Happy New Year!

We returned to NK on Monday with two vehicles loaded to the gills. We were praising the Lord that the line at the ferry was short. We left the guesthouse at about 10:30 am and were home by 1:30 pm. Those of you who have experienced the ferry, know how good that is. Drive time from the guesthouse to here is about 1/2 hour on each side of the river and the crossing itself takes any where from 30 minutes to over an hour depending on the state of the engines. Wait time is highly unpredictable especially mid-day. Usually we figure on at least a 2 hour wait. If it's less than that we celebrate! My longest ferry wait ever was about 13 hours. I left the hotel where I was staying at 5 am and finally got home at 8:30 pm. Those kind of waits don't happen too often fortunately!

Suellen, Teresa and I celebrated New Year's Eve with our traditional bonfire. Shivering (after all, it was probably high 60's, low 70's), we sat around watching the fire, eating chile, cornbread and brownies. We decided we would go to bed when the wood ran out. (We thought it would run out before midnight, but it didn't.) Being missionaries who like to accomplish something even with a fun event, for the past couple of years, we have been building our bonfires in the stump of the big tree that used to be in the center of the compound. You can't see the stump anymore and this year we made inroads into the roots that still remained. By the time others join us here, the 3 of us will be the only ones who know why we have bonfires in the center of the compound.