Catching up on stuff . . . Christian Radio Station Project, Part 1

Here's a report on a project we've been helping with for several months - I just haven't posted about it yet!

If you follow our ministry in detail, I'm sure you know that we don't run a Christian radio station, LOL. However, in the past year we have been pleased to have several opportunities to use our construction skills to help other missionaries with needed building projects for their ministries. It's fun to be a part of a type of ministry we wouldn't likely do on our own, and to be a blessing to those missionaries who don't have the same construction skills and experience we do. You may recall the small bridge we constructed (with help and funds from a visiting team) for an orphanage in another part of Honduras last summer. This time, we partnered with a local missionary, just a few miles down the road from us . . .  AND (here's a teaser for you) . . . there's another project in the works which might have Allen and Russell traveling to build a bridge in Haiti in the next year or so, for a ministry there!

But now . . . the radio station project!

A Christian radio station was started in our area about 4-5 years ago. Currently, a missionary from Texas, Shannon Hopkins, is directing the station. Shannon, like us, has multiple ministries going, including this radio station, a feeding program, and working as the chaplain at the bilingual school Ben is now attending.

There was a need for housing for a watchman at the radio station property. Shannon asked Russell to oversee this project. Like the bridge we helped with at the orphanage, a team from the US raised the funds for the materials, and came to work alongside our crew for a week during the actual building process.

Below is Boo's photo chronicle of this project, as the house for the watchman was built. Since there are so many photos, the rest of the work we did at the radio station will have to be included in a "part 2" post. 

My HOUSE! My ROOF!

Before you know it, we're going to have a ROOF on our new house! I'm so excited! The men have worked hard on this house, but only during the lulls between other, ministry-related construction projects, so it's been a slow process. We've been living on the property, in our bodega/warehouse, for five and a half years now  - it really is time for us to have a house, and amenities like interior walls!

The lumber for the roof was purchased back in August of last year, and has been sitting out drying (and getting rained on, and drying again) all this time.

Off and on, when they've had time over the past couple of months, the men have worked on planing the rough lumber. Once a large enough pile of planed boards was ready, they started staining them.

Gradually we are amassing a pile of dried, planed, bug-treated, stained boards. These will be the rafters of our roof, and will be visible from inside the house, as part of the ceiling.

The photo below is the ceiling of the "team house". . . which is similar to the ceiling which will be in our home, except that we're planning to whitewash the flat boards, and just have the support beams stained. 

The house will have porches in front and back, so we have wooden posts for porch roof supports:

If you're good with your imagination, you can look at these photos of the house, and imagine what it will look like with a ROOF and covered porches.

Back porch-to-be

Front of house (porch will be on the left)

So, there you go! A ROOF in the making!!!!

Can you help us with this problem, RIGHT AWAY????? It's (almost) URGENT!

I hate to use the word "urgent" in anything I post, because, after our kidnapping situation, people might see that word and think that danger is involved. I'll reserve the word "urgent" for when I need you to drop everything and pray immediately, okay? Meanwhile, I'll go with VERY IMPORTANT AND TIME SENSITIVE, for this post. How's that?

This is a VERY IMPORTANT AND TIME SENSITIVE POST!!!! Please read it right away, before we're OUT of time!!!

In addition to filling the annual shipping container with donations, we also have to receive permission from the government to import the container and contents duty-free. This year it was MUCH harder and took MUCH longer to get the duty-free situation in hand. That's why (in case you haven't already heard) the container hasn't shipped yet. 

We received the preliminary permission this week, and we'll be shipping before the end of January . . .  but there's a hitch . . . . we will not be allowed to ship the huge spools of cable, which have been collected for us to use in building bridges here, in this particular container. We expect to be able to ship them in the future, just not this time.

So, we have permission to ship the container, but with the spools removed we are back to having EMPTY SPACE TO FILL! And those spools are huge, so it is a large amount of space!

Oh my! We DO NOT like to pay to ship EMPTY SPACE! Noooooooooooo!

So, my request is as follows: Can you help us fill the empty space in this container, in the next TEN DAYS???????? That's how long we have for this!

Ways you can help are listed below:

- if you live in the MD, northern VA, DC, and southern PA areas, you could possibly collect items and deliver them to Thurmont or Walkersville Maryland. I will list the delivery locations below, but you MUST call to make sure that someone will be there at the time you deliver. Allen wanted me to mention that he has asked, in the past, at Salvation Army locations, and they have been willing to donate items if you tell them that they are going to be put into a missionary container. Just an idea, if you have a place near you!

