hello to all

June 25, 2005
Dear Family,
We are doing well this week. Only a 10 more days till we leave. We are working semi-frantically to get everything done before we leave.
Clint put a new metal door on the clinic yesterday. It looks good. We found out the new wood door frame we put in less than a year ago was totally termite eaten under the new nice white paint. None of the wood is good enough to be used for anything but firewood. The termites are so fast here. We are replacing every piece of wood in the clinic as fast as we can. It is worrying the termites who are eating as fast as they can. The rafters are all wood so the termites are going to town on them also. We have almost finished a proposal to ADRA to replace the roof in about a year with metal.
Bethany and Brandel are doing well. Bethany learned to climb into Brandel's bunk bed this week. She has also learned to crawl underneath the gate on our porch to escape. She is doing very well with signs for "please, bottle, done and big". She tries to speak the words for "banana, please and Hola". She copies Brandel making drilling noises. She loves the little rocking horse and really gets it moving sometimes. She knows she is not supposed to be outside with out her shoes so she will bring you her shoes when she wants to go outside. She will get a book and back up to you so that you will pick her up and read her the story. She loves the water and her bathes even when they are cold.
Brandel is talking up a storm. He probably knows at least 50 words. He is riding his bicycle back and forth on the porch regularly. He also works on it regularly with his tools. He wants to turn the rocking horse over and work on it but we are afraid he will hurt it so we tell him the horse doesn't need fixing but his bicycle does. This morning he "found" the mouth on the horse. He spent a long time pretending that it was biting him. He likes to go to church and wear his church clothes. This morning he saw Clint had his church shirt on so he got excited that today was church day.
This week on Wednesday or Thursday, Clint is going to Puerto. Rilla's parents are flying in to visit her for a couple weeks. She is really excited. Her parent's pathfinder club took on the Francia Library as a project. They went door to door collecting books for it. Rilla's parents are bringing almost 300 books for our new library. We are very Thankful for the people that take on challenges such as our library.
We have been extremely busy planting this last couple of weeks. We have planted 42 orange trees. Local oranges are not the type of orange that we are used to in the States. Mostly these are good for juice. They are sour with lots of liquid. So we planted a lot of them. We have planted quite a few coconut and papaya. The rice we planted a few weeks ago is growing well with all this rain. The sweet potatoes are also growing well. I have taken a chance and replanted some radishes and cabbage. I don't know if they will grow or not. Our bucket tomatoes are doing very well. We have gotten a few tomatoes off them now but not nearly as much as we would like to eat. When we come back I will plant a few more buckets now that I know it works.
Clint has started his antenna tower. He has the wood that he got a few weeks ago. Now he is worried that if he leaves it on the ground for the next 3 months while we are gone that it will rot and get termites, which is a completely valid worry. So he is anxious to get it up before we leave. This week he poured the four anchor pads. Now he is facing the enormous task of engineering a way to put up a 35 foot tower with our limited resources. I am still not sure how he is going to do it.
The clinic is going well. We are seeing patients regularly. It is now set up so that it will continue to function without me. Rilla and our local nurse will be able to keep it open and serving the local people. The last group that came down, Union College, brought a large donation that has been used to purchase lab supplies and medicine for the clinic. This will keep it supplied while we are gone. The two reasons in the past that the Clinic has been closed has been lack of medicine and lack of staff. Now we have regular local staff and the Lord has been providing donations to purchase medicines. We give the Lord praise for the work done down here.
Looking forward to seeing everyone soon.
Lots of love
Marilyn, Clint, Brandel and Bethany