PHOTOS!

At Last! A long time promised and now finally here. Enjoy!

Dipuo enjoys the sprinklers on one of the hottest days.

Nkamo and Dipuo

Nkamo and Ariel after playing in the nice cool water.

Santie painting faces.

Shelaine helped too!

This little lady liked her face painted.

Nkamo and I with his artworkon my face! :)

Neme and her son with his face all painted.

Seeing all those faces being painted was thirsty work!

We returned tothe compound to find that the men had caught a snake when moving an old tent. It was still alive when we arrived, but here it's clearly seen better days.

It's a puff adder for those who are wondering. :)

Before this particular group arrived they prayed for rain on the dry world around us. Whilethey were there we were blessed with 39mm of rain. God is good and does answer prayer, so keep on praying!

(P.S. I do know the names of the children that aren't named in this update, but my relationship with them isn't such that I feel I can go publish it on the net. :)

Pretoria

Hi there everyone!
Well, it's not so much Marlene in Motopi anymore as Marlene about Motopi. :) As most of you will know by now, I kind of had to leave the country as I didn't managed to get my visa extended/residency permit/waiver sorted out. It's a bit of a paper work story, but the point is I had to be out on the 19th of May, which, thanks to my parent's visit, was very possible. I kind of cut their holiday in Botswana short though (Sorry again!). Thanks to all those people who have been praying about my visa and for my work. You can stop now for the first, but the second does continue. I must say that I take great comfort in the knowledge that all of this is in God's control and part of His plan, not mine! :)
So yes, After doing a rather rapid sightseeing tour with my parents I evacuated and am now situated in Pretoria. It's a very different world and something to get used to again. We arrived with the cold, making the daytime temperatures around 30 C colder than I was used to! The first week was a bit much. I was really tired and reached a point one afternoon when I just didn't want to see or meet another person anymore. After 3 months (with only short breaks) of seeing pretty much the same 2-3 people everyday, and the few village people, this was a whole new (very crowded) world.
I seem to have gotten past that and was very greatful to go along to a small bible study group of other people my own age (a first in 3 months, not just the study, but the people my own age as well!) on Sunday night at my aunt's church, which was really nice.
Another exciting thing, which gives me some assurance that I'm here for a reason, was that i've managed to organise someone from that same church (Reformed) to translate my lessons into Setswana. It's really great because i know that Mrs Cronje is pressed for time and it would take quite a while to get 92 lessons translated if she had to do it all by herself. I've typed up the first ten lessons and they are being printed today so that he (Seni) can get started. So please pray that this will go well.

I was also very glad to be here yesterday as I seem to have gotten some kind of stomach bug, which left me in a considerable amount of pain. It was really nice being able to come back to a warm home (not a caravan) with power etc and just sleep for most of the day. I'm glad to report that it's almost completely gone now and i'm able to get on with my work.

I have to appologise once again that there are no photos. my memory stick is at my uncle's work as he's printing off the lessons for me, so the photos are temporarily stuck on my laptop. :(
but i'll flick some on as soon as, this time it's a promise!

Well, that's about that for now. Please continue to pray for the work as i finish off the last few activities and it all gets translated. I hope to finish it all in the next 3 weeks.

Outreach Groups

Pretoria Group

The group from Pretoria came for almost a week. I went along to help working with the children 3 days that week. It was great fun, with face painting, drawing pictures and singing songs. The children loved the attention, but i won't go on because I wrote about that in my last email (I think) but here are some photos.
Ok, Maybe not. This computer keeps making things disappear so before i reach complete frustration i'm going to leave! Ill try update photos another day. So sorry!

The Tabazimbie group came after them, but I don’t have any photos sorry!

We then went to SA which ended up being for nearly 2 weeks in the end. On the way we saw an elephant, which was the first one for me since I’ve arrived.
I stayed at my cousin’s place for 3 days, which was really nice. They’ve got a large farm where they grow all sorts of stuff like sun flowers, corn, millet, beans etc. I was there when they started harvesting the corn, which was quite interesting and something I hadn’t seen before. From there I went to Pretoria and stayed at my Aunt’s place. While I was there my mum’s niece arrived from Holland. I hadn’t seen them since I was 7 so that was interesting and a good chance to brush up on my very lacking Dutch skills! Understanding it isn’t the problem, it’s speaking it, but I managed to communicate pretty well in Afrikaans with a fake Dutch accent!

