The Last Two Weeks

The last two weeks have been a little rough around here. Natalie has been pretty sick for the last week and the week before that she had to go to the doctor because of a sharp pain in her abdomen. She is beginning to feel better but is definitely still not 100%. Turns out she has amoebas and giardia. She finished the medication for the amoebas on Tuesday night and started the medication for giardia last night. Hopefully she will be back to 100% by the end of the weekend. We could definitely use prayers that we can keep her healthy from this point on as I’m not sure how many more times she can be sick before she has had enough and wants to go home.

Other than that the last two weeks have been relatively uneventful. I worked at our orphanage construction site all day on Tuesday, which was a lot of fun. I am continuing to setup the accounting system down here. I finished setting up the orphanage side of things yesterday so now I will begin working on sorting out all the different businesses that we have. Natalie and I are also beginning to do some research to possibly start a coffee shop and Christian bookstore somewhere here in Coch as a another business to support the orphanages. We are in the very early stages of this process so there isn’t much to report yet. We will keep you updated as we make progress.

We are in the process of “re-branding” Bolivia’s Best Coffee. We have a new couple here right now, the Hulseys, who have a lot of experience in marketing and graphic design. So they are putting together a new image for the company as well as press release packages for the organization as a whole. We are growing so fast down here it is clear that God has a hand in this ministry. Our hope is that the “re-branding” and the new marketing strategies will be able to drastically expand IOUs ability to construct new homes and house more kids. We will be posting the new images and press release information on this blog when it is ready.

Big news, we just received an email this morning with the flight itinerary for our next visitor, Natalie’s cousin Jenny, who will be arriving on October 23rd and will be staying with us until November 21st. We are incredibly excited to see her! If anybody else wants to make a trip down, our guest bedroom is almost always open! I think that is about all. We hope that everyone back home is doing well and as always please send us any prayer requests that you may have. Thanks for all your support!