Happy New Year!
We just picked up two babies last week, but I haven’t met them yet because I have caught Covid again. I have a mild case thankfully, just a bad cough. No fever, headache, or sore throat. Not like the case I had last year, that basically crippled me.
The weather up here is still quite cold, but nothing like two weeks ago. Every morning, it was down around 10 degrees, and didn’t really warm up until around noon. If there was a wind out of the Lao mountains, though, it never did really warm up. Despite the cold weather, the kids had a nice Christmas, and had their own barbeque New Year’s eve, and beyond midnight. For the Christmas party, Santa Claus was one of our German volunteers, who is six foot five inches tall, and quite thin. Kids were asking me “isn’t Santa short and fat? This Santa is a beanpole!”
On the farm, our chicken coop is ready for chicks. We are waiting for this cold snap to pass, and then will buy about 150 chicks. Our three mama pigs are cranking out piglets, and they pile on top of each other, close to mama, to stay warm. Our calves sleep with their mothers, so as to stay warm at night.
New Year has passed, so next on the agenda is renovating the old bakery into home for our four brain damaged little ones. We will have to install new doors and windows, build bathrooms and shower areas, install water heaters; install a kitchen sink with hot and cold water faucets, and repaint the inside and outside. We will extend the roof, and pour a cement floor underneath, so that in the hot and rainy seasons, the kids can sit in their wheelchairs and strollers, and enjoy the outdoors. There are some outdoor buildings that the bakery used to keep stuff, and we will fix the storerooms up, and repaint them. We will pour new cement floors, and put down insect repellent so as to cut down on cockroaches and other such insects from ruining the supplies we will put there.
So, this is our latest. Have a great year, and stay healthy and well.
Fr. Mike
