Last days of Senegal

Our last few days in Senegal flew by all too quickly.  The only reason I wasn't weeping during the last week is because we know that Kari's family is coming to Budapest for Christmas!  It always makes saying good-bye easier when we know the next visit is just months away.  :-)

Alec enjoys lovin' on Yvia, although he lost interest in playing with her in a matter of seconds.  

Yvia became more alert during those 3 short weeks we were there with her.

Alec is very tactile.  That is, he loves to touch and manipulate different textures.  Here, he was supposed to be gluing tissue paper to construction paper with a glue stick but was actually gluing the paper to his fingers!  After a while, he wasn't crazy about the fact that he couldn't get the paper from sticking to his fingers.  It was cute to watch his expressions as he tried to pull the paper off his fingers, only to have the paper stick to other fingers!

Yvia, ever sleeping with hands above her head--like her cousin Jazmine!

Reading Cowboy Bill or Curious George books with Alec was always a pleasure for Glenn and me.

Watching Yvia sleep or playing with her for the few minutes she was awake between "meals" was a blessing to Glenn and me!

Alec talking to Yvia.

Never got tired of holding Yvia.

We have one more precious grandchild, Jazmine, the daughter of Chris (our son) and Kate.  Jazmine will have a little sister in September!  (Our fourth grandchild)

Besides missing being with Kari, Jonathan, Alec and Yvia, I also greatly miss eating all the mangoes and melons I cut each day!  They were in peak season and so delicious!

Well, eventually I had to leave the world of Africa, my daughter's family, mangoes and melons, and vacation time to re-enter the world of work, Budapest and traveling.  We were gone for the shortest month ever!

Glenn and I received this flyer in our mailbox for a new phenomenon in Hungary.  Garage sales!  Truly a new concept.  If you look at the flyer closely, you may notice that they are selling a STOP sign (not something that most families would have in their basement!) and the box of miscellaneous things is marked: 25 cents.  Cents?  Or do you mean forints?  Evidently, this was a piece of American clip art!

We made the mistake of going to Ikea to pick up something (to take to a friend in Serbia next week) while mourning the loss of our daughter's family.  We walked out with a train set for Alec and a table to set it out on when he comes at Christmas.  Hmmm, if we could get Chris and Kate and Jazmine out here for Christmas too, what would we buy for her???

Four days after returning to BP, we left again for Czech Republic to visit our personnel.  We stopped in Brno to participate in a ministry opportunity for 3 days with some friends of ours.  Their church was providing free family portraits to the community taken by 3 volunteer photographers from our company in an effort to introduce people to the various ministries of the church.  Glenn worked with the photographers, and I helped with the cooking for all the volunteers involved in this community outreach.

This is one of about 10 good pictures they took of us.

We had a few minutes one afternoon to run into downtown Brno to see a couple of sights with one of the other volunteers.  We've been to Brno about 5 times, and never seen any of the city sights.  The alligator is the symbol of Brno so it was very fitting for Glenn to have his picture taken with the city mascot.

Our host told us that the graduating high school senior classes always try to find some unique way to display their class pictures in store windows throughout the city.  We found this display to be one of the most unique displays!

Each student had their picture on a beer bottle!

This is another class photo!  Each student is modeling or advertising some item, and their name is in place of the actual item.

And to end on a humorous note ...

We saw this sign on the door to a souvenir shop.  No smoking, no ice cream cones, no talking on cell phones, no eating, no drinks, and the last one is no passing gas and being drunk!  What???

We head to Prague from here, then to Hradec to visit more friends before returning to BP next Thursday.  We love this part of our ministry most of all!