It was a sad day last week...

...when we had to say "Goodbye-" to our horse, King.

King is an 11 year old gelding. A few years back, Anna was really struggling with a lot of fear and anxiety, but loved horses. At that time, King belonged to another missionary family who used him to give riding lessons, and we arranged for Anna to take lessons with one of their daughters. We've really seen Anna blossom as a result. When that family decided to sell King a little over 2 years ago, we took advantage of the opportunity to purchase him and it has not been an investment that we have regretted. Anna has continued to make great strides in her self-confidence and willingness to try new things. And that's not to mention that her preoccupation and love of horses and all things equestrian has only continued to grow.

For much of the past two years, we've been able to find folks to continue working with the girls on the horse. However, we've not had anyone to work with them in recent months, the price of feed has increased (along with all the other staples here in town), Tim has had to pick up extra responsibilities again this year, we've just decided that Richelle will be returning to the States for the delivery of this baby, finding time to exercise and give him the attention he needs is scarce and the girls aren't old enough/mature enough to safely do so on their own, we are looking at a furlough next summer and we'd need to find some place to board and people to care for him for the year... for these reasons among others, it seemed a good time to sell him - he's in good health, a gorgeous animal and still worth something. We've mentioned this in our last prayer letter because it was important to us and the girls that we try to find him a good home (i.e. we didn't want to sell him to someone who just wanted to run him into the ground out at the race track).

We want to let all who've been praying for this request that we did find what we hope will be a good home for King. Two young men affiliated with the equestrian club down the hill wanted to purchase him as a gift for their father, and they came to take him to his new home last week.

The girls (Anna especially) are sad, and we all miss his exuberant greeting (or was that a desperate demand for food) when we'd walk by the door in the wee hours of the morning (his stall was where he could look right through the front door into our hallway), but we hope that this will enable us to allow her and Rebekah to take riding lessons down at the equestrian club, with those have much more experience than either Tim or I.