Simple Woman's Daybook

For Today...Wednesday, June 24
Outside my window...sun shining brightly, a nice breeze blowing and bringing the wind chimes to life, almost ripe molokita (a type of orange) hanging outside the window
I am thinking...that God has convicted me lately to be more encouraging to my children and to take more time to just have fun and enjoy them
From the learning rooms...Spanish American War, Teddy Roosevelt, Wright brothers, switching artists from Georgia O'Keeffe to Jackson Pollock
I am thankful for...our sweet neighbors and their patience with me as I learn their language and their culture
From the kitchen...whatever I find at market this afternoon
I am wearing...blue v-neck t-shirt, red skirt, beaded "salvation bracelet" from a friend in Memphis, hair in a braid (the kids have been commenting on how long my hair is getting!)
I am reading...just finished "These Strange Ashes" by Elisabeth Elliot. If you want a first year missionary's perspective, PLEASE read this book. She echoes many of my feelings as we finish our first year on the mission field.
I am hoping...that our e-mail gets up and running soon. We hate not being able to communicate with our friends and family.
I am creating...lots of banana and mogea (bush apple) muffins to sell at market this afternoon.
I am hearing...the wind chimes (thank you, Lord, for the breeze!), neighbors chattering, a bird taking a bath on top of our rain tank
Around the house...Aaron building more book shelves and a window seat
One of my favorite things...listening in to conversations of my neighbors and being able to pick out a few words.
A few plans for the rest of the week...beginning a garden tomorrow
 

Healing well

Wednesday, July 1
Benjamin and Olivia are doing great and healing well. Lots of questions from neighbors, though! It's given me a great opportunity to share how I pray for my kids every day.

injuries

Tuesday, June 30
I was working on vocabulary with Eileen when I heard Benjamin holler. He came limping toward me with blood flowing from his foot, so I helped him begin the ascent to our house, and Eileen's husband David carried Benjamin the rest of the way. Benjamin had cut his the base of his big toe on a shell, and he bled all up the steps! Aaron began to patch him up, and I headed back down to Eileen's where I had left Katherine. I got settled in, picked up my notebook, and began to ask Eileen another question, when I heard Olivia scream. Those of you who know Olivia are well aware of her tendencies to be dramatic when it comes to pain. My back was to her, and when I turned around, I saw my blonde beauty with blood streaming down her face. I handed Katherine to Eileen and began to trek back up the hill with another bleeding child after sending Sarah up the hill quickly to warn Aaron to get the first aid supplies back out. Olivia and I made it up the hill, and her screaming quickl!
y gathered a crowd of curious onlookers. As we washed her face, we quickly found that she had several cuts on the right side of her face. She had been playing in the hammock (ila - also the word for net) with other kids when she fell and slammed into the coral beach. We cleaned her up, applied antibiotic ointment, and assured all of the neighbors that she would be okay. Looks like she will have a black eye and a sore face for a while. God was protecting her, though, because the deepest cut was just under her eye and another cut grazed her eyebrow.

planting the flower border

Friday, June 26
Skita is now helping us with the house and yard. I asked her if she could put in some flowers around our yard to fill in the "fence". So she and I went over to Ruthie's and found the most beautiful flower garden! Ruthie eagerly dug up some bulbs and hacked off branches to share with us, and Skita and I came back to the house with arms full of blooms. First, we had to weed some more, and again we drew a crowd of young helpers. About thirty seconds after I started hacking at the roots of the clover, I unearthed a snake. Skita quickly clubbed it to death with a stick, and I kept on weeding. After I found the second snake, Skita hacked a couple of poles off a tree with part of a branch still remaining on the end. These formed a small hook that would catch the bottom of the clover mass. So each kid hooked a branch in the bottom of the clover (after banging on it to scare away any snakes) and pulled so Skita and I could chop at the base. Working together, it didn't take !
us very long to clear away the weeds and begin planting. Skita dug the holes, and I put in the flowers and watered them. Some of the flowers remind me of ones in the States. We planted a pretty purple one that looks like morning glory and a very fragrant white plant that reminds me of gardenia. We finally finished the western and southern sides of the yard. Then Skita asked the neighbors for some banana trees, and we planted a big one and a small one just on the other side of the south border of our yard. Not wanting to get sunburned again, I told Skita that was enough for today, and she came up on the porch to rest. We swapped "custom stories". I read her "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and she told me a short one (in language) about a mother and daughter that go into the bush together. I got a little excited when I could pick out a few words and catch a little bit of meaning as I typed in her story. I imagine it was her version of "The fat cat sat on a rat", b!
ut it's a start! My triceps and hamstrings are beginning to remind me
that I haven't done any yardwork in a very long time, but by Monday, I think I'll be ready to put in the eastern flower border between us and the ocean.

