Dixie and I should have watched some classic orphanage movies to prep us for this trip… Little Orphan Annie, Newsies, or Oliver Twist.

The day Marla and Ken left for the United States one of the boys got ‘deathly sick’ with a scraped knee, or was it a sore throat. At any rate, 2 days later the epidemic started to spread through the boy’s dorm…..boy number two could not go to school because he had a sore throat, or was it a scraped knee, the best “awe, my clothes are dirty”. I can just hear there muffled Creole voices discussing how well this sickness thing worked to skip school. Of coarse, all of the staff including Dixe and I, were clueless as to the spreading illness until one morning I was on a toilet-leak hunt on the orphanage grounds……(if a toilet runs none stop the water pressure goes down). “Dixie, why in the world are these boys here? Shouldn’t they be in school?” You bet ya, they should be in school…. The boys learned you don’t mess with Madam Dixie ‘dmama’ and went off to school.

Pudence and Kervens take care of the goats and the cows. The milk cow has a month old calf which is to be separated from its mom at night so the boys can milk it and give the milk to the cooks to use as seen fit. Once again as soon as Marla and Ken jumped into their car, all the rules changed. Pudence and Kervens saw no reason to separate mama cow from the calf any more… thinking “the calf needs the milk and milking the cow by hand is a lot of work any way”. Day 3: I was poking around the kitchen as I often do and some how the subject of milk came up. The staff told me there was NO milk! Pudence could not milk the cow because it had a baby. Time for another Harley talk with the boys and a supervised evening milking. These guys do a lot of work to do the animals the right way, all by hand. Next morning, Pudence shows up at our door sporting a huge smile as he showed me the pail full of the morning’s milk.

I have many more stories, each just as funny. I can’t help but wounder how much laughter there is in heaven as God and the angels sit and talk about Dixie and Harley and why they were late for church today.

I ask myself, “Would I do this again?” No worries. Dixie says EGO won’t ask you to do it again…. Simply put the above stories shouldn’t be out there in the public.

Thanks for your prayers….

Harley and Dixie

Pudens milking cow

milking the cow by hand

Pudens the milking cow by hand, barefoot

milk men

Some of the kids in the baby dorm

We are in a wing of our father’s heavenly mansion