Good morning all!
Greetings from lockdown to lockdown! I am so grateful that although so much of the world is in varying degrees of lockdown we can still be in touch with each other.
We are at the start of our third stint of lockdown, we don’t get to go out the compound at all during these times, but so far the pattern has been a couple days each week to go shopping and sort stuff out. There has now been one confirmed case of COVID-19 in Plateau State and other areas of Nigeria have had significant growth in numbers of cases.
I (Ali) feel like this week I found my feet at last and started to feel like most of our household jobs are under control and that I have a bit more time to devote to my “normal” office work! Most of my work is internet or e-mail based so not too hard to continue with the vast majority of it. In fact, the slowing down of new requests for information etc is giving me a great chance to catch up on some long overdue archiving tasks!
Tim managed to facilitate some online meetings to achieve the key elements of the planned meetings that were kicking off our project planning for Fiscal Year 2021 that had to be cancelled with the office closure. They seemed to go well with most of the key participants managing to connect in even from various village locations. This means that the planning for next year is going ahead with input from at least some of the right people. He has also been coordinating a daily online devotional for our staff which has been really encouraging and appreciated.
Tim has also been trying to stay musically creative, it has been hard with a house full and with him feeling pretty tired and having to do everything via the phone, but his mum helped with a project that you can view on Youtube.
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Dan has settled well into his school routine and seems to be doing a good job of keeping on top of his assignments now. He is taking one Advanced Placement class this year (which is roughly equivalent to an A-level) that would normally have an externally set exam. We were wondering how they were going to manage that but we just found out that the exam board have decided to just mark the students on their coursework element of the course and not hold an exam. Generally Dan does better on exams than coursework so please pray that he can show his full abilities in the coursework.
Helen, one of the staff here, has been staying with us for the time being. She is a Wycliffe UK member and good friend of ours. We have been really blessed to have her staying with us, not least because she is always willing to muck in and help out with whatever needs doing! She and Dan have become the washing-up King and Queen!
We would love to hear about how you are adapting to your new situations and anything you would like us to pray for. If you have a chance to pray for us, we would really appreciate it.
Praise Finding new rhythms of life Good progress made on planning for next year despite lockdown Prayer Wisdom for officials making decisions on the next steps for Plateau State Dan to be able to show his skills fully in his AP coursework Continued patience and grace towards one another
