The Grand Christmas Party By Jared Langdon

            On December the 22^nd, we had a very fun Christmas Party.  It was a get together for all of our employees so that they could get to meet each other.  Everyone attended except for the two night watchmen, who were late for certain reasons.  We started out with a small banquet for the whole gathering, which totaled 20 people, including us.  We had 4 different kinds of cookies, as well as peanuts, meatballs, samoosas (small triangular corn tortillas with hamburger in them), and Fanta Orange pop for drinks. Everyone enjoyed themselves, and when everything was said and done, there was absolutely nothing left!  They always say that American candies and cookies are too sweet (stuff like M&M’s, chocolate cookies, etc.), but everything was gone!  They were thoughtful, and packed some in their bags for their little ones at home. Here is one of the funny things that one lady did with her candy.  Mom had given her a candy cane, but failed to explain what to do with it.  For us Americans, it is obvious what you do with a candy cane (you dispatch it immediately).  Anyways, she thought it was a decoration, and hung it up in her house.  When she related this to everybody after she watched them eat their candy canes, everyone just about died with laughter!

            After the food, we gave out gift bags with stuff like rice, sugar, tea, milk powder, and custom calendars with the pictures of the babies they took care of on them.  Everyone was SO thankful, so they gave us some African style singing which included some “hi-yi-yi-yi”ing, dancing, and handshaking.  It was an impressive sight, watching about 10 African women dancing and swaying in time with the music. 

            Then the speeches started.  Our gardener joked around a little bit and said that “probably if it hadn’t been for the food,” he might not have come.  He then thanked us and stated that it was a joy to work for us because we demonstrated the love of God to them.  He said that even though we were having troubles with malaria, other sicknesses, and many things that would discourage some people enough to make them go home, we were sticking it out.  Many of the caretakers said many similar things.  One pointed out that even though they hadn’t been working for us very long; we were still kind enough to throw a party for them.  They then collected their things and left, except the ones who were on night duty that night.  The whole party lasted about 2 hours, from 3:00-5:00.  The whole thing was enjoyable, and everyone had fun.

 

 

 

 

Our Garden

 

            A few weeks ago, Matthew wrote about our garden and how “bad” it was coming along.  I am sure he particularly mentioned our attempt at growing sweet corn here.  I think he mentioned something about how short and scrawny it looked.  Well, although our corn plants “were” somewhat scrawny looking, when we had some with dinner the other night, it actually tasted very delicious and the ears weren’t small and undersized like we figured they would be!  We were better gardeners than we had thought.  The ears were nice and yellow and weren’t even bug eaten!   In the rest of our garden we are growing sweet potatoes, broccoli, tomatoes, regular potatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, cabbage, green beans, popcorn, and peanuts. Everything seems to be growing fairly well and we are expecting fresh vegetables in a few weeks.  The strange thing is that we are growing all of these in late December, which is not normal for us since we have been living in the northern hemisphere before we came here.

 

Kris 

 

 

Going to the Hospital

Going to the Hospital is probably a bad subject to talk about, but I went there with Mom and a friend.  Our friend drove us because my Dad had our car.

When we got there I felt good but when the doctor looked at my throat it started to hurt some more. Ok, I am going to tell you what the Hospital was like: it was very clean, and there were real seats! And there were some Doctors from the U.S.A. Then we had to wait and wait while they went to get medicine.  Boy I got mad, but it made me well.      Sarah

Another Baby

After one of our babies named Jacob died, we were left with only 6 orphans (and some very sad nannies), but a few days ago, God blessed us with a replacement baby.  This new baby is named Mphatso.  As you probably already know, we have another baby named Mphatso, so how are we going to not get the two mixed up?  Well, since just about every Tumbuka name means something in English, we decided to call the new “Mphatso” by his English name which is Gift.  Gift is the perfect name for this new baby since we lost a baby and God replaced it for us with a Gift.  So, our orphan number is back at 7.  Please pray that God will send us more babies.  We still have room! 

 

Kris

The Funeral

 

            On Sunday the 26^th, one of our babies, Jacob, died in the hospital.  On the following Tuesday, my Mom, Dad, Kris and I went to his funeral. I wasn’t sure at first if I wanted to go, but in the end I decided to see what it was like, and it was our baby that died. So with our Land Cruiser filled to the limit and a little bit beyond (I was crammed in the back meant for 4 people, but besides me there were 5 others), we drove to Jacob’s village, which was a little ways out of town, towards the lake.  When we got there, we all got out and the caretakers that came with us started singing “In the Sweet By and By” in Tumbuka as they filed towards the house that Jacob’s body was in.  The women all went into the house, while all of us boys hung out and some smoked cigarettes.   After about 30 minutes of singing and mourning, another group of ladies came with flowers and songs to comfort the mourning aunts. 

            When all of the singing was done, the women came out with the coffin.  It was crudely built, but it was pretty for having been made on the spot.  The wood was mahogany colored, with nice trim around all of the edges.  The village headman spoke a little bit, but he cut the message short because of the weather.  Our oldest caretaker then spoke a message, thanking my family for coming to Malawi and caring for the orphans. My mother and Father also spoke and told them to thank God, because if it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be here.  My Dad also told them that they should be happy because Jacob was in heaven, where he wouldn’t have a weak, sickly body.  The service was short, because Jacob was very young, only 2 months, and so there was very little eulogizing. The graveside service was also short.  The pastor spoke a little, and since Augustine (a Malawian friend of ours who is a translator for the Roach’s) was there, he translated for us.  They buried little Jacob and we left to go home. There was lots of hymn singing during the whole thing.

 For the next few days, the atmosphere in our nursery was subdued and quiet, and any mention of Jacob brought the tears again to many of the caretakers.  They finally requested to have his name removed off of the list of babies in our nursery.  Thankfully, we still have pictures of him while he was healthy.

           

By Jared Langdon