Lessons in Motherhood - by Amy

I’m enjoying being here in Africa with Nate and Karina. Things are sure different this time! My days are very busy, since most things take a bit longer to do. I’ve been boiling water and letting it cool for her baths since she’s at that stage where everything goes in her mouth and the water’s never guaranteed to be safe. We also wash her dishes separately in filtered or boiled water, just to be extra careful. I’m gradually getting used to caring for Karina here and we’re getting into a bit of a routine.

We’ve actually had lots of fun with her lately! She loves going outside for walks or playing on a blanket on the grass, since the weather is so pleasant. She’s recently learned to roll over and is quickly becoming more mobile. She’s been enjoying baby cereal for a little while now and recently got started on peas, which she LOVED! That was a learning process for me too. There are very few baby foods available here so I’ll have to do all the vegetables myself. I boiled up some fresh peas and then ran them through my little manual baby food mill with a crank in small batches. Then I froze them in baby food ice cube trays that I brought. I was quite pleased with my efforts but the kitchen was a disaster and I had to leave it for a while to move onto the next thing. I returned to the kitchen about an hour later to find a colony of ants enjoying any leftovers that had fallen onto the counter! I’ll know what to do differently next time.

It’s been a joy to meet up with everyone again and introduce Karina to them. She’s hearing lots of different languages—Swahili from the Kenyans and Amharic from our Ethiopian teammates. She’s been a really good girl—letting people hold her and play with her.

Nate and I are enjoying being here together too, remembering all the good times we spent both in Sudan and Kenya while we were engaged and newly married. It’s wonderful to be starting ministry together here afresh, now that we’ve been married for over a year and a half and know each other so much better. The Lord has really blessed us!