7047 Blue Mountain Road
Thurmont, MD
(301)-271-4896

and

Fredericktowne Baptist Church
8645 Biggs Ford Road 
Walkersville, MD 
(301) 898-8600 

- if you do not live locally to the connection sites, or you don't have items to donate or time to deliver things, you can still help. There is still (barely) enough time to purchase items on Amazon and have them delivered by the time the container ships. We never have enough school supplies, backpacks, small gifts for men (wallets, pocket knives, ties, socks, etc). All of the other items listed in the linked post can also still be sent . . . they will NOT go to waste!

If you are shipping donations, use this address:

Gifts for Gracias c/o Jim Cofer
7047 Blue Mountain Road
Thurmont, MD 21788

Can you help with this? We would be SO GRATEFUL! I think you all know how much we abhor wasting donated funds, and we are just finding ourselves backed into a situation which may force us to be inefficient with money - and none of us want that!!!!

On the chance that anyone here is completely unfamiliar with the Gifts for Gracias project . . . here is a link that will give you all of the details: Gifts for Gracias: See What We See

From the Sowers family, I say:

And from the actual gift recipients, I pass this along:

Gifts for Gracias - A Post From a Very Special Donor

We appreciate everyone who helps us create gifts for the Gifts for Gracias project every year - those who put together a gift for a boy or girl of a specific age, or a family gift (which blesses the parents as well), those who send bulk items we use to create additional gifts, and the people who collect and donate used clothing and bedding in good condition, which are valued parts of the entire gift package - but I think you'll agree with me that this donation is something unusually special!

Meet Jules - a long time friend of mine, even though we've never actually been in the same place at the same time. We connected through an online homeschooling forum more than a dozen years ago. Jules is a quilter - she pieces and quilts lovely items herself, and also does quilting for others, as a business. This year, she decided to do something extra-special for her donation to the Gifts for Gracias project . . . but I'll let you read the details in her own words from her blog. 

This year when I saw blankets as a need on the list and saw what a blanket costs (when did I buy a blanket last???), I figured I had fabric, I’d make quilts for part of my box.  I officially took off the week of Thanksgiving from customer work and spent my quilting time making quilts for an unknown loved one in a faraway land.  It was so fun to make from what I had and be able to do whatever I wanted.  I ended up playing quite a bit with my quilting.  Midst the work, my mind prayed for the Sowers family and those that will receive my meager gifts ... read more here

Click on this photo for a close-up on the amazing detail in the stitching!

Head on over to Jules' blog, And Sew On . . . , to see the quilts she made for us. I'm so excited for the opportunity to give these lovely gifts away this year! 

Keeping in Touch . . . tell us how to do it better . . .

Things have been changing in my life, a lot, in the past couple of years. Two years ago I was a busy homeschooling mom, caring for and educating four children in my household. Suddenly I find myself an almost empty-nester . . . and a grandmother! 

Rachel is married, and Gus is in college in the US. Ben still lives at home, but he is now enrolled in an excellent bilingual school in our area, and will start attending classes there in January, so he won't be around the house much now. Boo has one foot out the door. She's finishing up some high school studies, but she's been mostly independent in her schooling for years now, and she's traveling quite a bit right now. She just spent a couple of weeks on the north coast, visiting friends at the Loma de Luz Hospital, and now she's in the capital, Tegucigalpa, spending the rest of the holidays with Rachel and Brandy. She takes her school books with her, and manages "homeschooling" on the road!

It's been a challenge for me to adjust to these changes. I'm delighted to find that I still enjoy spending time alone with my husband, and I'm renewing some of my long-lost hobbies, even playing the piano and sketching again. I have less laundry to do, of course, but there are also fewer minions to help with all of the housework, so that's become more work for me. I'm trying to rethink the whole process of keeping house, now that so much has changed.

I also want to be more efficient and purposeful in the part of the ministry work that generally has been my responsibility . . . which is communicating with our friends and supporters. Over the years, I've found this to be a continually changing challenge for me. At first I wrote a monthly newsletter, which went out by email and regular mail. Then we set up a website, and tried to keep that updated, so that people would have access to more info and pictures, in a more up-to-date format. 

