Monkeys like pumpkins...

..and other things I learned this week.

--Staying up until midnight grading papers on back-to-back nights isn't just for first year teachers.

--Asher understands English better than he speaks it. I told him to go get his blue helicopter in the study this week. He turned and disappeared for 20 seconds and came back with the exact toy I told him to get. Impressive...now if he can just stop calling me and the rabbit "Mommy" he'll be golden.

--Micah can call and invite a playdate over without my assistance. I hope he doesn't ask for a cell phone for Christmas.

--My first professional article was published last month. (Read about it here.)

--Making dinner for your wife twice in one week doesn't get you out of dressing up for "Carnival"--our school's version of Halloween. She still hasn't told me what my form of torture will be tonight.

And this picture is of our nicely carved pumpkin--its face expertly eaten off by a Sykes monkey. Micah still likes it though. (No, it's not exactly an orange pumpkin, but we're told it is truly a pumpkin.)

Pictures are just going to have to be worth more than words right now

We've had a supremely busy week since midterm ended on Monday Oct. 13. I've been putting in 12 hours work days every day, and Heather's been giving about 10 hours a day. All that while splitting time watching our two boys. But I got all my papers graded today, just put the boys to bed, and am enjoying a nice stress-free late night right now.

Thought you'd enjoy some pictures of midterm. We went to this lake nearby (45 minutes away) and you can get out of your vehicle and walk relatively close to the animals. The top picture is Asher and me looking at a family of giraffe from about 60 yards away. The middle picture is Heather and Micah out on the lake in a rented boat searching for hippos. The bottom picture is of the closest hippo we saw--about 25 yards away. We saw about 20 or so that day, including a baby hippo on its momma's back. It was one of those "oh-my-gosh-I'm-in-Africa!" kind of days. Yes, we still get those after three years!

Ironic interruption

During John's memorial service on Friday, a man walked towards the front of the church to give a message to a doctor from Kijabe who was attending the service. She walked to the back where an eager, expectant father was waiting for her. His wife's water broke, and the doctor was needed. One missionary moves on from service...and a missionary child is born. The circle of life. Or maybe more like the song "Lightning Crashes" by Live, which is set in a hospital.

"The angel closes her eyes/The confusion that was hers/Belongs now/To the baby down the hall"

Also, Paul's and my attempt to listen to PSU was unfruitful. The Internet was so slow that we would catch about 5 seconds out of every 30 seconds of the broadcast. This is what it sounded like--"Clark goes back for the pass, the defense chases him, and..." Yeah, pretty frustrating. Paul gave up after a half hour, and I ended up reading about the game while the radio broadcast sputtered on uselessly in the background. But when Paul called me this morning after church for the result, he got good news. PSU won 20-6.

A game well played

At our staff meeting on Wednesday, a man stood up who graduated from RVA in 1958 and worked on staff here for man years. After thanking us all for our prayers on behalf of his family, he asked, “Who is the Penn State fan here?” I raised my fist in the air, which prompted him to chant, “We are…” I knew the appropriate response—“Penn State!”

He had seen my tire cover (in the picture above) and knew there was another Lion fan roaming the campus of Rift Valley these days.

The reason he had come back to visit us was to bury and to celebrate the memory of his identical twin brother John. John and his wife Elaine live here on campus, and John served the school (in recent years) by being our visa/immigration/tax guy to the Kenyan government, no small feat for a faculty of around 70. During his forty years of service at RVA (yes, 40!), he had done just about every other job imaginable—teaching, dorm parenting, administration. His wife has built a growing ministry to orphans in recent years (called “Little Lambs”) and will continue in her work even now that he’s gone.

In a beautiful display of love, over 300 students attended a memorial service yesterday, despite the fact that few of them knew him. To see young people (the future missionaries to Africa and world-changers in every corner of the globe) honoring the legacy of a man who devoted his life of 68 years to the Lord’s work on this continent was a beautiful tribute.

The verse that the Lord brought to mind this week was 1 Peter 2:5. “You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

John is no longer a “living stone” here among us, but his time on earth has left a firm foundation. And the “spiritual house” that is RVA will forever be more stable and strong because of him.

You can pray for this family (his two missionary children work in South Africa and Tanzania) as they go through this time of mourning and transition. I’ll take care of his brother tonight. We’re planning to listen to the Penn St.-Purdue football game on Internet radio together at my house. Of course we’re hoping for a PSU win, but I’m also hoping to learn more about this great man who went on to glory this week through his brother.