Our 1st day of no sickness in a month...

Yippee! So what do we do to celebrate. Who knows! As for right analise is in her ballerina dance outfit and dancing to christmas music! I say right on let's dance. It is amazing to be healthy. I have heard from so many of you that you have dealt with sickness also. Sorry! We been really thankful for our campus. They have really rallied behind us, besides once in while asking what is up with that Stauffacher family. First the dog missing and found, then sick for a month. But really when you serving Christ is Satan going to try and take you down. He has been busy trying but he doesn't know he has already lost. We are more than conquerers in Christ and really we have life eternal. So what ever he tries we have that hope! Anyways- that my story as of now. We still are missing our camera so sorry no pictures or movies. I will have to buy a new one but I won't get it until after January 15th so please know I would love to post pictures... Lots of love- Amy Louise

You would have loved being at my house last night...

So last night we had 6 freshman students in our house for dinner last night. It was a meeting to plan the upcoming trip 5 hours away in one of the Students village. They are planning to show the Jesus film and do evangelism and discipleship there with one of the local churches. It was so refreshing to hear their hearts and how excited they are to go and share and make a difference in their hometown. Blessings ( the freshman who had this on his heart to do it) recruited 6 students to go with Bob (Bob is his Genesis teacher here) in March to do this about 5 hours north of here. There are 3 girls and 4 guys and Bob. Their excitement to clearly share the gospel and impact these people's lives was refreshing and so neat to hear their heart as they want more for these people that live in this village that I don't remember the name of. So Blessings, Gordon, Joseph, don't know the other guys name, Fannie, Wanuga, and Funa will go with Bob to Blessings hometown which is a rural village and share the hope that has transformed their lives. So the bigger car comes in handy for this. I wish i had my camera so I could of given you a picture of it. But they are fun, teasy, passionate kids that range from 19-24 going on this trip. They are what this campus embodies. Teaching Africans to reach Africans. They do it best. And We meaning Bob- gets to be apart of it for real. Me I stay home and pray for them! Of course I want to go! But where would we sit! :) On the top! Anyways just a snipet of our nights here in Malawi.

So Analise is feeling better, no more fever just crankies! Maybe 2 year old crankies or maybe tired of being sick crankies. Who knows she can't tell me even though I ask. But sadly Nya got a fever last night and it is throat infection that is going around campus. So I officially say that are in the moving to a new country sickies. We are really done being sick! But we have to continue to press on! So I am doing better, Analise better but cranky, Nya on antibiotics and Bob is doing pretty good. We love you all and miss home a lot these days. Applebees anyone! I would love to go to have my Oriental chicken salad! I miss it. Sure I would love to go shopping at Target! Just for nothing and walk out with 5 bags of nothing...I miss it. Anyways blah blah blah! Love - amy louise

I am back...

So thank you for your love and prayers. On day 10 I was up and by day 11 I was moving and doing things. Wow What a difference to be healthy. I am so glad to be back to normal whatever normal is. Analise is the one who is sick again. What more sickness you maybe thinking so did I. She has had a fever for the last 2 days. It could be random like 2 year old molars coming in late or it could be another virus. Could I ask that we continue the prayer! I really have deep faith that God hears our prayers and it really has blessed me to see how many people are with us on this journey. Thank you to all of you and you know who you are who email us and continue to pray and support us! We feel loved and cherish and WOW Loved! Nya is doing well- She has an empty left leg as my mother would say. She is loving finding foods that taste like America foods. She is picky like her momma! She has found some yougurt that is from South Africa actually it is Dannon they have it in the stores here pretty cheap. She loves that. And I found some good orange juice that she loves. She took one sip and said did you bring this from America. I said no it is from Here WOW she said I love it. Good. Baby steps to loving american tasting food in africa. A family brought homemade cinnimon rolls here to us today and she said it tasted like america. Well - that what her life revolves around. "Do you taste like america?" We love you all and wish we could share more with you like pictures but my camera is missing at the moment. So a small prayer that I find that too. You want pictures right and videos right. So thanks and will update soon- love amy louise

Sickness...

