Kabiye Team News
April 23, 2000

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy Easter! (or Joyeuse Paques, as we say here in France!) We hope and pray that all of you have had a wonderful Easter and have been blessed with another reminder of the Risen Savior that we serve and adore! We had an extra special team worship time tonight as we focused on Jesus' resurrection and were blessed with Don Neal's parents, Bryan Ries's parents and Nicole Kennell's sisters visiting with us from the states. We are on our spring break here at the Center (that's our friendly term for the language school), and many of our teammates have had family visiting. It's been a blessing to see all of them again. Both sets of our parents are coming to visit us near the end of July/beginning of August, just before we leave for Africa. Having other parents here makes us excited for our families' arrival!

Thank you for all of you who have been praying for our language learning and for the devotional that David led in French a week and a half ago. He did a very good job and is looking forward to his next opportunity:-) It will probably be my turn, though, before he gets the privilege again! Our final exams are "final"ly over, so we are ready for a fresh start into this new semester. We both did well, according to how much we had learned, and the exams really helped show us specific areas that we were strong in and others that needed more work. Please, please continue to pray for us in this area of language learning, that we will be diligent and dedicated in these last 3 months before we leave. Please pray, specifically, that God will give us the very amount of French that we will need to communicate and, especially, to learn Kabiye, once we arrive in Africa.

This last Monday through Wednesday we took a small family vacation to Paris. We had grand plans for seeing many things, but traveling with a one-year old changed things a bit:-) We plan to go back to Paris with our families when they come and so we mainly wanted to scope out good places to visit and we wanted to take Hannah to the zoo. This was our trip's success story, as Hannah had one of the highlight experiences of her life! She loves all animals and loved everything she saw at the Paris Zoo, especially the giraffes and the Malaysian sun bears. If she could have, she would have jumped right through the fence and ran towards them! We also saw Notre Dame and the Picasso Museum (which we found very strange!) We were in Paris for only one day on a layover from Africa back to the states in '96 and saw at least 3 times as many things as we saw in 3 days with a baby. C'est la vie! We did have some good family time and we got to eat at Pizza Hut and Chi Chis! It was great to eat at two genuine American restaurants!

The last few days we have been cleaning, relaxing and playing with and taking care of Hannah. Please pray for her. She has had a yucky cold for a couple of weeks. We took her to the doctor when we got back from Paris and were told that she had two ear infections. She is presently on an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory medicine, but has not been able to sleep very well and seems to be in pain so much of the time. She is pretty cranky and also has a cough. Please pray that the medicine will do its job and that her body will heal quickly. All of our kids have been sick off and on since we have been here, and it is beginning to be frustrating to all of us parents who hate to watch our children suffer through even a cold. The doctors have told us that since they've had the warmest winter here in quite a few years that there are a lot more viruses and bacterias being spread than would normally be in the air. Also, with all of our kids together in the nursery, stuff gets spread around that would normally be contained. Please pray that all of them will be healthy through the rest of the spring and summer so that their immune systems will be in top shape when we arrive in Africa.

We have good news about our arrival in Africa! The Millers and Kennells will be flying into Lome (the capitol of Togo) on August 14th and we, along with the Neals and Rieses will be arriving in Lome on August 21st. We plan to head up to Kara (a 7 hour drive) on August 22nd or 23rd. We have found some good prices on tickets and are so thankful to God for providing for us once again in this way.

Some other tidbits about Hannah: the world of verbal expression is opening wide its doors to Hannah over the past few days! Perhaps because she has been hearing only English recently, since she's been out of the nursery for a week, she is clearly saying some words and trying to repeat many others after us. Her repertoire of clearly understandable words to date are: Mama, Papa, Daddy, Hannah, all done, down, thank you, Abby, Isaac, Grandmama, Grandaddy, Grandpa, Grandma, baby, bath. She says other words consistently but ones that probably only we can understand! She also knows the sign language signs for please, thank you, all done, down, and her own version of no (shaking her head vigorously). She uses all of these as she says the word that she knows and we are so amazed and proud of her!! (Sorry, we can't help it.) She is also learning to climb stairs on her own, and can even do her own version of a crawl now! (It's not pretty, but it gets her where she wants to go when walking or running don't work, although she definitely prefers these modes of mobility!) We pray for all of you and know that God is pouring His love upon you in many ways as you walk with Him. Miss all of you and always look forward to hearing from you!

In Our Savior's Love, David and Becky

Jude vs. 24, "To Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy-to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen."