It's Been A While

I recently realized that I haven’t written in a while…maybe in part because I think only about 3 people actually read this and I’ve also been busy and unsure about what to write. But I have some things to write about!! Probably anyone that reads this received my email update and heard about Phetsile. It’s so amazing because every day she is happy and smiley and joyful. It’s awesome. Now we are pouring into Tevi (newest little girl who is 11 and weighs about 35 pounds and was severely depressed after losing both of her parents and being left in the hospital for the last 5 months) lots and lots and watching her come back into herself. She has a precious personality that is coming out. This week she has been smiling so much every day…and she is talking and laughing and saying funny things. It’s remarkable. She’s still not much more than skin and bones, but she is actually gaining weight and looking better. She makes me smile!
Last weekend for Easter we had a nice 4 day weekend, so my housemates and I went to a very beautiful area in the province north of us (Mpumalanga) to see some beautiful sights. We had such a great time together. On Friday we drove up to Nelspruit, the nearest town in SA that has a mall with a cinema and restaurants and lots of stores. We stayed the night there and then drove up Saturday to a tiny town called Graskop. It was really beautiful and reminded me of being in America because there were several small mountain towns with lots of cute little shops and cafes. So nice!! We stayed at a little hostel in Graskop. The weather was overcast and rainy and pretty cold, but we were still able to see many beautiful things. We went to a couple of waterfalls, a massive canyon called Blyde River Canyon, a rock formation called the Three Rondavels, and a gorge with these little pools of water called Bourke’s Luck Potholes. I’ll put some pictures below. We also went to this tiny church for Easter Sunday and there were about 30 people there. It was precious. We sang with the organ and the older lady in the back row who sang to her own tune. Greatness. We loved it. So the whole weekend was really nice and much needed.
We are learning siSwati now!! It is such a hard language to learn. There is so much that doesn’t make sense. I guess it’s like that for most languages. They don’t have masculine and feminine/she or he at all in their language apparently. To make things plural or possessive or first or third person could be any sorts of different prefixes and suffixes…it seems there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Some things follow the same rules but I don’t know how you figure it all out. It’s pretty crazy. Then there are the clicks.
And lastly we have been able to do more “community service” work lately in our spare time J Two weeks ago we got to help paint the outside of a foster house and yesterday we got to paint and clean up the inside of another house. We were all talking about how we really would enjoy doing service projects like we do on missions trip because it just unifies people to work together like that and it’s always fun! So now we are trying to incorporate those types of things into our lives more. That’s about it for what’s been going on here I guess. Only 10 days until Darren, Dad, and Lynda get here!!!