Family Fun Day

On Saturday, July 24, we hosted a “family fun day” at our church here in Lobatse. It was a day for the community to come as a family and have fun together. Unfortunately we ended up with only a handful of adults and about 125 children, but it was still a great day. The church rented a jumping castle and then we had a bowling game, bean bag toss, face painting station, and craft station. There was a team here from Virginia, the 7 college students, Margaret Fortenberry and several ladies from the church that helped make this day possible.

Our theme was how Jesus said “Let the little children come to me.” We wanted the children to know that Jesus loves them. Many thanks to all who helped carry this day out!

Here is the craft station. They were able to make a “lamb of God” picture frame, a bird, boomerang, and a bookmark. With each of these crafts, a bible story was told.

Here’s some pictures of the kids getting their faces painted. 

Here’s some pictures of the jumping castle. The kids had so much fun!

Beautiful Africa

Recently, Brent took the university students who are here for the summer for a day in Pilanesberg so they could see some wildlife before returning to America. We are so thankful that they gave up their summer to come and minister to the people here in Botswana! They made such a difference here and shared the gospel with so many people.

This is the group at the Lion Park where you can pet the baby lions. Ben, Allison, Kasey, Ashley, Sterling, and Brett.  Below is Ben playing with the lions :) While Brent was trying to take pictures, one of the lions decided to stalk him and snuck up behind him and attacked his leg. He had a huge bruise and teeth marks in his leg to show for the bite…now he can say he was bit by a lion and survived. 

Our sweet little boy

Here is a 4D ultrasound of our sweet little boy’s face and right arm. He is due to arrive October 13 and mommy and baby are happy and healthy. We do need a name still so if you have any suggestions we would love to hear them!

Safari Birthday

Amanda celebrated her birthday on July 8 and Brent took her and Taylor to a game park about 3 hours away for the day/night. We had an amazing time seeing some pretty cool animals for sure. Here’s some of our favorite pics…

Taylor using her “noculars” to look at some giraffes

Koko

The Setswana word for chicken is “koko”. This morning we went out to a village to visit some friends and before we departed we were given a chicken. Nope this chicken was not for a pet as Taylor and Amanda had hoped, it was to be eaten. So they put this chicken in a bag and put her in the back of our truck. Yikes…this now means that we have to kill the chicken ourselves. When we went through missionary training this time last year we could have attended a class on how to kill/prepare a chicken; I think we should have attended this class!! Brent did the deed of beheading the chicken and then he had to boil it to make the feathers come off. We are having her in a stew tonight so hopefully it’s good.

Taylor keeps asking where the chicken is, she doesn’t quite understand why she can’t come into our house and play :) I forget how far removed we are from our meat in America, it’s so hard when you put a face to your dinner.

 

 

3 years old

It’s hard to believe, but we now are the proud parents of a 3 year old girl. It seems like yesterday that we brought Taylor home from the hospital, but on June 29 she turned 3 years old. We celebrated her Princess party on a Saturday, July 3, with about 60 of our friends. We decided to grill out and all the kids enjoyed jumping on a jumping castle. The 7 college students that are here for the summer rented Taylor a jumping castle for the day…we love these guys and Taylor is going to miss them so much when they leave. We also played pin the tail on the donkey and made some princess/prince crowns. What a fun day for all!

 

To view all the pictures from Taylor’s big day go to http://theturnerbabies.shutterfly.com

Necklaces

On Sunday, July 4, we celebrated Taylor’s birthday with the children at church. We took in some cake, chips, and drinks and they all had a great time.

Recently we received some necklaces that the children at Rainelle Christian Academy in West Virginia made for the children here at Lobatse Baptist Church. The children here just love anything that you give them and they treasure it so much! Thank you Margie Hall and RCA for making the children at Lobatse Baptist Church feel so loved!

This is the time of year that most churches have VBS, so we wanted to ask that if there are any leftover crafts from VBS then we would love to have them to make with the children. Please just contact me at bltast@hotmail.com if you or your church has any crafts or materials you would like to send.

 

 

Kalahari Hunting Trip

I was able to take a trip out to the Kalahari for some great hunting and fellowship with 6 other missionaries. We hunt on a cattle farm that is located right next to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, and is 75 thousand acres. We are in the wild for sure! While we were there we spotted fresh lion tracks and sure enough they had a problem lion on the farm, and we had hunted in this area for 2 days! They loaded up 4 trucks with 20 bushmen, 8 guns, and 8 pure bloodhounds. We left the day of the lion hunt but it just shows how wild this place is. We had a great hunt taking home 2 kudu’s and one Red Hartebeest. 

This is the area where the lion was hanging out and the area we hunted hard for 2 days!

This is my nice bull Red Hartebeest – the meat is AMAZING!!! Our freezer if full!

This is Brandon Warner, a fellow missionary with a Great Kudu Bull.

The beauty of the place is truly amazing, if you want to check out more pictures please take a look at our other web sight, http://theturnerbabies.shutterfly.com/