Life in Africa!

Our April...

2011-05-10T15:36:00.009+02:00

Before I jump into all the incredible things God has done in the last three weeks, I need to interject a few business things first in case a few of you don’t read to the end of this note.

This month (May) is the last month for you all to give to our ministry needs through One Challenge Int (OC). As of next month (June 1st) please stop giving through OC and begin giving to us through donations to Overland Missions.

As you continue to support us financially or if you would like to begin investing into our ministry with Overland, would you please direct your financial support with the designation “3074” (our new account number) in the memo line, payable to:

Overland Missions
P.O. Box 566
Cape Canaveral, FL 32920
https://www.overlandmissions.com/donate/secure.php

USA Office: office@overlandmissions.com
Phone: 1-321-452-9696

We expect our overhead costs to decrease moving forward, but in the next few months we have some significant expenses ahead with regards to our big international move. Even if you are not a regular contributor, will you please consider giving a one-time gift to help with our moving costs? It would be a tremendous blessing for us – thank you!! (if you have any questions about the process, please email us at danielhartley@oci.org)

Easter Conference in Bloemfontein
We had an amazing week away at our church’s Easter Conference (aka The Kings Feast). Dan had been working on administrative pieces for this for around 6 months and it was incredible to see how everything came together. We hosted two international worship leaders and once again were blessed by a former Shiite Muslim’s words of encouragement and exhortation as the main speaker. On Easter Sunday, we had a time of unbroken worship that lasted from 7am-9pm with various worship teams taking turns leading. It was a fantastic time of encouragement and refreshment with other believers! There was some beautiful worshipful art paintings done and several people were healed by prayer. Amazing!

A Sister in Town
A few hours after getting home from the conference, I drove to the airport to pick up my sister Julie. Some of you may be thinking, “wait, didn’t she just visit you in Oct last year??” I am delighted to announce that my sister Julie has also joined Overland Missions and is going through their Advanced Missions Training for the May – July class. (We will be in the Sept – Nov class) She flew in a week early to spend some time with our family before flying up to Zambia. I can’t tell you how amazing it will be to be able to do ministry with my sister in the future – I can’t wait!

We have been slowly phasing out of formal ministry as we prepare for the BIG CHANGE. (Moving to Zambia) We have a few more things Dan is helping with at the church, but the month of May is largely for us to focus on our big To Do List. We gave notice for our rental house and our home has to be completely packed up by the end of this month. We also have a few other big things on our list like updating our will, researching and signing up for a new insurance company, setting a new missionary budget, updating our address database…all of which are rather time consuming. We have some incredible friends who have offered to come and help us pack or to play with our kids so we can pack uninterrupted. This will be a life-saver! However, PLEASE PRAY FOR US, especially in the next 3 weeks. I know we can do it, but it looks a little overwhelming right now. Here is a picture of my two cute moving assistants.

Then, after that…we are still working out the details. The month of June we expect to be bouncing around a little bit. Our goal is to spend some quality time with ministry partners at each of the construction projects Dan has helped with. We hope to do more work in Swaziland for a couple days with the Chomba family at Hope House, spend time in Nelspruit with the Mongwes at Impilo Orphan Village, and then up in Temba at House of Hope with Bill Rapier. For one week, some people we barely know at church have given us a week’s vacation all paid at their time share in Mpumalanga. We also have been invited to go hunting at some friend’s game farm in the Eastern Cape for a week. Those two weeks are going to be incredibly needed by then I think! It will be great to have some quality family time as we prepare to transition.

Although this may be subject to change, based on what we know now, we think that we will drive up to Zambia sometime the second week of July. We are so excited that you are with us on this journey!

Thank you for all your prayers.

Janell for our family

Easter Camp

2011-04-17T19:56:00.002+02:00

Thanks for your prayers for us this week. Our week was full of unexciting things like updating our database, researching insurance companies and errand running. Sometimes even missionaries have boring weeks! We are preparing for our church's Easter Conference (April 21-27), we also participated in part of a worship conference, and hosted a Zambian missionary at our home for a couple nights this week, so we had a few fun things interspersed in there.

Easter Conference (also known as The King's Feast) is a special time where anyone who is a member of the churches belonging to our network can come and hear some international speakers and have some incredible times of worship. They will come from Zambia, Zimbabwe, and all over South Africa. It has always been a super special time. In the past month, it seems like God has been showing His goodness in some pretty tangible ways to people at our church – it will be amazing to celebrate all together!

