Over this past week we have watched the river rise and spread further onto the land here. Because everyone depends on the boat to get anywhere, we have all had longer days; Rebecca and I have been staying at the children’s home while Gary takes the staff home, and picks up the people for the night shift. Last week, we weren’t getting home until about 7-7:30 at night! But, waiting for the boat beats walking in the water; last week we heard that 95 people have been killed by crocodiles because of this flood!!

Yesterday, Rebecca and some of the staff moved the horses through the water to drier land, which was a scary task. They made it through just fine, and today they were able to load the goats on the boat and bring them to the horses. There is still a concern about whether we should move the children or not- so far the water has not entered any of the buildings, though it is coming close to a few. We have already had sandbags in front of doors since last week, so we are prepared! The biggest problem we have now is that the septic system isn’t working very well. Today the social worker and health inspectors came to see what the situation was here, and they want us to move into town next to their building. However, we will be crammed into one area, in tents, without toilets, the children’s school work, and any free area to move around. It also means more noise from the town when we are trying to sleep at night, trying to get food from the children’s home over there with any other medical stuff we need. Gary and Rebecca have looked into a place near us that is still on the water, but not flooded. We would at least have more space to move around, there are tables for children to do school work and we would actually have a place to shower! But the mosquitoes are bad there, and the roofs are thatch roofs, so if it rains we will get wet. Ideally, we don’t want move unless we really HAVE to because it will just be more of an inconvenience and who knows how long we’d be stuck in that place. So we are praying that the social worker and health inspector will not make us move, and that it won’t get to a point where we really do need to move.

Obviously, because of this whole flood situation, the trip to Cape Town has been cancelled. I’m a little sad, but I would’ve felt bad leaving with the water was creeping closer each day.

Please continue to pray for us here, and pray that the water starts to go down!