In 2007 I discovered the blogosphere, and started blogging regularly. The newsletters, became "occasional" instead of "monthly," as it became hard for me to find things to share that I hadn't already posted on the blog. Gradually, instead of newsletters, we substituted short emails, for extremely important news . . . like kidnappings, etc. 

Only a few years ago I succumbed to the world of Facebook,

and I haven't been extremely successful at balancing Facebook, blogging, emails, and personal communications. I really have tried, though.

While I'm still struggling with all of that, there are also Twitter (yes, I have a twitter account, but I still don't really know what to do with it) and Google +, and Facetime, and Skype, and Instagram, and . . . 

I haven't updated the website in quite a while, because the program I was using became obsolete, and I haven't found the time to learn a new program, so that I can edit the site! I'm getting kind of old and tired . . . and technology is definitely changing faster than I can keep up!

At the same time, Allen pretty regularly takes time to make phone calls and connect with people that way.

I'll be honest here. We work hard at this stuff, and still people remark to us that they haven't heard anything from us in a while! Generally I assume this is because they are only watching one or another of these communications outlets, and our time and energy is being spread between a bunch of them. If a person only reads my emails, or only catches me when one of my FB posts hits their feed, or just reads the blog, I'm sure it looks like we've cut back on communications, because they are only seeing a fraction of what we're putting out there.

In order to help me do my job better, I'd like to ask for your input on this. Tell me where you currently see or hear the most information from us. Tell me which communication method you would most likely see and pay attention to. Is there a different method of communicating that you would like to recommend to me? Give me your honest thoughts on how I can do a better job here - because, really, I can use the help! 

You know we are just one part of this ministry . . . without knowledgeable partners praying and supporting us we can't accomplish much of anything!

Thanks so much for helping me with this! 

The Right Person, in the Right Place, at the Right Time

We recently sent out a newsletter, and many people mentioned that they enjoyed reading this one, so I thought I'd share it here, as well:

Dear Friends,

Recently, our daughter Rachel and her husband Brandy received a phone call, in the middle of the night, with the news that Brandy’s father had been hospitalized and wasn't expected to live much longer. They rushed to his side, and for the rest of the night, Brandy and his brother took turns holding their father in a sitting position on his bed, because sitting upright allowed him to breathe, and the beds at the small local hospital weren't adjustable.

The family was able to arrange for their father to be transported by plane to a better equipped hospital, in the capital city of Tegucigalpa, the next morning - but sadly, Brandy’s father did not survive the trip.

During those precious last hours together, Brandy was able to share the gospel with his father at a time when his father was ready to listen - and because of this Brandy has the hope of seeing his father again in heaven!

Brandy was the right person, in the right place, at the right time.

As missionaries, we work to share the good news of the redemption which is available to us all through Christ, with the people of western Honduras . . . but we can only be in one place at a time. By assisting the indigenous Honduran pastors, missionaries and evangelists in their work, we've had the honor of being part of spreading the good news to hundreds of villages in the remotest parts of the mountains in all directions around Gracias Lempira.

With your assistance, we’re helping the right people be in these villages, at the right times:

-   when a pastor is able to plant a church in a village that previously had no church, because he received the gift of a horse or motorcycle

-   when a pastor is able to share the message more effectively because he has attended the pastor training school

-   when a parent brings their malnourished child to one of our pastor-run feeding centers

-   when Bibles, Bible study materials, and Sunday School curriculum are available to these communities locally, at prices they can afford

-   when children in remote locations and living in poverty get the opportunity to receive an education at a Christian school

-   when a pastor is encouraged in his work through receiving a Gifts for Gracias package

Much interest has been expressed in our bridge construction projects recently, because they are physically large and impressive. We build those bridges because people need them to have access to places they need to go, and people they need to see. The work we do supporting pastors is an even more important type of bridge building. We help the indigenous pastors to reach people in need of God, in remote mountain villages, so that those people can see and experience Christ’s love, shared through his followers: the pastors (unsung heroes in this story), our family (working to get the resources to the pastors as needed), and YOU (supporting us through your prayers and gifts).

Thanks so much for being a part of this ministry. We hope you have a joyful Christmas!

Newsletter - are you on the list? Do you want to be?

I mailed out an email newsletter this morning. If you think you should be on the list, but you didn't receive an email from us, please let me know! Earlier this year I had a computer die on me, and I lost my most updated copy of the list.

