Water Games

One of the great things about the school where the kids attend is all the extra activities that they provide for the whole community. Seeing as we are now in the middle of hot season, the student council recently held water games for the elementary students after school. They even let Elayna and Silas join in the fun along with the younger siblings of other students. We love the family atmosphere at the school and the way the kids are able to have fun with students of all ages. One of the games was bobbing for frozen tampicos in a bucket of water.


Here's Silas holding his treasured frozen tampico. This particular tampico is like an orange slushy in a bag.


The kids tested their skills at doing the limbo under a stream of water.



One of the favorite games was the slip and slide that they made on the newly planted grass on the playing field.


One of the last games was a relay race. Each team had a shirt that they soaked in a bucket of water. Then they carried the shirt to the other end where they squeezed the water into a can. Whichever team collected the most water won. The older elementary students had to wear the wet shirt as they ran. Here Silas is being helped by one of the high school girls.

We did have one injury during the water games. One of our elementary boys broke his leg in three spots while jumping on the wet grass. The Lord orchestrated everything to provide the medical help he needed. His teacher immediately did a great job of comforting and calming him while the school nurse helped. Krista called his parents to come get him. Another parent (who is a doctor) helped assess his injury. His parents came and loaded him on a board into their station wagon to take him to a local clinic for x-rays. On our way home, we stopped at our mission office and ran into one of our doctors (a Pediatrician) who had just arrived in town from Galmi hospital. We mentioned what had happened and he recommended having another doctor (a surgeon) look at the x-rays. The other doctor had just arrived in Niger from the States an hour before. He was staying at the guesthouse with his wife and a friend who is also a surgeon. I was going to be flying the three of them to Galmi the next morning so I needed to talk with them anyways to make arrangements for our flight.

We headed to the guesthouse to see them. Even though they'd been traveling for more than 24 hours, they were willing to go to the clinic to help. After dropping Krista and the kids off at our house, I drove the two surgeons to the clinic. His parents were quite relieved to see them walk into the clinic. They were supposed to arrive in Niger two weeks earlier, but their trip had to be postponed because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland. Otherwise they wouldn't have been here in town on that day. The people at the clinic graciously allowed our two surgeons to direct the care. They all agreed that the break was too complicated to treat here and that he needed to be evacuated to England for surgery. They immobilized his leg with plaster from his foot up to his waste. A few days later a medical evacuation plane came and flew him and his dad to England. They'll be in England for at least a month and will have to return to England in 9 months to have the pins removed from his leg. Pray for this family as they are separated for several more weeks. The mom is in the States now for a conference and the other kids are staying with another mission family here.

A New Plane

SIMAIR is in the process of completing the purchase of a second 4-seat Cessna 182! Our long-time SIMAIR pilot, Jim (who's in the States now), found us this plane last week. He negotiated a price that is $30,000 USD cheaper than the price we paid for our last Cessna 182. This is a huge step forward for SIMAIR. There are still a lot of steps left to take before this project is complete. The current engine on the plane needs to be replaced with the diesel engine as well as other modifications that need to be done to the plane before it heads to Niger. Roughly $110,000 USD still needs to be raised to finish the project: $55,000 is still needed to pay for the engine conversion and another $55,000 is needed for the other modifications and transport of the plane to Niger. Pray that these funds would come in quickly so this plane can be put in service in Niger soon alongside the 1st Diesel Cessna 182. Once this plane arrives in Niger, we'll be looking to sell our Piper Saratoga which still uses the very expensive and hard to find Avgas fuel. With two planes that use Jet Fuel, SIMAIR will no longer have a need for Avgas. This has been a long-time goal of SIMAIR, so that we can provide as affordable a service as possible to missionaries across West Africa.

We're almost there! Would you consider helping us finish the project? You can pray, share the need with others, and give if you feel led to do so. You can give online in the USA by clicking here. The project information is already entered on that page. You simply select the amount of the donation, chose the method of payment and follow the instructions. To give online in Canada click here. Under "step 3" specify that the donation is for SIMAIR 2nd Diesel Plane Project #097720. If you want to send a check instead, contact us and we can send you in the right direction.

