Finally Home

Thank you all for your prayers! We finally made it home after 40 hours of traveling.

9/15/2010

Happy 31st anniversary Allen and Gloria!

Hi everyone! Sorry Bri and I haven't posted anything for a couple days. We have been extremely busy getting ready to come home. We were planning on posting an update yesterday, but Bri had a migraine and I still had my sinus headache. Over the past few days we have been starting our goodbyes :( This past Sunday was our last Sunday here. Yesterday we went out to a farm that has a "lake" (we would call it a pond) with Allen's class. The girls and boys had a lot of fun out on canooes and spashing in the water. Unfortunately, we did not know that we were going to the water or we would have brought our bathing suits... it's kind of hard swimming in a skirt or jeans, which is all we have. Allen said that he had no idea that we would need them either since the last 2 Septembers it has been so cold that it snowed! It got up to 89 degrees yesterday! We have not had a single day of real rain! It sprinkled off an on for about a half hour one day, but that's all. It has been wonderful seeing the sun everyday! However, the sun here is much more intense than in Seattle. Being out in the sun all day gave Bri a migraine. Over the last few days I have been taking my flonase more frequently, and I am slowing getting rid of my sinus headache. I pray that it is totally gone before we start traveling on Saturday.

Today we were supposed to go to a children's home about an hour away. However, the person driving ended up canceling on us. No surprise there, all plans are as the Bennets say, "set in jello" here ;) We were going to take tomorrow off to get all of our packing and last minute shoppng done, because that would be the only time we could do it before we leave, but we figured since we are home now today we will get everything done today and go back to school tomorrow. On Friday we were asked to teach the grade one class all day! The teacher, Leann, is a total sweatheart, and has been the most welcoming to us. Leann had an emergency come up and she has to take Friday off. There are a lot of teachers taking friday off for some reason, so there wasn't anyone to take over her class. We told her we would love to help her out. Please pray for us!

Some of the kids out on the water having fun. Yes, they eventually tipped the boat ;)

The two of us with Leann

9/9/2010

The internet has been touchy the last few days, but yesterday I just could not get it to work long enough to update my blog. Yesterday Bri and I led the devotion time in Allen's classroom. We asked the kids last week to write down any questions they have about the Bible or life. A lot of the kids asked questions like, how do we know God exists? or how do we know what the Bible says is true? We were originally planning on doing studies more from the Bible, but we realized that these kids don't believe that the Bible is a credible source. What's the point in teaching from the Bible if they don't think anything in the Bible is real? We felt totally out of our comfort zones leading a time talking about proof that God is real and the Bible is true. As a resuly, we spend a lot of time researching this past week! We also emailed a couple people asking for some links that they know would be a good source for information. In the end we had a 6 page packet of information and a video clip. God really gave us wisdom on weeding through all of the information and figuring out the best way to present it to the kids. They loved the discusion! The other teacher in Allen's class was so impressed that he asked us to make a copy of our packet for him. The kids all realized that, from a scientific point of view, there is a ton of evidence that there is a God, and that what happend in the Bible is true. We talked about things like the Dead Sea Scrolls that prove the proficies were writen 100-200 years before Christ was born. We gave them a ton of scientific evidence that the only way to explain many things using science (such as the tides, the earth's magentic field, Jupiter's temperature, etc.) is that the earch was created by God. The kids talked about it all day long. They all asked for a copy of our information as well because they were so excited. Well, I don't have much time so this will have to be all for now. Thank you all for your prayers!

There will be no blog updates for the next few days. We are going on a road trip and we won't have internet. Please pray for safety and rest :)

The class listening to Bri and Myself

Bri and I praying at the end

9/5/2010

It has been a very busy Sunday! After church we were invited to lunch at a couple from the church (and school's) house. They made us authentic South African food! Unfortunatly, we did not have our cameras. The food was all pretty good. The main course was some kind of buck with gravy, half fried potatoes, peas and rice with summer squash. They told us that when we go to see all the animals this next weekend we now know what one kind tasts like ;) They were all talking about how they caught it, and arguing about if it was a leg or a shoulder... I think they decided that it was a leg. For dessert, we had a special Malva pudding...They call any dessert pudding here. I'm not sure how to describe it other than the fact that it was a cake, but it was very good.

This afternoon, we went to the school and hung out with the girls who live at the school. They were very shocked that we would take time out of our weekend to go hangout with them. We played games, talked, and listened to music. I brought my Ipod because they wanted to hear some of the christian music that we listen to. They were very excited to see the pictures on my Ipod that we showed them. They were all making fun of me today because I have a pretty distinct tan line now from my sun glasses ;) They said I have a reverse racoon face.

