Hello! I bet you all couldn't tell that I have been working in school...and that the weather has turned very hot. :-) Needless to say it makes for one very worn out Jenn. So, I have been thinking about what to write and have been wanting to write about the school for a while now. So, I will start with that.
My kids, as you all know started school the Monday after we arrived in Sunyani. I however did not get fully involved in school until December. there were many reasons for this,and I am glad to be working again and doing what I love. yes, I love working in school. I especially love working in school here in Ghana. it is incredibly difficult and hard, but also immensely rewarding. I'll get to more of that in just a bit.
First the kids. There are now 16 kids in school. That does include my four year old Indie. We have enrolled her in the Speaking English program. LOL!! Since i am in school everyday, Indie needs a place to be. AND it is actually good for her as she is learning verb tenses andvocabulary that wil be needed for the Learning to Read program. The pace work (school work) is good for her to, dot to dots, coloring by number, drawing missing parts to things has all been very good for her. It has been good for the other students to actually have an English speaker in the class as well. Indie got a kick on the day they were learning toothbrush. Th is difficult to pronounce since it is a consonant blend that is not in the local languages here. The kids all said toot brush which illicited many giggles from my little Indie. :-) Montana and Corban are in the older learning center, and Jachin in the younger learning center. There are 9 students altogether in those two learning centters. The age ranges are from 6 years old to 12. My kids are getting the hang of doing their school work in "exercise books" or notebooks as we might call them. We have only one copy of each PACE and so they are recycled through each kid. It has really helped cut costs since we don't have to get new paces for every kid for every subject. This does mean that pacework is a bit slower. Imagine having to write everything out instead of underlining, circling, or just anwsering. Math is the biggest time consumer. They have to write out all the problems and then answer them. I really appreciate my kids, a lot, as this has been the biggest change for them as regards school, and they are just rolling with it. It was difficult at first, but now it is normal, and hey it's really what everyone else has to do, too. :-)
Back to the immensely rewarding part. :-) Here is what I love...helping kids learn how to think and how to learn. I took a kid who only completed one pace in the first quarter to completing 11 in the second!! And took the same student who couldn't add or subtract without manipulatives, to being able to go through a flash card deck and get every single one of them right the first time. It still brings tears of joy as i remember it. :-) you know why? Because there was a struggle. I had to fight (not physically, but mentally) to tear down those giants of I CAN'T, and help him, make him see that he CAN. That i tell you, that is what learning is all about. I see his smile and the light that has come on in his eyes because he is beginning to understand, truly understand, what it is that he is learning. That is what I love. It is where my passion is. I have parents who come and thank me, to which I respond, "it is my pleasure" and it truly is my pleasure. Loving kids whom i have not born and engaging their brains to read and think and grow. And I think to myself, this is why God made me.
Why did God make you? Do you know that God made you? He formed your inward parts while yet in your mother's womb. You were wonderfully made, and you are known by the One who created you. He created you for a purpose. i praise and thank God for every day i get to be here, for bringing us back to Ghana. I am so very thankful for His plan and purpose for me, for Steve, and for our family.
I would like to ask you to pray for us. We will be making a trip to Togo next week as we need to leave the country so that we can re-enter the country and get our passports stamped for another two month stay. Steve has been working tirelessly on finding work here. He has applied for several development jobs here. A couple that sound pretty good, and we are not really sure if we will get to stay in Sunyani with any of them. Please pray our travels are uneventful and that we will find the work that the Lord wants Steve to be doing.
