Sorry.

The Pinnacle on my birthday!
And ziplining! :D

I know, I know. I haven't posted anything in a while. So this is a catch up blog.

Above: The municipality workers went on strike. Their job was to pick up trash so to show that South Africa should appreciate them they threw it all in the streets. They did end up getting their raises though and the rubish was picked up.

The pictures above the above picture were taken on my 15th birthday (July 28th) We went to God's Window, a beautiful lookout point, and another place like it. Oh and did I mention I got to go ziplining? ;) It was amazing!

Some more highlights of the last 2 months:

We have had many teams come and go, and it's great to be able to build relationships with them all! The only bummer is that it seems like they're here just long enough to get to know them and then they have to leave again! But we all still enjoy them.

I have applied and taken entrance exams to a school nearby us. The name of the school is Penryn and it's a very nice school. We are still waiting to hear back from them but I'm confident that I did pretty well on the exams.

The New Hope guys get here today! We are SO very excited to have some of our friends come over to visit for a week. We hope they have a life changing experience!

Ryan and Amanda have arrived safely and are completely settled in to the experience and their new home. It's a blessing to have them here and great for me to be able to have some fun with my sister!

Those are the basic highlights from the past 2 months! I will try to be more diligent with my posting. Thanks for all the support and love!

Rae

4 months and counting!

Today is the four month anniversery of us living in South Africa. We officially got to our home on January 28th 2009! It seems like so much longer but at the same time it feels like we haven't been here that long! In these 4 months we have been striving to build relationships with anyone and everyone we can find. I can finally see that they are really coming together. I have made friends in the communities and friends from the youth group I go to. The youth group meets every friday night (when it's not a holiday, which there are many!) to have fun and worship as a whole. I've really made some good friends that I'm looking forward to hanging out with :D

Some prayer requests for this month:

Amanda and Ryan are coming in June. VERY SOON! :D

please be praying that the funds will be met for them and that they will just be able to experience God the way we have while they're here.
Our house: We will be trying to build a nice wendy house to live in.
Relationships: We still need to be building on these relationships that have already been formed.
General peace: We have all been missing you guys alot! We get worried too, about your saftey. Please pray that there would just be a peace in what we are doing.


Thanks to all who support us by praying or giving money or even just thinking about us from time to time. We love and miss you all!

Love, Rae :)

Oh the beauty of technology...

Well i have a new means of communication for those of you who aren't exactly internet savy. Yahoo(: it only requires YOU to have a cell phone and text messaging(: simply give me your cell number, i will save it to my yahoo acount and for free i can TEXT you! :D it's a wonderful invention(: it will only cost you what a standard text message would(: Don't you love technology? (:

Just another African adventure...

The night before last i awoke with a terrible pain in my right ear.... at 3 in the morning. Not wanting to wake my parents i decided to wait it out and try to go back to sleep. I assumed the pain was due to the sinus problems i had been having for a while and tried to shake it off. However the pain was just too much. I stayed awake for 2 and a half hours, all the while debating with myself if i wanted to wake my mom and have her suffer with me.. I decided against it until 5:30 that morning. Unfortuneltley there was nothing she could do to ease the pain. Which suprised us because we've had PLENTY of practice. You see, when i was younger i had ear infections ALL the time. But this was unlike any other. The worst pain i've ever had in my ears. We tried just about everything, including hydrogen peroxide. (remeber that) Then after all else failed and i was still crying and holding back screams of agganizing pain, she gave me an anti inflamatory pill. Which just happens to have codine in it. That made me forget about the pain and sleep. Next thing i knew we were on our way to the doctor. Or "sister" as they call the nurse practitioners here. After waiting for an hour or so we got in to see her. We went through normal proceedure and blah blah blah. Then she brought out the scope and placed it gently in my ear. "Uh-oh" she said, "It looks like you have a hoorha in your ear." Just as you probably would i replied with a "a WHAT?" to which she replied "a bug". I just about lost my cool when she told me that. Well i pretty much did loose it. "O MY GOSH GET IT OUT!" was all i remeber saying. Then the next thing i remebered was her bringing in a dish to catch the discusting creature in and a giant needle looking thing that i thought she was going to shove into my brain. But it was actually full water. She said "this might be a little uncomfy" and it was. Have you ever had water shoved in your ear to get a bug out? well don't try it. Finally i heard my mom say "ew gross" as the bug made a nice little splash in the water that had also come back out of my ear. The sister finished off by saying "It must have crawled into your ear last night while you were sleeping and suffocated because it couldn't get out." Which to me was just absolutley fine. Anything that crawls into MY ear without MY permission should suffocate and die in there. So thankfully i have no more brain eating bugs in my ears but i do have an inner ear infection that they have me on meds for. 3 different medications 3 times a day. All for only $15 to $20. Including consolation fees. So i consider this just another adventure(: a discusting one at that.

Beauty...

 

I do believe that i live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I can look in any direction and find something that absolutley amazes me. God is such a wonderful artist that He creates beauty everywhere. Now the only thing i need to learn is how to find that beauty even when I'm in a city full of buildings i think are ugly....

Well think of this as 2 posts in 1...

