among them they could come up with the money for the other liter. I also sent a big bowl of popcorn for them to munch while they worked.
E-mail wasn't working for a while this morning. We depend on our colleagues in Honiara to check the radio and reset it often. Only three families occupy SITAG right now, with a fourth living about 2.5 kilometers away, and they are really stretched thin with their responsibilities. When we finally got our e-mail message to come through, we read that the Bilikiki, a scuba diving ship, had changed its scheduled. They originally told our colleagues that the ship would arrive at Karumulun on Sunday afternoon, but this e-mail said they would be coming Friday morning and leaving my meds with Chief Raymond.
So the Pony Express had begun - a colleague bought more meds to finish my prescription and took them to the Bilikiki's office. The Bilikiki staff very graciously offered to bring them out to the West Russells, and they handed off my meds to Chief Raymond. Benjamin and his two friends (one to help paddle and one to bail water) paddled in a dugout canoe to Karumulun to pick up my meds and bring them back to Marulaon. All just in time for me to finish the bitter children's liquid meds I had been drinking in between doses of pills. God's timing is always so perfect! Reminds me of Proverbs 21:1, except my version is, "The heart of the ship's captain is in the Lord's hand, and He directs it wherever He pleases, even to a remote village in the South Pacific."
Haris asked Sarah to teach her how to make banana cake, so this afternoon, Sarah and Katherine went down armed with all the ingredients for banana cake and recipes in English and Lavukaleve. Haris' family has a big drum oven (if you look closely, you can see it smoking in between Sarah and Haris) which makes cooking the banana cake much easier than if you only had a pot and an open fire.
Tomorrow, the girls are supposed to take the mausa bark out of the ocean and begin drying it to make Sarah's skirt for Christmas.
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