Snippets and Stories

So, I think I've posted plenty of pictures of the PLACE we live in, I'm sure you'd like to seem some pictures with us in them as well. ;)

We have a washing machine at the house, but currently no dryer, so we line dry all of our clothes. These pictures were taken back in August when it was quite cold, so my fingers would get numb sometimes hanging up the wet clothes. heheh  It's warmer now, so it's kind of pleasant to go hang up the clean laundry.

My dear husband took these lovely pictures. I love the late afternoon light. Same time of day that I took the house pictures.

Jon produces a whole lot of laundry. It's usally 2/3rds his 1/3rd mine. ;)

Jon-Jon eating his Oatmeal on the stairs. Kind of a silly thing to do, but I thought it was cute and took a picture of him.

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Okay, the next set of pictures are all one day. It was a Sunday. We went to church with three other people who were staying at the house, but we decided to drive separately because they were going somewhere after church and we were both sick and too tired to join them.

So, we get back to the house after church, drive through the gate, park, get out of the car and realize... we do not have the house keys. ... There are not enough sets at this point for everyone to have one, and the other group just happened to have them! Meanwhile, we are the only ones with a gate key. So, if we leave, they can't enter the property, but we can't get into the house either... It was a dilemma.

We decided we had plenty of time to at least go get some lunch, which we did, expecting the others to be back by 2ish.  Oh, and did I mention that Jon's cell phone was locked in the house? And they were planning on calling us with their plans?  yea... Oh! AND we had just gotten back from the store with groceries, like milk and cheese... but that worked out, because there is a little fridge sitting in the garage waiting to be transported to the Farm. So we plugged it in. =)

Well, this is Jon walking around the house seeing if there is some way to get in.

Considering that every window is barred, and the doors both have iron gates on them, it is impossible to get in even if we had a hack-saw. We needed a key.

Well, let me say, the end of the story is that Jon is the real McGyver and got in!  How?  well, thankfully we found in the truck the keys that Tommy had copied but said didn't work and he needed to get them fixed. The thing is, they DO work on the gate! just not the wood door. And the gate is the impenetrable part (without a serious torch or explosives).

So, we got through one layer, but were having trouble with the next. This is Jon trying to file the door key in case he could get it to fit right. He was very persistent.

I just waited around. Couldn't do anything. I was tired.

So I sat in the truck. Then I took a nap in the car. We were stuck out there for a couple of hours.

Then I hear a noise, look over, and there is Jon standing in front of the open door!!!! HALLELUIAH!

I won't tell you how he did it. Let's just say he's amazing. And thank goodness! Because the others didn't get back till late that evening, having changed their plans. And they texted instead of calling to let us know, so they had no idea we didn't have the phone. So, Jon saved the day with his persistence and ingenuity! Hooray for my husband!

Yup, that's the story. Hope you enjoyed.


Much love from the both of us,
-J&L

The Midrand Property & Hogan Residence

 Okay everyone! Here I go using massive amounts of our precious data on our limited internet plan, all for you! Hope you appreciate it.  ;)

Here is a little photo tour of our current residence on Reaching a Generation's Midrand property. It is were Jacques and family lived before they established the farm and the Lodge. The house is a funny mix between a work space, living space, and hotel. It's a nice property, it kind of feels like being in the country right next to the city, which we like. Sometimes it's a bit unsettled with people coming in and out, but this week and next we have it all to ourselves, which is sooo nice! Our bedroom and workspace are upstairs (pics below), and we are usually downstairs only for kitchen use and eating, but sometimes we sit down there.

Alrighty, enjoy!

 The house is on the left. (later there are pics looking out from those upstairs windows)
The garage and Tommy's flat are on the right.

Front door on the left, kitchen door on the right behind the car.

The warehouse is in the background on the left, where all of the OneHope books are stored.

The big window upstairs is one of our bedroom windows.

Looking into our room. That's the window I mentioned.

It's a very nice, warmly lit room, with good windows. We like it.

There's a good amount of closet space on the side there.

Our artsy bookshelf again!
and me posing in the mirror ;)

 And here is our work space. Nice natural lighting.

New desks just arrived, so it will look a little different soon.

The wall on the left is the wall with the closets in our bedroom.

This is one of those front windows.

You can see a little play set out there, and on the right side you can see another house on the property which is currently being rented out, but they are soon going to turn it into a Bed & Breakfast.

The other window. You can see one of our neighbor's houses in the distance.

The little side window by Jon's desk looking over the driveway and the entrance to Tommy's flat.

My desk on the side, our bedroom door to the right, the bathroom door beyond that, the little "bridge" leads to a large room for guests, and of course the stairs on the left.

A little sitting room area. We don't use it much, but when there are other people around we spend a little more time down there. 

There are two little bedrooms to the left, and the door to the kitchen on the right.

Conference/dining table in the front room.

"Receptionist" desk... though there is no receptionist.  heheh

The space is still undergoing development as new furniture arrives ect.

Kitchen doorway

So glad to have a real kitchen to cook in.