Dan has been on the planning committee again this year and has a pretty long "to-do" list to punch out before Wednesday. Please pray that things would come together smoothly and easily.

This coming week, we would love prayer for:

Safety as we travel south 4 hours to Bloemfontein with multiple trailers full of equipment.

Health – the weather is changing here (it is officially COLD) and that usually brings out the sniffles in our family

That we, and those attending, would learn from the Word and have an incredible time in the Lord's presence.

Also, we will pick up my sister Julie from the airport as we are driving back into town on the 27^th. She is participating in the AMT training in Zambia with Overland Missions and will be up there on base from May-July. We are really looking forward to time with her! She is about 70% supported last I heard. If you would like to give her a one time gift to help cover her training fees – please send her an email at jfengeman@gmail.com

You probably won't hear from us next weekend because we'll have limited (or no) internet service while in Bloemfontein. We are excited to tell stories and show pictures when we return.

And then in May…we start packing! Wahoo!

Dan's birthday is tomorrow (18^th). Please feel free to congratulate him on aging or send him cheesy e-cards to danielhartley@oci.org

Smiles,

Janell for our family

Hartleys – BIG NEWS!

2011-03-25T20:49:00.010+02:00

For awhile now we have had a sense that God has been cultivating some plans that would completely change the direction we are currently moving in.

We have been praying about this change for many months and have wrestled with two different options to consider for our next season of ministry. We have invested a great deal of prayer, investigation, and research into this decision and had many spiritual mentors speak into our lives as well. We have felt God's guidance and confirmation in this process and we are excited about what is ahead for our family.

We will be moving to Livingstone, Zambia!

After 8 years of being missionaries with OC International (5 years in Africa) we feel God nudging us into something new and different. We are so thankful for all the amazing people God has brought into our lives through OC to shape us, grow us, and prepare us for this next season of ministry. Our OC teammates have walked this exploration journey with us and even though they are sad to see us go, they are incredibly supportive of our transition. We will really miss these wonderful families as well as many dear African friends.

We have been accepted as missionaries to Overland Missions, and have resigned from OC, effective May 31, 2011.

Things in our life will be pretty different. We will be saying a lot of "goodbyes", packing up our house, selling/buying a different vehicle, and moving from the really big city with several 6 lane freeways to live in a pretty rustic environment where you light a fire under the water tank if you want a hot shower. We have intense peace about our choice and although we'll probably go through a bit of culture shock again J we are confident this is where God is leading us.

If you have any questions about any of this, please feel free to contact us directly at danielhartley@oci.org or janellhartley@oci.org

Here is a bit more background to our story:

You might recall that three years ago on our way up to a conference in Lusaka, Zambia, our trailer was quite literally "eaten" by a pothole in Botswana, leaving the axle and trailer separated from one another. We were able to drag it a few more hours up the road and then left it with some friends on a missions base in Livingstone. We then continued another 8 hours up the road to Lusaka where we met up with the rest of our church's ministry team. After our time of ministry we headed back to retrieve what was left of our trailer.

This missions base where we left the trailer was operated by Overland Missions. Our close friends also lived on base and we were going to spend some time with them as well. Much to our surprise, when we arrived on base the trailer was flipped on it's head, and pieces were in place making it look once again like a trailer. With a few more welds, it actually seemed like it would make the 20 hour pot-hole filled journey back to South Africa.

The next few days were spent on base relaxing, exploring the base operations, and discovering how God was using Overland to make huge impact into the lives of Zambians who might not otherwise be reached if not for the massive 4X4 trucks they use to get into the deep bush. I (Dan) almost immediately felt as if I had found my perfect fit for ministry… not Janell. It was a little too rugged for her!

Now, fast forward 2 ½ years, and I believe that the feelings I had then, are now God's intention for our family this year. We had a 6 hr meeting in January with the director of base operations/ministry and the answers he gave to our difficult questions resonated like a C Major chord within our hearts. As well, just as a bonus, the base-life is much more family friendly then it used to be (they now have electricity and houses on the base for the missionary families to live in rather than safari tents!) and Janell's spirit is in union with mine as we pursue Overland.

