The New Wilson Home!

Well, construction on our house continues! As of Feb 26, we have been living in our house unfinished as it is! It is really nice to finally have our own little space and I am glad to have my own little kitchen. Little by little we have been working on improvements and it is getting more and more comfortable all the time. Here are a few glimpses of life here as it has been progressing.

When we first moved in we didn't have counters, sink, table, or anything like that, 

so we made do with what we had.

Mike, a volunteer who put in the two outside door frames,
seated at the lunch table.

The outside doors

Strange noises in the night have been waking Steven up and causing
him to go on patrol. There in the corner of the tool bag you can
see the culprit. We have evicted Mr Toad and two of his cousins so
far, but I don't know how many more of his relatives we are going to
meet in the other room!  

And as work continued, Steven made me kitchen counters and a sink...

 

My kitchen window sill. I have been taking after my Mom! She always
had so many plants in the windowsill in the springtime that you
could never see out of them! My plants keep migrating to the garden as they grow.

Fresh bread using the pans Steven's Mom gave us : ) and the table cloth that
was also given to us as a wedding present.

So here is the view of my kitchen as it is at present.

We have been very much enjoying our new hand crank blender!
It works much better than I thought it would! Especially with Steven
behind the handle!

Our new dining room...

The freshly washed bedding hanging up on the indoor clothesline.

Our bedroom. The mosquito net hangs up over the bed at night.
There are swarms of mosquitoes right now! It has been raining more
lately and the blood thirsty insects are on the rampage!

Our clothes closet... a piece of rebar hung from the roof and covered with a cloth.

      And since the septic tank is not anything more than a hole in the ground,

     our shower is outside under the tap. But in spite of that, it is quite nice.

The inside view of the shower. We have since moved it a little ways from the house so
that the view from the window over the sink is not into the shower. 

This is where the shower was situated.

Even our outhouse has been improved! The seat still needs a little stabilizing so you
don't get a rush as you feel you are about to tip into the hole, but it works great.
There are so many mosquitoes that you aren't there long with so
 much skin exposed anyways!

Here are a few pictures of our little garden. I am working on it bit by bit all the time, but there is so much to do all at once that I have not really finished much. However the zucchini are growing fast, and so are the pumpkin. The corn is trying to grow, and the lettuce is trying to recover from the shock of transplanting.

The corn patch. The ants did a number on the corn as it was just coming out
of the ground, and then because we didn't till the soil for the first seeds we
planted, the first corn has been struggling. 

In preparation for the second batch of corn, I tilled the soil and added all the
leaves and branches into the trench, thinking that it would slowly give
nutrients as the corn grew. The corn came up really well, but then in one area
all the corn was chopped off under the ground. It wasn't ants so I dug into the soil to
see what had done it. Termites. The termites were eating all the branches I had dug
down into the soil and were also eating the roots of the plants while they were at it.
I figured out that a separate compost pile for the branches and woody things is
the best idea. When the termites have reduced the wood to nice soil, then
put it on the garden for the plants to enjoy. 

The little zucchini plants

I had basil started in the window, and one day a hungry grasshopper
came by and ate off four of them. So now I have them covered to
save them from the grasshoppers and other hungry insects.

Little passion fruit plants. They will be climbing up on a tree that is in the front yard.

 And so the story of living in Bolivia continues. God has been so good to us. Every time we run out and I get discouraged about how we are ever going to be able to finish the house and have enough for food as well, God always provides something somehow. Work goes forward, and I hope that we can make a difference.