We taught the girls how to play Snorta today! They loved it ;)

They taught us how to play their jump rope games.

We gave the girls the cinnamon rolls that we made. They LOVED them!

9/3/2010

It's Friday! Today was a very long, but good day. On Friday's the kids 4th grade and up split up boys and girls, and then have the opportunity to ask their same gender teachers any questions that they have about life or the Bible. Bri and I offered to lead the girls group today. As we expected, most of the questions were about dating. It was frustrating at times because they wanted us to give them a formula on how to handle a ton of different situations with guys. We told them that the solution to all of the problems they were asking us how to handle really came down to dating the way God intended it. If they really wanted to keep God first in their lives then they wouldn't be in any of the situations that they were asking us about... such as their parents finding out about their hidden boyfriend, having 2+ boyfriends at a time and not knowing who they really "love", and so on. We tried our best to explain to them why both of us decided early on that we were not going to date just to date. We read in Proverbs where God says to guard our hearts and we explained that with each boy they date just to date they are not guarding their hearts. They are asking to have their heart broken. We talked about our purity rings and how God wants us to save ourselves for marraige, and how that means more than just sleeping around. With all of this they just could not understand why Bri and I would choose to not shop around for guys or why we would both keep our purity. I'm not sure how much of our talk they really took to heart, but I pray that God used us to plant a seed in their lives.

For the rest of the day Bri and I helped out in the 1st grade class again. In the afternoon, the teacher asked if we could watch the class because she had to leave. For the rest of the afternoon we looked after the kids. They are fun, but 8 little balls of energy ;) They saw our purity rings and thought we were married. We tried to explain that they are on our right hands and a wedding ring is on the left. They did not believe us at first, and then they tried to take them off and put them on our left hands trying to say that then we would be married. They obviously have never heard Pastor's baptism metaphore with his wedding ring ;) These kids are silly and loving and bring us both lots of smiles.

We don't have any pictures for today, so I thought I would post some more pictures from the other day when we traveled with Hospice.

These are their mud, stone and stick houses... some, as you can see, are falling over.

We met this little girl at the school for disabled children.

This little boy is HIV+ and is recovering from TB.

This little boy was so shy! He didn't want anything to do with us until Bri showed him his picture on her camera. They are just fascinated by the fact that they are in a box!

9/1/10

Today Bri and I had planned to stay home and get some things done. It was a great day to take off after such an emotionally draining day yesterday. We slept in... until 7:30 that is (actually, Bri was up by 6:45). After getting ready for the day, we headed out to town. It has been in the mid 80's here, and we figured it would be best to get all of our walking done early in the day. We walked around looking at all of the pavement shops, but after about an hour we decided that the pot everyone was smoking was too much and we went shopping inside. I found something for Luke at one of the stores. Bri and I went out to lunch at KFC. We just happened to be the only white people in the store! But it sounded good, it was cheap and we were hungry. The looks people gave us were priceless though ;) There are a lot of chicken places here and everyone says it's because the Blacks LOVE chicken. The menu was different, but we were really excited to be able to get our "mash and gravy!" Most of Blacks eat chips (french fries), so we were surprised that they had mashed potatoes. Even Gloria was surprised when we told her because she has never seen them on the menu. This afternoon we just relaxed and prepared our devotions for the weeks to come. Tomorrow Bri and I are going to give our testimonies at school and let the kids ask anything they would like to know about us, the US or whatever else. Please pray for us! We started a question box earlier in the week where the kids could drop in any questions they had about God, the Bible, Christianity, etc. We will use their questions to prepare devotions for the weeks to come.

We went to leave this morning and found the gate locked. Nerina didn't know we were staying home today, so she locked the gate that blocks off the driveway. We didn't have a key, and we had no other way out, so we were locked in! It took us about an hour to go searching everywhere to find a key. We finally went in Nerina's house and grabbed all her keys hanging up (about 10 sets), and went through them all. Of course it was on the last key ring we checked.

Blacks love their KFC's!


The red shirts are all the people who are striking. Everywhere you go you see a ton of people walking around in their red shirts.

