The Fey Family

I am tired. It is a good kind of tired in a lot of ways, but it is still tired. We are almost 3 weeks into our new way of life. Overall, things have been going so much better than I thought they would. There are moments, sometimes whole days, where I tell Darin I am packing up and heading back across the road with or without him and the kids. I vent my frustrations and troubles to a few friends and family and they remind me that change is always hard and it will take time to find a new rhythm. I try to remind myself of this when I feel like screaming and throwing things (like small children who want to constantly say “NO, AUNTIE JONNA”. Only kidding.) I am learning new things each day. I have learned that peeling and cubing a medium sized butternut squash is infinitely easier than peeling and cubing a large butternut. I have learned that I can make meals for 10 or more people and they actually turn out. Yesterday I learned that chili powder here in South Africa is a bit hotter th...

It is Thursday, just before noon. I am sitting in our bedroom/living room enjoying a moment of semi-quiet. I think I have to wait for total quiet until sometime after 7:30 tonight, although if tonight is the same as last night, the quiet won’t last long. We have one little guy who enjoys banging his head on his crib. The mama’s rustled up a crib bumper from somewhere, so we’ll see how that works tonight. We are starting to feel a bit more settled. I have finally put away most of our things, but that is only the stuff we hauled over here the first couple days. The majority of our clothes and stuff is still at the other house, waiting to be sorted through, packed up or brought over. I’ll get to that sometime this month still I hope. A third volunteer (Hi Gemma!!) is arriving at the end of next week, so that will definitely free up some more of my time. We made it through another week of meals. I start to celebrate the success, then I remember that I need to do it all again and ...

Last Friday morning Mark Harding, who founded Tshepo ya Bana (or as we usually refer to it, across the road) with his wife Chris, passed away. We are mourning the loss of this wonderful, godly, gentle, compassionate, generous man. I don’t even know if I could find the words to adequately describe just who Mark was and what his death means for so many people, so I’m not even going to try. Just please pray for the Harding family and the greater Tshepo ya Bana family as they grieve and process this great loss. A few weeks back, Darin and I sat down with Mark and Chris and had a discussion about the possibility of our family coming on board at TYB as house parents. The couple who was living in the main house for the past several months had found different employment and the Hardings knew that we had a heart for the little ones over here, which is why they approached us. With our recent financial struggles, this  opportunity made a lot of sense, as we would be volunteering, but re...