2 Waggoners together again, 2 more to go...

It was so nice to be back with Ellie again today and I was excited to hear her new words and see the skills she picked up while I was gone! I packed her potty chair and told mom that we expected the same results we got when they watched Reagan for us one summer when he was a puppy. Well, all I will say is Ellie has yet to master that skill.

She can now say her name ("Elleeeee"), "me", and uses "stop" and "go" in a fun little game. She's also enjoying playing with Gigi's alphabet magnets on the fridge, and can read her name when written or typed. Whoa!

I also got to see Dad's video footage from the aftermath of the explosion near Vlashaj village. I don't know how to describe seeing home after home with no windows or doors remaining (literally looked like driving by a ghost town as you made your way down the road to Vlash -- if you've been there with us before, Marikaj [where PSF used to work] took quite a hard hit too). In some cases the roofs were completely blown off too. Nearest the blast site, all that remain of beautiful hillsides of olive groves are little bitty brown stumps. The village of Gerdec was crawling with search and rescue teams and special forces men searching for munitions that were blown throughout 2,500 acres of surrounding countryside. The most sobering site were lines of news crews and clusters of people waiting by the road side for some sort of news about their missing family members.

In Vlashaj, a silver soccer ball was almost unrecognizeable (at first I thought it was a crumpled soda can) as the air had been completely sucked out of it. You could hear the crunch of glass as Dad walked in the first floor of the ministry center and you could see that the glass on the 4 interior doors (they have frosted glass windows on the top and bottom to allow daylight in) had been blown out and even the wood stove doors were blown open and ashes sprayed across the floor. Had the blast occurred 15 minutes earlier, those rooms would have been full of children. The conditions of the upper level are still unknown as the metal door at the top of the stairs is bowed inward and 2 grown men could not shoulder it open. The door jam will probably have to be completely removed and the door replaced. Inside the Proseku's home, interior metal doors were blown off their hinges and the windows that for some reason didn't shatter have frames that have bowed out. Dad's greatest concern is that the entire frame of the house is twisted. It's impossible to imagine the effects of such a concussion. It lasted a mere second and was over, but it's going to take many months to rebuild.

I promise I will try to post some Ellie photos soon! And keep praying for Nathan down in Peru with the Asbury College students! Thanks for your continued interest and concern for our family!
Update: Nathan just called me (Thursday AM) and is quite sick with altitude sickness (that's what the clinic diagnosed it as, though he says he feels like a malaria relapse).