more lelenga

Thursday, June 11 � Lelenga Day
We're moving up the learning curve! Last time Sarah and I only watched as Skita finished preparing lelenga. Today, Sarah and I took ingredients and our own cassava (obikola) scraper over to Auntie Sarah and we all worked together from beginning to end. We went around 2 o'clock, and Auntie began by showing us how to peel cassava. It was easier than I thought. You take your bush knife (I now have my very own small one � it's about a "cubit" in length), and cut off the ends of the cassava. Then, you cut a slit from top to bottom. Next, you work the tip of the knife in under the thick skin to pry it off, and the whole thing peels beautifully! After we had peeled the cassava we had bought at yesterday's market, we washed it and scraped it. Aaron helped us out by scraping nine coconuts at home, and he brought the coconut over as we were finishing up the cassava peeling. We put a tiny bit of water in the coconut. Then, we took a piece of finely pounded bark, placed some of the grat!
ed coconut inside, and SQUEEZED. Once all of the coconut milk was out, we boiled the liquid. Then Auntie brought out a big pan and apologized for not using only leaves! This pan is from WWII and it was made in the USA, so they call it the "USA pan". Auntie Sarah showed me how to heat the leaves by drawing them slowly over the fire so they wouldn't crack when we folded them into the "USA pan". We layered the cassava and coconut milk, and Auntie built a big fire using coconut husks. She put many large stones on top, then we all went outside to visit and slice bananas for the lelenga. After a while, she went in to check the stones, and we all joined her and finished making the pudding by adding the bananas. We placed the pudding on top of the hot stones, then placed more stones on top of the pudding and covered the whole thing with leaves like we did with Skita. Then, we each went back to our own houses to cook supper and get ready for Evening Prayer. After Evening Prayer, we !
went home, but it didn't take long for Auntie Sarah to come and get us
for the unveiling of the pudding. We all watched as she pulled the heavy pan off the fire and took off the stones. When the banana cooks, it turns red, so the pudding had a reddish tinge this time. Auntie cut it into pieces, and we took some home with us to enjoy.

Choate family bakery

Saturday, June 20

Yesterday, we received a bunch of bananas, and we had just been given a beautiful basket of mogea, so we decided to make muffins to take down to market. This morning at 7:45, there was a knock on our door, and Melody stood there to tell us that all of the ladies were down at the market waiting for us to bring banana cake to sell! We had just started baking when she came, so we told her to tell the ladies it would be a while, but we would be there. We brought the batches of banana and mogea muffins down in shifts as they came out of the oven, and they were snatched up within seconds. Each muffin sells for one Solomon Dollar (about 12 cents). After we sold about four dozen, we ran out, and I had to explain that baking used a lot of gas. I could either bake a whole bunch now and run out of gas soon, or I could bake a little bit for each market while we were in Marulaon.

 

Last night after Evening Prayer, Skita asked me if I would make a birthday cake for her nephew who was turning three. I told her that I would love to make it as my gift to him, and we discussed what flavor she wanted and the shape of the cake. So today, Sarah and I (mostly Sarah) made a chocolate bundt cake, and tomorrow we will ice it after church.

papaya trees

Monday, June 22
Ruthie is helping us with the house and the yard this week. We saved some of the seeds from the two types of papaya (manioko) we bought at Saturday's market, and she helped us plant them this morning. We planted them in groups of three along the northern border of our yard. Sarah came behind us and ringed each plot with either coral or stones. We're hoping to enjoy some papaya by the time Thanksgiving is here!

odds and ends

Just an update to let you know that our water tank for the community has been well received.  Several of the small rain tanks have recently gone dry, and we have been so happy to be able to share with our neighbors.

