Coffee with Christine

BLESSED CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!! A few pictures to get you updated on what's been happening at the Phangs while Tony was gone! Goofing around with Max! Decorating cookies...an annual tradition... A very proud cookie decorator! Kathryn's blue man and snow man! Emm....should i decorate the cookies or eat them??? Vickie's "retro" bell! Can you guess which ones are mine? Guess who got to clean up the mess after?? Gifts for Kathryn's Sunday School class.. Each gift pack has a lollipop, candy and a squishy yoyo ball that lights up! Only from Malaysia! We made over 30 packets. Not counting the gifts for the orphans (hundreds! ), I wrapped over 200 + gifts for students, pastors and family, workers at the orpahange, friends, etc. My hands must be tired after that...that's why the photo is blur....shaky hands?? Max wanting to play but we were too busy...see his pleading eyes? He is SO cute! I think he is saying "I miss my daddy" Once again, Wishing everyone a...

Vickie in one of her final games.... She's an aggressive player! Kathryn and friend pretending to watch Vickie playing...maybe some cute boys around???! can you see Max? One happy snoozing family.. Kathryn demonstrating to our friends how to use the steam roller that Happy Factory sent for our orphanage. This "tractor toy" helps with the kids mobility, especially those with special needs. These machines came to us from Utah via Fedex!! Lucy, our orphanage director (on the far right) brought her visitors from America to visit with us. They came to help widows with self generating income projects.

I am having major problems with our computers and am completely frustrated!!! Hoping that some IT staff are still around before everything closes for more than about two weeks!

I have been kinda under the weather for a while...a head cold that I can't seem to recover from ... coughing, sneezing, no energy, etc...and it seems to me that our internet server must also been having a cold of sort...it has not been working right very much lately. However, today, things seems to be getting better for me and the server :-)) I am trying to post about several different events today... This August during the AOG General Council here in Kenya, several HIM (Harvesters' Inst of MInistries - the laymen bible school we pioneered in 1993) alumni came to us and shared about how the Lord is blessing them in their ministry and suggested to us that we need to have an alumni meeting soon. They organised it but we hosted it on campus. They were able to contact about 20 of them...we haven't seen some of them for over ten years now! Some of them are pastoring, one of them, Harris and his wife, Florence in their 60s, (on the right of Tony with the African outfit) is ...

In one of our Ladies Fellowship, two of students showed the rest of us how to make liquid soap. They bought a Soap Making Kit for 700 Ksh (about US10) and it made over 20 litres of liquid soap. We are paying about USD2 for 500ml at the store. We thought teaching the ladies a skill like that can help supplement their income. Some of these ladies are also ministers and pastors as well and they can teach the widows or members of their congregation how to make this liquid soap and help them sell it to generate a small income. Noella and Dorcas explaining the process and the ingredients. The ingredients Rose, one of our students, writing down diligently the process and ingredients. Mixing the ingredients...it's actually harder than it looks...takes quite a bit of elbow grease to get the chemicals well mixed. We sent everyone home with a baggie of liquid soap I bet you never thought a baggie liquid soap can make the ladies smile so big!!

I have been trying for days and maybe weeks to post some pictures but our internet connections has been so sporadic, I can hardly get any pictures uploaded. I decided to upload two photos at a time, and post more often instead of one long post. This Masai ladies are part of the WOW (Widows and Orphans of the World) conference. You will see Lucy at the far right (the only lady not wearing Masai clothing i.e the red ones). She is also the director of our orphanage. We met these ladies after I spoke. They have just arrived! They had walked close to 40 miles to get to the conference. They also presented me with a beautiful necklace. I will try to take a close up of that necklace sometime. DEAD snake...yikes! We don't like snakes. This little fellow was in our backyard. One of the campus gardener saw it and promptly killed it. We are very grateful. VERY dead snake....

Hey guys...sorry about the lack of posting lately and it isn't because of my lack of trying either! We have been having so many problems with our internet. The constant interruption on our power supply has affected our server and it's not working like it should. The server serves the whole campus, so this is quite a big problem for everyone, especially the students. I am glad it's working today, at least for now...:-)) Our electricity has been going off up to ten days a day since last weekend. Each time it goes off, we have no idea when it will return. Sometimes a couple of minutes, sometimes a few hours! This is driving everyone crazy.. I have tried to upload photos so many times but the power would go out on me, I am ready to give up BUT I received a sweet comment from Juniper and I was encouraged to try again. Will try later today.... Meanwhile, if you have been following international news, the situation in Goma is serious. We received news that the rebels have cl...

I had a wonderful time speaking at the WOW (Widows and Orphans of the World) conference last week. Before I go to that, let me finish with the pics of Mt Kenya.... These are Rock Hyraxes and they are supposedly distant relatives of the elephants!! I think, if they are truly related to the elephants, it must be quite a distant away :-)) Can you see the peak of the mountain between the clouds? Mt Kenya! Bush pig...Vickie loves ALL animals... Vickie named this baby buffalo, Babu! Hybrid of zebra and horse, Kathryn calls them Zorse~ I think they look mostly like horses except for the stripes Speedy, the turtle, giving free rides!!! We were told that he can carry up to 300lbs. Our favorite monkeys...all three of them :-)) There is a brick wall with the names of the donors to the orphanage...this is not our Kathryn's brick but she thought it was cool to take a pic of it anyways! I love the expression of Kathryn's face in this picture. She suddenly look like her two year old self...