The Fey Family

We had an amazing holiday at the beach last week. Darin and I have been thinking back and this is the first holiday we can remember taking with just the 4 of us since we have lived in South Africa! It isn’t that we don’t love our parents and other people we have traveled with in the past, but there was something lovely about getting away with our little family for a good long while. We are glad to have good friends who were willing to house sit for us while we were away!  One of our house-sitters, sleeping on the job This holiday was made possible thanks to the hardworking Darin Fey and an order of Village Water Filters he had to deliver to a World Vision office in Greytown, about an hour from the beach. So we hauled a trailer full of filters and buckets to Greytown, unloaded them, dropped off the trailer in Pietermaritzburg, made a quick stop to get groceries and then made our way to our holiday destination. Lunch Stop Long car ride, but these two were great! ...

Hello again. This is not going to be a long post, but rather a request. If you would like to send us your family Christmas letter, we love staying in touch and would enjoy reading about your 2016. My parents will be visiting in February, so they are the designated mail carriers for this year. Please send mail to: John Van Schepen Attn: Fey Family 5451 Kafir Drive Keizer, OR 97303 I will be posting something later this month or early next, just an overview of our year. Hopefully I'll post something else before that as well! Love from the Feys

My family. I love these three people so very much. Lately I am realizing how swiftly the days pass. This month my babies will be half way through year 12 and 10 and Darin and I will have been married 15 years on the 22nd. Our first 3 and a 1/2 years were spent living in an old duplex in Zeeland, Michigan. We rented out the top unit to a stream of interesting tenants and even had my brother living above us for a while. Tyson was brought home from the hospital to this house, our tiny baby boy. When Tyson was a little over a year, we moved into what we thought was our forever home in Hudsonville. We were expecting Jori, so obviously, we needed a house with more bedrooms and more bathrooms before our second child arrived! We lived on Elm Avenue for a little over 5 years and then had the crazy idea to move to South Africa. So we sold our forever home and moved into an apartment for 4 months before getting on a plane and heading into the wild unknown. In just over a week, we w...

Dear Laurie You’ve been asking me to write for a while and for some reason, it never happens. Why? I really don’t know. I suppose it is just life getting in the way. That is really a poor excuse as you are my sister and I do actually want you to know what is happening with all of us in South Africa. Today, I had plans to visit a friend. Those plans were derailed when we had a call that a granny we know was being discharged from the hospital. I offered to go as I know the family better. I quickly came to regret this decision as getting discharged from a hospital in South Africa is not like getting discharged from a hospital in the states. I should have remembered this from Darin’s wonderful hospital experience in May. First one of her grandkids was told to return her file to the admissions area. Later he was sent back to fetch the file as it still needed to go to the pharmacy. Then a nurse had to take it to another ward as the granny was transferred to her ward without discharge ...

It is the end of September. We celebrated Darin's birthday last week. This year his birthday had so much more meaning as we truly celebrated his life after the scary times we faced back in May. That whole time period is often something we want to forget and run away from, but looking back we see how God is ever faithful, how He meets our every need and how He so lovingly cares for us. My dad is in South Africa right now. We briefly saw him over the weekend and he is on his way back to us tonight for a whole week of fun! The kids are really hoping to go to Bela Bela and we have talked about doing a tour of Soweto, but who knows what we'll get into while he is here. I know that cleaning the garage is high on our list of things to be done. Tyson and Jori will be on school holidays starting Friday, so we will have time to chill and NOT worry about homework! Darin's dad is arriving towards the end of October for 2 weeks. We are saving some projects for him as well, like taki...

It is Friday morning. I have laundry going, a list of things to do a mile long, and I am not feeling 100%. None of this is really out of the ordinary, but tomorrow Darin and I are heading into 7 days of non stop action as we welcome a group of advocates from the US of A and Canada. This group is coming to see what is happening on the ground in South Africa with Take Action Ministry. They are here in conjunction with the Help One Now #tendollartribe at the invitation of Crystal Paine, the Money Saving Mom. This is an exciting time for us as we get to show people what we do here in South Africa, introduce them to our local leaders and the projects they run and most importantly, show them the vision that we believe God has planted in us to bring hope and restoration to the communities of Hammanskraal and Maubane. Exciting, yes, but also exhausting. We will be leaving our house every morning and only returning after4 each day. We have made plans for the kids for each of the next 7 days; ...

So, I was really excited to be part of the recent book launch team for "Doing Good Is Simple: Making a Difference Right Where You Are" by Chris Marlow. Normally, I don't pay attention to things like book launches because we live in South Africa and people don't want to send presale books overhere (shipping and all the hassle I suppose) BUT my friend Rebecca was going to be heading our way soon and Chris Marlow is the founder Help One Now, which is one of our Take Action Ministry partner organizations, so I thought I might as well try to be part of the launch team. The book came, and I read it. I highlighted a lot of good stuff. It was practical and easy to understand. One thing I realized is that doing good IS simple, it really is, but making the choice to do good is somewhat more difficult. There are so many great organizations out there, so many needs and so many ways to get involved, which can lead a person to become overwhelmed by the choices. I think for many...