 

I can't believe I forgot to put our Flag Day celebration on the blog!  Sarah and I decided we needed to celebrate, so we whipped up some sugar cookies (with red sprinkles) in place of vanilla wafers, then I made some banana pudding while Sarah created some mini personalized flags to put on top of our dessert.  It was yummy!  We're saving the flags to celebrate again on July 4.

blog post for June 7 2009

Sunday, June 7, 2009
What a beautiful day to travel! When we arrived at the pier, we saw a family that we knew from Marulaon, and I enjoyed being able to greet them in Lavukaleve. We chose the same spot on the boat as we had before � the bottom deck in the back � and settled in for the hour wait before the six hour journey. We are so thankful for the Bikoi and it's dependable schedule! This time we took two big gas cylinders along with a 400 gallon rain tank to hold water for the community.
We quickly found lots of people traveling to the Russells. A teacher at Fly Harbor School (the elementary boarding school on the island of Marulaon) storied with Aaron for a little while. The teacher said that he had come into Honiara on the Bikoi last Tuesday night and that it had been storming. Water had washed back and forth over the deck as the boat chugged on its way to Guadalcanal. This made me grateful for the great return voyage we enjoyed only a few weeks ago. We also made new friends in Rita and Wally. Wally was downing Sol Brew way too fast and decided to take lopsided pictures of our family with his wife's digital camera. He giggled after every picture. About halfway through the trip, Wally fell asleep and remained asleep until we arrived in Marulaon. I wasn't disappointed.
When we arrived back home, we could see a wall of rain just east of where we needed to unload. The kids and I stepped off the Bikoi into a canoe with the chief, the chairman, and a couple of other guys. They loaded our "carry-on" baggage, the gas cylinders, and the water tank into the canoe, and we headed back to shore while Aaron awaited our cargo from under the ship. The kids and I waded ashore from the canoe and called to our friends just as the rain began to fall. So, everyone pitched into carry our bags up to the house in the rain. We had finished all of the water we brought aboard the ship, and we were all so thirsty from the trip, so I asked Sarah to go down and fill a container with water from the tank. (We hadn't pumped the water up to the roof yet, so we couldn't just turn on the tap.) She came back saying there was a lock on the spigot, therefore she couldn't bring up any water. Since it was still raining, I asked her to take the container and put it under the pip!
e on the front of the house. We quickly had some water to drink, and the rain stopped just after she filled the container!
Aaron and the rest of our things began coming up the hill, and then Sarah heard some wailing from one of the young girls who had just gotten off of the ship. We asked the chief and learned that our closest neighbor Eileen (who lives just down the hill) had lost her dad, Albert, last Thursday. The funeral was yesterday, and one of his granddaughters was wailing in mourning as she arrived. This week will be a week of mourning, and the family will be cared for by community members (working their gardens, preparing their food, etc). Eileen's husband, David, lost his dad not too long ago. He is growing his beard out for a year to represent his mourning. We are planning to take some food later this week.
The chief and the chairman also explained the mystery of the padlock on our water tank. Evidently, someone was caught taking water from our tank during the night, so to guard our water, one of our neighbors provided his own lock. However, he was away when we arrived, so we had to wait until he returned to get the key to be able to use our water. Thankfully, it didn't take very long and the kids were able to shower before evening prayer. We really feel loved by this community, and we hope that the small rain tank that we brought will help out!

SITAG, Honiara, Over and Out

We got good news today that the radio seems to be working just fine, so we should have good e-mail access while we are in Marulaon. Thanks for all of your prayers. However, last time we were out in the village, Blogger kept sending back all of my posts. I will continue to try to post via e-mail via radio from Marulaon, but in case it doesn't work, this is SITAG Honiara, signing off for two months. Over and out...

And the winner is...

Amy! We'll get your necklace out right quick before we catch the boat to Marulaon.

Quick Prayer Request

We just heard that the equipment for transmitting our e-mail via radio is having some problems. If it is not able to be fixed, we will have have no e-mail while we are out in Marulaon. However, we will still have daily radio contact with SITAG. Please pray for wisdom, resources, and speed in obtaining the parts needed.

Giveaway

Our camera battery died last week...you can guess where the battery charger is, in Marulaon. But we would like to giveaway the necklace we bought last week at the market. If you look closely at the picture of Olivia, you can see the alternating small flat white and tan (caramel, latte, toasted coconut?) shells. Comment by Thursday, midnight CST to include your name in our scientifically random drawing. Our child powered number generator will select the last name in the bowl to win. Now back to canning and packing...