Right now at CHS

This is your opportunity to get a peek into the classes at CHS. Right now at 9:30 am on Tuesday morning this is what is going on at CHS.

David’s office is empty as he is off to town to buy supplies and submit our paperwork to the ministry of home affairs. 

In grade 1 they are learning about emotions and how they are expressed on the human face. In this shot you can not see Mr. Beukes, but he is in the front of the class teaching away! This is the group of kids that I will be teaching next year. I will be a co-teacher with the home room teacher in the second grade class.

In the second grade they are doing math worksheets right now. You can see the kids lining up to have their work checked by Miss. Nelenge.

The third grade class has a bathroom break. See if you can recognize any of the feet in this picture.The kids get 2 bathroom breaks in the day, this includes a break to brush their teeth after snack time. The kids get a sandwich at ten and a full meal at one.

In Grade 4 they are busy with literature. You can see Mrs. Banda in the front of the class. This is the largest classroom in the school. We are trying to figure out next year when we will add a class, we are running out of space! Pray that we find a piece of land soon so we can build our own school building. The school currently has the money to build our own building, but we are struggling to find a suitable piece of property.

In grade 5 and 6 they are learning to knit! This is during home ecology class. The African man in the picture is Mr. Banda, he is home ecology teacher, and the girl in the picture is Nellie, a short term volunteer. She has been here since July and will leave right before Christmas day. Notice in the picture how some of the kids are using pencils as knitting needles. (and how Chris is way more interested in his book :))

In the kitchen Martha is busy prepping for lunch. In the morning they make oatmeal or porridge for the kids who eat breakfast at seven. Right after the breakfast dishes are done, they prepare the sandwiches and fruit for snack time at 10. When the prep for that is done the lunch prep begins, here Martha is slicing onions for bobotie, a traditional South African meat dish. We figured out that the kitchen serves about 40 000 meals a year! The school just received a grant from the Spanish Embassy so they will be upgrading the kitchen equipment soon.

So there you have it! Continue to pray and have a great day!

New look.

We have a permit to be here now. So a new look seemed in order. This blog is now about our life here in Namibia. Let us know what you think. If you are viewing this in Facebook click here to see the blog.

Thanks for all for helped us to get here, the future is bright!

Love!

Aliens in our yard.

8 days.

8 Days. This morning we woke up, and the date was the 20th of October. The visa that we are on expires on the 28th of October. We have 8 days left and then we need to pack our stuff and get out of the country. This knowledge that we are only here on a temporary visa has been on our minds for 6 months now. (That’s right people, we have been in Namibia for six months now!!!)
We have applied for a work permit, the application takes several months. Apparently it can take up to a year, but usually at least six  months. We turned ours in in August, so if any of you are doing the math three months is more than eight days.
This morning I was sitting in the living room trying to decide where we would pack all of our things and how we would tell our landlord.
Then I went to lunch with Suzanne, (yes I am doing better, I can walk unaided now!) and then David called.
He was acting kind of weird on the phone, he kept asking me weird questions, and his voice was hoarse. It turned out that his voice was hoarse because he had been yelling. It also turned out that he was yelling because he got a letter from home affairs congratulating us on our two year work permit. We got it. We are now able to legally work in Namibia until the 15th of October 2012.
Praise Jesus! Thanks for all the prayers!

It has been about a week since my last update.

Hi!!
I am waving to you from the couch, in a seasick daze. I am still home, still sick. Right now the dr. “guessed” that it is a deep middle ear infection. Sometimes it is called labyrinthitis. Last week I was on antibiotics for swollen glands, and an upper respiratory infection. I am allergic to almost all antibiotics, so last week when I woke up in the middle of the night from severe vertigo, and crawled to the bathroom to throw up I figured it was an allergic reaction to the meds. The next day I went to the doctor, he told me to stop taking the meds in case they were making me sick, and guessed that it could also be a middle ear infection. My ear does not hurt at all. My only symptoms now are a fever (going on week 3) and severe dizziness. He told me to rest and to hope for the best. If it does not get better in a few days I have to go see a specialist. They also want me to go to an allergist to see which antibiotics I can take as there are none left for me to take. Fun times.
Please keep us in your prayers.
Love!

Feet…

The name of this blog is “how beautiful are the feet” from Romans 10:15. The passage is about the gospel, and how it has to be preached for people to hear, and how happy we are to receive a good message. Thus we would think that someone who carried a message to us had beautiful feet. The first time I really thought about this verse was in 2002 when David and Kyle were working in the North of Namibia. Kyle had a poster on his wall with that verse. So I want to introduce you to some of the feet that we work with at Community Hope School in the next few weeks. As you get to know each of our co-workers take a moment to pray for them!

The first pair of beautiful feet belong to a 31 year old Dutch girl. She has been with the school for many years. She started off as the second grade teacher, but now is the classroom teacher in grade three. She has a heart for kids. She used to work in Cape Town with AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children before coming to Namibia. In fact she has spent most of he adult life serving children in need of love. She knows the heart of each of the children in her class. I have seen her cry over the stories that they tell, and I have seen how the love she gives has influenced individual children. In her I have found a true friend, she has a fantastic sense of humor, one of her favorite things on earth is cheese, and she usually has a smile on her face. Marye has beautiful feet because she lives her life for God, and she show unloved children the love that Christ has for them.

