Wow what a week

Friday January 20, 2012

Wow what a week I will share with you a few stories of this past week. Well ,it has been raining for several days and apparently we were getting some aftermath storms from a cyclone that was hitting Mozambique. The roads got all muddy and no one could really go anywhere. So each night I had different groups come to my house we baked chocolate chip cookies, had juice, some fun food and then watched a movie. We had girl’s nights and a boy’s night. Now imagine 20 people crowded around my laptop watching a movie trying to listen amidst a storm crashing down outside ha-ha. We had a good time.

This week I have been preparing my classroom for my students I have desks and a chalkboard!! How exciting, so I have been making posters and things to hang up around the room. I even made all of them name tags for their desks. I am now teaching grades 3,4,5 which is a lot however it is only 12 students so that is nice to have a small class. God has blessed me so much while being here. There is a Zimbabwean lady who is teaching the older grades and she has given me a lot of advice and encouragement as I start to start planning for a whole year for three different grades at first it seemed a bit overwhelming but now I think it will be ok.

So yesterday I only worked for half the day and then decided I wanted to take public transportation into town. So I took two of the children with me since they can speak SiSwati and knew the shops. Well this is how that journey went…. We walked 30 minutes to the “bus stop” which we then waited 1.5 hours for the “bus” to come. This bus is really a 12-passenger van that packed in as many people as possible ha-ha. So when finally got a ride to town we still had a 30min or so trip ahead of us. Well we made many several stops and we were going up this hill through the valley and the van just stops in the middle of the road. We have broken down. I think to myself oh gosh its getting late I have these two kids seriously we are in the middle of no where. Well we only needed gas so they walked to call someone to bring us some and 20 minutes later we were on our way again. We left the house at 12pm in the afternoon and finally arrive in the town at 3:30 ha-ha and we had to leave by 4ish in order to get a van back. So we quickly walked around getting a few groceries I picked up a few things for my house and meanwhile I am the only white person in sight. Several children run up to me to touch my skin, I had a few marriage proposals as well. The children I brought with me were very protective and told them all to go away. But it was so much fun to go and explore a town and talk to the people making various things. I loved it. Now getting back was much easier there is a van station where you get on. So I think we had over 16 people in a 12-passenger van so you can imagine it being packed full. We arrived home and boy was I glad to be back.

This morning on the farm we had an order of 150 lettuces to be taken to the shops. So at 5am several of us got up and headed down to the nursery and everyone had their job, some cut the lettuce, some put them into crates, some washed, some counted and then we all bagged them up for transport. I was apart of the washing crew with some of the housemothers and older boys. They had so many questions for me, what do I think of their King, how do I like Obama and I am thinking to myself its 5:30am I haven’t had coffee and we are talking about politics what the heck ha-ha. But it still was a good time. I am enjoying myself here and even though my role is to teach I love being apart of the farm too. Some days when I have to get a lot done up at the school I send the kids away (usually they are playing in the classroom while I work.) and by the end of the day I run around trying to find them all because I miss them.

Thank you for your continuous prayers and support while I am away. Things you could be praying for…

1.) Life is busy on the farm, please pray that I make time for the Lord every day.

2.) That I will not stress about Curriculum and I will just work hard and know it’s my best.

3.) My relationships with the children and the house mothers will develop

4.) I want to have a high school girls bible study at my house. The girls are VERY shy around me so please pray that they will come and it will be a good time in the word.

Praises!

1.) My health has been great.

2.) I am getting sleep.

3.) I am learning more and more of the children's names