Whining.

Our next door neighbor has a dog. Actually, she has a few dogs. Currently one of them is whining which is detestable in a child, but downright annoying in a dog! The whining from the dog next door reminds me of when we were in Africa and of the puppy that lived next door to the missionary and yapped all. day. long. (Incidentally, I just found out the other week that the little puppy in Africa died when it was bit by a poisonous snake. Sad ending.)

Whining. If I can't stand it when a child or animal whines, why do I think it's ok to do it to God, my husband, friends, and so on?

My pastor preached an excellent message on Sunday evening about praise. He used Paul and Silas as his reference point and was pretty dramatic in describing all the horrible things about their situation. A dark, dingy dungeon. Whipped back, feet in the stocks, no snuggle blankets or fuzzy socks (ok, I added those last two in there:D). Pure torture.

Yet Paul and Silas decided to praise God. There was plenty of room for a pity party and some whining. "Oh woe is me!" would also fit, but the choice Paul and Silas made is permanently recorded as praise and prayer.

Wow.

Whining. Leave it with the next door neighbor's dog and praise the Lord!

From Africa To America.

Well, we're home! And my rising time of 4:45 AM this morning proves that jet lag is no respecter of persons:). I slept very well on the flight from Jo-burg to Amsterdam and managed to stay awake all day yesterday (yeah!), so going to bed at 9:30 was a welcome treat. Actually, being back in our own home was a welcome treat!

We greatly enjoyed our 7-week trip to Africa. Of course most of our time was spent in Botswana, but the remaining week was spent in South Africa. As my husband and I left Botswana, we were asking the Lord to continue to teach us through the other two missionary families we were going to be staying with and He really answered our prayer!

Tuesday night gave us a great opportunity to listen to some sage deputation advice. We had a 5.5 hour ride home (as in the missionary's home!) so we took the time to ask one question and that got the missionary going:). He talked fast and Nat typed fast. So many practical tips for deputation that we just didn't think of and the Lord knew we wouldn't ~ so He let us hear it from someone who had "been there, done that." Why reinvent the wheel when we don't have to?

All in all, Africa was a great experience for us. Now to go apply it all.... :)

Kindle Reading And Other Sundry News.

I'm pretty sure I'm leaving my current internet connection tomorrow ~ that is, I know I'm leaving the current house I'm in and I'm pretty sure the next house I go to won't have internet. :)

Nat and I left Botswana on Tuesday and headed for the border with two of our friends kindly driving us there. It's a good thing we were reading "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" from somebody's kindle along the way because the scenery was that boring.

We went from one missionary (in Botswana) to another to another (in South Africa)... all from our home church! It's so nice to be able to visit with these families and they have been very hospitable in opening up their homes to us. We are just finishing up a visit with one of the missionary families and are heading over to the other family tomorrow afternoon. That's the place I'm (pretty sure) will not have internet access, which is fine. :)

Nat and I are returning to America this next week, although we're going about it the long way! Johannesburg to Amsterdam to Detroit to Allentown... yikes, I'm tired just thinking about it.

See some of you soon!

Jumbled Lodging.

I feel I must give an honorable mention to the place we stayed at in Kasane last week, mainly because the pictures speak volumes!

The facility just opened in May, although it was supposed to be open in October (TIA - this is Africa). Apparently there were chalets on the property but since we were going to be staying in tents, that's where our focus was. The lady was very nice in setting us up and even arranging for the three girls to sleep in one tent, rather than having one of the girls stay in a tent by herself. Besides the dirt everywhere, lack of pathway, and the promise of landscaping sometime in the future, the place was great. Running (hot!) water and electricity have a way of convincing you that yes, this place really is luxurious!

Nat and I had to chuckle when we looked up to the right of our tent and saw this:

And we laughed even harder when we saw all the metal debris conveniently stored across the way from our tent:

This was the only picture I have to accurately show how the tents really looked:

The tents were quite cozy and the woolen blanket was a plus! The days were warm, but the nights were downright cold and I was thankful my husband forked over his blanket one night so I could get my feet warm:). What a great guy I have!

With campfires every night and the wind flapping at our door, we felt like we were kind of camping, but Krista did inform us it wasn't real camping because of the lack of an outhouse. Right.

Nevertheless, Nat and I are now looking forward to our first real camping trip... maybe this fall??? That would be fun:).

