Easter in Botswana

The other day we were at one of the two “malls” in Gaborone and we saw these Easter bunny inflatables. Since there is no chance of Taylor sitting on the Easter bunnies lap here, I told her to go and sit BY the Easter bunny. She decided to try to LAY on him instead.

It’s funny, not many Africans know what the Easter bunny even is. Taylor’s nanny told me today that all they do is go to church and that she has never heard of the Easter bunny or decorating eggs. Sometimes I guess we tend to focus on different aspects of holidays, but we will make sure Taylor knows the true meaning of Easter this year!

This was our attempt to color the brown eggs that we have here. All worked out well except for the yellow.

Immigration

On Thursday we had to go back to immigration yet again to try to get an extension on our temporary visa while waiting for our Resident Permits to be typed up (it has been 6 months since we submitted our paperwork). We were not quite sure what would happen as they could ask us to leave the country until our Resident Permits were available which they had promised us would be in the next 3 weeks. But God had greater plans for us…He put us into the office of the Chief of Labor and she had a secretary type up our Resident and Work Permits right then. It took about 3 hours of sitting in the immigration office on Thursday and about 15 visits over the last 6 months, but I can’t even begin to say how thankful we are to not have to go back to immigration for 3 more years.

Since we had to wait for 3 hours, we had to find something to entertain Taylor. I took some stickers and she ended up with them all over her body.

 

Then she decided she wanted to make some silly faces and look at them in the camera. Whatever works!

Fun birthday package

Today Brent received a fun birthday package from his family that included some birthday hats and many other fun things to get from the States, so he and Taylor decided to model them. It’s so much fun to get those packages from home.

Happy Birthday, Brent!

Today my wonderful husband is celebrating his 31st birthday. We are so blessed to have him in our lives and so glad he was born at 6:42pm on March 21, 1979.

Taylor did a great job singing “happy birthday” and helping blow out the candles

Brent loves Carvel ice cream cake and unfortunately they do not sell them here in Botswana, so we had to do the next best thing and try to make one. It actually did not taste too bad, but it was probably one of the ugliest cakes I’ve ever seen. I’d love to blame the decorating on Taylor, but unfortunately it was all my (Amanda’s) doing. Taylor did lovingly place the candle on the cake though.

Big girl

Our little girl has now become such a big girl. The last several months she has really been going through some “terrible twos” and not listening to mommy and daddy and being a very naughty girl  as they say here in Africa. In the last 2 weeks, she has really turned her attitude around. One thing I think that has helped is that we FINALLY got rid of her pacifier. She only had it for nap time and night time, and really we should have done it a long time ago. The first couple nights were pretty rough sleeping without it, but she was encouraged that she was going to be a big girl just like her friends Madylanne, Olivia, Owen, and Andrew. She also decided to give up her naps, so that was interesting to say the least, but she is doing very well with it.

Children really are a gift from the Lord and we are so thankful for this little girl He has placed in our lives. Parenting certainly is not easy and has it’s ups and downs, but it is so worth it!!

3 pieces of land

As we continue to learn language, we also continue to learn the culture. They go hand in hand, if you learn the language and never learn the culture then you will never be able to relate to the people you are trying to minister to. This week during one of our language lessons, we drove to our language helpers village. He explained to us that every citizen is given 3 pieces of land by the government. The first piece of land is where they live, normally this is in a village. The second piece of land is the cattle post, or as they call it in Setswana Moraca. The third piece of land is for their fields or Masimo.

As Africa becomes more developed, less and less people depend on their fields and cattle posts for survival, but it’s still amazing to go into the villages and see how people can survive on their own without grocery stores to shop in.

Recently we attended part of a funeral process that lasted about a week. The evening we attended, it was a singing and preaching service for about 2 hours and then the men and women divided and socialized with each other. The women have to wear a scarf over their shoulder and a headdress and the men have to wear some sort of jacket.

This is part of the cattle post. Most cattle are “free-range” and wander around in the bush eating for the biggest part of the day. Normally a member of the family, a younger boy, has the job of watching after the cattle and making sure they each get back to the cattle post each day.

We were amazed out the huge plot of land that is given for people to plant their fields. Our language helpers grandmother is 80 years old and walks 45 minutes to the fields every day and works in the field for the biggest part of the day. The biggest thing they plant is corn, so they can make maize meal, they also plant lots of watermelons and beans. We bought a watermelon the other day at the grocery store and cut it open and it was white inside. We thought it was not yet ripe, so we through it away. When telling our language helper this story he started laughing so hard and informed us that there are both red and white watermelons and we threw away a perfectly good watermelon, ugh!

Adoption

Some of our good friends, Matt and Kelly Summers, are starting the adoption process. If you would like to read their story please go to http://www.mattandkellysummers.blogspot.com/

They also are trying to raise some money to go towards the adoption through 2 websites. Kelly is a magnificent photographer, so check out http://www.etsy.com/shop/ksummers07, to order some of her prints or http://www.justlovecoffee.com/Thesummers to order some coffee to help them out. They currently are working in Corsica, France, and looking forward to adopting. There are 147 million children who need adopted and they want to make it minus 1. Please help them out if you can! Below is a picture of their little girl Sadie.

I am going to be a BIG SISTER...