After this I headed back to Motopi and here I am. I managed to finish the first year of Sunday school for the 7 and under group, which I’m really excited about. Thanks for all the prayers, I needed them, and they were definitely heard. The last 8 lessons came in 2 days! So now I’ll revise those. There are a few little things I want to change, just making the lessons more interactive. I kind of wrote them thinking somewhere in here I could add a question etc. Then remembered I’m not the one teaching them so I’ll have to put the questions etc in!
Anyway, I’ll take a day or two to do that, then I’ll start with the new testament lessons. I wrote the other one not thinking about school holidays, so I’ll write the new testament lessons shorter than 52 weeks, then together they’ll be a 2 year curriculum with holidays. (If that makes sense?)

Anywho, all in all it’s going well here. I’ll admit I needed that break to SA, but I have been much refreshed by it and hope to get a fair bit done in the next 3 weeks before my parents get here. (Something I’m looking forward to heaps!)

So till next time, God bless you and keep you! My He guide your paths and strengthen you each day!

It's 3 May now and the first chance i've had to get on email again. As mentioned above i can't update photos now though, so i'll try another time, or maybe a little later!

Bush Trip and Church

I'm sorry I haven't written in a while! It's is very time consuming and time in Maun is limited. We went into the bush (around 40km north of home) to cut mopane (mopanie?) posts for dinishing of a cattle kraal. It was a fun trip of about 2 hours in the bush (sometimes track, sometimes none) and it took us about 3 1/2 hours to get back because the ute kept over heating from the grass seeds blocking the radiator fan. Anyway, it was fun.We saw some zebra on the way in and back out again.

Lat Sunday the Maun congregation joined us for the church service adn then for lunch afterwards. It was really nice to see the church so full! The singing was fantastic as always. It's very traditional, but comes from the heart! Below all of that there is a photo showing the car after a trip to Maun! Read my last email update to get an idea of what gets it to that stage!

Traffic jam in the bush!

Our bush braai for lunch!

Mopane worm! (yes, they actuallly eat these!)

Our church choir sang when the Maun Congregation
came to church with us.

After the service they came to have lunch at the Cronje's.

The back of the surf after a trip to maun! Ther is more on our laps and my feet are resting on a rater large watermelon!

On the 7th March it was World Aids Awareness Day and there was a big festival/information day in Motopi. there was a whole lot of speeches, choirs sining and traditional dance from the local primary school children and another group. there was the ability to be tested for aids and receive the results on the spot. It's a very big problem here that people just don't get themselves tested, especially the men. So there was a big push on the day. It was good to see some men get it done, even one from the church proudly coming over to Mrs Cronje to tell her he got himslef tested and that it was negative. Mrs Cronje was on the decorating committee so I went along to help out the night beofre nad the morning with setting up. It was my first real chance to get involved with something the community had organised, and it was interesting! Organisataion would not be the word to describe it, it was definately Africa stylem but in the end the whole day worked out fine, including a very good speech from the head boy of the junior high school who gave a christian message that was very well received.

Sponsored walk to the fair. children form junior secondary school, as well as some other people from the community marched for the cause.

The traditional dance group from the local primary school.

Another dance group from the area.

Just a few photos I took around home.

Little birds that come to drink at the water bath.

A Setora (squirrel) snacking on a seed.

Pooll party! On hot afternoons the birds come to cool down as well!

Nkamo and Dipuo who live with us during the week. They have had a rough life, their mum died from aids, and their dad works on a cattle post far away. On the weekends they stay with their grandmother and aunt in the village. Everytime one of these kids cry my heart just breaks and I cry with them!

Before church!



Some children who came to visit and play games in the 47C temperatures!


Greetings before church!

Update, At Last!

Thailand

After a 12 hour flight with not even 5 minutes of sleep I arrived in Thailand very tired and ready for a good sleep. I found my driver easily and we were on our way to the hotel by around 10pm. Little did I know what I was letting myself in for. First thing I did, being a good Kiwi girl, was to put on my seatbelt…or to try at least. This wasn’t going to work though as there was no little thingy to stick it into! So I gave up on this figuring it’s not law here and I’ll survive one trip without. So off we went. We were about 2 minutes from the airport when I realised indicating is just not the done thing in Thailand…instead you carve yourself a little spot in the traffic after a short game of chicken to decide who deserves the spot more. My driver seemed to know what he was doing and how to deal with this so after a few deep breaths and a prayer I sat back for the ride. We were a short way along the motorway when I realised we were going quite fast, and so I peeped into the front to see what speed we were doing only to discover that the speedo was firmly fixed on 0! I realised that we were driving slower than the rest of the traffic so I relaxed again and pretty soon we were at the hotel. I finally figured out how to get the lights to go and in my room, only to turn them off again rather quickly so I could get a good night’s sleep.
The next morning I woke up at what I thought was 4.30, but it turns out it was only 3.30 and I had set my cell phone to the wrong time. But seeing as I was wide awake, I got up and re-packed my bags ready for the day. I went for a tour of the old capital city of Ayuttaya which has many ruins of temples from over 600 years ago. There I salso went for an Elephant ride. The photos probably describe it better than I can myself.





