Lemme just say that living in Midrand is working out MUCH better for us than living at the farm. We're really enjoying it here.
There's just something about being isolated out on the farm that made it really hard to work and hard to function in general. We keep hearing confirmation from other people that their experience is the same, so it's not just us.
We've actually fully moved into our downstairs room last week since the bed arrived, and Taka arrived from Japan (he works with a branch of OneHope called Hope Education and is involved with a government granted program here in SA) and is up in the guest room. Mpho is living here, but every weekend she's back home with her family preparing for her wedding, so we don't see her as much. And Tommy of course lives in the flat next to us. We're enjoying having Taka around, he keeps it lively in the house. We're a couple of old fuddy duddies in the evenings/weekends if there's no one to get us to do something more interesting. ;)
So, we're actually going out sometimes and seeing things! (who'da known?) and being more interactive in general with Tommy and Taka around. It's nice. We went to the Friday night church service yesterday, and when we got back Taka taught the three of us a new card game, which we played till 1am! I haven't stayed up that late on purpose for a long time. haha but we were able to sleep in this morning, so it was worth it.
Also, we're feeling pretty good about work right now. It was a hard coming back to SA after working in the international office for a month. The work environment there is very good, and the work mindset is inline with ours. The work environment here in SA on the other hand is a little stressful and sometimes chaotic, but the last few days have been really good and we feel like we're moving forward. We are very hopeful about a possible candidate to take over our job in the Southern Africa region. And that is the end goal of our work here after all, to replace ourselves with more long term people.
We still have several things to get in better order before we hand over the work to someone here, but we're making progress in those things as well. Please pray for us that we have wisdom in pursuing and deciding whether or not this person is right for the job. At the beginning of September our boss Tom's right hand woman, the lovely Claudia, is visiting SA and we're planning for them to meet so that Claudia can help us in this decision. We're really hoping this is it!
If it is, we will probably be training and handing over responsibility for this region by the end of the year, leaving us to focus on West, Central, and East Africa next year. Southern Africa is a very demanding region, so handing it over first will make a huge difference in looking for people to take over in the other regions. We're planning on basing out of Ghana for a few month's next year and traveling from there through West and Francophone Africa, and also spending time in East Africa.
There is still a whole lot to accomplish and an enormous amount of things to simply keep up with in the meantime, but it's good to feel like we're moving forward in our bigger purpose here in Africa. Please pray that we will be able to juggle all of our responsibilities well. This job can be quite chaotic at times, as we have our hands in nearly every aspect of the workings of OneHope, rather than specializing in one or two aspects. It's a lot to keep track of.
Thanks for listening/reading. =)
We really appreciate your prayers!
I love hearing from the couple of you who send me little notes and updates on yourselves, so please continue. We miss you all.
Much much love!
-J&L
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Moved to Midrand + Out-of-Date Pictures of Room at the Farm
Hi all!
Well, as of Friday, we are now living in our fourth "home" this year. 1.) Our apartment in Boca, FL (lived there 7 months. The longest we've lived in one place since being married) 2.) The Forum (OneHope's headquarters), FL 3.) the game farm, South Africa 4.) Midrand property, South Africa (with some more of the Forum inbetween during July). Then we'll also be back home both in OC and SD for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and next spring we'll be living in Ghana for a few months. Getting tired of packing, unpacking, settling, repacking, unpacking, settling... etc.
But, the good news is that Midrand is a good change. As cool as the game farm is, and Jon has said it the best, it is a great place to vacation but a very difficult place to work and to live. Midrand is right outside of Johannesburg. So, not only does it take about 7 minutes to get to the grocery store instead of 20-30 min, but there are also shops and restaurants there! and there are shopping malls within 15-20 minutes, and it's about 30-40 minutes to the airport instead of 2 1/2- 3 hours. AND! our friend Tommy lives on the same property as us and his church is an English speaking church which is very similar in style to a lot of U.S. churches, and it only 20 minutes away! Awesome! it's our first time going to church in SA, and it was very nice to go with someone we know who can introduce us to people etc.
