Closer to home

Hi, its Cynthia here.  Samuel is away again, but just for a few days, and I thought it may be a good time to catch you up on the Bacon family.  Samuel hasn't blogged much lately and his last one was about the election.  I’m guessing/hoping that some one may actually want to know how Israel and Serenity are going!  Not to mention a few other small details.
Soo… we had 2 weeks here  without Samuel earlier this month - which was a first for us.  Thankfully Buddy was around to guard us from any danger (although only in the day, as each night he would wriggle out the fence and go and run wild, fighting with the competition and chasing the girls around – boys!) So really he wasn't much use cause he would arrive back home around breakfast time and sleep the rest of the day….hmmm.     Maybe Israel was our protector after all.
Our health has been pretty good, thank God!  Serenity and I have each had a 3 day flu which is nothing compared to the dengue running riot over here.  Lots of foreigners have been sick with dengue and we heard that something like 60 Timorese kids have died from it so far this season.  Pretty sad.
While Samuel was away we met a visitor who had just arrived in Timor.  His name is Bevan and he is a wheat farmer from SA.  Last Sunday we invited him along to the home church we hosted and he will be arriving tomorrow to stay with us for a while.  Speaking of home church, Paul came.  He works for MAF and has come for a week to replace John who is  with his family in Australia.  Earlier in the morning we had heard him fly out (a perk of living next to the airport) and we had rightly assumed he was doing a medi vac.  He explained later how he had picked up a teenage girl had been very badly burnt in a house fire.  Very sad.  I guess its good that she is alive though.  Her family are with her in the hospital.  She came from Suai, which is where Sinta comes from (Sinta works at Bellekria).  So in the evening I shared the news with her and later this week we may try and visit the family and assist in some way.
When we first arrived back in Jan, an expat here asked me to find or recommend a suitable young woman to train up as a housekeeper.  I asked Sinta, who seems to know about people.  She recommended 2 girls.  One lives locally and has finished school and was keen to work hard.  So we arranged for her to start a month ago and it has been going really well for them.   The other girl lives in Suai and and is a kind of orphan with another sad story – her father (Sintas relative) brought her back to Timor from Indonesia when she was a tiny baby.  She never knew her birth mother.  Then when she was still little her father was killed in 1998.  So she was “adopted” by her dads sister.  But recently this aunt also died.  So she now lives with her aunts husband.  And he is likely to find another wife which may fare badly for this girl as generally step mums are nasty to step kids here.  Just like the stories I suppose.  Anyway so we have arranged for an expat here to pay this girls school fees, and Sinta is keen to bring her down to Dili  live with her.  Its just a matter of finding the means for Sinta to go there or send a message somehow.
Also a  couple of expats have been bringing their unwanted items to us to distribute, and I'm starting to wonder if we should actually open an opshop of sorts somewhere, like this one in Thailand.  Its an interesting idea.  But instead I sent a lot of it off with Samuel to Los Palos for Pastor Samuel & Uli to distribute there.
What else….
Homeschooling has generally been chugging along well this year,  although I've had a particularly trying few days and feel ready to throw in the sack and let them run wild. But I hear that's just a normal part of teaching, and I’m sure I’ll recover and keep on going. Besides, I have to do something with them to stop them bickering all day :)
I hosted the Tuesday afternoon “homeschool” group, and after some brain games i got them to try and build a tower.  Yes Serenity had her hair in tiny plaits for a few weeks.  I do it as a treat about once a year.
Serenity is obsessed with Buddy and Taffy and rarely speaks about anything else… Is that normal?  I guess its better than some other obsessions.  Taffy is looking a little plump – more than halfway through her 2 month pregnancy. (well its 20 days to go apparently…) Both Serenity and Israel (ok and me) are very excited and cant wait till she gives birth to some cute little kittens.  They have made box kitten houses and play gyms and are currently making a birthing bed.  It keeps them occupied.   We had a sweet sunset a while ago and then Serenity took a photo showing two planets.  Israel enjoyed the rope swing.
Now that our house is more of a home I’ve noticed that they spend less time playing with the neighbours which is a bit of a shame I suppose.  The benefit is that they come home in tears less often. They still go and play a few afternoons each week and occasionally they bring a group of them down to our front verandah and play hopscotch or draw with chalk on the concrete floor.  We haven't been swimming so much this year.  Its too cold for me.  But it has also been pretty overcast and windy, and the current “current” often seems to bring the brown water from the river.  Most of the year the current flows it away from our beach, but this time of year it switches.  Haven't seen any crocodiles or dolphins lately.
Well thats about everything I can think to write about at the moment.
Oh and heres a giant caterpillar! If only it made a  giant butterfly.
I am sure Samuel will have some more stories to tell later in the week when he gets back.
Thats all folks