So I have been in my bed or couch or parallel to the ground for the last 10 days. It amazing to be up now to type a blog. I really can't tell you if it is was a virus or a bacteria infection. Two doctors have two different opinions, All I know is I have been in Yuckville for way too long. But I ready for a new city. Somedays literally somedays not. I kinda have hit the 4 month mark of missionary life that is where I miss home and I am ready to end this adventure. I am ready to come back to where I know and understand. It is a wierd place to be at. You really aren't hating where you are at but you don't understand this deep craving that happens when you think of home. It is so deep you can't explain it to even your spouse. So at the end of 4 months I have learned so much and I am ready to come back to where I know. But that is not apart of the deal. You just can't stop and do what I want to do. I would miss out and what God has in store. :) Really I know we are here for at least 2 years untill we come back so I will just have to be deal with it. I am glad that God know better than me. I appreciate His Plans.
While I have been sick I appreciated the Malawian Culture so much more. Maybe it is even African, They come and visit no matter how sick you are. You could be contagious and they don't care. They have to come and say hello and pray for you. They even do dishes or do something that makes life a little easier for the sick person. THey all ask the same question, is it something you ate, or have you taken your medication. Something I appreciate they connect with you when you are at your worst. Us Americans, We wait to see if contagious and we might drop by a meal outside the door and run. We love each via phone or non contact, going to the store for you. The Malawians they come in your yucky messy house and love and touch and pray and make you feel valued. I really want to be more Malawian when people are sick, Isn't that what life is about. Loving each other and making a difference in each others lives... I am as guilty as the next American but I want to learn and be bigger. My american friends and non american non malawian friends have really been there for me too, though I must say. The love, prayers, babysitting, dinners and support that they have offered have been priceless. I will write more when I am not soooo sick. Well- that's all for now - amy louise

Analise Singing Cinderella Song to Dolly Video

The Cranky Birthday Gift Video

Children imitate life...

So the other day I came outside to see what the girls were doing and they were walking around with bowls (baskets they say) on their heads. What they were doing was imitating what they see around them I don't even remember if we ever talked about why the cute mommas carry things on their head with Nya and of course Analise is going to do it because she watches her older sister. It is amazing how they copy their surroundings without us even talking about it. So it made me think about all that she sees and the impact it has on her. If this little thing she saw made her do this what a huge impact we make in her in our actions. What a change in perspective it gave me. My words have huge impact but boy my actions carry more than I thought. I really can speak volumes without talking at all. I already knew it but then I saw it acted out and NOW I really know it. That is all for now-Amy Louise

On the mend and Bob's Birthday..

WOW Prayer works... Thank you so very much! Seriously it was a long 5 days of up chucking not fun. But a treat was that both Bob and I did not catch the bug...


Here are the girls and Bob eating lunch yesterday for the first time in 3 days...




Here is Bob's Birthday present a chameleon



Nya going back to school and wanting to walk and push the stroller...


Here is the road to school about .03 of mile to school from where we are at.

So thank you for you prayers and love what a treasure to have intercessor for friends. We love you all and will keep you all updated in our little life. Keep connecting with me in your stories too. Lots of love- Amy Louise

thank you for all your emails and prayers...

Here they are this morning watching the Wiggles for the 3rd time to pass the time...



Nya woke up this morning with a little twinkle in her eye. The first since last thursday. She said she felt better and got up to make a card for her dad since it is his birthday and ate some cereal. She lasted up for about an hour and is now laying down again but no throw up yet. Analise is doing still the same so we wait and see I am really asking God to intercede that they don't get dehydrated. But they seem to do okay so far. Thank you for praying. We have our friends that have a 2 week old named Kate who has a fever and had since Wednesday. Please pray that God will heal her and all the sickness will go from this campus and her family has been sick for the last 9 days... I will keep you all updated. thank you again for all those email I got. Such love and support! Soooo Wonderful to feel it all the way over here.
Love you- Amy Louise

Prayer please...