Von Rideout family singers

Every 5-6 weeks, Krista helps lead worship for the Sunday night Niamey English Worship Service (NEWS). Different missionaries and visitors take turns preaching and leading worship each week. A few weeks ago, the person preaching spoke on having faith like a child. Krista thought it was a good opportunity to involve our kids in helping lead the worship. The kids worked hard learning the songs and did a great job. Here's a picture of Krista, Joy (our adopted oldest daughter for the year) and the kids singing.

Softball

One of the fun activities that some of us do here is play softball. We usually play pick up games of softball on Saturday afternoons. Each year, there are also two softball tournaments: one in Niamey in October and one in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in February. The teams participating are different every time depending on who's around and available. Last month, we took a rather unique team to the tournament in Ouaga. Our team was made up of missionaries from 5 different missions, volunteers with the Japanese version of the Peace Corps, a US Marine, and someone from a humanitarian organization. We drove about 6 hours to Ouaga for the weekend tournament.

3 of us from our team went expecting to sleep on the floor of a guesthouse. When we arrived, we discovered that the hospitality committee found other housing for us. They arranged for us to stay at the US Ambassador's house. They haven't had an ambassador there for a while, so the house was empty. It was a fun treat to crash at the ambassador's house for the weekend. Somehow I ended up with the master bedroom.

The first day of the tournament was a pool system where we played each of the other three teams in the competitive division. We lost all three of our games. Since there were only 4 teams in the competitive division, all 4 teams played again the next day in the semi-finals. We won our game and made it to the finals. Then, we won the finals. We finished the tournament with a losing record (2-3), but we won the tournament. It was fun to see the team come together and play well when it counted.

The picture above is our team as well as the team we played in the finals (the Burkina Bats).



Here's our team: the Niamey Nomads.

Another birthday celebration!

Our sweet Brynnie turned six on Friday! She wanted a Fairy tale themed party, and several of her friends came dressed as knights and princesses.
Here she is with her princess and the pea cake.They had a "dragon egg" hunt in the yard, which was a big hit!
She got this dress-up dress for her birthday.
We're very proud of our sweet girl! She is a delight to be around, always does her best, and cares about others. We love you Brynn!

Growing pups!

We are having such a great time with these sweet little puppies! Each day they get more playful and cute. Above is Kolo, who will go to Sahel Academy to live with Amber and Betsy.
These pups will be among the most well socialized ones around! They are loved on and played with whenever the kids are allowed. We do give them plenty of time to eat and sleep, of course.

This is Buddy and Domino. They paused for a picture between wrestling and gnawing on each others ears.
Cookie is my little sweetheart. I can't get enough of playing with her.
The four kid to four puppy ratio continues to work well. All the puppies get attention, and all the kids have a puppy to play with.

We'll be sad to send them off to their new homes in four more weeks! But in the meantime we are taking full advantage of having them around.

Birthday Boy!

Yesterday Silas celebrated his third birthday! It's hard to believe he's already three. His favorite things to do lately are singing, playing with his trains, and in the last few weeks playing with our puppies. Here is Silas with Buddy.



He got some fun animal visors from Nana and Papa, and Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Amanda. He loved roaring like a tiger while wearing this!



For the last few months he has been begging for a sock monkey like his sisters have. Aunt Sarah made the girls all some beautiful ones, and he loves them! Well, my sewing skills aren't quite up to the level of Aunt Sarah (She's amazing! She's made so many great gifts for the kids!) I made an attempt. Silas is quite pleased, and that's all that counts.

Here's the big three year old enjoying a piece of his train cake.
He gave us quite a show blowing out the candles one at a time and with a great deal of effort.

Due to some unpreventable circumstances his planned party ended up being just family. But turning three was all about the cake and ice cream and the presents. He was pretty happy, guests or not!