Also, if you weren't on the list, but you'd like to be, let me know that, too! We'd be more than happy to add you. (If you send me a name and email address through the comments section, I'll receive it, but I'll make sure your info isn't posted publicly, as all comments are monitored before they are posted.)

Thanks so much, to everyone who supports us with prayer and giving!

Re-Connected!

In spite of various obstacles, we have now re-entered the twenty-first century with an internet connection right in our home!!!!!

This is not a fabulous or fast connection, but it is sufficient for our basic communication needs for personal and ministry use. We're not streaming anything - certainly not movies - but we can watch the cute short videos people link on Facebook . . . once in a while . . .

Hopefully I'll be back to blogging now. Thanks for your patience!

We're Coffee Farmers Now!

Here's some exciting news . . . read on for a new (and really great) way you can be a part of our work here in Honduras!

God is leading us toward developing a more self-sustaining ministry model, and we are excited to share this with you today. In short, this is a chance for you to partner with us in a project which will multiply donated funds greatly, and continuously, for years to come! I've mentioned briefly, on Facebook, that we have been planting coffee plants on our property for the past few months. In this post, I'll be sharing details about this project - but I want to make it clear from the start that this is a matching funds offer, and a project which should add sustainability to the ministry, and a situation which will create jobs in our community! It's a win, win, WIN! 

In the department of Lempira, where we live, coffee is the main cash crop. There is even a strain of coffee plant named “Lempira,” which was developed specifically to be grown successfully and profitably in our area. We own approximately 65 acres of land, most of which is steep and rocky. While the uses for such land are limited, it can be used to grow coffee, and it is our goal to develop this land to help fund the ministry work we are doing here. Because we already live on this land, we can handle security and oversight of the project without significant extra cost, time, or effort.

This project will help the ministry work we do here – the feeding centers, church and school construction projects, bridges, pastor training school, Bible book store, etc. – to be funded and at least partially self-sustainable for years into the future. The coffee project will also create much needed jobs for local workers: preparing the land, planting the coffee plants, caring for them, and harvesting the coffee beans. It is our intention to sell the beans in bulk locally, as the drying, packaging, and selling of the beans is too time consuming for us to feel that it is a good use of our available time and energies. We absolutely want this project to benefit the ministry, not take us away from the work God has placed us here to do!

During his recent trip to the US, and since his return, Allen has been presenting the coffee project to potential donors. It has been our hope that people who desire to partner with us in ministry will consider donating toward this project. All of the profits from the sale of the coffee will directly fund the ministry, and Allen, with his degree in business and systems analysis, has run the numbers and found that we can expect each dollar spent on the coffee project to give an average return of sevenfold over the course of the next 12 years.

This means that a donation of, for instance, $100 would actually grow to $700 of available funds to be used in the continuation of the ministry, and a gift of $500 would grow to $3500 . . . but at the moment, several friends of the ministry have issued a matching funds challenge. This means that a donation of $100 can be expected to return $1400, and a $500 donation really means $7000 of funding for the ministry! At this time, up to $20,000 of donated funds will be matched!!! I’m sure you will agree with us that this is a huge opportunity!

These numbers have taken into consideration the certainty of having years of good crops and years when the plants produce less. The plan also includes a budget for replacing plants as they gradually die out . . . so that our production of coffee beans can continue out into the future indefinitely!

We’re excited about the possibilities here! Already we have installed a road down through our property, for better access to the coffee fields, and have planted 8.5 acres of coffee: 17,000 plants so far! Our goal is to eventually plant 30 acres of coffee! The estimated profit from this venture – after expenses are considered of course – is $50,000 per year, all of which will be used for ministry expenses!

What do you think? Do you have questions about this? Maybe you’d like to partner with our ministry in this way? Pray about it and let us know! We’re praying here, too! 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

As always, donations should be sent through The Foundation for Missions, and receipts will be issued. 

To Donate by Mail, send checks to:

The Foundation for Missions

PO Box 560233

Orlando, Florida 32856-0233

- Make check payable to "The Foundation" -

- Be sure to write "preferenced for Sowers Ministry, matching funds coffee project" 

on an enclosed paper -

To Donate Online:

     Click on THIS LINK to donate online using credit card, debit card, or automatic monthly donations from your bank account. Make sure that you choose "Missionary Support" from the drop down menu, and type in "Sowers Ministry, matching funds coffee project" 

in the box requesting "additional specifics on how to use the gift."