I have been given a gift of teaching others not just with my mind, but also with my hands. I believe that I am a capacity builder for others. I am passionate about finding the potential in others and then exploring it so that their heart and mind understand who, and what God has created them for. Overland has invited me to teach their AMT course and it is a dream job for me! AMT stands for advanced mission training and is designed to train and equip someone who is interested in becoming a missionary with skills to help them minister effectively in challenging rural situations. It is a 3 month course, run 2x a year, which will teach missions theology, preaching, cross cultural communication, medical wilderness training, 3rd world country diseases, GPS navigation, expedition training, 4x4 driving course, welding, bush cooking and much more. What an amazing opportunity to impact world missions right from the starting line!

You can find out more by watching the course promotion video here: http://www.overlandmissions.com/index.php?/amt/article/amt-description-new/

During the months that the course is not running I will have the amazing opportunity to participate on evangelistic expeditions into the unreached and neglected regions of Zambia and Southern Africa. Western Zambia is an extraordinary landscape because the Zambezi River is in flood 3-6 months of the year. This isolates a huge number of people groups that settle within and west of the River. Because it is so difficult to reach by modern transportation they often receive minimal priority. These hard to reach places are where Overland wants to explore with the vision to evangelize, train pastors, teach Biblical principles and assist with social/health education. I first set foot in Zambia in 1994 and always had a portion of my heart set aside for this opportunity. I never imagined it might be so much fun experiencing the fulfillment to this dream.

(the picture above is the Zambezi flood plains at sunset from our Zambia trip in 2010)

We are not sure exactly what Janell will end up doing, but her first priority will be our children and then there will always opportunities to assist with projects around the base. There will also be times of mentoring / coaching needed for the gals who will be going through AMT and that is her favorite thing! She will have these opportunities and more to have great loving influence into the lives of women as well as into the "life" of Overland. She is an amazing mother and the model she will live, out of her love for God and others will speak much louder than any seminar could ever accomplish.

We know that we are only seeing a partial glimpse into our future but we are very excited about what is ahead for our family! Above are a few pictures of the base and view.

We will continue to stay in touch with you about how to transfer your support of us to a new account with Overland in upcoming communications. Until the end of May, please continue to send in your financial support to OC International. Thank you so much!!

To learn more about the other amazing holistic ministries of Overland Missions go to http://www.overlandmissions.com/ and check out Expeditions (short term teams), LIFE (caring for orphans), sector management (evangelism and discipleship in a target area), SAM (helping develop agricultural projects and microenterprise), RPN (Rural pastors network – pastoral training), and more.

With hearts full of thanks to God for all He has done and for you all,

Dan, Janell, Miesha and Titus Hartley

PS. We are in process of updating our communications database – if you have moved in the last 5 years, will you please send us your updated residential address? Also, if you want our emails to go to a different email address (or not come at all! J) will you please drop Janell a quick email at janellhartley@oci.org Many thanks!

Transitions

2011-02-27T19:28:00.004+02:00

Many of you have popped over here to our blog hoping for more news about our upcoming transition. Well, we are close to an announcement, but you won't find it today!

Stay tuned!!!

Lots of love to you all,
Janell for us 4

Here are a couple cute pictures of our kids from this week. Miesha was given a bike with training wheels and she is just now getting the hang of pedaling. Dan attached an old mop handle onto the bike so we could help her keep moving as she was learning. Now, Titus loves to "help".

The best place to eat a chocolate pudding popsicle is...

Soweto Sewing Center

2011-01-26T16:32:00.004+02:00

God is doing some amazing things through the missionaries with work with. At our team prayer meeting recently, my teammate Sarah shared some incredible news about how God is working in a small community called Braamfischerville and I thought I’d pass it on to you.

First, a little background…
Sarah and her husband Jay have been working with OC Africa for around 12 years with a focus on community development and uplifting area called Braamfischerville for the last 7 years. “Uplifting” basically means doing everything they can to help the people get out of poverty and walk in the abundant life Christ intended for them. They have created sustainable income generating projects, they sponsor an orphan boy to be able to keep him in school, they assist with health needs, they assisted with a starting a church, they do Bible studies, help with funerals, they plant gardens, expand people’s houses so that they can care for more orphans and foster children, showed the Passion movie at Easter time, and helped build a pre-school so the little kids could have a safe place to play and learn. If you knew all their challenges over the years, you too would be wildly impressed with their tenacity and the incredible things God has done in this small community.