Thanks, and random bits of news…

Thanks for the prayers! On Saturday morning I was finally able to find a dr. with an open slot. She prescribed a weak antibiotic, some allergy meds, and an expectorant. She never said what was wrong, but I feel like I am on the mend! Still have the fever, but I did get my voice back little by little over the weekend, now it only squeaks and squawks every now and then 🙂

We bought a fan today. A fan that is also a humidifier. David is calling it the FANcy pants fan. It has been around 75 degrees at night,  it is really hot! We continue to worry that as summer approaches we will slowly melt.

One of the kids at our school is getting a cornea transplant in the near future. Last week we learned that after the transplant he will not be allowed to do anything that may jar his eye. No running, no playing soccer, so swimming, and he has to wear sunglasses all the time. When David told him he expected Ricardo to be upset, soccer is life out here, but Ricardo just rubbed his hands together and said: “Yeah! I am going to tell my auntie she has to buy me sunglasses now!” Pray for him when you have time this week!

Today we reapplied for our work visa. We only have 2 and a half weeks left on our current visa. Technically one can not reapply for a work visa, and you only get 90 days a year on a work visa. We still handed it in, and we are praying and hoping for the best. Our are still waiting to hear about our 2 year work permit, apparently it takes them up to 8 months to get an answer back to you.
We are not sure what will happen if the visa is not approved, we may have to go down to South Africa for a few months. Please continue to be in prayer for the visa, we really can not afford to leave the school right now. Above all we know that God is in control and whatever happens will be fine.

This last week we have really missed Central Christian College of the Bible. They had the Missions Emphasis Week. We dedicated out lives to missions because of MEW. While at CCCB we spent many hours planning MEW, it was the highlight of the semester! If you are interested in CCCB, the tuition pain college, check out their website here.

There are six weeks left in the school year. This week I am teaching on HIV/AIDS in health class. The new teacher for next year made it to Windhoek yesterday. He is a down to earth South African guy, we look forward to getting to know him!

There are some days when we realize working at a school is not what we had in mind when we planned a life on the mission field. Yet, I have seen the hurt a child can suffer, and I know that the Heart of God the FATHER is broken over the children of Katutura. We may not have planted any churches yet, but I have seen a child be transformed from shy, heartbroken, quiet, lonely stranger to a smiling, participating, strong leader. God can change lives, go out and show the love of Christ this week!

What you can pray for:

1. There is a ridiculous amount of contagious diseases going around the school right now, from Meningitis to German measles. I (Sandy) have had a fever since last Friday, I have missed several days of school this week. I am going to see the dr. tomorrow. Pray that it is not too bad, you see I am allergic to most antibiotics, and can only take the really weak ones. The other symptom is a sore throat, and I am starting to lose my voice.

2. Our work visa expires in 3 weeks. We have applied for the 2 year permit, but you are supposed to be outside of the country when you are waiting for it. Approval can take up to 8 months. I called home affairs today to see about renewing our work visa, and she told me that we should leave the country and apply for a permit, and that she has never heard of people reapplying for the work visa (the 3 month one we had before). EEK! If push comes to shove we can call a contact at the office and try to get the permit pushed through faster. So we may be illegal in 3 weeks. Please, please pray for the visa situation! (for the rest of the staff at school too, Namibia is one of the most difficult countries on earth to get a visa)

Thanks!

Jingle bells Jingle bells!!

Hello!
It is Thursday night here. It is stiflingly hot, and I feel like listening to Christmas music. It is true that I am one of those people. You know, those people who can listen to, and enjoy, Christmas music any time of the year. Today we were discussing how different Christmas would be this year. I think we will still get a nylon (is that what a fake tree is made of?) Christmas tree, and maybe even hang some socks on the wall. This year we will probably eat watermelon, and go to the public pool. This Christmas mood has been brought on by the Christmas play that we are rehearsing for. It really has been a huge blessing and so much fun. I used to lead some dance groups when I was in high school, I always thought it would be part of my future. But then I moved to America, and ya’ll just don’t dance much. I remember the exact day when I finally said “Ok, God, I am not sure why you gave me this desire to dance, I guess that was just a passing thing.” I was pretty sad. Now I am here dancing with our kids, and let me tell you these children take to dancing like fish to water. It has been amazing to see some of the attitude changes in the kids who I am dancing with. God knew all along! 
Now I would like to take this opportunity to officially invite all of you to attend our Christmas extravaganza! There will be hear melting singing, foot stomping dancing, and Hollywood level acting!
Thanks for the prayers! God in moving in Namibia!

Here is a small taste of what we will be doing. I am teaching dances to three groups, this song is for the fourth grade class. They will be playing the super cool wise men. (When Don Stoll was here he helped to pick this song! ) 

What spring looks like in Namibia…