Baby Monkey "Dexter"

Hi Friends and Family,

Shelby and Lorelle invited a couple young ones from the congregation over today to play cards. They arrived with a totally unexpected wonderful gift. A new baby monkey! His name is Dexter.

From the pictures you can see he is very shy right now. We are sure he will warm up soon, Jack too was quiet the first couple days. We have a vet coming on Saturday to give him a check-up and vaccinations. We will also know better approximately how old he is at that time. I am thinking 7 or 8 months.

The two little girls, who stayed with us over summer vacation, Rachida and Samuella, came to meeting this week with bags packed. It is school vacation. They will be with us for two weeks. It has been a very easy transition now for them to come and stay. They are used to our home and routine. They were so cute this morning practicing there presentations for the truth campaign. We are still using the campaign in outlying villages and army barracks. Tomorrow, X-mas, we will be going to the army barracks down the road from us. All the little ones are excited, they even set their clothes out the night before. All the little girls wanted to have skirts, not dresses. Oh, to be 8 years old again..... It was fun to hear them practicing there presentations, a complete mix of Krio and English.

Not sure how much African news gets to the US, but just in case you are hearing of the news from Guinea, please don't worry. The Guinea president died the other day and the military has given notice that they are taking over the government. We have not heard anything bad in regard to the missionaries or friends there and we personally are very far from the Guinea border. We are on the ocean side of Sierra Leone, Guinea is the inland border country, so we are on the complete opposite side of the country. The US embassy sends regular emails to all US citizens updating us on everything, we have not had anything to worry about.

We have been busy getting ready for convention. Dennis, Shelby and I have all been asked to help or take part in various aspects of the convention. It is a great priveledge. Shelby has really come a long way with her sign language and has been asked to interpret seven different parts.

Dennis was working on one of his talks today when a brother showed up at our house to rehearse some, he came by bicycle! He is from the Sussex group, the group we went and worked with last summer. It is farther than the Godrich congregation that we visited last weekend. The Sussex group is 22 miles from our house, and it isn't flat countryside! We also learned that he uses his bicycle to go to meetings and he has a wife with a little baby, she also rides bike.

Sorry to hear of many still out of electricity, hope you can get it back soon!

Thinking of you lots,

Lorie