Kabiye Team News
March 19, 2001

Dear Family and Friends,

We send you sweaty greetings from the land of heat and dust!  We are entering into our hottest period here in Togo as the temperatures rise to the low 100s every day and are down in the 80s (out of doors) at night.  Our houses, made of cement brick, tend to soak up the hot sun all day and just as they are beginning to cool down around 5am the next morning, the sun pops its head up quickly to its almost constant position overhead, as we are situated so close to the equator.  It has not rained here since the beginning of October, so we are eagerly anticipating the scattered showers that are supposed to recommence in April, although the rainy season doesn't officially begin until June, we are told.  Praises be to God, however, that our heat is relatively dry, unlike the sweltering sauna in the south of the country where humidity seems to always be between 80 and 100% with the same temperatures in the low 100s.  We are surviving, though, and are trying to brace ourselves for April and May, which we are told are the hottest of the hot months.  The fans in our house are a huge blessing and we are also looking into putting an air conditioner in our bedroom sometime in the next couple of weeks to have a place of refuge from the heat, especially for Elijah as his heat rash flares up a lot and my main goal throughout each day is to nurse him constantly as he has been getting mildly dehydrated.  However, there are other things to talk about besides the heat.  We just want to make you feel a little bit sorry for us now and then:-)  We really are doing well!  God has delivered all of us from our sicknesses and Hannah celebrated her second birthday 4 days ago with a swim party in our back yard with Isaac, Abby, Maddie, and Mary Claire.  Hannah is talking so much lately and is very pleased with her ability (as are we!) to put her many intense thoughts into words!  She continues to be such a joy in our lives and is a wonderful big sister to "Baby Liejit". (as she affectionately calls Elijah:) )

Thank you for those of you who were praying for our six month retreat.  It was a very successful time of goal setting, and recreation.  We have a modest set of goals that we have set and are in the process, as a team, of planning the necessary things to carry out our goals over the next 6 months.  Our children had a fun time playing together and the adults got to have a little fun as we played water balloon volleyball and created two "mock" Spring Sing shows and performed them for each other.  The latter, of course, was an exclusive, one time, performance and unfortunately will not be available for anyone's viewing pleasure, much to my disappointment, but to the satisfaction of many of the other embarrassed members of our team. (Who, by the way, I would like to thank deeply for going along with such a crazy and entertaining idea that has provided me lasting memories to chuckle at through these next few months of culture shock:-))  Speaking of which - (culture shock) the answer is "Yes", for all of you who are a bit worried or may be wondering by trying to read in between the lines of this review if we are indeed in culture shock.  For each of us on our team, this culture shock or stress seems to manifest itself in a different way, but I think I can safely say from each individual family's testimony that each of us are under some sort of culture stress.  Speaking now for the Reeves family, I will say that we move in and out of stress and shock and there are moments when I feel that neither of the two are present, and I am content and able to functin normally, but perhaps this is an illusion that I will look back on and realize it was only some kind of strange coping mechanism where I was detached from reality. But for now, I will claim that I feel no culture shock or stress at some moments in my day.  Dave, I think, would claim that this is only a fact when he is engrossed in building a civilization on his computer out here in the air conditioned office.  I won't share any personal manifestations of this culture shock for our family, as of late, because they are becoming increasingly embarrassing, so we will wait until we are far removed from this state of shock and then tell you stories when we are more able to laugh at ourselves and our reactions to this culture.

Please continue to pray for us in this and for our spiritual and physical health.  We really are doing better than I've portrayed!  Elijah is growing and gaining weight very well and is smiling and even laughing now and then throughout most of the day.  He has a fussy period around dinner time every night, but otherwise, is a completely happy and joyful little boy, for whom I can't get enough of his presence:-)  Hannah is a riot and so much fun, although she does have her periods of being "two". This "two-ness"hasn't become terrrible only "trying" at times.  My only somewhat humorous story is an incident that took place a couple of weeks ago as I was attempting to take Elijah's underarm temperature with an electronic thermometer. (You know, the kind that BEEP when they have detected the body temperature?)  Well, I pushed the button to start the process and before I could even get it under Elijah's arm, it beeped and it flashed up "99 degrees".  Thinking it was a mistake, I tried again.  This went on for three separate times as I finally gave up, realizing that the air temperature was 99 degrees and that I wasn't going to get an accurate reading no matter what I did!  It turned out that Elijah did not have a fever, he was only hot from the hot day!

The last update that I want to share with you is that Dave and I have both begun a regular weekly schedule of language learning, along with time for Dave to visit villages twice a week and scheduled study time for him and a time for me to do "preschool" activities with Hannah.  Our schedule has been in place now for only one week, but we are both enjoying our language lessons and our week seems to have some routine to it, that before wasn't as present.  Our settling in/ welcoming a new member of our family phase has ended and our working phase of concentrated language learning has begun.  Thank  you again for your prayers and your love for us.  We love you each deeply and praise God for His work in your lives and in ours.  May you be wrapped in His peace today and comforted by His presence. 

In His Love,
Becky (for the Reeves family) 

"The eyes of the Lord are in every place keeping watch on the evil and the good."  Proverbs 15:3