Impressed!

We woke up early Thursday morning with high hopes of catching the sun rise on the Chobe River and we were not disappointed. Chobe National Park was packed full of game, beautiful scenery along the river (looks are deceiving though!), and evidence of the elephants -- both to the eyes and the nose. :) While we didn't see any lions or leopards, I was completely happy just seeing giraffes, zebras, a crocodile, and more. I try to keep my expectations low. :)

One highlight of our safari ride was driving by the same hippo and asking him to yawn for us which he so nicely did - twice:). It was most likely a sign of aggression, but I'll stay in my happy, safe world and just think he was tired;).

The whole day was absolutely amazing and one that was completely worth the money! If I could, I would go on another ride through Chobe in a heartbeat - I would just have to drive the 6 hours north to return to the area:).

We actually did get out of the car to watch the sunset and take pictures. Call me paranoid, but I was definitely looking over my shoulder for lions to come down the hill and at the water for crocodiles to quickly jump out. I figured most accidents involving wild animals and people are never planned and I didn't want our group to be added to a statistic!

Pictures just don't do justice. Taking a safari through Chobe was one of the best, if not the best, experience I have ever had overseas. It was that good!!! At the end of the day, when we were snuggled into our tent (I'll have to share that in another post) I thought again of what a great God I serve. His creativity was on full display in Chobe!

Happiness:).

~And it has been one very sweet year filled with much happiness~

Grace.

Every afternoon around 1 PM I meander over to a little orange stand. Waiting for me there is Grace, along with her adorable 5 month old son David. We usually chit chat about the day and in the course of conversation I find some cultural tidbit to tuck away into my ever growing African knowledge. As we start the study, the distractions never totally die down around us since Grace does run an orange stand! But I've been pleased with how attentive Grace has been each and every day.

Please pray for Grace. She understands she needs a relationship with Christ and is very close to taking that step. What a joy it would be to see her come to know my sweet Saviour!

Friends.

One of the things I love about traveling is meeting new or new-ish people. There are always the native people in the country I'm visiting (obviously!) and then there are Americans to be met too. This trip to Botswana is no different. Of course I knew Rachel already, but there are three more people in this group that fall in the new-ish category. :)

Rebekah, Tobi, and Krista are from Alaska (now we have an excellent reason to visit!) . Their family came to my church a few years ago and it was a classic case of "everyone in the church knows who you are but you don't know who they are." :)

Nat and I have enjoyed getting to know them better (here's a link to their blog). Rebekah and I both have Bible Studies every week day in the market/taxi rank area (compared to everyone else who are a couple of streets over). It's been very encouraging to compare notes about our Bible Studies and see where are ladies are at (or not at!) spiritually.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We're taking a little break tomorrow with all of our Bible Studies in the afternoon since it is a holiday here in Botswana. We have plans to do a game drive in the morning, so I'm sure we'll be the typical tourists with our eyes glued to the window;).

Experiences.

Wow, what a week!

I honestly did not expect the week to be as busy as it was, but at the end of the week I was very glad it was busy:). My last post was Sunday, so that should tell you a little bit about the lack of time to post. ;)

Our morning teaching time started at 8, which meant this gal was actually out of bed by 6:50 every morning (but one... Wednesday was 7 AM). That is quite a feat and that also meant an adjusted bedtime to 9:30 at night. There is so much I want to share and now I wished I had blogged every day, but we were pretty exhausted in the evenings. Here's an overview of what our days looked like:

• 6:50 AM-8 AM: shower, devotions, breakfast, etc.
• 8 AM - Noon: teaching time (group devotions, phonetics, missions strategy, etc.)
• Noon: lunch
• 1 PM - 4:30 PM: Bible Studies in town
• 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM: get back from town and unwind
• 5:30 PM: supper
• 6:30 PM: debrief from the day
• 7:00 PM: watch culture videos or a preaching video
• 7:45 PM: done for the day:)

I tried to use my spare time wisely, since we are writing out the book of Acts while we're here. Acts is my favorite New Testament book and there are a lot of good gems in there!

Last Saturday at the market I met 13 ladies who agreed to study the Bible with me. Out of those 13 I've connected with 4 this week, had 1 tell me a definite no, and passed along 2 to another girl on our team to follow up on. The rest just didn't show up. I did get to start a Bible Study with another lady though, so five ladies are studying the Bible with me... what a blessing!