- If additional instructions or information are needed for donating, 

please don't hesitate to call The Foundation for Missions, at 407-730-3364.

     

Quick update on Boo and her tonsils

Boo arrived home safely this morning, having left her troublesome tonsils behind! She's feeling well, though she looks paler than usual. Due to schedule complications, Rachel and Brandy could not accompany her home. Boo got a ride from a missionary as far as San Pedro Sula on Tuesday, and came the rest of the way to Gracias alone on the bus on yesterday. She spent the night at Russell's house, and he brought her home this morning. I had just a few minutes to chat with her before I headed into town to use the internet.

Thanks so very much for praying for her trip and her surgery!!!!

Internet, Coffee, Surgery, Etc.

Hi all!

We still have no internet access at our house. We believe that our equipment, which has been serving us faithfully for years and years and is borderline obsolete, has sustained water damage. Although we were able to reconnect several times after the connection first died, each time we did so the connection was lost again within 24 hours.

The service we've been using is gradually being phased out, anyway, so rather than continuing to try to repair this equipment, we are looking into other options. There is a local business which offers a wireless internet connection  in the city of Gracias. While we aren't located in the city, our home is on a hill which overlooks the city from a few miles away. Since we have line-of-sight to the city, it is possible that we may be able to connect to the internet using this service. The technician is due to visit our house this week, and then we should know what is possible.

We hope that this system will give us a faster connection as well as being less expensive than our current satellite internet. Please be praying that this situation will be resolved soon!

Meanwhile, life goes on, even without internet. Those ministries which are ongoing throughout the year continue - the feeding centers, pastor training school, the Bible book store, etc. A shipment of food is due in port any day now, and there will be travel and paperwork involved in getting the food from the port to us here in Gracias. In addition, the menfolk are putting most of their daily efforts into a major project: planting nine acres of coffee on a section of our property! This is the time of year when the plants have to be set into the ground, and this has been a huge job. We are hopeful that, in time, the profits from the coffee harvests will help pay for the cost of the ministry here. At the moment, we're investing  large amounts of time and money into this - we had to bulldoze a road down through the property, for access to the coffee fields, prepare the ground to receive the plants, purchase the plants and hire knowledgeable local men to oversee the planting and care of the young plants, purchase fertilizer and pesticides, etc. Please pray with us that God would bless and reward these efforts!

In family news, after more than a year of trying to arrange for it to happen, this week Boo is finally having her tonsils taken out! Because the removal of tonsils isn't done often anymore, and because Boo is in her late teens, this isn't considered as simple a surgery as you might expect. We wanted to have this done at the hospital on the north coast, where we know the American doctors and trust the level of care. Getting to the hospital, and finding the time when we could pull away from the ministry work to take Boo there and stay through her recuperation period was the difficulty.

Meanwhile, however, Boo suffered from nearly continual discomfort. We came up with a plan, but, as is common here, the plan was changed and revised multiple times . . . however this week it is really happening. Boo's tonsils are scheduled to be removed today!

On Monday afternoon, Boo left home and went to spend the night in Gracias with Russell and Iris (and Russellito). Very early Tuesday she caught the first bus to the city of Santa Rosa de Copan, where she had to transfer to a different bus to travel to the larger city of Sana Pedro Sula. Sending my small, delicate, blonde 18 year old daughter traveling alone, by bus, in Central America, to the city with the highest murder rate in the world, felt like quite an act of faith, I will admit. Boo felt up to the challenge, though, and she is extremely anxious to be rid of her tonsils!

From the huge bus terminal in Sana Pedro Sula she took a taxi to the airport, where she met up with a missionary who works at the hospital in Balfate. He was in the city picking up people at the airport, and he arranged this meeting so that Boo could travel the rest of the way to the hospital in a private vehicle. From the airport, the reminder of the trip would involve about five hours of driving.

Boo will stay at the hospital compound, in the home of missionary friends, during a week of recuperation. The doctors recommended this because there is a slight chance that she could have a serious complication involving post-operative bleeding during the first week after the surgery, and this would be dangerous for her to experience while traveling, or when she has returned to an area where a quick medical response would be unavailable.

Toward the end of the week, Rachel and her husband, Brandy, will travel to the north coast of Honduras from their home in the capital, so that they can accompany Boo on her return trip by bus. This was arranged because of concerns that Boo might not feel well enough after the surgery to travel alone.

