Life in Midrand

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