So i realize that i have not been posting as many blogs as i should be. Especially since i'm sure people want to hear about our adventures in Africa! Well to start from where i left off, we have been working with 2 different communities, each of which i love in different ways. Mbonsweni and Kabokweni. I just love playing games with the kids and being able to see their smiling faces. It never ceseas to amaze me when i hear their stories of how hard life for them is, yet everytime i see them smile and laugh and play. It truely is amazing how grateful these children's hearts are. Recently the New Hope team came down for a visit/mission trip. I'm so glad they came! For those of you who don't know, here's a short version of my history with New Hope: I started going there with my family when it literally had first started. I was about 4 or 5. So about ten years ago. I grew up in New Hope and for the longest time i knew just about everyone there. I built lasting relationships that are still going strong and this church is my family. It was very hard for me to say goodbye to them. So back to the original story. I was SO excited to have them here. My long time friend Sarah Spurgin came with the team(: She stayed with me and we just had a blast! Among the team there were old friends and new friends but everyone of them family. Today we had to send them off to go back to America to share their wonderful testomonies. I truely hope that had a life changing experience and I'm SO glad i got to spend time with them(: So here is the 2nd post of this 2 for 1 blog.

Just a short story that i whipped up about today..:
So today, much to our suprise, we saw a snake. The first one since we've been here and to say the least it was intimidating. My mom saw it as she was about to walk out the door and quite calmly said " Oh My God a snake!" to which i excitedly jumped up to go see. Unfortunetley by the time i got there it had slithered as only snakes do, in between two rocks. My mom ran out the door and stayed as far away as physically possible from the snake sheltering rocks as she went to go get help. As she hurried along I waited for a good shot of adreniline to see a poisonous snake right in front of me(: So i waited at the door for a good spook. And suddenly there was something shining that had been there before. I threw the door open but that just scared it and off it went back into its shelter. Not long after, My mom came back with Stanley, an African student at the YWAM base. He caried a water bottle full of kerosene and matches. Then i realized, they were going to try to catch it on fire! Bravely Stanley drizzled the flamable substance in and around the crack. Next thing i knew the whole thing was up in flames. Just when i thought that it was over and that the snake was sadly suffering inside what he assumed to be his shelter, it came racing out with no harm done. Boy was i suprised to see the size of that sucker. It was HUGE. Probably at least 3 feet long WHILE IT SLITHERED! Not only was it huge and scary but then i realized it's color. It was a dull grey color with a little bit of yellow underneath. A black mamba. A highly dangerous and highly venemous snake native to Africa. My heart stopped for about a millisecond then beat fast with the adreniline i had been waiting for. Believe it or not it only took a couple of seconds for the snake to come out of the burning rocks, and glide into a whole GIANT set of new rocks. So there they went again, setting the rocks on fire. Unfortunetley, the slimy creature never came back out. We still don't know where it is which disturbs me even more. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! So after a long day of sending off the New Hope team and sleeping quite alot of the whole snake ordeal, i decided to take a relaxing bath. Relaxing as it was, the whole effort was pretty much ruined when i got out and saw that there was none other than a snake skin hanging from the INSIDE of our sliding front door. Not near big enough to be the skin of satan, i mean the snake we say today... but big enough to make me nervous. Now i sit here writing about my snake day and probably making you worry. Well no need, because i'll be okay(: just keep me in prayer and also that snake. but not in the same way ;)

well i know this blog is already EXTREMELY long but..
some prayer requests:
.The DTS students are leaving for 5 week outreach on Monday. Including my dad.
.I would LOVE to go to youth camp with the New Hope youth this summer, so please be praying for that as much as possible.
.Safety for the New Hope team as they fly back.
.Relationship for us as we continue to work in the communities.

I also want to thanks EVERYONE who donated food or spices ect. to us! they are defenitly appreciated!

Thanks everyone for the support,
Rae

Living in south africa..

I haven't posted anything in a while so here it goes.. I have been living here for about 3 weeks now(: well technically i've only been here for 2. because i was in Cape Town for a week about 2 days after we got here. But it was beautiful there(: i had alot of fun! But i am living in Whiteriver here(: i have learned a little bit of Afrikaans(: and have had compliments on my pronunciation. I have also been told that i don't really have a Texan accent(: so maybe that will help me get a cool accent(: who knows? i'm working on it :D i am still trying to find people my age, although everyone here is totally accepting of me unless they need there "adult conversations" ;) but everyone is awesome(: I'm hoping to get to go to a youth group held by someone we know on friday nights. i've been there before when we were here short term but never went by myself. i'm hoping to make friends my age really soon. escpecially ones with awesome accents :D well nothing super exciting has happened other than the movement of God of course (: but we haven't had water for a week now i think. and we've been going over to the Hodge's to shower or anywhere we can really(: we use the pool water to flush the toilets and we buy clean water or boil some so we can brush our teeth and stuff like that. so it's a little different but not bad(: i really like it(:

New home and a new camera...

Well i am now living in South Africa(: and so far i love it(: it's very beautiful here and so is our new home. We have had some difficulties with the water but nothing major (: haha. so i will try to get pictures up..

Germany!

We are in germany right now(: it will be a time of resting and resting and emailing. haha! but we have a hotel room for a few hours then we will head to the airport then on to south africa! i am very excited but very tired so i will keep it short again. thanks for all the prayers and keep them up! i love you all! :D

It's here!

Today is the day of the big move(: it is 9:09am right now and our plane takes off at 4:20 in the afternoon(: i will make it short because i am suppossed to be showering right now but i am so excited and will miss everyone but it's not a goodbye it's a see you all later!

Count down(:

Well there is 16 days and 4 hours and 16 minutes until we board the plane to Frankfurt, then after a 13 hour layover we will be on a plane to South Africa, our new home(: I am more than excited! I have been waiting for this day as patiently as possible, which was not very patiently, but that's something I'm working on(:

Anyways, I have made a countdown chain like we did in kindergarten(: haha it's just a simple paper link chain and everyday i pull one off(: it's super cool(:

Well that's all for now!

Happy New Year!

My first post of 2009(:
I am really excited to start the new year, because it wont be long before we get to africa(: i'm really super excited :D