Adjusting to Life in the Village

Tonight we will have a light as we finally found one of our 110V light bulbs in our stack of stuff.
We have been using candles at night but it will be good to at least run the generator for an hour
with an electric light! The running of the generator allows us to charge all of our electronic
devices, too. :)

Things are beginning to come together here in the house but still A LOT of work to be done. I've
spent a good part of today working on screens. Will do that some more once I have this email written.

Yesterday I tested out our washing machine that has been sitting around forever. Everything looked
great and I was trying to run it through a cycle with just soapy water. Well, I got to the spin
phase and all of a sudden a big rat leaped out from around the tub and into the water! Then right
away the spin slowed down and grinded to a halt. I shut everything off and was convinced that
something in the washing machine squished another rat and that was what stopped the machine from
spinning. I was able to take a cover piece off and peer down inside around the tub of the
washer...and there he was, another rat peering up at me. He didn't look hurt at all. To make a long
story shorter, in the end we just put enough water in the tub so that the rat had to be closer to us
in order to breathe. I let him just sit there and chill in the water, hoping that would weaken him.
Finally, Reb helped me get the critter. I had to put two sticks down and kind of pinch him and then
pull him up. It wasn't easy as he was still full of life! We've killed three rats in the house here
so far. I think all three were transported down here unknowingly in our stuff when we had the men
haul all of our things down here. It was all quiet last night so I think we got all the ones that
were in here. Of course, without screens in the windows any number of critters can climb in here
during the night if they wanted to!

We're all doing well. We've had Ash come here to the house already a couple of times. One family is
a family we know from Brazil.

Thanks for praying!

-Brad