Nelspruit Pictures

for those who can’t see these pictures on Facebook, here are some pics from a weekend in South Africa with Emily & Heather as I bought a new visa

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Friend Update

ANNE’S COMING IN 9 DAYS!!!!!!!!!

I’m so excited it’s crazy :-)  I wish everyone from home could come see my life here.  I’ve invested so much here I can’t even begin to explain everything, I want you all to see it first hand!  But it’s okay.  Before I left Anne and I had already talked about her coming to visit and I was 95% confident she could come.  I was only holding back that little 5% in case she couldn’t, I’d have room to be disappointed.  I’ve already got our time together planned out, well mais ou menos.. I’ll meet her and my aunt at the air port then go home with my aunt for the whole weekend.  Me and Anne will spend Thursday night and Friday catching up and hanging out with my family.  Then on Saturday my friends from the centre will come out and hopefully stay the night.  I want to head out to an island or the beach, but (as usual) transportation and finances are a bit of an issue.  So I don’t know how that’ll work out but I know it’ll be fun :-)  **God’s really been showing me how to trust him, and not worry but just be confident in waiting, it’s great**  Then Sunday night we’ll go to worship @ Jimmy & Linda’s house and finally go to the centre afterwards. 

We’ll spend the whole week with the boys and going on visitors’ outreaches.  It’ll be my first time on a lot of the ministries the visitors participate in, I’m excited to finally have the chance.  We’ve got four main outreaches that include visitors’ regular help: street ministry (they visit the jail and give food out in a park in the city), hospital ministry (go into the city and pray over the sick in the hospital), the Bocaria (local trash dump, they go and minister to and pray over the community living there), and weekend outreaches into the bush where they preach the Gospel.  I’m excited!  Anne’s gonna love it.  Then the next weekend we’ll (omgomgomg!) go to Kruger Park with my family.  This is the best part.  Kruger is a safari park!  I’m finally gonna see lions and zebras and really feel like I’m truly living in Africa.  It’s going to be friggin sweet!  We’ll drive down Friday or Saturday and then (God’s such a smarty pants) Anne and I will head home on Monday, catching a ride with Meghann and her mom who will be in Kruger that same weekend.  While my aunt and cousin drive down to meet up with Uncle Todd.  It looks as though everything will work out wonderfully :-)  I’ve been trying to get to Kruger for so long, when I was last in South Africa I was really disapointed to not have the finances to afford the trip, since we drove past the park!  Ahh, it hurt.  But whatever, even if Anne and I don’t go to Kruger it’s still going to be an amazing time  :-)


**she just got here this afternoon!  we went to dinner and ice cream with my family :o) and sat outside by the pool chatting for ages, with tea of course!**

Life Update

Job Update
Things change here so often, it’s ridiculous. People come and go all the time; new people come, old people leave, current people visit home for two months at a time.  It’s ridiculous!  So, in light of these changes, I’ve taken on more responsibilities.  In hospitality it’s: keys.  Keys.  Keys.  Keys.   It’s a nightmare, but it’s all about organizing and categorizing…sooooo, (call me loony) I love it!  At any given time we’ve got between 15-50 visitors, they sleep in their own little area we call the Visitor’s Compound.  They each get a set with 3 keys (their room, their kitchen and to the actual compound which stays locked 24/7).  I’m the one who has/gets to make sure each set of keys is correct.  I’m not sure how to explain just how headachy this job is.  I’ve been doing this since December and it’s just never ending.  I just stepped in and took over because I love organizing.  But I didn’t realize it would never be fixed.  We never truly have all the keys we need and certainly not the number of extra copies we want.  But it’s cool, it’s cool. :o) 

I’m also doing this new thingie I call “car mileage.”  The directors asked me to do the admin on keeping track of cars: how much they’re driven, their problems, and how much money is put into their tanks.  It’s pretty messy because there are 14 cars and one missionary keeps track of these things for one car.  So every Monday I’m emailing all the missionaries trying to track down what they wrote for their car.  But it’s working pretty well, I’d give it an 85% success rate.  It’s only lacking because drivers don’t write everything down the way their supposed to and I’ve got quite a bit of chasing to do with my colleagues.  It’s a work in progress. :o)

The big change is this: Laura’s going home for 6 months!  She’s leaving in mid-June, 7 weeks before I follow suit and head to Richmond.  This is going to be tricky, because it means I’ll have to train-up a new missionary, leave for the States and then Laura will come back to a new person running the dorm.  It’s going to be a bit odd, but I’m really excited for Laura.  She’s going home to spend more time with her family and to start graduate school.  I’m such a huge supporter of both these things :-)  Please pray that a missionary will come here long-term with a heart for working with my dorm.  And pray we get one before I leave.  I don’t particularly want to run the dorm alone again, it’s a bit lonely and I still haven’t learned quite enough Portuguese to feel confident with the Tias’ explanations for things.  But I especially want the chance to train a new missionary so that the boys’ lives are still relatively the same until Laura comes home. *I know I use the word home a lot, to talk about the States and here.. but that’s just my life*  Pray over this whole situation in general :-)  I know it’ll work out, but as usual, I just wish God would let me (little miss planner) know soon.