Nat and I have had a lot of experiences during our short time in Africa. We have learned much and were quite tired at the end of each day. But we are so grateful that our pastor encouraged us to come to Botswana to learn from the missionary and work here. So much of what we learn here will be very useful in our future ministry!

Distracted.

Since the missionary said all of us girls are going to be taking turns teaching the junior church class during the Sunday morning service, I dutifully followed Rachel and the three African children outside to the classroom (the far end of the porch of the building we were meeting in).

The oldest boy - 14 years old - participated fully: songs, verse, Bible story, songs, verse, Bible story, etc:). The little girl made a valiant attempt at the hand motions for songs like, "Deep and Wide" and "Peter, James, & John."

But the little guy - not older than 8 - was the one who intrigued me. He sat there rather listlessly, and stared at the road as the traffic went by. He actually did perk up with one of the action songs, but that was short-lived:).

As Rachel started in on part 2 of the Bible story, the little guy got up from his seat to go get a drink of water. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him saunter the 6 or so steps to a nearby tree with a bird cage hanging on a branch... such a convenient distraction! He glanced over at Rachel before he started swinging the cage: back and forth, back and forth.

Soon the sway of the cage brought him to boredom. Not to worry though! Three dogs were in the next yard over, providing the perfect opportunity to tease the dogs into barking. Little guy began to put on a show: stand on one foot, put both hands out, and stick out a very, very pink tongue at the neighbor dogs. Of course no self-respecting dog is going to let antics like those get by and so they kindly reciprocated by barking.

The little guy enjoyed provoking the dogs and continued on for 30 seconds or so until Rachel reminded him our small little group was this way:). Little guy slowly rejoined the group, much to his chagrin I'm sure!

Contacts.

We went out this morning to do some tract distribution with the primary focus of setting up studies. I'll admit I was a little intimidated but that was mainly because I've never done it here before:). I was really surprised at the response! Even if all the contacts don't pan out, the response was a lot better than what I would usually get in the States:).

Lord willing, I will have a study with these two ladies on Thursday. Please pray they show up!

Nat was able to chat with several men and set studies up too!

What's a trip without ice cream??? Well, this is probably the last ice cream cone we'll have in Botswana - made with vegetable oil and milk solids. I saw Bro. Hammett mixing up some homemade ice cream earlier today, so I think we'll stick to that instead:).

We climbed up (and up... and up) a hill today to look out over the city.

All in all it was a very good day. One blessing we found today was an ionic straightener. The straightener is of good quality and best of all I can take it back to Thailand when we return! So I feel like we fixed a problem (can you imagine bad hair for the next 6 weeks?? DISTRACTING!:D) as well as made a future investment.

Oh, and the bank did return Nat's debit card! We were relieved they did because the lady said they normally shred the card when the ATM "eats" it. God is so good!!!

Blessings And The Baobab Tree.

I've unintentionally started a trend: yesterday's post was represented by the letter A and today's post is represented by the letter B! Let's see how long this little trend lasts:).

Blessings:

In all reality, at first glance some of these were not instant blessings, but the Lord changes perspective! We've had more interesting experiences happen on this trip than any other trip (well, except that one time a group of 25 people -myself included- had to run 30 minutes through the city of Prague on buses, trams, and subways to catch a train!)

Wow, what a rabbit trail...

So in three days' time we've had:

• a hair straightener die
• leftover salad dressing spill in my carry-on and drench my mp3 player, slippers, and glasses (but not an iPad 2 or my computer!)
• a bank card eaten by an ATM (we have low hopes of getting that back tomorrow)
• two nights of no sleep from 1:30-3:30 AM
• a shaver that snapped in half -too much pressure in those suitcases, I suppose!

But for each discouragement, we've had a blessing:

• the straightener is under warranty
• the salad dressing was cleaned up
• we called our bank in America and no transaction surfaced on our account, so at least we know the problem is on this end, not stateside
• we took something to help us sleep tonight
• duct tape easily fixed the shaver (even if it does look funny!)

Before we came to Africa, we were asking the Lord to stretch us and grow us. I know, I know, don't ever ask the Lord for something unless you're ready to receive it! I really feel like the Lord is using all these little things to see how we'll react.