8/29 and 8/30

Hi everybody! So, yesterday I ended up running out of time and wasn't able to post. It has been very busy, and we havn't been able to really take any pictures either. Yesterday we went to church, which was held at the school this Sunday. After church they sold steak rolls, which are really yummy, and pancakes (aka crepes) with cinnamon and sugar in them. After church we all came home and took a nap :) Even Allen and Gloria slept for about 3 hours. We have been going non-stop and were all exhausted. Bri and I talked to Nerina yesterday and she asked us if we would like to go on a hospice visit. Hospice makes home visits to diagnose and treat HIV+/AIDS patients and determine the best situation for a child/children that are in the home once the parents pass away. We both said that we would love to - it should be a good experience to see how they run all of that over here. She said that she would try to work that out for this week sometime.

Today was a pretty easy going day. We started out our morning by counting all of the uniforms that are at the school. Of course, nothing is in the same room, and most of the used uniforms didn't have the tags on them, so it took a long time. The secretary of the school said that without us, she didn't know how she would have finished the school inventory on time. She was very impressed with how we were able to type everything out on an excel spreadsheet and make it all so organized. She said that she isn't letting us go home because we save her so much time and frustration ;) On Monday's at school the staff have a meeting during lunch, but it ALWAYS runs late. Gloria goes to Allen's classroom when their lunch is supposed to be over so the kids can get back to work. However, the rest of the students in the school don't have any teachers that are availible for that, so they just play until the meeting is done. Last week the meeting went an hour over, and today it went an hour and fifteen minutes over. Bri and I asked the 4th,5th, and 6th grade teacher (these grades are all in one classroom) if she would like us to fill in for her during the meeting like Gloria does for Allen so the students and get more work done. She was very excited! We actually had a lot of fun, although we couldn't help them with their Afrikaans ;) After school we talked to the girl's hostile (dorm) mom to see if we can spend some time with the girls after church this Sunday. She said the girls would love it. We told the girls that we were going to try to hang out during a weekend when we first started meeting with them, and the hostile mom said they talk about it non-stop now. They are amazed that we would want to take time out of our weekend to do something fun with them. We are also going to talk to Nerina today and see if we can go volunteer at Home of Comfort, the orphanage, after school during the week. We get home from school at 2:30 in the afternoon, so we would be able to walk to the orphange and play with the kids for a few hours each day. It will make for a long day, but it will be more than worth it! These kids don't have a lot of people who come and play with them. There needs are met to the best of the orphanage's ability, but they just don't have the man power to play with the kids. We would love your prayers for God to work out what He wants us to do for the remainder of our trip. We are completely open and just want God to use us to touch the lives of these people.

8/27/2010

Today was a pretty good day. Bri and I helped finish the inventory of the whole school in the office this morning. This afternoon, we had more time than normal to talk with the girls, which meant that we got to talk to all of the girls that we hadn't yet talked to. One of the girls just broke out hearts. Her name is Mbali, and she is 13 years old. The black culture has fed so much garbage into her head, and she believes all of it. We found out today that in the black culture, fathers want their daughters to wear mini skirts and low-cut shirts (as soon as the girls reach puberty) to "show off what they have." They want to marry them off as soon as possible. It used to be that when a guy wanted to marry a girl, he would pay the father in livestock for her and then take her to a new hut that he built for her and their family. Now, these young men don't have enough money, so they bring their brides to their parents house (these are usually a one-room house in which they fit ~12 people). The fathers gave up on getting paid for their daughters, they just like that it's one less mouth to feed. Mbali was telling us that she will never get married because all husbands do is use their wives. She told us that she does want to be a mom though, so she decided that she will just sleep around so that she can have kids without having to get married. When we tried explaining to her the emotional pain that would come from living a life like this, she just told us that "only weak women get hurt." These girls have no understanding of their worth in God's eyes. Please pray for them! Nothing we say can counter growing up emersed in lies. All we can do is pray that the seed of truth that we have planted will continue to grow and that, one day, these girls will choose to believe the truth. God loves these girls even more than we do, and with Him nothing is impossible!

Please pray for my skin! My eczema is really bad and I forgot my medication at home. Last night, my hands were bleeding so bad that I had to cake mosterizer on them and then wrap them up to keep the sores from getting infected. That really helped, but I can only do it at night.

Later in the day, Bri and I were pulled over to play with the girls from the grade one class. They are such cuties!