We have been sick. Nya has been the worst. It is a flu bug that has hit the campus hard. There are 13 people sick here on campus with the fevers, vomiting and cha cha chas. It has hit us too. Nya has been sick since Saturday morning throwing up and fever. She has not stopped throwing up. Even tonight she is still sick. Analise got it Saturday night and still is throwing up. We have a doctor who is taking very good care of us that lives 2 doors down, but even his whole family is sick. So please intercede for us that the girls will get healthy. And that the other 13 people on campus will get better. Four families out of 14 families are down with it. Thank you and I will keep you updated...
Amy Louise

Outreach at Girls High School

Thought I would give you a snipet of my outreach. This is what I do on Wednesday afternoons. I take 3 students from ABC and bring them to this secondary (high school) for girls. Mind you this is the highest class of schooling there is in this city okay. Look around on the chalkboard and about all the chairs are broken and so aer the desks. The windows are broken and this is the top of the top. Anyways I bring these students to teach a bible study to these girls that live there at this school. It is a non christian school and so they face all the same struggles as kids in american public schools. They need encouragement, love and support and that is what we get to offer them. They come from various backgrounds and come together on a common ground as christians. It is a boarding school and they speak okay english. They are able to meet in clubs and this is one of the clubs. Our club is a bible study. We sing some worship songs and study one the books of the bible. It is refreshing to be with 14 year olds that are serving Jesus with everything that they got and that is not much.

The other azungu (actually it means foriegner or what they say for white person is Pam) Pam is from Ireland and been leading the bible study for the last 5 years. She was in a bad car accident this summer and just returned from recovery this last month. I kinda took over as leader for her as she recovered. I will continue to meet with the girls next year also. So fun for me. The other girl in the pink shirt is a college student named Christina. She is so much fun and has a great laugh and voice.
Well just a snipet. Love- Amy Louise

Life always throws a curve ball...

It is just what you do with that pitch. Make a home run or strike out. I don't know baseball. I thought it would be fun to pretend. So I was so ready to give up on dolly. She was gone for 4 days. Dead probably. Someone else loving her. Probably. Never knowing where she would be. probably. We grieved ( Nya and I Mostly) Saturday was about looking for her everywhere on Campus. We had about 100 people looking. There was no way to get out but she did. By Saturday night it was pouring rain and life was pouring rain too. Sadness is an understatement. But then when we were driving home from dinner. ( I had canceled cooking anything) We came upon a man on the side of the road that had been hit by a car. We turned around and too find him alive. We stayed there until other people came. We called the ABC doctor and took him to the city hospital. So many people drove by and did not stop. When we stopped we were the first ones to stop. Then about 4 other people stopped. They were all Christians and we prayed for him. The girls were really worried about him but we prayed and it was good opportunity to show them to love others and help even when we are scared too. because it is the right thing to do love your neighbor. So by the end of the evening we were toast. I woke up the next day to find out that a good friend of ours lots their son to Malaria( a different kind of Malaria that happens when you don't take the medicine that we are taking!) Most Malawians can't afford anitmalaria medicine. He was a year and seven months. Okay Lord That is too much. First Dolly, then the man on the side of the road and then a baby. But I really felt like God was saying do you trust me even when things don't make sense. The same place I had to be when we lost Will. Do you continue to serve a God that always does not make sense. I choose too and will continue too. He is all I have to lean on. HE is my rock. So to continue on with the story of course I felt silly to pray that Dolly comes home. A friend just lost their child Who I am to want a pet. But the loss of Dolly was really connected to the Loss of our son Will because his Birthday is Tomorrow the 7th of November. So It was all connected. I really believed that God could bring Dolly home but wasn't sure if it was in His plan. In my plans yes His I had to trust Him. Well- to say the least we got a message that some 7 men had found Dolly in the fields. They thought she was a baboon but they had heard on the radio or by posters that there was a lost missionary dog from ABC. So they chased here to ABC which was about 5 miles. She ran as fast as she could. She ran and they ran. They brought to the gate and she took off and Bob was there and saw dolly and she was home. you know it was like why do I get my dog and my friend loses his child. But He says Do you still trust me. Yes but I still got my opinions :)But I will still choose to trust. So here she is home right where she belongs sleeping with her friend...

