Baby, It's Cold Outside...

...and inside!  Although the days can become quite hot, the nights and early mornings are now frigid.  The main difficulty with this cold is that the house temperature plunges along with the outside temperature and does not warm up until afternoon when the sun shines directly through the living room and dining room windows.  Even if the temperature outside becomes hot, the house stays stubbornly cold.  It is not uncommon for us to be able to see our breath inside in the morning! 

We do have a gas-powered space heater that helps.  Whoever gets up first lights it, and then we leave it on for a few hours.  That brings the inside temperature up a few degrees.  Even so, in the mornings we often leave the house in order to warm up outside.  While inside, we all keep one or two sweaters or jackets on.  We have plans to install clay ovens in both houses, and those will be useful for warmth once they are completed.

the papaya definitely doesn't like cold

A chilled avocado tree

The autumn weather means that, in the night, the grass develops a fine layer of frost which clings until the sun touches it.  Several of the plants we put out in the garden resent the cold, and their blackened, withered leaves show their displeasure.  Hopefully the plants are strong enough to rebound when the weather warms up again in March.

Most of the plants aren't out in the garden yet, as there is no place for them.  There are still workers coming six days a week since construction continues on our house, now on the second story.  Six's first story is mostly complete, although she doesn't have a proper floor yet.  We are still living in her house, because ours does not have finished windows, nor does it have doors or electricity.  We hope to be mostly moved into our house before Christmas, although that may mean finding someone else to do the doors.

The well is almost finished, and today we had giant puddles (which both the kids and the ducks enjoyed), while the well-diggers emptied water in order to keep digging a bit more.  Seeing the digging progress amazes me at how labor-intensive it is!  One man is lowered by pulley on a handmade swing while the other man stays above to help.  The one in the well digs or chisels out rocks by hand and passes buckets up with the same pulley.  All this inside a deep hole...

Please continue to pray for us.  Pray for the construction to continue without injury or accidents.  Pray also that the people working for us will desire a relationship with their Savior.  Some of the men have had conversations with both Six and Abraham about their faith.  As always, please continue to pray for health.  Abish and Lani both have coughs now, although Lani is improving after several days with fever.