Mountain Life

We have great news! Micah had another blood test and the results were great! The Dr. said if he was seriously ill there’s no way he would’ve bounced back that high nor that quickly. He continues to be on a limited diet and is still taking supplements, but it looks like in a few months or less everything will be resolved. 

We also found a vehicle to purchase. It was a little tricky trying to work out the details of buying a car out of state without going back to PA, but we’re figuring it out and are glad to have reliable transportation again.

Lance recently finished a welding competition – his team won, reportedly from Lance’s sound engineering principles, not so much the teams welding skills… I recently had to come up with a recipe to cook in a cast iron skillet over 3 rocks – I wasn’t nearly as successful as I hoped, but learned a lot of good principles in the process. We had goat meat for supper the other night from the goats we slaughtered and dissected in one of our vet classes. Such is life on the mountain – never very typical, often challenging, always interesting.

One of my assignments this year was to use a wringer washer for a month. After Micah got his hand caught in the rollers, I made feeding the clothes into the wringer permanently my job and the boys helped by throwing the clothes into the agitating water (so much fun, as you can imagine) and pulling them out the other side of the rollers into the rinse water. They usually ended up as wet as the clothes we were washing, but we enjoyed working together.

Currently in my women’s class we’re discussing the multiple, dizzying aspects of getting ready to go to the field. From questions to ask a potential mission board to how to know what to pack for where you’re going, it’s all very practical, good to know and I would be much more overwhelmed if there wasn’t such good information given in class and our notebook. 

Lance is done with his mechanics course and on to building construction. At the end of the term his final project is to draft plans for his first home on the field, including the electrical, plumbing and any other systems that go into a building. (Obviously I haven’t taken the course.) Right now he’s designing and drafting the wooden shipping crates that we might actually build and use, depending on which country we go to.

The time Lance took to construct our greenhouse last fall is bearing fruit, literally, as we have already been harvesting lettuce in it all month. We set up a wonderful hydroponics system from Mighty Fine Gardens that is easy to use and working well. The boys love to see how everything is growing from our living room window. 

The boys continue to enjoy life on the mountain: there are millions of tadpoles in the lake to watch, a multitude of visitors from relatives to veterinarians to missionaries home on furlough and with the warm weather, many adventures to find. In-between classes, Alex and Micah are usually on a quest to find mud to play in. During classes, Josiah loves to listen in and learn all he can. He’s even quizzed us afterwards to see if we were paying attention. Recently they helped me fill a tire full of dirt in which to grow potatoes and then we searched for worms to add; we have lots of fun.

Thank you for your continued prayer support,
Ruth, for our family.