As far as our actual accommodations go it's still a little unsettled. As I said in the last email, we are living in a little house on a property owned by Reaching a Generation, our major partner in Southern Africa, whose founder and leader is OneHope's regional director for S. Africa. Tommy lives in a flat above the 3 door garage which is next to the house that we're staying in. It is a small 4 bedroom house. The downstairs includes the kitchen, the "living area" which is office space, a full bathroom, and two quite small bedrooms. At the moment most of our stuff is in the larger of the small bedrooms, but there is no bed there yet, so we're sleeping upstairs in the guest room. Also upstairs is the master bedroom which is completely unfurnished at the moment, but is a very nice room, as well as another full bathroom, and an open "common area" which will soon be fitted with desks as office space.
Tomorrow (monday) we should be getting our bed downstairs. We are currently sharing the house with Mpho, who is the Communications person for SA, but she's getting married early next month and will only be working here, not living here at that point. Tomorrow our Japanese friend Takka (he's pretty American though) is coming (works for OneHope) for four weeks. He'll be staying in the guest room upstairs. And near the end of the month a team of 4 or 5 people will be coming through and will be staying on bunks in the master bedroom. SO, it is going to be a pretty turbulent month as far as the living situation goes. should be interesting. Come September it will be a quiet house again, and hopefully we'll be able to move into the master bedroom (hopeful!).
So, here we are! Please pray that we adjust well. Pray especially for extra grace this month as a lot of people will be in and out of the house, and we're in a pretty small room right now. And please also pray that we will do better in this work environment than at the farm. We felt pretty disconnected from everything (the rest of our regions as well as the international office) while at the farm, so we're really hopeful that being here will help that. We also have faster internet here which will be quite helpful for our job, however we had to buy an internet plan using a wireless modem which is limited to 5 GBs a month. So no more video chats, and we have to be careful about any video/image upload/downloads, because they eat up a lot of gigabytes.
But, I'm using up some of that to present you with the pictures below! because my mama wants to see them, and perhaps you do too. =) (I compressed the images so they're not as big of files.)
These are, obviously, a little late... but these are pictures of the room we were in at the farm. We actually really liked the room, and kind of made it our own a bit, so we were sad about leaving that, but happy to be coming to Midrand.
So, our living space was actually quite nice at the farm, it just was not an easy place to work, and we were so isolated from everything, out in the South African bush (which is nothing to the rest of African bush however).
Here we are! We had a great time back in Florida, and taking a little vacation time up in Virginia with good friends, and we got to see my brother Daniel a couple days in FL while he was on business, and now we're back at it. life and work in Africa. We're hoping to accomplish a lot in the next few months, getting some various operational things sorted out here in SA, and laying down some processes and procedures... and hopefully we will find and start to train the right person to take over what we will have hopefully sorted out here, so that we can then move our focus to the other regions next year and find people to do our job there as well. That's our end goal! working ourselves out of a job by finding Africans to take over and do it even better. Please, pray toward that end for us!
We love you all! and miss you lots and lots.
Dad and Grandma, heal up quick! stay strong with all of that physical therapy! (yikes)
Cheers! (as they say here in South Africa)
-J&L
p.s. Update on Rob Hoskins, president of OneHope: a couple of weeks ago he was able to go of of antibiotics, having kicked out that awful staff infection! It was a tough time for him being on antibiotics for three weeks which made him feel worse and increasingly week the longer he took them. We haven't had any updates on the prostate cancer, but he and his family are not very worried about it since they caught it very, very early. So praise God!
Well, as of Friday, we are now living in our fourth "home" this year. 1.) Our apartment in Boca, FL (lived there 7 months. The longest we've lived in one place since being married) 2.) The Forum (OneHope's headquarters), FL 3.) the game farm, South Africa 4.) Midrand property, South Africa (with some more of the Forum inbetween during July). Then we'll also be back home both in OC and SD for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and next spring we'll be living in Ghana for a few months. Getting tired of packing, unpacking, settling, repacking, unpacking, settling... etc.
But, the good news is that Midrand is a good change. As cool as the game farm is, and Jon has said it the best, it is a great place to vacation but a very difficult place to work and to live. Midrand is right outside of Johannesburg. So, not only does it take about 7 minutes to get to the grocery store instead of 20-30 min, but there are also shops and restaurants there! and there are shopping malls within 15-20 minutes, and it's about 30-40 minutes to the airport instead of 2 1/2- 3 hours. AND! our friend Tommy lives on the same property as us and his church is an English speaking church which is very similar in style to a lot of U.S. churches, and it only 20 minutes away! Awesome! it's our first time going to church in SA, and it was very nice to go with someone we know who can introduce us to people etc.