We miss you all. Our love to all. God's blessings to you all.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Our house and a tree house
Happy New Year! Wow the last month has just flown! so, here I am as I hope to catch you all up to speed. :-)
We started December still in the two rooms at the school house and moved into the house we're renting on Steve's birthday. it was a little crazy, but we managed to move in and cook a birthday dinner. Steve wanted fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I did pretty well with the masked potatoes but the fried chicken.... well it need to cook more. Hey! not that i don't know how to cook it, mind you, i ended up buying chicken godzilla and could barely fit three legs in my frying pan (a large one at that!). And for dessert, ice cream cake. Ok, that really was the best part! :-) When you only have a two burner stove top you begin to get creative. i tried my hand at pitas today, hoping to add that to my repertoire of stove top cooking, but alas it was not to be. I couldn't get the silly things to puff up so that you could actually stuff them afterwards, but i have digressed haven't I?
back to December. Moving in has been so good! The boys have their own bedroom, the girls have their own bedroom, Nancy has her own bedroom, and we have ours. WOO HOO! And we have two bathrooms, which makes for faster bath times. The water here is not as good as it was at the school/church building. We are not on the main water supply like the school building is. So, the water tends to be more off than on here. So, when the water comes on, there is a rush of excitement to get the washer going and take a "real" shower instead of bucket baths, and fill the water barrels that we now have in the house. We have a water barrel in the kitchen and one in the kids' bathroom area. We have yet to get one for our bathroom, but we will. Just waiting for our favorite discount store to get restocked so we can buy one. :-) Oh, yes, we do have a well. but it is really like the jack and jill kind of well without the convenience of the handy dandy pully to help pull up the bucket. we have a nylon rope and the equivalent of a five pound bucket at the end of it which Steve pulls up approximately 42 feet to fill the buckets that Corban brings into the house to fill the water barrels when their empty. it does seem to happen that as soon as the barrels get filled that our water comes on. C'est la vie!
Soon after we moved in the Harmattan came. The Harmattan is when trade winds blow over the Sahara. It gets very dry and dusty during this time, but the HUGE benefit is that it cools way down at night. Way down into the low 60s! It was even supposed to get down in the upper 50s, but it either didn't happen or we weren't here when it did. We had to switch our 5 speed ceiling fan from the highest 5 down to 2, just so we wouldn't get too cool. :-) Indie has been wearing her long john jammies. Another great thing about the dry season is that our clothes dry super fast on the clothesline, sometimes within the time that it takes to do another load (water permitting).
Corban and Jachin and even Montana some have been working on a treehouse in an avocado tree in the yard. Jachin is out in it most days, and i figure by the time he's ten, it will be a full blown house as he keeps making improvements on it daily. He's currently working on a telephone for it. Maybe we will put a swing in a different avocado tree too. So, of the trees in my yard, I have three avocado trees, a lemon tree, an orange tree, a mango tree, a moringa tree, and 6-8 palm trees (the palm fruit kind), and a papaya tree. Avocados are on the trees now, maybe we will have some ripe very soon. The mango tree is blossoming so hoping by march we have some of those. we have already taken three big bunches of palm fruit off of two trees. We made soup with some and gave the rest away as we don't have a way to keep it. We have a very sizable yard, which has been so great! The kids have been running around and playing quite a bit. this is especially nice because when you live in a walled compound you could feel a bit closed in, but the yard helps tremendously. We even played a game of family football last night. it was quite hilarious! :-D
Our porch has become the best place to hang out. I am there right now as I type. :-) We eat out here, skype out here, do our Bible reading and prayer time out here. It is really great having it screened in so that we can just hang out here at anytime. In the mornings, it is really nice to come out here with a hot cup of coffee while it is still pretty cool and enjoy the coolness. And it's probably about the only time, when drinking a hot cup of anything sounds appealing.
We started our new year off with a meeting out at the treehouse. We talked about what kind of things we'd like to accomplish this year. Mainly we talked about Bible reading plans. Steve and I are going to read the Old Testament once and the New Testament three times this year. Montana is going to read the whole Bible, Corban is going to read about half of the Old and all of the New Testament, Jachin is going to read the New Testament, and Indie is going to have a story read to her each day from her beginner Bible. We're also going to be working on memorizing Psalm 119 (we may take more than a year to do that, though, as the kids still have their school memory work too).
Now you know a little bit about our new place. I have a couple of things I'd like to ask. The very first being is that we would love to host you! Who would like to come for a visit???? :-) We have lots of space now, and would love to see some of you while you get to visit the Saints and work here. The second thing is that we are all missing many of you. Would you consider emailing, facebook messaging, or skyping with us? My kids especially would love to hear from or "see" some of their friends. My kids would love to skype! Please message me so that we can set up a time to do that. Since we are several hours ahead of you, if we could set up an appointment I think we can make it happen that way.