The ruins of one of the 'Wat' (temple grounds) in Ayuttaya city.




You can still see some of the detail that would have been all over the temple buildings, even though it's 600 years old.









The Elephants are kept a little outside the city.

I got a chance to feed some of the little ones




My elephant ride! Feels a bit ike a horse ride really, jsut a little more sway from side to side!



My guide with some school children infront of the ruin of a buddah statue.

After the tour I was dropped back at the hotel where I caught a tuk-tuk to Siam shopping area. The trip was fun, with the driver trying to convince me that he can take me on a shopping tour for a 100 bhat, to the point that I pretended to get out at the lights without paying and it was a smooth ride from there. Siam square was a bit of a disappointment though as it wasn’t really a market, but mostly just small shops.
I headed back to my hotel from there and after an hour in traffic finally go there! I was picked up at 8 for the airport and after booking in I headed for BK for a nice chicken burger for dinner (which was a great improvement on my Thai lunch)!

My flight to SA was good as I had 2 seats to myself and so got about 5 hours of sleep.

I arrived in SA at 6.30 and was home at my Aunt’s place by 8.30am. We had a quick drink before heading out to do some shopping for a few things I couldn’t fit in my bags. When we got home I slept for about 2 hours despite saying I would only lie down for a while, but that was really good. My cousin, Willem, and his wife, Aneleen, and children came over in the afternoon so I got to meet her and the kids. They are so cute. That night I went to visit my Uncle and his family and it was great seeing all my cousins again, all grown up! I had a great sleep and was picked up around 9.30am by the Cronje’s to go to Motopi.

The Trip

We left just before 10am from my Aunt’s place and arrived at the border just after 5. From there we went to Mahalapey where we stayed with their children for the night. In the morning we headed out at about 9am. The drive was much the same with low scrub and little trees covering a HUGE expanse of flat land. At about Mopipi it’s as if there was a line drawn in the sand and the landscape suddenly changed to almost nothing but white sand and salt pan. It was beautiful, and almost scary in a way, just so much nothingness. But it was amazing to see all the donkeys! There are heaps of them, everywhere, particularly in that area, just walking around next to the road. From there the road became a little rough as they area upgrading by making a new double lane fully sealed road. This was closed, so we drove partly on the old (one lane partly sealed partly breaking up to dirt) road and newly metaled road. The four wheel drive didn’t mind this, but the poor little overloaded trailer was bouncing around behind us creaking all the way. (this was really a blessing as the trailer was overloaded with clothes for the people in Motopi!)

We arrived at Motopi around 5pm, and surprisingly after 2 days of travel I was not too tired. I really enjoyed the trip, and didn’t sleep along the way.


The road between Mopipi and Rakops


Salt pans by Mopipi

Motopi

Motopi in one word is definitely beautiful. It’s on the bank of a (dry) river, but the area is beautifully green at the moment. There has been some rain (by some I mean a very little) over the last few days, and as I write this (9 Feb) there is thunder in the distance, which hopefully means more to come. Rain here is very important, so important in fact that the name of the currency, Pula, is the same word as that for rain! There are so many beautiful birds here and there are little squirrels everywhere. It’s great. Today has been mostly cloudy, so it hasn’t been unbearably hot yet. I’ve also been mostly resting so the heat hasn’t really affected me yet.

My caravan. It's actually nice and cool inside during the day! :)

One of the many Hornbills that come and get food and water at the compound.

Last night when we were having dinner there were all these tiny little black stink bugs that came to the light, I mean thousands of them. To the point that we had to leave the room because it stank so much and they were starting to crawl into our hair and clothes! We sprayed the room and left the light on while we sat outside in the dark, and this morning there was a black carpet of bugs covering the entire dining room, kitchen and bathroom!

Today I had quite a quiet day, just wandered around meeting the animals (Goats, cattle, and 6 dogs!) and watching the hornbills and squirrels coming to get food and water. This afternoon we went to feed the children in the village. There were between 50 and 60 today and they are so beautiful. The people are lovely and all want to have a chat, but off course their English is limited to about the same as my Tswana…Dumela ma/ra. It was quite tiring, but I look forward to seeing them all on Sunday at church. There was one man whose first question was whether I will be there on Sunday at the chapel. J

10 Feb. 07
The rain was really heavy last night, and carried on right through the night until about 10am this morning. The sun has come out now though, and with all the dampness it’s quite warm really! This morning two girls from the village came to get some cold medicine and we also found some shoes for them from the trailer of donated clothes. They were very amused by my laptop and I showed them some pictures and things on it.

