Two Week Wrap-up

It is Saturday morning, a very quiet Saturday morning. Darin, Tyson and Jori are camping with a group of dads and kids from our church. They left yesterday afternoon and will be back sometime later today. Darin has sent me a few pictures and it looks like they are having lots of fun. I’ll see if I can get him and the kids to write up a post telling all about their camping adventure later this week!

With the three of them gone, that left me and O at home alone. She took an extra long nap yesterday, which might have been why she was up twice during the night (not normal) for reasons unknown to me. She did sleep in til after 8 this morning though so I’m not feeling too tired from her nocturnal activity. I did two loads of laundry while she sat in her chair watching a pair of hornbills fly into a window. She seemed to enjoy the show they put on. Now she is sitting outside in her swing watching the birds and enjoying the cool breeze from under the lapa. It is HOT here, almost 100 yesterday and I’m not sure what it is already today, but it’s almost too hot to enjoy my morning coffee.

Since I last wrote, we’ve been keeping busy. Darin celebrated his 35^th birthday on the 22^nd of September. We went to cell group in the morning and had breakfast for lunch at Wimpy. On the 23^rd, we went to lunch at the Warrens and met another family that also recently moved here from Virginia. The kids had a great time playing with their boys and Darin and I enjoyed having a time of fellowship with other adults. The kids had a holiday on the 24^th, Heritage Day I believe. The rest of the week was pretty quiet for them and us. I spent some time across the road, Darin had some meetings, lots of phone calls and tons of emails shooting back and forth.

On Friday, the 28^th, we went to court for Miss O. We found out we’ve been spelling and saying her name slightly wrong. It’s Oarabile, pronounced O-are-ah-bee-lay, and not Orabile, O-ra-bee-lay, but really, you say it so fast that it basically sounds the same either way J We arrived at the court at 9, which is when the social worker told us to be there. The social worker showed up at 10, and we were finally seen around 11 by the magistrate. The whole process went very quickly and O has been granted a 6 month leave of absence from TYB and has been placed in our care for that time.

We had cell again on the 29^th and went to the Van Gilders for lunch afterwards. We are so thankful to have found such good friends out here in South Africa!

Sunday, the 30^th, Darin and his partners, Blessing and Carel, were supposed to have a meeting in the township closest to us to present the water filters to the local community. They arrived at their meeting at 9 in the morning and found out at 9:30 that the meeting had been cancelled. This is Africa!! Thankfully, Jeanne, who runs the Art Therapy program, had also shown up for this meeting, and she took the guys around to meet some people in the community. Blessing and Carel stayed for lunch, which was nice because I hadn’t met either of them yet.

The kids had this past week off from school for midterm break. They now have one term left until summer holidays and then they’ll be starting 2^nd and 3^rd grades! Wow. We had a nice week together. We went across the road a few times and the kids even swam one day. Tyson and Darin worked on our garden and Tyson helped Darin with some errands in town. Jori and I played Polly Pockets and she painted O’s toenails. On Wednesday, the Crone’s, who we met at the Warren’s house, came to visit. They played so hard together and were tired out for the rest of the day. On Thursday morning, Tyson and Jori stayed home (with Amos to keep an eye on them), while Darin and I went to a meeting for the Take Action group. Then yesterday they headed off for some camping fun and that brings us back to today!