Ice Cream

It has started to get pretty warm here in Botswana. The seasons here are opposite those in the states, right now we are having Spring and heading into Summer. The other day we found some very yummy ice cream at a place called "Milky Lane" and as you can see Taylor enjoyed it quite a bit.

We will be heading to Zambia on Thursday, October 22, for 30 days. Our itinerary while we are there will be 12 days in Lusaka (the capital of Zambia) where we will be going out with a local in the mornings and then classes in the afternoons. The next 12 days will be spent camping in the bush, 3 days will be spent living with an African family in their village, and the last 3 days we will be at a place called Ibis Gardens debriefing all of our experiences over these 30 days. We'll be sure to put in our next newsletter how our Zambia time was spent.  Please keep us in your prayers during this time that we would be able to tell many people about Christ and learn lots about the African culture. We won't have access to email or blogging during this time, so we'll see you in about a month!

Packages/Letters

Several people have asked about how to send letters or packages to us. Here are a couple of helpful hints and our address:

• When you fill out the form at the post office, never say that something is “new” otherwise we will be charged for it when we get it.
• If it has a tag on it or is in a package then please take off the tag or packaging.
• If you are sending a CD then label it “audio material” and if you are sending a DVD then label it “video material”, so it is less likely to be stolen or that they will make us pay a fee to pick it up.
• When putting the value on the form at the post office, put it at a very low rate or $0, otherwise we could be charged for it when we get it.

Our address until about June 2010 will be PO Box 228, Lobatse, Botswana

What can you send? Well we would love to have anything you would like to send. Getting a care package always is fun and makes you feel special. Something that would be very light to send that we can’t get here is kool-aid, so that’s one hint of something we would love :)

Thanks for keeping up with our blog and let us know how we can be praying for you!

Home in Lobatse, Botswana

We have now moved about 1 hour south of Gaborone to a town called Lobatse. We will be completing our language study here most likely with a local pastor.

Our 2 bedroom/1 bath home (half of it will be where we do language school)

Hanging the clothes out to dry in our back yard

Taylor loves to play with the 2 jack russell terriers next door

Just one of the beautiful flowers in our yard

Arrival in Africa

We left for Africa on October 7. Overall our trip went very well other than Taylor throwing up all over herself as we arrived at Dulles airport, the plane being stuck on the Tarmac in London for an extra 20 minutes because Taylor would not sit in her seatbelt (the captain of the plane came back and gave her special allowance to sit on my lap after that), and Taylor only slept about 8 hours of our 26 hour journey. Needless to say we were very happy to arrive and can laugh about it all after the fact.

We had some of our fellow missionaries pick us up from the airport on October 9. All of our luggage arrived with us except one piece and that came the very next day, so we were very happy about that.

On Saturday they had a welcome party for us and we had tacos. Below are a few shots from the party of some of our new friends/fellow workers.

Shawna Davis and Lisa Jones

Meredith and Taylor jumping on the trampoline

Traci and Keely-2 of our journey-girls who serve 2 year terms

Brandon and Torie-they live with us at the moment in Lobatse as they are finishing up language school.

It’s spring here in Africa so things are green and the flowers are beautiful. I’ll try to post later on some of the landscape here.

Also on Sunday we were able to attend our first African church service. It was great! Here’s a picture of part of the crowd in church and some of the kids around Taylor afterwards.

The African supermarket

On Monday (October 12), we moved all of our stuff south to Lobatse (about an hour from Gaborone where we will eventually be living/working). We will be living in Lobatse until about June 2010 learning the language of Setswana with a language helper. This meant we now had our own home which also meant I had to learn to feed us. So Torie took me to the African supermarket for the first time. Here is a picture of it, rather nice I thought.

It was amazing to see what all the supermarket had available for us:

• Lots of fresh vegetables and fruit
• Different varieties of cookies (biscuits) and crackers
• Toothpaste, lotions, soap, detergent, trash bags, diapers, and wipes (most of these are off brands and expensive but we’re glad they are here)
• Amazing selection of juices (very cheap!)

Things that are not easy to find or non-existent here at the supermarket:

• Lunch meats (one supermarket carries pastrami and sometimes ham but that’s it)
• Kool-Aid (we drink a lot so you either drink tea or water or juice)
• Pepperoni (pizza topping)
• No boxed brownie or cake mixes or Pillsbury ready-to-bake cookies (guess I’ll have to learn to make these from scratch)
• Fruit snacks-these are some of Taylor’s favorite things
• Goldfish

So overall, it’s very nice what we can find here. More to come I’m sure on how the cooking from scratch thing is going. Brent will most likely go to the butcher to get our meats cut. We had the privilege of eating Impala and Warthog the other day with our neighbor and it was delicious. Brent may go hunting sometime soon to get our own meat.

Hard Good-byes

Saying good-bye is never easy. We are ready to start our journey in Africa, but leaving behind the ones we love is a hard thing to do. Material possessions come and go, but the love of family is like none else. Below are some pictures of our beautiful nieces who will be much older the next time we get to hug them tight. We love you, family, more than you will ever know and thank you for supporting us as we start this chapter in our lives!!

Ainsley Cate-2 months old

Noa Claire-2 years old

Jaiden Daniele-4 years old

Kali Anne-5 months old

A good friend sent us this quote earlier today:

For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice
Statement by african missionary David Livingstone, Cambridge University, December 4, 1857.