I think that’s most of the news for now. I am very thankful that I haven’t had any jetlag problems and that the heat has not been too bad in the first few days with a lot of cloud cover.

My fisrt two of my visitors! These photos look very dark on this screen,but can be lightened!


Sunset in Motopi! It's beautiful every night!
15 February

Well, it seems a long time since I wrote all of that! It continued to rain the next night, with a lot of thunder and lightning. One lightning bolt struck so near to us that I woke up and jumped! It was so loud, if I didn’t know I was in the middle of no-where I would have thought it was a bomb! Well the middle of no-where is not really the right description. It is so beautiful here. The sunsets are absolutely magnificent! The nights are quiet and the starts are as bright as can be! It’s been a great first week!

It feels so much longer already. Oh, we went down to 5 dogs for a couple of days, but Betina (she was given away) just came running back, very hungry and thirsty. Poor thing. I don’t think she was fed for those 2 days she was away. I have made good friends with the friendly beast though. He is the hugest dog, but he’s so good natured. He’s real name is ‘Optel’ which basically means ‘pick up’, because Mr Cronjé picked him up as a pup in the bush.

I have started writing Sunday school lessons, and will get there, slowly but surely. We went to Maun on Monday for the day, but unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to update my blog (Obviously!). Today is Friday and we are going to feed the children again before heading to Maun to pick up a guy called Kobus who’s flying in from SA about a building project.

I found out a couple of days ago that Mascom, the mobile company I’m with here doesn’t have a partnership with Vodaphone, so I can’t text NZ and if anyone has texted me, it’s floating around somewhere and will never arrive here, so don’t!
I’m going into Maun today mainly to find out if ‘Orange’ the other company does allow for texting to NZ.

My audience as i wrote this! unfortunately we had light behind us!

So far, all is going well here, and I’m enjoying myself. I’m certainly enjoying the quiet and slow pace of life!
I'm getting used to cooking on the gas stove here, and will soon start trying out the fire, which is the best option because the wood is free from the bush!

17 February
I finally made it to Maun today. Kobus (a guy who's here to discuss building plans) took us all out for breakfast, which was nice. Now i've got most of the mnorning to sort out a few things here. It threatened to rain again last night, but nothing came in Motopi, so we continue to pray for rain on this dry land!

Well. That’s it for now! God's blessings!

One More Sleep!

This week went surprisingly fast, but I have a feeling the rest of today will drag a little. My bags are all packed and I'm ready to go! It's only one more sleep to go now and I'm really excited. Went to the market this morning like I do most Saturdays, and then just finished off packing the last few things. I'm having a quiet night with the family tonight and hopefully an early one!

1 Week 2 Go!

Well, it's Sunday the 28th today, so 1 week till I leave. A lot of people have been asking me what i've got plannd for this last week, so i thought I'd giveyou a little update...for those already checking! :)

This week is pretty relaxed, I had my last (of 10!) immunisations last week, and bought any last things I needed so not much left to do really. Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll be heading up north to a lovely beach for the day just to relax with some friends. That's mostly what the week consists of, really, catching up with friends and family before I head off.

I should get packing on Thursday so i have a few days to realise all those things I've forgotten!
I fly out at 3 something on Sunday so I'll be heading to church in the morning and then straight to the Airport so i can book in around 1pm!

My schedule from there is 1 day in Bankok...just like the song...maybe not. Anyway and then I'll head to SA. I'll stay in Pretoria and surrounds for a few days catching up with family (some of whom I haven't seen in nearly 12 years!) and friends, before the Cronje's take me back to Motopi!

Oh yes, that is another blessing sent my way. It was looking at one stage like I would have to catch the bus, which involves staying one night in Gabarone (the capital of Botswana), but then I had an email from Corlize who said Th Cronje's were arriving in Pretoria for something on the 8th Feb (2 days after me!) and that they could take me along! So praise the Lord! I have confirmed safe and easy travel to Motopi!

Well, that's it from me for now...I'll update again before I leave!

Oh...a quick run down on the people i'll be mentioning:
Mr & Mrs Cronje head the work in Motopi and have been there since 1999.
Corlize Viljoen - Joined them in 1995 and has been my main contact in planning. She's not currently in Motopi though, and probably won't be back till April.
There is another Lady there at the moment from Austria (I think), but I don't know her name sorry! We'll over lap by about a month.

God's blessings!
Marlene