We sure do love you all!
We started December still in the two rooms at the school house and moved into the house we're renting on Steve's birthday. it was a little crazy, but we managed to move in and cook a birthday dinner. Steve wanted fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I did pretty well with the masked potatoes but the fried chicken.... well it need to cook more. Hey! not that i don't know how to cook it, mind you, i ended up buying chicken godzilla and could barely fit three legs in my frying pan (a large one at that!). And for dessert, ice cream cake. Ok, that really was the best part! :-) When you only have a two burner stove top you begin to get creative. i tried my hand at pitas today, hoping to add that to my repertoire of stove top cooking, but alas it was not to be. I couldn't get the silly things to puff up so that you could actually stuff them afterwards, but i have digressed haven't I?
back to December. Moving in has been so good! The boys have their own bedroom, the girls have their own bedroom, Nancy has her own bedroom, and we have ours. WOO HOO! And we have two bathrooms, which makes for faster bath times. The water here is not as good as it was at the school/church building. We are not on the main water supply like the school building is. So, the water tends to be more off than on here. So, when the water comes on, there is a rush of excitement to get the washer going and take a "real" shower instead of bucket baths, and fill the water barrels that we now have in the house. We have a water barrel in the kitchen and one in the kids' bathroom area. We have yet to get one for our bathroom, but we will. Just waiting for our favorite discount store to get restocked so we can buy one. :-) Oh, yes, we do have a well. but it is really like the jack and jill kind of well without the convenience of the handy dandy pully to help pull up the bucket. we have a nylon rope and the equivalent of a five pound bucket at the end of it which Steve pulls up approximately 42 feet to fill the buckets that Corban brings into the house to fill the water barrels when their empty. it does seem to happen that as soon as the barrels get filled that our water comes on. C'est la vie!
Soon after we moved in the Harmattan came. The Harmattan is when trade winds blow over the Sahara. It gets very dry and dusty during this time, but the HUGE benefit is that it cools way down at night. Way down into the low 60s! It was even supposed to get down in the upper 50s, but it either didn't happen or we weren't here when it did. We had to switch our 5 speed ceiling fan from the highest 5 down to 2, just so we wouldn't get too cool. :-) Indie has been wearing her long john jammies. Another great thing about the dry season is that our clothes dry super fast on the clothesline, sometimes within the time that it takes to do another load (water permitting).
Corban and Jachin and even Montana some have been working on a treehouse in an avocado tree in the yard. Jachin is out in it most days, and i figure by the time he's ten, it will be a full blown house as he keeps making improvements on it daily. He's currently working on a telephone for it. Maybe we will put a swing in a different avocado tree too. So, of the trees in my yard, I have three avocado trees, a lemon tree, an orange tree, a mango tree, a moringa tree, and 6-8 palm trees (the palm fruit kind), and a papaya tree. Avocados are on the trees now, maybe we will have some ripe very soon. The mango tree is blossoming so hoping by march we have some of those. we have already taken three big bunches of palm fruit off of two trees. We made soup with some and gave the rest away as we don't have a way to keep it. We have a very sizable yard, which has been so great! The kids have been running around and playing quite a bit. this is especially nice because when you live in a walled compound you could feel a bit closed in, but the yard helps tremendously. We even played a game of family football last night. it was quite hilarious! :-D
Our porch has become the best place to hang out. I am there right now as I type. :-) We eat out here, skype out here, do our Bible reading and prayer time out here. It is really great having it screened in so that we can just hang out here at anytime. In the mornings, it is really nice to come out here with a hot cup of coffee while it is still pretty cool and enjoy the coolness. And it's probably about the only time, when drinking a hot cup of anything sounds appealing.
