February 2006 Beckendorf Update

Greetings,

I mentioned in the January update that this last month was going to be busy--and it was! The Botswana team retreat in South Africa went much better than we had anticipated and a lot of progress was made. After our retreat we made a trip up north to Shakawe (where we will be working) with our program director where he got to meet some of the people we will be working with and got a feel for the area. He and Tim had some very good meetings with some key people so it was a good trip. The other highlight of that trip is that we finally found a house to rent! Yea! It is a brand new 2 bedroom house with a nice view of one of the channels in the delta (though for some reason the landlord doesn't seem to value the view, he built the house so that only the kitchen and one bedroom face it, and put in a bunch of trees between the house and the river--the trees may find themselves transplanted to other locations).

So, now we are in the process of buying furniture for the new place (no good furniture stores up there), packing, and trying to figure out how to get all this stuff up there, and take care of a multitude of other things now that we have a 'permanent' address, like getting a drivers license, taking care of car registration, getting a phone, etc. Getting a phone has turned out to be a real challenge; to get the type of service we want we needed to open a bank account, we tried to open a bank account at one place but couldn't because we don't have the right paperwork (in their opinion) showing that we are employed. We were able to open an account at the second bank, but only after a fellow missionary who already has an account there agreed to vouch for us. We now have to wait about a week for the account to become approved and activated, at which time we will be able to apply for a phone (which will take who knows how long to actually get). We were hoping to move early next week, but with all the running around we've been having to do our moving date keeps getting pushed back and we are getting more and more stressed.

They have had a lot of rain in northern Botswana so things were nice and green when we were there and they are expecting bumper crops this year. Unfortunately, because of the rain they are also expecting a bumper crop of mosquitoes and malaria is a concern.

For those of you who are interested, after only six months Tim has finally been able to update our web site. There you will find some pictures of our recent trip up north, the house we will rent, and some more up to date photos of Aaron. You can access the site at www.lbt.org/beckendorf.

We have several prayer requests for this month. Please pray:

• that we can get all of our pre-moving activities done and still retain our sanity.
• that our move will be uneventful and (relatively) stress-free.
• that we would remain healthy.

We also have several things to be thankful for. Join us in thanking God for:

• a good retreat and the opportunity to meet with fellow missionaries
• a very fruitful (though short) trip up north with our program director.
• we found a house to rent!!.
• for safety during travel.

Thank you again for your prayers.

Tim, Lisa, & Aaron