We took a little trip today to see a unique tree: the baobab tree. The tree grows on both the inside and the outside, so even if the inside dies the outside keeps growing. These trees can be several hundred years old and look a little intimidating!

I was thinking about this tree and the thought hit me that I could keep growing on the outside even if I "die" on the inside. No one would necessarily know and yet I want to be growing on the inside, not just look tough and alive on the outside!

All these little issues that have come up on this trip are to test us, to try us. Nat and I are both excited to see what the Lord is going to teach us on this trip. We've had too many obstacles leading up to this trip and so we know God is up to something. We just need to stay open and available to Him. Spilled salad dressing and all!

Airports.

We arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa Wednesday afternoon and spent the night at a lodge. The lodge was actually very nice, but it is cold here in Africa! Tile floors and concrete walls manage to keep the cool air in quite nicely:).

After a nice warm shower, we slipped into bed and fell asleep for what we thought was the whole night... it was actually just 4 hours:). Waking up at 1:30 AM and falling back to sleep around 4 AM did actually produce a good night's rest because it's almost 10 PM and we're still awake:).

We went back to the airport this morning, met up with the man to give him the box of award ribbons, and cleared customs for our next flight to Botswana. I was a little surprised to see 15 terminals all lined up next to each other with buses outside the corresponding numbers. I thought that was kinda neat to see we were going to be bused out to our plane.

Our plane was one of those teeny, tiny ones with the small overhead compartment to fit the part. We were both surprised to be served a meal on this flight: chicken meatballs and some kind of rice dish resembling the taste of Suddenly Salad:). As we approached Francistown, I kept waiting for the "city" to pop out of the vast, brown land, but it wasn't until we were about two minutes from the airport that we finally saw houses.

Once we deplaned, we were staring at what had to be the world's smallest international airport, although I'm sure there might be some competition for that title from a place like Papua New Guinea or something like that:).

Just inside that door to the right is baggage claim and customs, all within the space of about ten feet. Not to be outdone, the exit to the other side is a mere 6 or 7 steps. :) Definitely an experience!

We were very glad to have all of our luggage come through without any problems or fees, although the guy behind the Air Botswana desk did gasp when we said we were both checking two bags:). No worries though since we were traveling international! And so the adventure continues... !

African Adventures - Here We Come!

Well, we're off. :)

We're dutifully sitting in Atlanta waiting for our next flight in 3.5 hours. Between now and then, I want to: (1) people watch. Airports are a great place to do this! (2) Eat Mexican food. With a name like "On The Border" it's got a chance at being half good. We'll see. (3) More people watching. Like I said, the airport is a great place to do this.

Our local airport in PA had to be doing some extra security training or something, because I have never seen the security dude spend so much time taking a detailed look at every single person's identification and boarding pass. Thankfully we passed the test, and stood in what felt like one of the longest security lines in the world. There were actually only 20 or so people ahead of us, but it was a s-l-o-w process:).

Also, just an alert for all you gals out there who travel in long skirts: get ready for the pat down. I'm not even kidding you with that statement. Twice now I've been patted down because (and I quote) "extra security measures need to be taken since you're wearing a skirt." At least this lady was nice about it. The last one in the Philly airport was rather abrupt and rude. So next time I travel, I think I'll go with a knee-length skirt or culottes. It's all a part of traveling, I suppose:).

I will say though that my water bottle got through security with more than 3 ounces in it! Too bad the poor lady in front of me didn't have that same bonus. Her eyeliner was confiscated and a bag check was required. Airports are amusing and that's half the fun of flying:).

This next flight is only 15 hours with no more layovers (yay!). We get to spend Wednesday evening at a bed and breakfast in Johannesburg before flying up to Botswana on Thursday afternoon.

We didn't need to take any extra bags with us, although we do know two of our bags are overweight for the Air Botswana flight. We're only allowed to have 44 lbs. for that flight (we can travel 50 lbs. for international flights). Thankfully we are getting rid of an 8 lb. box to a native pastor in Jo-burg (it's full of award ribbons... long story!) and then we plan on shuffling stuff around so that we do NOT have to pay! God has been faithful in answering our prayer of being able to take everything with us and not have to have an extra bag:). We did have to leave behind two bags of Bath & Body Works that was graciously given by a lady in our church, but I'm sure she'll understand it just wasn't going with us:).