Our little update!

Well, we have been able to spend a bit of time in the capital city these past few weeks and have been enjoying time with Gretchen's mom and dad.  They came out to Ambrym initially ....

and we were able to show them around our village and our building site, introduce them to friends, drive up farther north to show them some more of the our language group and just live island style with them.  Our life in the village is quite different than our life in Vila so it was fun to show them this and enjoy time in Ambrym before we all headed back to Vila, for the remainder of their stay with us.  Click here  to see the photos from their visit with us.

Let me take a step back so we can see what these past few months have had for us while we were in Ranvetlam this last stint.  You will see that a HUGE portion of what we have been up to revolves around our house building.  We have enjoyed hosting two different groups of work teams and as a result have seen our house go up brick by brick!

Starting the slab

Starting the block work

We have been overwhelm by the time and efforts many have put into helping on this home for us.  As you can see from some of the pictures above, we have had lots and lots of community help along with the work teams.
We are now up to the stage of the bond beam (as all the walls are finished) and then on goes the rafters and copper roofing.  This will be the next work teams goals to finish up.  We have a group coming in just a couple weeks and then we will all head back out to Ambrym to get back to work on the house.

There are lots more pictures of the house building (and many other things) found on our Facebook page ( click here to visit that album).  We are able to keep updating it in real time from the village so it gets a bulk of our attention.  Just so you are aware... :)

We hope to have the house finished around the new year and we are looking forward to a permanent house that we can minister out of for the next umpteen years of ministry here in Vanuatu.  As God continues to work in and through this language group.  We are blessed to be a small part in getting his Word into their hearts and lives so that understanding and praise can follow.  To His glory!