To keep this (fairly) short, I've left out so much of the story - the fact that there is a visiting team of Ear, Nose, and Throat doctors at the missionary hospital this week, for instance. This is the type of doctor who would preform this type of surgery in the US, especially in instances where complications would be anticipated. We would have been happy to have the general surgeon at Balfate handle this operation, but because Boo was able to be there this week, she'll be under the care off specialists!

Rachel was planning to travel with Boo both ways on this trip, but Brandy had a scheduled vacation this month, and the exact dates of the vacation weren't tied down until the day the vacation started! This made Rachel's ability to plan her part of the trip particularly difficult! The timing of the visiting team of doctors and the timing of Brandy's vacation (when we finally got that info) didn't fit together well enough to allow Rachel to accompany Boo early this week, which is how it came about that Boo took on the first part of the journey alone.

Please pray with us that the operation will go smoothly, that Boo will be free from the sickness and discomfort that her tonsils were causing, that her recuperation will be complication-free, and that she (and Rachel and Brandy) will have safe travel back home again. Thanks so much!

And thank you SO MUCH for reading to the end of this long, pictureless post! On top of everything else, my laptop keyboard is acting up, and so it took me MUCH longer than usual to type in this post. Before lots of arduous editing, the paragraphs above looked like this:

Boo willl staaya aaat the hsopitall lcompound, in the home o missionary fffriends, dduring aa week kof recuperaation. The codtors recommene thi becauase there i aa sssight chnce tht he coud haaaave a aserious compliction invollving post-operative bleeding during the irt wee ter the surgery, n thi would be dddaanagerous sfor her to experience while travelilngn, or when shse ha returned to an area where a quick mediclala respsonse wouldd be unavaiallable.

I shared that so that you will be appropriately appreciative of my efforts! I'll post again, and let you know how Boo is doing, next time I have internet access! Thanks for praying!

I'm a Grandmother now!!!!!

Note: I wrote this earlier, but couldn't post it until now, because of my internet problems. 

What a full week we've had here!

Monday (Sept 8) was the day planned for the big surprise baby shower, for Russell's wife, Iris. Because I needed to purchase a shower gift and also a strawberry cake mix (my job was baking chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry cupcakes for the event) I drove down to the city of Gracias on Saturday.

Sometime during the night on Saturday I started running a fairly high fever. It got worse on Sunday, and was STILL so bad on Monday that I knew I wouldn't be able to attend the shower.

Part of the plan for the surprise involved getting Iris out of the way for a few hours late Monday afternoon, so an appointment for a checkup with her obstetrician had been scheduled for that time. However, late in the game, the appointment was cancelled, because the doctor had had to go out of the country for a brief time!

I was pretty out-of-it at that point, so I don't know all that transpired, but somehow it was arranged for Iris to see a different obstetrician at the same appointment time. Phew. BUT - at the checkup, the OB found indications that Iris was starting into the dreaded condition known as toxemia. This is extremely dangerous, but can be safely managed, with extensive nursing care. For Iris, only three weeks from her due date, the decision was made to deliver the baby immediately!

When Russell had a moment to speak privately with the doctor, he explained that there was a room full of 50 people at that very moment waiting to surprise Iris with a baby shower! The doctor agreed to give Iris some medications to help keep her condition under control, and said that Iris could attend the shower and they would deliver the baby FIRST thing in the morning - and of course, that Iris was to be as still and quiet as possible until then.

So, that's what happened! Before the sun was up the next morning, they were checking into the Clinica San Lucas in Gracias, which has a wonderful option for expectant mothers. Iris delivered the baby there and then had a private room with a private nurse, for two days. While it's more expensive than the public hospital, it's also cleaner and quieter, with a higher level of care.

The delivery was uneventful, and little Russell Lee Sowers, Jr, arrived on the scene right around 7am, weighing in at 7 pounds, 2 ounces - which is a nice weight for three weeks early!

Unfortunately, I was sick with a fever the day Russellito was born, and I had to wait an excruciating amount of time - an entire day - until I could go and visit him, wearing a mask, just in case.

I assure you that in the weeks since his birth, I've made up for this delay. This week I even got to change a poopy diaper! I am one lucky grandmother!!!!!

No blog posts for a bit . . .

Our internet is out, and I don't think we will have internet at the house again for a while . . . weeks, at a minimum, I'd say. It has already been off more than on for the past month.

So, things will be quieter than usual here for a bit. Hopefully I'll be back online soon!