We are going to go bring dinner to our friend Patrick and wife Dorothy and visit with him and his family tonight(We are bringing rolls and a live Chicken). Please pray that God will transform this heartache to peace and that they would be more like Him through this hard time.

Love you all and thank you so much for all your prayers for Dolly and us! We felt it!
Love- Amy louise for the family

Sad loss....

So on Friday night there were some fireworks set off by some friends and it was in the front of our house. Our dog Dolly that we brought from San Diego somehow got out and ran away as fast as she could. She ran until she was lost. She has not been seen for 2 days now. The campus that we live on is supposabley secure but really not as we thought. Somehow she got out of the campus and ran away to somewhere! We have searched the entire campus and there is no sign of her. We are devastated. Nya especially. She cried herself to sleep last night. So keep her in your prayers as she adjusts to life without Dolly. I will update more later. Love- Amy louise

loving our neighbors...

That is what God called us to do. Simple as that. Don't try and conquer the world just what is in your sphere of influence (your neighborhood). So on Friday Nya and I just did that. We were able to go to crisis nursery and help feed and hold some babies. There are about 33 orphaned babies there and there are only about 5 workers. So we go love on the little ones because the workers don't have time to sit and rock and cooo at the them all. So Nya is holding Maggie who is about a week old or so and I am holding Manuel about 3 months... It is overwhelming at times to go there. We were there 2 weeks ago Nya held a baby named Ruth. Which she fell in love with... We found out she died of an infection about 2 days ago. Heartache is an understatement. There is no words to describe loss of life. Just knowing that we have to believe in God's Sovereignty even when it doesn't make sense at all. We just know that we can help in loving our neighbors and He ultimately reigns in over all the earth. here is a picture of her with my friend Bethany last week...

Continue to Pray for us as we love our neighbors and make a small dent in this world even by being able to hold and kiss on God's babies... And as we continue to trust in God that He is in all things even death.

love you and loving babies- amy louise

African Rain for real

The African Rain

But what is this. Rain. It was amazing. We have tin roofs so it was so very loud. It smelled even more delicious. I wanted to take a big bite out of it. Here is the sunset after the rain! Anyways wanted to let you hear the magical african rain ( you know not that kind of Magical but romantic magical.) On the video I showed you my new screen door. I just got because I was tired of saying close the front door, the mosquitos... Again and again. So now it closes by itself. AHHHH the mother has a big sigh of relief.

That's all for now!
Love Amy Louise

Lake Malawi..

On Saturday we went for a road trip to a little lake named Lake Malawi... Seriously you can't see the other side of the lake....below are some of the small villages on the way. You know I wanted to stop by and look and meet the cute families that live there... We drove through some small towns that have more stores... And a super transit system... of course I am joking....Small pick ups with lots of people Not the safest way to travel...
HEre is my cute analise and my cute Thandie.... Analise face is continually covered with dirt. Whether at the beach or home.
The waves were a little overwhelming at first for the missy. But at the end of the day she was waist deep letting them crash on her
She loves Thandie and prefered her to take her in the water. James (thandie husband) also along with Nya and bob which are the small dots in the picture below. We couldn't drag them out for about 2 hours. Nya was diving into the waves and swimming like fish also.

Here is a school trip from our neighborhood actually! These kids played for hours in the beach just as our girls...

Here is the cute couple up close. We really enjoy them and you will be seeing more of them.

Lots of love-Amy Louise

11 weeks already...

Seriously How does the time fly? We have had such a busy week . Bob has had his Mid -Terms for the college. The students did great. Then Nya was off the entire week. Mid Term break. So nice for the kids. We have had fun. Busy but fun with friends and hanging out with each other.

We really got to just love on people. Our favorite thing to do...So on Monday night I had 12 people over to watch a movie on Bob's projector that he uses for teaching! Then we had friends from the College (James and Thandie she works in the administration and was an ABC grad over 9 years ago) over on Tuesday for dinner Then on Wednesday we went to our campus bible study after having some academy teacher friends over for dinner. And by Thursday we had some new friends over for dinner that are doctors at a ministry that works with HIV/AIDS patient exclusively. They are truly on the front lines with that disease. They have a website if anybody is nosy. http://www.partnersinmalawi.org/ I am connecting with them as they are looking in needing help with xray! So we will see! Here is the website...