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Sopa!

I did the Afternoon Program today with Room 3 (the youngest who are about 6) and we made soup :-)  The only other time I’ve ever cooked with them was when we made a cake for Laura’s homecoming back when I first got here.  So this was a new adventure..one that I didn’t even volunteer for without first stepping back and really processing through it.  But then I figured how bad could it be?  I’ve only made soup one other time in my life but these are six year olds.  And not just American six year olds, but six year olds who will eat anything you put in their hands and say “doce!” (candy!). 

It was a good time, lol :o)  I love cooking, especially when I don’t follow a recipe and just go for something.  The first step, the same one every young chef learns is: wash your hands.  So I stood at the sink with a chair from the kitchen table and had each boy come and wash their hands.  They were surprisingly good at this… the kids in America put their hands under the water right when you put the soap on, its useless.  But my (amazing) boys first scrubbed their hands without provocation and then rinsed them –I was proud.  Haha.  Well after all hands were clean I set them up to color (and touch what I can only assume are germ-ridden colored pencils…. heh… oops?) I had each boy come up in turn and pour water into the pot, put vegetables in along with it and then stir.  It was pretty freakin’ cute, I’m not gonna lie :-) And the soup turned out delicious (yay me).  It was so good I even gave some to a tia, because I wasn’t worried she’d hate it :-)  I love the Afternoon Program

Anatomia de Grey

Grey’s is my favorite show and Meghann is my hero.

She visited home in February and brought back with her all (yes ALL!) seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, even some of the current season! It was heaven. So for the past, I dunno, 3-ish months we’ve been spending most Tuesday nights watching Grey’s. When Emily got here she brought season 2, then Meghann returned home with all seasons… we’re about to start season 5 tonight. Haha, it’s so great. It’s the little things, ya know? Don’t tell me anything about the current season, please, I've only seen the first 13 episodes. But that’s so exciting –I’ve seen the first half and I’m in Mozambique!! God is good in so many ways :-) Me and Emily are the hardcore viewers, Meghann and Erin watch often but then there’s Fiona and Heather… Maybe it’s because their English? They hardly watched until recently. As of last night I think I’ve finally got Fiona into it :-) She was really upset when Season 4 ended, until I got to tell her we’ve got Season 5, hah. But we’re still working on Hev. Pray for her lol, she needs to join us :-)

yes, I just devoted a whole post to Grey’s --it’s that good.


life updates are on their way soon. hopefully this week :-) lots to update!

lovelovelove

City Streets

I made a video a few days ago, and now I’m sitting in a coffee shop able to enjoy internet strong enough to upload it :-)  It’s not the smartest thing to take pictures out in the street, but I couldn’t imagine going home and not having what I see everyday on video.  So I took the risk, and because of it I’m super happy.  Stupid, maybe, but happy? Yes! 

I’m in cafe sol right now with a big group of girl friends.  This place is the closest I can get to Starbucks, it’s an ex-pat haven :-)  I can actually evesdrop on conversations in English!  I can people watch and understand their language –love it :-) It’s a very needed break after

a hard last week. 

ShopRite

This is our local grocery store, ShopRite, it’s kind of like a Food Lion.  Kinda.  Last friday there was a ShopRite run in the afternoon so I took one of my boys with me.  I took Estevao (steve) who’s about 8 years old.  I went up to the dorm and told him to stay in his nice school clothes but told him I’d explain why later.  I didn’t want the entire dorm knowing I was taking him until the very last minute otherwise I’d be showered with “take me too!”  I ended up being showered in those anyway, but I like to think I stopped some of it, lol.  So anyway, we’re in the bus with two other missionaries and one visitor and I pull out my old cell phone so we can listen to music with earphones.  Estevao is not a quiet kid, not at all, it’s part of what I adore about him.  But on the ride there he was so out of his element it was adorable!  He was silent!  I kept dancing to the music trying to get him into it and he’d only give like 10% effort :-)  So when we get there I tell him the rules of ShopRite before we walk in –something I learned from babysitting.  I told him to always hold my hand or touch the cart and not to ask for anything, at all.  He did amazing!  He was my little helper, it was so cute :-)  He loved pushing the cart, something I forgot all kids love to do.  He carried things for me, and put the vegetables on the scales.  So cute!  And he did really well not asking for anything, but he did make an effort to point out every cool toy. Which up until that point I had never noticed.  Nearing the end of the trip he saw a big cool toy car and said in English, “me for car.”  I died laughing inside, but told him, “Don’t ask for anything please.”  And then he said, again in English, “I said Jesus!”   Hahaha, I died.  So once we had finished getting all of our coisas (things) I bought him a soda and chocolate.  The drive home was lovely, he almost spilled his soda a hundred times and his hands were covered in chocolate –a true kid :-)