I told them all to attack Bri with kisses ;)

Silly girls

8/25/2010

Bri and I were asked to help out at an Athletics meet today. We figured we would just help make sure the kids stayed where they were supposed to or something. When we got there, however, we found out I was an official score keeper and Bri was a judge on the field. Neither of us had any idea what we were doing at first ;) And for my job, there wasn't any room for errors without a whole school getting mad. We were also told that it was going to be very cold today, so we went to the meet in our winter gear. It was actually REALLY hot today, and we were baking in the sun. Thankfully, I keep sunscreen in my backpack, but with this African sun we burn in about 10 minutes. It is amazing what a day in this hot sun will do to our energy! We are both ready to pass out and it's only 6 in the evening. Allen was telling us that the girls, especially Nosi and her sister, have been asking about us all week. We are very excited to get back to school and spend some time with them tomorrow. Please continue to pray for our time with these girls!

This one is for my Dad. This is their version of coffee... it is a powder that you mix in with water (kind of like hot chocolate) They usually put about half a cup of full cream and 2 scoops of sugar with it ;)

This was the official table where I spent my day doing a lot of writing and cheering on the Rivermead kids.

Bri's second trip up for my sunscreen.

South African's LOVE their cooking oil. This is a picture of an aisle in their grocery store. I have never seen so much oil!

Steers is South Africa's version of McDonald's.

Bri and Gloria waiting for their food.

Here they eat everything with a fork and knife.

They even have little plastic forks to eat chips (french fries) with.

8/23/10

This morning both Bri and I woke up and felt terrible. Our whole bodies ached. We ended up staying home, taking some Tylenol PM and crashing for the rest of the morning. By the afternoon, we were both feeling back to normal. I think we just needed some rest. We have been running all day everyday this past week, and we haven't been sleeping very well at all (because of the dogs and the construction). We wanted to go to school, but we figured that we should just stay home, get rest, and be ready for the week.

Later today, we went to the children's home that Nerina works with called Home of Comfort. These kids were so sweet and loving! Most of the children are orphans, but some are not. Those children that are not orphans have been removed from abusive / neglective homes. In some situations, the children are HIV+, but the biological parents won't bother to give them the medication. In South Africa, one a child is abused, abandoned or neglected, the biological parent loses all right to the child forever. Home of Comfort is set up so that there are 4 houses. Each house has a boys room, a girls room, and one or two babies. Each home also has 2 home mothers that are in charge of the children in their house. The home can hold a maximum of 57 children, and right now it is completely full. The stories of each of these children just breaks your heart. Each home mother is trained on how to take care of the medication for HIV+ children as well as the requirements for their special diet.

This little girl was attached to us from the moment we picked her up :) She is a cutie and has such a sweet smile.

These group of kids sang us a song.

This is one of the little babies.

She loved playing with Bri's hair! She would pet it and pull it - she even pulled out a couple strands ;)

He LOVED the camera

This little girl is a twin. Her and her brother weren't supposed to live when they were found (they only weighed a couple of pounds each), but they are growing bigger and stronger each day.

8/21/2010

Today we had a pretty relaxing day. We were supposed to climb Mt. Currie today with a group of boys from church, but it was re-scheduled due to a last-minute school fundraiser (yes, another one). We were supposed to be able to sleep in this morning, but, like every morning we are able to get a little more sleep, the dogs come and start barking right next to our windows. So sleeping in meant 7 instead of the usual 6. After hanging up our laundry, we went to town to see some of the pavement shops and to visit a couple of stores that Allen and Gloria wanted to take us to. It was very interesting to see the variety of items that you can buy on the pavement here. Later this evening, we went to have tea with a family from church. They were very nice. We had a lot of fun talking with them about the differences between the US and South Africa.

This is one of the little shops on the pavement.

Allen and Gloria took us to this little cafe for lunch.

The owner of the cafe is a Christian. This is the bottom of the menu.

If you look back to the pictures of my trip to China, you will see a picture of some of the food I had to eat. A lot of people have been asking us if we have had to eat anything really weird, so we thought we would take a picture of our lunch that we had at the cafe today. It is a cinnamon and sugar pancake (aka crepe) with glazed apples :)

This is the family that we went and had tea with today.

