Twelve beds in twelve months!

This certainly will be a year to remember in relation to all our moving around. A year full of people, places and new experiences. Unfortunately this is another temporary move we hoped we could avoid but finding a longer-term house to rent in the city has proved harder than we thought. So

Packing to move with the MAF Kit to
our next home!

with the two other MAF families returning we needed to move off the MAF compound. We are now living on the SIL compound (another larger mission compound). It is only about 5 minutes drive from MAF so easy to pop between the two! The new house and compound also has a small play area and trampoline, which is great for the girls. 

I now have the packing down to a fine art form, made easier by the fact that we are still moving around with our seven bags we arrived in Chad with as we wait for the rest of our items to arrive from Uganda. Two small delays with that though as firstly we need to have a house to put all our items in, and secondly we need to wait for MAF Uganda to be able to fly them all up on one of their planes. (Due to an issue with the CAA in Uganda, no Ugandan registered air operators are allowed to fly internationally at the moment. We hope and pray MAF Uganda will be able to fly internationally again soon, not only because of our needs, but due to the amazing work they do supporting South Sudan and DRC). 

Living out of seven bags has been interesting though. I remember packing in Uganda panicking as to whether we were bringing the right things. So many unknowns and what ifs!! On some days it has made me realise though how little we actually need and question what exactly is in the 20 or so boxes waiting to come! On other days in a moment of frustration or sadness I have longed for a few of my photo frames or kitchen comforts or the girls toys! But with the iPad full of photos, and generous MAF friends sharing their kitchens, and with sunshine all day and outside areas to play we quickly move on. That said we will be very excited when our things do come! 

Another major change we have had to adjust to this last month has been the weather. When we arrived in July it was the start of the rainy season. Highs of around 30ish degrees celsius, very muggy and humid and some amazing storms which cooled everything down momentarily! As we crept into October the rains ended and it started to get very hot and dry. On an average day we now have highs between 38-40 degrees and humidity can be as low as 8%. For a few weeks it was just hot, all the time. We especially felt this moving to the new house as we had been blessed with air conditioners at MAF (depending on power) where as now we just have ceiling fans. The temperatures at night were staying around 30 degree so that took a bit of adjusting to. Now we are heading into November the nights are cooling off and for the first time early this morning I actually needed to pull the sheet up!

So as we now head into November we have lots going on and lots to look forward to. The house hunt continues, Rachel returns to her pre school after two weeks half term, two little ladies will be having two special birthdays (Rebecca will be one on the 19th and Rachel will be three on the 30th), we hope and pray all our things will arrive in Chad, and Sam has a very busy work schedule. 

Thank you again for all your love and prayers. We love hearing news from afar and apologise that we don't always manage to reply.