So here is Friday and it is potluck night here on campus. We do it every Friday, fun to just connect with others on the campus. So tomorrow we head to Lake Malawi which is 1 1/2 hour away to swim and hang out! We are going with James and Thandie and some college students. I will get some pictures. That will be fun. Then it's Sunday again and here we go.


I wanted to tell you how much fun we had at the crisis nursery. They have about 30 babies is a house about 1700 square feet. About 4 workers taking care of the babies. So I arrived with some friends. there was 7 of us total. My car which is station wagon really only holds 5 people but we put some in the back. I had to turn away some college students that wanted to come but since I didn't have enough room in my car. We are praying for a car that will hold more people so more people we can take to outreaches like this. We will probably at least once a week with college students to go help feed and hold babies. They are about 1 week old to 18 months old. Nya came with us and let me tell you she was so wonderful with those babies. She held about 8 babies ( or maybe even more than that I think I lost count) while she was there - I held maybe 3. How do you put one down? She would rock, sing and giggle at them for about 10 minutes and go and get another and repeat it all over again even with the same song. Of course she came home and told Bob it would be fine if we had another baby that didn't have a mommy or daddy. How tender is her heart. It is so beautiful to see your daughter love others. Especially knowing these babies have it all going against them but this house. It is haven for them.
So Please pray that we continue to press on and serve Jesus daily.
Please continue to pray for our health and safety.
Please pray that we would impact people in a way that they see Jesus in our lives and that we would be a light.
Love you all and thank you for your friendships and prayers We cherish it so much more....Amy Louise

P.s. I am still trying to get to bob to blog. You know it is not natural to him. Me I crave it. Just time flies past and I say AAAHHHH I need to blog... But this next time I will tell you about the lake with pictures and my new bible study I get to be apart of.

Another sickness...

Homesickness... Just wanted to let you know to continue to pray for us as we go through cycles of Homesickness... Okay really me. Bob loves it here, He is so cute that he doesn't really recognize that the food taste different. How does he not notice?
I am the one who vents it mostly. Oh Mylanta... I miss my friends, my family, and my familiar surroundings. Like my front porch. I try not and focus on it most days but the days that I have been sick it comes like a huge wave and pounds me. We are here in Africa and I have to say it out loud. Every day is an adjustment. I know my blogs make it sound that we have settled in and adjusted but it is of course it is not that easy. The food, the driving, the bugs, the different culture and did I mention the bugs. The days without electricity or water that is when it is really prevalent that we are not in America. Days are blurring together but after living here for 63 days. Yes today I am counting that do I miss home...
But those days that I do miss home I look at where God has called us and say to myself. Hush it sister and step up to plate and continue to serve right where He has us. And I go out and keep on keeping on.

So just wanted to give you a realistic picture of me.
P.S. I am making Bob Blog starting next week. I need time to emotional prepare him to blog. I am the natural blogger and he is not! He is a natural adapter to third world countries and I am not. :)

We are still here...

So these 2 weeks have been a blur for us. How is that time flies the older we get. We have been busy. Busy working, Busy being sick, busy spending time together, busy going on outreaches with the College Students, busy being parents, busy being a family, busy going to school, busy teaching, busy helping out at the clinic and tomorrow we go Nya and I will go to the orphan crisis nursery to help out. We will go with Megan and a couple ABC College students...

You remember her from this picture with Analise....

Here is my friend Megan (Nya's next year teacher) with her favorite girl who was abandoned because she has AIDS. This baby's name is Madalitso... Here is there website... On it it has the place where we are going...

http://www.ministryofhope.org/

But Life here is good. We are connecting and thriving here. Analise and I got sick last week with fevers. At first we had thought we had malaria, but it ended up being just a common virus. So please remember to pray for us as we live in a high malaria area. We were out for the entire week. By just this Tuesday we had started feeling like ourselves. AAHHH! So nice. I will be connecting again. Just want to let you know we are still here :)

Lots of love- Amy Louise