Today is my son's 6th birthday.
Some friends have a guinea pig which is giving birth soon and so we've gone around and collected a cage, so that we can tell him today "you get to pick out a guinea pig!" as his present.
He's going to love it! He loves the guinea pigs he sees at friend's houses.
The cage is about 4' x 2' and has a mesh wire bottom to it. Apparently here, Guinea Pigs are outdoor pets and they feed off your lawn. You move the cage daily and occasionally give them treats of green beans. After a week you'll notice that your lawn is significantly shorted in all the places your pet has been.
We're considering letting our daughter pick out one too, making it female, so that we can start having our own little guinea pig babies, but we haven't decided.
Someone gave me a good idea, so I went and bought some wagon wheels and a rod, and had autoshop machine the rod so that I can mount wheels on the guinea pig cage so my son should easily be able to move the cage himself.
After all he's 6 now, and has new responsibilities that accompany his new freedoms. (-;
I'll post later about his reaction.
My kids are both pretty smart in their particular areas. My daughter reads as a 7th grader level and we're not sure what level my son does math, but it's at least a 2nd grader level because he can finish her math homework.
It is interesting to listen to them:
Syd - "hmmn. what is three hours after a half past seven."
Cal - "10:30, 10:30 10:30"
Syd - "ssh, I'm trying to think...."
Cal - "I told you it's 10:30."
Syd - "sshh! what is a half past seven."
Cal - "I'm jsut trying to help."
later
Cal - "the yellow dog r..."
Syd - "the yellow dog ran down the road."
Cal - "don't finish my reading for me..."
Syd - "I'm jsut trying to help."
God is doing an interesting thing out here. Today is a very momentous day for us as our cargo has arrived. We are awaiting the storage shipping area to notify us, but I can see our boxes in the store room. So finally I'll have my tools and other such useful items. Admittedly it's a bittersweet reunion, in that now we also have to find a place to store all this stuff we've lived without for nearly 4 months now.
But... YAY! that feeling of being stuck in the middle will soon be gone!
To get an idea of how masterfully God moves His people around, here are some interesting statistics:
For PNG:
As of 31 July 2006
Total overall languages where we have worked since 1956 337
Total languages being worked in now 185
Total New Testaments completed and dedicated 159
Total Number of Complete Bibles dedicated 1
Language personnel currently working in PNG 214
Language personnel currently on leave, loan, furlough 97
Total number of Language Specialist Personnel 311
Support personnel currently working in PNG 213
Support personnel currently on leave, loan, furlough 75
Total number of Support Personnel 288
Total number of Personnel in PNG at present 427
Total number of Personnel assigned to PNG 599
Number of Guest Helpers 42
Number seconded from other missions 17
Number of overseas countries represented (see below) 18
Total number of permanent PNG Employees 252
Nations here and how many:(aud=australian, aus=austrian)
AUD AUS BID CAN FIN GER JAP KOR Latvia MAL NED
54 1 21 27 22 9 10 12 2 2 21
NOR NZ POL SWE SWI
1 6 1 9 6
USA TWD
393 2
