We will be signing the affidavits today along with Pastor Nancy at the attorney's office. From there, the paperwork will go to the social welfare office on Monday, hopefully. Then, it will go to court (if needed).

We were able to get each of the children here in Blantyre blankets and we will be buying blankets for all the children in Metaketa hopefully next week to take to them.

Downpayment on the well in Metaketa has been made, so hopefully that will begin soon. We will go out there and get pictures as the work progresses.

We have set up a Paypal account in case anyone would like to use that to donate towards our adoption. You just go to paypal.com and put in our email address (ryaljs@yahoo.com) and then follow the instructions.

Linda's mom came into town yesterday and we all met with the attorney yesterday afternoon. Linda's mom agreed to the adoption and signed the consent form yesterday at the meeting. The next step is for some affidavits to be signed by us, and the directors of the orphan care center that Linda has been staying at. Then, all of the paperwork will go to the Social Welfare agency for approval. After that it will go to court (if it will need to go to court at all). The attorney has agreed to do all they can to try to get this completed so that we can all leave on schedule on August 26th.

Jeff will be going today to get estimates on the supplies for the next step in the building project and from there we will see what we can accomplish on the building while we are here.

Also, we have gotten the quotes for the well in Metaketa, so know we will be scheduling the time for this to be done fairly quickly.

Well we meet with Linda's mother and she agreed adoption was in Linda's best interest!!!! She should come next Monday to meet with our attorney.

This week has been another busy week so far. On Monday we were able to go to Nchala where another Noah's Ark Orphan Care Center will be started. The church there has already started helping 8 orphan children themselves along with others being helped in their homes. It was a blessing to be there. While we were there, we were served lunch - which was a big sacrifice for them as they have very little in that village. On our way home from Nchala, we were able to go on a game preserve that was free for us. We were excited to see 5 giraffes at one point and at least 2-3 others while we were driving.

Some of the team members have been challenged to adopt children. Some have been challenged to sponsor students for the university. Christopher (the pastor's son) was able to visit colleges yesterday with a team member and they are ready to accept him as soon as he brings in his paperwork from his schooling.

Right now, the rest of the team is a Majete Game Preserve. I am sure they are having a wonderful time and being able to see many animals. This is the same preserve where we went last year.

On Monday evening, we had a good meeting with our attorney. Our attorney now has all of our paperwork and we will be meeting with Linda's guardians as soon as possible. That is our next step.

Metaketa

On Wednesday, we were able to go out to a small village about 2 hours from Blantyre. It is called Metaketa in the Zomba district. The pastor there, Pastor Chisale, has started their 2nd Noah's Ark Orphan Care Center there in Malawi. As a group, we were able to play some games with the children. Maggie taught them the Hokey Pokey, and Duck, duck, goose (but it was chicken, chicken, goat), and many other songs and games. The Noah's Ark Orphan Care children performed for us and showed off how much they have learned. A couple children read some speaches and showed off how good their English was. Christopher (the pastor's son) had them sing a few songs and it was beautiful. The people in the church there even performed for us along with people from the surrounding areas that came for our visit. It was very touching that there were so many to come from far places to see us.

Today we have had a full, exciting day so far. This morning we were able to set up the 2 computers that were donated to the Orphan Care Center. Thank you Lewis & Knopf!! They are set up in the sitting room so as soon as the kids came home from school they were so excited. This is the only place anywhere around there with computers for the orphan children, so this is very special. 2 of the older boys who go to school in the afternoon, were there after we set them up and we got a Typing learning CD installed. They worked on that for at least 2-3 hours and are doing very well already. This is going to be a great help for the kids to learn typing skills and much more. One of the team members that came, Brian, brought many phonics, math, and other teaching games for the children. This is so wonderful!

In Malawi

Well, we arrived in Malawi yesterday (Monday) afternoon and were greeted with many people at the airport and the church. We had dinner and then tried to settle in a little. This morning we were able to go to the school with some of the children and see the assembly before they start classes. Then we went into the Preschool room and did the Hokey Pokey with the children. It was a lot of fun to see the kids doing the Hokey Pokey. This afternoon we were able to take everyone to the building site.
Just so that everyone knows, there is another blog that the rest of our team will be posting on. It is giveagoodday.blogspot.com in case you would like to see the posts there as well.

TODAY!!

Well, we leave today. In fact just 2 1/2 more hours and we leave for the airport. We are all very excited and none of us slept very well last night. Hopefully that means we will all be able to sleep on the plane. Detroit to Atlanta and then Atlanta to Johannesburg. We will overnight in Johannesburg and then fly to Malawi on Monday morning.

Thanks to everyone for their support and encouragement as we have been preparing for this trip. We appreciate everyone's help. May God bless your summer!