Thanking God for Another Year of Life

Some months ago I started toying in my mind about doing something special for my April birthday.  My dream came true when we took the April 5, 8:30 a.m. flight to Nairobi and on to Madagascar.  Ruth and I spent a wonderful week of holiday with an AIM missionary friend there who also took a week off to relax and tour around her base in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar.  Since Malagasy and French are the languages—definitely not English—we were so grateful for her and her fluency!

A couple days after our arrival, we took a fun trip (between 3-4 hours) to the center of the Island where we saw an amazing waterfall plus spend a couple of nights at an incredibly beautiful small lake complete with a smaller version of another waterfall.  Later in the week, we spent the better part of one morning being guided through the Lemur Park where they boast of more than 7 kinds of Lemurs, all of them in their natural habitat—no cages.  These furry monkey-like animals are only found on this Island and are some of the most agile creatures on the planet. We spied five different kinds of lemurs with most of them eating, relaxing, and playing very close to us; in fact they seemed to be oblivious of us. Two or three of those we saw belonged to the category of “dancing lemurs” and didn’t one of them hop to the ground and do several side-ward dance steps on his two back legs as he headed for another tree—very comical but it happened so quickly that no one captured it on camera. Besides unique animals, Madagascar grows 90% of the world’s vanilla beans, an impressive array of spices (including about 4 kinds of black pepper), and a cocoa bean that Switzerland imports for their chocolate.

We took and left three different sets of VOICE curriculum there, but soon realized that our English curriculum could not go too far. However, one set went to a leader in the Children’s Program of an English speaking church. She mentioned that they were nearing the end of their current curriculum and wondered what they would do next. Another set was left with the Scripture Union of Madagascar National Director whom we had the privilege of meeting—he knows some English.

Thanks for your prayers that brought us safely back to Uganda in the wee hours of April 13.  Our driver Fred, was there to meet us and the car got us to within a few feet of our compound gate and then completely died.  We are yet to get our car back from the repair shop but are thankful for the wonderful break, total change, and memorable celebration in Madagascar.