Silas turns 4

Silas turned 4 a little while ago. He chose to have a Pirate Birthday party. Everyone dressed up like pirates. They started off with a treasure hunt. Here's Silas trying to figure out the treasure map.

"X" marks the spot of the buried treasure.

Some of the treasure included deadly pirate swords. All the pirates quickly regrouped to a sword fight.

They all survived the sword flight and then boarded their ships for a cannonball fight.

Some of the pirates had trouble staying in their boat, but the cannonballs kept flying.

Everyone especially enjoyed eating the pirate ship cake.

Tree "Trimming"

When I lived in Tennessee, I learned a style of tree "trimming" that I had never seen before in MA. My friends and I dubbed it the "Tennessee chop." They would lop off the whole top of a tree, leaving just the trunk and a few stubs branching out from it. We discovered here in this part of Africa that they use the same method to "trim" trees.... except here most tree cutters don't have cherry picker trucks or chainsaws to use.

We have a number of trees around our house that were getting very tall. During the rainy season, they were swaying quite far in the strong winds that come with each storm. We decided to "trim" the trees before this next rainy season arrived... a little preventative measure to save our roof or power lines from being damaged. Last rainy season, there was a large tree on the street directly across from our gate. During a storm, half of the tree fell over. It fell across the street onto the main power lines and our wall. The street was completely blocked past our house. We called the power and phone companies to remove the tree and reconnect the lines. With that excitement fresh in our minds, we decided to cut some of our trees.

I hired a friend of our guard who cuts trees for a living. Their tools consisted of two machetes and some long ropes. One guy climbed up a tree... adeptly moving around in the tree like he was standing on solid ground. He methodically hacked off branches a piece at a time.

Meanwhile, the other two guys were below on the ground holding the rope to safely lower large branches to the ground.


They started with the two large Flambeau (Flame) trees in our yard that towered above our roof.

Here you can see the first tree has been given the "TN chop" and he is starting on the second tree way above the height of the roof. They spent a day and a half "trimming" all the trees around our house and then moving the huge piles of branches and brush out to the street. Our guard then bought the wood for himself at a highly reduced price. He will use it for his cooking fire for the next 4-5 months.


Silas had a blast watching the guys cutting the trees. He also helped me clean up the yard afterward.

Branching Out

We get asked to help out in a lot of different ways. I recently got asked by one of our colleagues if we could repair a tape duplicator for him. He uses it to duplicate tapes in local languages that he hands out in the marketplace and in villages. The machine can make four copies at a time, but one of the copying bays wasn't working... resulting in a 25% loss in copying ability. He had already narrowed the problem down to the motor for that bay and had gotten a replacement motor from the company that made the machine. He asked if we could remove the old motor and install the new one for him. We said we'd be willing to give it a try at the hangar. Here it is pictured going back together. The old motor is the black box on the table. A few minutes of soldering and the new motor was installed. The duplicator works great now. People are really responding well to the messages on these tapes as well as other forms of media in their heart languages.