As far as our actual accommodations go it's still a little unsettled. As I said in the last email, we are living in a little house on a property owned by Reaching a Generation, our major partner in Southern Africa, whose founder and leader is OneHope's regional director for S. Africa. Tommy lives in a flat above the 3 door garage which is next to the house that we're staying in. It is a small 4 bedroom house. The downstairs includes the kitchen, the "living area" which is office space, a full bathroom, and two quite small bedrooms. At the moment most of our stuff is in the larger of the small bedrooms, but there is no bed there yet, so we're sleeping upstairs in the guest room. Also upstairs is the master bedroom which is completely unfurnished at the moment, but is a very nice room, as well as another full bathroom, and an open "common area" which will soon be fitted with desks as office space.
Tomorrow (monday) we should be getting our bed downstairs. We are currently sharing the house with Mpho, who is the Communications person for SA, but she's getting married early next month and will only be working here, not living here at that point. Tomorrow our Japanese friend Takka (he's pretty American though) is coming (works for OneHope) for four weeks. He'll be staying in the guest room upstairs. And near the end of the month a team of 4 or 5 people will be coming through and will be staying on bunks in the master bedroom. SO, it is going to be a pretty turbulent month as far as the living situation goes. should be interesting. Come September it will be a quiet house again, and hopefully we'll be able to move into the master bedroom (hopeful!).
So, here we are! Please pray that we adjust well. Pray especially for extra grace this month as a lot of people will be in and out of the house, and we're in a pretty small room right now. And please also pray that we will do better in this work environment than at the farm. We felt pretty disconnected from everything (the rest of our regions as well as the international office) while at the farm, so we're really hopeful that being here will help that. We also have faster internet here which will be quite helpful for our job, however we had to buy an internet plan using a wireless modem which is limited to 5 GBs a month. So no more video chats, and we have to be careful about any video/image upload/downloads, because they eat up a lot of gigabytes.
But, I'm using up some of that to present you with the pictures below! because my mama wants to see them, and perhaps you do too. =) (I compressed the images so they're not as big of files.)
These are, obviously, a little late... but these are pictures of the room we were in at the farm. We actually really liked the room, and kind of made it our own a bit, so we were sad about leaving that, but happy to be coming to Midrand.
The door is to the left.
Moira lent us the desk and chairs, which was great.
Inside view of the thatched roof.
We added that curtain to the open wardrobe.
And we made that lovely bookshelf to it's right!
It's made out of unfinished wood planks/shelves with brinks inbetween.
It's pretty cool. Kind of an art piece if I may say so ;)
It's made out of unfinished wood planks/shelves with brinks inbetween.
It's pretty cool. Kind of an art piece if I may say so ;)
A glimpse into the bathroom. Showers on the right, toilet's behind the door to the left.
Our view out the doors and the window (there are curtains on both)
Me standing looking weird outside our room, with the kitchen doors to the right an the alfalfa field in the background.
The kitchen
Jon in the kitchen. It was a very lovely place to sit and read our bibles in the mornings.
And our view from the back of the kitchen.
So, our living space was actually quite nice at the farm, it just was not an easy place to work, and we were so isolated from everything, out in the South African bush (which is nothing to the rest of African bush however).
Here we are! We had a great time back in Florida, and taking a little vacation time up in Virginia with good friends, and we got to see my brother Daniel a couple days in FL while he was on business, and now we're back at it. life and work in Africa. We're hoping to accomplish a lot in the next few months, getting some various operational things sorted out here in SA, and laying down some processes and procedures... and hopefully we will find and start to train the right person to take over what we will have hopefully sorted out here, so that we can then move our focus to the other regions next year and find people to do our job there as well. That's our end goal! working ourselves out of a job by finding Africans to take over and do it even better. Please, pray toward that end for us!
We love you all! and miss you lots and lots.
Dad and Grandma, heal up quick! stay strong with all of that physical therapy! (yikes)
Cheers! (as they say here in South Africa)
-J&L
p.s. Update on Rob Hoskins, president of OneHope: a couple of weeks ago he was able to go of of antibiotics, having kicked out that awful staff infection! It was a tough time for him being on antibiotics for three weeks which made him feel worse and increasingly week the longer he took them. We haven't had any updates on the prostate cancer, but he and his family are not very worried about it since they caught it very, very early. So praise God!
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