That's the washing machine sticking out from the country, btw. No dryer right now, we use the line.

They got a microwave! yay!
(That's the security door in the foreground on the left, all doors and windows are barred because break-ins are fairly common anywhere around Joburg area)

Around the corner from the kitchen door going out behind the house.
Looks pretty in the light.

So, there you go! This is where we are living till we come home for the holidays (yay!!!), and we will return here in January till probably March/April when we are planning to relocate to Ghana for about 3 months. After that, not sure... Maybe back here. We shall see!

I have more pictures, but I'll save that for another post.

Also, eventually I'll get pictures of the people we're spending time with and working with. It just feels a little awkward to just randomly start taking picture of people working and what not. ~shrug~ I guess I just need to get over it.  =)

I'll post again soon.
Love you all!

-J&L

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

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.

 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   ;)

 

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!

State Side - Pictures of the Game Farm - Living Situation Update

Hi

Well, we were in Florida for two weeks as of July 1st for annual budget and planning meetings for next year. Very busy weeks with meeting after meeting for each of our regions in Africa (very good meetings), and lots of time hosting and entertaining our international guests (which was a little crazy because we had just arrived in the States ourselves). Then all of the international guests fly back home, we got to have a couple days to ourselves to get some work done, and enjoy the beautiful Florida beaches, and NOW! we are in Arlington Virginia on holiday! We're visiting our dear friends Jeremy and Joanne who moved here from San Diego in January. It's so great to be with good friends, and to have some time off to enjoy with them. :)

We're definitely in need of a little vacation. There have been a lot of very good things about Africa, and we're learning and growing, and hopefully doing some good through serving as best as we can, but there have also been a lot of challenges, so it's good to have some time removed from it all to be refreshed and to process through everything.

While we're here in the states with fast internet, I thought I'd add some pictures! These pictures are of the Lodge and Game Farm, where we have been living in South Africa. It is owned by the ministry we partner with in SA. When we get back, we actually will be changing locations (I'll explain at the end), but we will still be frequenting the farm.

 

This is a view from the road as you approach this part of the farm. The large building ahead includes the gift shop, offices, and a classroom/rec-room down stairs, a large conference room up stairs, and the lodge restaurant is connected on the right.

Closer up! (look at the big pots on the right side. It will give you perspective for two pictures down)

Me wandering around taking pictures on the weekend that Jon was in Zambia. He was gone for a whole week w/o me.

There's those pots! ;)
The gift shop is behind me, and on the left is the restaurant patio, and in the distance are 3 chalets, one of which we were living in. It's the far right one.

That's it. Each building has one large bed room (w/ bathroom) on each side, and a kitchen in the middle. Our room is the one on the left.

This is looking right from our front door. That's a field in which they grow alfalfa.

This is looking straight forward from our front door at the next door chalet.

Looking left toward the center of the building on the way to the kitchen.

Around the corner with the kitchen door on the left and a glimpse of the extensive property of the game farm straight ahead.

This obviously is from a different week because Jon is here. ;)
The kitchen, obviously.

Yup. That's it.

Vanilla extract!!! yay! We bought vanilla beans/pods in Madagascar, and I'm making vanilla extract with them.

The tree on the right is in the center of a little pond that the antelope and wildebeests come and drink from at night.

A herd of Blessboks out in the open field area. They frequent this area. They are one of a large variety of of antelope on the farm.

Reflection of me in the Chalet window.

Looking back at the chalets and conference/lodge center from the field.

So, yea, that's it! I have pictures of our room, but they're on Jon's camera which we left in SA, and I forgot to put the files on my computer. =/  I'll post them when we get back, even though it won't be our room anymore. 

We will be moving from the farm, which is about a 3 hr drive North of Johannesburg, to a property in Midrand, which is about 20-30 minutes from the Joburg airport. It will be much more practical for us to the live there. For one thing, our main international warehouse for Southern Africa is on the property, and we have taken over facilitating the shipping of materials from South Africa to the surrounding countries (lots of the smaller countries don't have big enough programs with enough products to have the books shipped directly to them from the international printers in China or elsewhere, so they get shipped to South Africa and we are now arranging their shipment to their final destination). All that to say, it will be good for us to be where the main warehouse is. Besides that, we'll also have faster internet, better access to a vehicle when we need or want it, we'll be less isolated, we'll be close to the international airport, and it will be easier to find a good church for us. Also, the guy who does program/product design for Southern Africa lives on the property as well, and we'll be able to visit his church with him, which is nice. It's really helpful to at least know someone when joining a new group of people. We'll miss being near some of the people we work with who live on the farm, but over all we really think this set up is going to be better for us.

When we move there and get settled I'll take pictures of that place and post them too.

Oky, well, I've finally posted pictures of the place we were living, only just in time for us to move out! sorry about that ;)

I hope you are all very well, we love you all! It is very refreshing to be in the States for the month, but we still miss our lovely California and all of you who are there. We are always looking forward to coming home in November. 

Much love!

-J&L