happy august!

Right.

We've been sick.  And when I say "sick," I mean, we've joined the ranks of the millions worldwide who've suffered from the scourge of malaria.  For those of you who weren't already aware through our prayer requests via Facebook or email, or our July newsletter, let me just sum up by saying David and I succumbed to malaria together and spent 6 days incredibly ill together.  We're very thankful that Elijah was spared!  We're even more thankful that our energetic, high-demand toddler was well taken care of by our colleagues while David and I were too sick to move!  I won't go into the gritty details.  Just suffice it to say, I've never been that sick in my life before, nor have I ever been sick for *that long* in my life before.  Malaria really takes a toll on your body... and I know, for a fact, that regardless of how sick we were, we weren't nearly as sick as we could have been.  The Lord is really merciful and He shows His care for us even in the hard providences!

Happily, the meds did their job and the malaria is gone, and now that we've been recovering for nearly a week, we've just about got our strength back, too.  It was necessary to "lie low" last week and recover, but this week we're back to our normal operating schedule.

Except for one thing.  One additional thing.  I've started "toilet-training" with Elijah (for lack of a better term). At this stage, it's more like we're working on learning to associate the words "poop" and "pee-pee" with the actions, whether in the toilet, in the diaper, or on the floor.  My goal with this "training" is simply to get as far as we can as soon as we can... whatever that happens to be.  I would prefer to NOT have two children in diapers... but even if Elijah doesn't successfully become a 100% toilet trained child by December, at least we've made a start... and we've not waited until he's 2 or 3 to start.  So, yeah, you can imagine there's not a dull moment around this house right now!  (Elijah would make sure of that even if we weren't toilet training!)  Keeping a 13-month-old occupied enough by singing and reading to sit still on the potty for 5 minutes is... challenging, to say the least.

We just sent out our July newsletter, so if you haven't received it and you'd like to be on our mailing list, let me know!