We started our new year off with a meeting out at the treehouse. We talked about what kind of things we'd like to accomplish this year. Mainly we talked about Bible reading plans. Steve and I are going to read the Old Testament once and the New Testament three times this year. Montana is going to read the whole Bible, Corban is going to read about half of the Old and all of the New Testament, Jachin is going to read the New Testament, and Indie is going to have a story read to her each day from her beginner Bible. We're also going to be working on memorizing Psalm 119 (we may take more than a year to do that, though, as the kids still have their school memory work too).
Now you know a little bit about our new place. I have a couple of things I'd like to ask. The very first being is that we would love to host you! Who would like to come for a visit???? :-) We have lots of space now, and would love to see some of you while you get to visit the Saints and work here. The second thing is that we are all missing many of you. Would you consider emailing, facebook messaging, or skyping with us? My kids especially would love to hear from or "see" some of their friends. My kids would love to skype! Please message me so that we can set up a time to do that. Since we are several hours ahead of you, if we could set up an appointment I think we can make it happen that way.
We sure do love you all!
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Always something....
That's the way it seems to be isn't it? Always something...I think that having lived in America for the past 6 years, I had gotten used to things happening the way that they should. Here the better assumption is that there will always be something. Let me explain a little.
One of the first things we did when we got to Sunyani was to get sim cards for our phones. It turned out that Steve's phone didn't work and my sim card didn't work, and our internet modem needed some help. Of course hindsight is always clearer, but it took us up until a week ago, to get that all smoothed out. Soon after we got our internet to work (choruses of Hallelujah!) the power cord to our computer burned up. Working internet, no working computer. I'm sure you're beginning to see where this is all going. Always something isn't it?!
We have decided it takes a lot more prayer to live here because there is always something. Right now our prayers are focused on having the man who has put his belongings in the house we have rented get them out. Easy, right? Wrong...if we just threw his stuff out he could have us arrested for "missing" items, etc... Don't worry though, there are things we can do, it just takes time...
Back to that prayer aspect, prayer becomes more of a necessity for daily life. Not just prayer for the big things in life, the difficulties, but prayer for the little things and seemingly insignificant. In some bizarre way I am thankful for it. Thankful that i must seek God's care and provision for the daily matters that most of us take little thought. I am thankful for the opportunities for God to be a part of every part of my life. Isn't that what He wants? To be integrated into every part of our lives? I think so.
So whether I come home to a turned off fridge with defrosted meat that all needs to get cooked up right now or the mason who is supposed to attach our gate to the wall consistently doesn't show up or the president is in town and has blocked the only route into town from where we live for the inauguration of a university, there's always something. I choose to thank God anyway.
One of the first things we did when we got to Sunyani was to get sim cards for our phones. It turned out that Steve's phone didn't work and my sim card didn't work, and our internet modem needed some help. Of course hindsight is always clearer, but it took us up until a week ago, to get that all smoothed out. Soon after we got our internet to work (choruses of Hallelujah!) the power cord to our computer burned up. Working internet, no working computer. I'm sure you're beginning to see where this is all going. Always something isn't it?!
We have decided it takes a lot more prayer to live here because there is always something. Right now our prayers are focused on having the man who has put his belongings in the house we have rented get them out. Easy, right? Wrong...if we just threw his stuff out he could have us arrested for "missing" items, etc... Don't worry though, there are things we can do, it just takes time...
Back to that prayer aspect, prayer becomes more of a necessity for daily life. Not just prayer for the big things in life, the difficulties, but prayer for the little things and seemingly insignificant. In some bizarre way I am thankful for it. Thankful that i must seek God's care and provision for the daily matters that most of us take little thought. I am thankful for the opportunities for God to be a part of every part of my life. Isn't that what He wants? To be integrated into every part of our lives? I think so.
So whether I come home to a turned off fridge with defrosted meat that all needs to get cooked up right now or the mason who is supposed to attach our gate to the wall consistently doesn't show up or the president is in town and has blocked the only route into town from where we live for the inauguration of a university, there's always something. I choose to thank God anyway.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Our first two weeks
Hello! So, today is the first day that we have actual internet. So of course, i am on here to blog. Where should I start?
