Time, and blogging

Ok so, it's been awhile since I blogged here. My apologies to all who thought I had either died or abandoned this site. :) Things have just been extremely busy for us for the past several months. We also now have a new blogging platform (on samministries.org) for news...which leaves this site as more or less just for personal ramblings--which I enjoy, given I have the time to dedicate to that. The second hold up has been issues with blogger--the interface, etc. keeps changing; HTML and Compose views are not consistent and I keep getting error warnings and red banners flashing, telling me publishing may fail. *sigh* Sometimes it seems to be all uphill!

But I will do my best to keep my tales updated. Here's what's happened (in photos and in brief) over the past 2 month. Several visitors have come our way to spend time here helping out and getting acquainted with the local context. Four of these ladies were nurses, so I've had lots of help with the various ongoing health projects and the health workers have enjoyed their input as well.

Jodi (the first to come) changing Marta's dressing. Marta was bitten by a Puff Adder, and her story has impacted us all. You can read the details here The next to arrive were these ladies. They've been a group of hard workers too! Here they are on a home visit with the 101 year old granny (who has since passed away).

While they were here, we took them up "the rock" to see the sun set over this beautiful area. We took a chair on our hike as well (Andy's brilliant idea), so each had a turn trying out a classic pose...

I just like this photo that Jodi took, it's of Simon weighing an orphaned baby who's in our infant milk program. I love how the baby is studying Simon while Simon studies the dial on the scale.

We've also been REAL busy working on translating reading books for the school library, and working on remedial materials for kids who are struggling. This is Fani hard at work.

It's great fun reading with the kids, I wish I had more time to commit to it but there are other things to be done. Like taking photos of kids for their sponsors.

Here, Paulo (teacher) helps get a smile from a shy student. Amid the activity, Dwight and I took an express trip to South Africa to do some business, then we headed right back home again. Here we are in a line up (which was NOT express) at the border post in South Africa. Well, we've seen worse. At least we weren't caught standing outside for 3-4 hours without an umbrella under an emergency foil blanket while it poured rain and stormed.

So far this year, we've had a few real hot days, up to +40C. It has threatened to storm but so far it's blown more than rained. Apparently the wind was too strong for our mission vehicle carport and it collapsed in the middle of the night one night when the wind got violent.

Thankfully our maintenance workshop is under construction. You can see it under construction here. And I can see it's time for an update there too! The airstrip has seen some good progress lately and yesterday, Aviation officials came to do an inspection. It seems that went well so now we await the final "ok" to open.

Oh, and it's orphaned duiker season again (due to it being intense hunting/trapping season). So here we are with our latest addition. Better go dig out those baby bottles again.

With that, I will close. But first, a few random, curious photos taken over the past few months.

At a local gas station, turn off your car, butt out your cigarette, and turn off your cellphone? Something makes me think it may be hard to get compliance on that last point.

This sign at a South African bank warns you that can't smoke or take your gun inside. Cell phones left on must be ok then? Phew. ttyl