8/19/2010

Today was a very slow and wet day. It is supposed to snow later this evening, and I believe it! It has been so cold all day. Today we were invited over to Oma's house for a cup of tea and some prayer time, so we didn't go to school. Even though we didn't have to be up early, both Bri and I got up at 7 (apparently our bodies don't want to through our schedule off). We have been going to bed around 8:30 and getting up around 6:00 everyday. I think Bri forgot to mention that 2 nights ago we had a scheduled power outage that went longer than scheduled. We were supposed to have another one last night, but we never did lose power... who knows, this is Africa ;)

We went to the store this morning and had fun taking our time and looking at all of the different types of food. They don't have a whole lot that is that different from what we eat in the US, but there are some pretty funny things. We are looking forward to having an authentic South African dinner before we leave. Most black people over here eat what we would consider mush, because they cannot afford anything else. There are a ton of people who beg for food, even people who work in stores will beg while you are shopping. Over here stealing is a HUGE problem! The black culture sees stealing as a good thing. The only thing bad about stealing is if you get caught. If someone gets caught, they are considered really stupid (if they were smart they wouldn't have been caught). It is hard, but we have to keep reminding ourselves that we aren't here to change a culture - we are here so that God can use us to change one heart at a time.

This is our Oma Drinie. She is such a sweet lady! When we left, she told us that we better be back to visit our Oma before we leave :) (Note our winter attire!)

This is their version of a garbage truck. I don't think a tractor is very efficent, but again, that's Africa ;)

It only rained off and on today, but apperantly any rain and the businesses close down... They couldn't believe we were out walking around. If they only knew where we come from ;)

The roads here are all torn up. Today we went out and there was a big pile of gravel in the middle of the road. This one looks pretty good compaired to others. They just move the dirt from one side of the road to the other. There is usually one guy running the bulldozer and 20 guys sitting on the side of the road doing nothing.

8/17/2010

Hello everyone! Today I was able to talk to Mom and Rick, which was a great treat :) As Bri said, yesterday was a very busy day. Today was a nice change of pace for both of us. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Gloria stays home to do laundry, run errands, and have a women's Bible study. We decided to stay with Gloria today since Bri needed to go shopping for "tekkies" (tennis shoes), and we needed toiletries. It was really eye-opening walking around town and seeing all the different ways they do things. They sell live animals all over on the "pavement" (sidewalk), and the pavement is full of random things that the blacks are trying to sell. Over here they have 3 different groups of people, and then MANY sub-groups within each group. There are the whites, coloreds and blacks. The whites are seen as the "highest" group, then coloreds, then blacks. Allen was saying that one of the best things that happened because of the world cup is that the different groups all started playing soccer together, which NEVER happened before. Soccer was previously seen as the "poor" sport and Rugby was the "rich" sport. Bri and I have really enjoyed learning the things about their culture here.

After shopping, us girls went to a ladies Bible study. It was such a blessing getting to talk with the ladies! Two of them are in their 80's, and they told us to call them granny :) So we now have a Granny Pat, and a Granny Drinie. They are so sweet! Granny Drinie told Bri and myself that she has been praying for us since January, and always will be. She also wanted us to know that we have people all around the world who are lifting us up in prayer. After Bible study, we had a relaxing afternoon talking with Gloria, spending some alone time with God, and baking goods with Gloria. We picked lemons off of a lemon tree and helped Gloria make homemade lemon bars! They are so good! We also helped hang-up our laundry to dry outside today, a first for Bri ;)

Our lemon tree for our fresh lemon bars ;)

Where we live. Nerina's house in on the left in this picture. Nerina is the lady that Allen and Gloria rent their place from. The building on the right is split into 3 flats. Allen and Gloria are in the middle and we are on the left. Nerina's son, Chris, usually lives in the flat we are staying, but he is going to the US on Friday.

The four of us today

This is Chris, Nerina and the 2 of us

This is the Bible study group that we went to today. Erica is in the back on the right, Granny Drinie is in the back middle, and Granny Pat is in the back right.

We are here!

Hi everyone! We are finally in Kokstad, South Africa! The flights were very long, but good overall. In Jo'berg we made our flight with only 6 minutes to spare! Thank you for all of your prayers :) Last night we stayed in a B &B next to the airport. Both Bri and I crashed right away and slept through the night no problem. We had an amazing breakfast this morning and then headed off to a church in Durban. The accents here are very fun - they are like a mix of Australian and Brittish. It is funny because everything over here is opposite of the US - literally everything :) (from driving on the left side of the road to the toilet flusher...) Well, we have a lot to unpack, but here are a few pictures so far.

On our first flight of the 36 hours of traveling

The 16 1/2 hour flight... Bri was sleeping and the guy sitting in front of us asked if he could take a picture ;)

I guess there is a story behind this guy in our rooom, but we haven't heard it yet... All we know is that he stays in our room and we can't pronounce his name. We call him Xander because that's as close as we can get ;)

These dogs like to stick their heads through our window (literally, through it) and say hi :)


This is a quick picture of our room