Our flight
This was Indie's first time of ever flying and she did very well. the pressure changes affected her ears, but other than that she was a trooper! She didn't like how loud the bathroom was either, but who does?! We made it to London in good time and were able to chill in the airport for about 3 hours. Our flight to Accra was very uneventful and smooth. the most amazing part was that ALL of our luggage made it with us intact! we looked like a mini train going out of the airport with all of our luggage carts :-)
Our first few days
We spent the first two days in Kumasi with the Hostetters. it was a very nice peaceful place to adjust to the new time zone and overcome some jetlag. Since we arrived in Kumasi on a Thursday, that meant that our first Friday in Ghana was spent at the Hostetters and anyone who has ever been here knows that Friday night is family night! So we were treated to Sherrie's homemade pizza and minerals (or pop as we would call it in the U.S.). Jeff also did his best to wear my boys out :-) He took us all to the zoo and then took my boys on a nature hike.
Back in Sunyani
On saturday we headed up to Sunyani. the hostetters very graciously let us use their van to take all 30 (yes, 30!) pieces of baggage here. It was getting late into the afternoon by the time we got here, and we had to wrangle up some beds for the night. Getting that done, we very happily took cold (not really that cold here) showers and went to bed. The last week and a half has been getting things that we need. things like a two burner stove top or cooker as they call here, an electric kettle (to heat water for bucket baths and sink water), outlet adapters for all our gizmos, food, silverware, buckets (lots of them, as I have been finding uses for them for so many different things), brighter light bulbs, and FANS. the biggest addition has been a washing machine which only the next few days will tell if that was a wise investment. we bought a used one, but it seriously takes forever (several hours to do just one load). i'm wondering if that is how and why it came to be here in Ghana. so we will probably have someone come look at that or bite the bullet and find a new one in kumasi. i have been doing laundry by hand. it takes a couple of hours and it is some serious hard work. the nice thing about handwashing though is that the clothes seem bigger and you feel smaller when you put the things on. :-) All that wringing and then clothesline drying makes for stretchier clothing! Ha!
We are still trying to settle in a bit, find a groove, and work it! The kids have been in school, which i hope is helping them adjust and get into a routine. they love their friends here already. they are constantly asking me if they can go play. The Boateng kids live right next door. Each one of my kids has a matching boateng kid they can play with. :-) Of course they are a bit homesick, as to be expected. Indie has asked me "When will I not be sweaty?" hmmm, right after your bath and while sitting under the ceiling fan, wasn't what she had in mind. Jachin finds the learning center "distracting" because nothing here is as quiet as it was in Mr. Ashley's learning center. :-) Corban has done very well surprisingly. He quickly became reacquainted with the boateng boys, talks to the men in the gym in the evenings, and is all around friendly, though he does miss his friends back in Montana and Oklahoma. Montana is doing well, jumping right back into things and being about as much of Nancy's shadow as she can be. I am working on getting things organized, figuring things out, and getting things into a routine so that I can be working in school as soon as possible.
Since we have internet, my kids would like to skype and "see" some of their friends again. So if you are on skype, please let me know what your skype name is so we can connect. Or you can find me at jenn.icenogle. We would love to visit with you even for just a little bit. We are (up until the time change that happens and then just add another hour) 4 hours ahead of eastern time, 5 hours ahead of central time, and 6 hours ahead of mountain time.
So I know this has been a bit long, hopefully you've beared with me until the end. :-) We do love and miss you all. May God be glorified in all that we do!
Saturday, October 6, 2012
First post
So, here i am at the beginning of my blogging. Mmmmm wonder where this wil take me. i have finally finished packing. ok, mostly. still have the clothes we're wearing and the ones in the clothes baske, and my pillow. but other that. it's all packed! including two kettle bells , 4 dumbbells...in our carryons! did you know that british airways allows you to take 50 lbs in your carryon?! that could be tricky to get that much weight in such a small piece of luggage, but never fear...2 kettlebells, 4 dumbells, and a cast iron skillet have totally helped!!! LOL!!! steve is going to get a workout just getting us situated on the plane! this is going to take me a little bit to figure this whole thing out, so please bear with me as i getthis up and running. and next time i'll use the key board for the tablet.:-)
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