Last Friday, Sarah was sharing about her sewing center project. The sewing center was birthed through the assistance of a short term team from the USA who came over with some sewing machines and patterns. Fast forward 2.5 years and now the sewing center has 5 ladies and 1 man on staff and although they are still struggling to see steady revenue come through, they are all making beautiful things and making money! Sarah proudly said, “They can make ANY kind of bag from generator covers to purses and there are several who are making their own patterns. They are extremely gifted individuals!”

Sarah has been going in weekly to do a Bible Study with them as a part of “leadership development” and has been taking them through the gospel of Mark. Recently, they talked through chapter 8 and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Sarah gave an invitation and she believes that all genuinely gave their lives to Jesus that day!! Isn’t that incredible?!!!!!

(Sarah with Judith)

Recently, Sarah was doing her personal Bible study and there was a theme about living generously and investing in eternal things coming through. She made a note to herself that someone was probably was going to request money from them soon. Sure enough, a couple hours later, the leader of the sewing center, Judith, phoned and through tears told Sarah this story:

Her daughter Palesa was the only student (out of 6-7 kids) in their community who passed her matric exams. (which are like really hard tests before you’d be granted your HS diploma in the US). She did it! She beat some incredible odds to stay in school, to learn, and to apply herself to get good grades! She was accepted into the Forensic Science program at the University of Johannesburg and would qualify for grants and loans to cover the cost. The only problem was that this family still owed the High School R500 ($70) for outstanding school fees. The school would not release her diploma/matric certificate until they paid the fees. Without the certificate, she would be unable to complete the paperwork to apply for financial aid (the financial aid deadline was a few days later). Without the financial aid there would be no University education, without the education, no career… You can see where this is going. Her future was hinging on $70/R500.

Sarah and Jay were able to give from what God has blessed them with to help this bright young lady have the chance to get a good education and create a life for herself.

They are impacting the nation of South Africa, one life at a time.

These are the stories that make my heart smile, and I think God’s heart smiles too!

Happy 2011!

2011-01-03T18:39:00.004+02:00

We can all see that I neglected this blog the entire year of 2010. (sorry!) Rather than giving you all my lame reasons why, I am hoping to redeem myself through sharing our family's adventures in 2010 through this awesome Smilebox. Enjoy!

May God bless you in 2011. - Janell

Create a free slideshow

Summarizing...

2009-12-11T13:47:00.031+02:00

Okay, if there is such an award...I think I would win the category for Most Absent Blogger of 2009. I think I have posted some 4 or 5 blogs this whole year. Yikes!

Everyone knows that transitioning from one kid to two brings a lot of changes. I was using this reasoning as my excuse for not blogging more. However, we were blessed with a relatively easy transition and Miesha really loves her little brother. She is always trying to help me by giving me his pacifier/dummy or patting his back when he is crying.

I told myself that I would get back into the habit of blogging once baby Titus started sleeping through the night. He started sleeping through the night around 1.5 months which is SO AWESOME! Now, I use another excuse for not getting my blogging current. I go back and forth between these excuses: a month ago we transitioned from the USA back to Africa and we are tired from the LONG (40 hr) journey and still have jet lag...or we are having yet another lightening storm and I am going to turn off my computer so it doesn't get fried by lightening...or we are still living out of suitcases (8 months now!) while housesitting for friends and I'll become a better blogger once we are settled into our own space again in early January.

Anyway - lots has been going on, so I thought I would catch you all up in one fell swoop again.

Since I blogged last - the very most important event was the arrival of our new baby boy - Titus Glen. He was born via c-section on August 24th and is the sweetest little boy ever. He was average weight (7 lbs) at birth, but proceeded to quickly grow into his strong name by almost doubling in weight his first month. He was 12 lbs at month one and 14 lbs month 2. He is a very happy little eater. As I mentioned before, he is a fantastic sleeper and already sleeps 8-9 hrs a night for me which is SO WONDERFUL! He is good natured, laughs hysterically at his parents when they make funny faces at him, tolerates his sister, has a bit of a snore, and sometimes even laughs in his sleep.

We had some wonderful memory making with family and friends in the States during our final two months after Titus was born. Here are a few picures:

When we arrived, we spent some quality time looking for a rental house. Through friend connections, we found an amazing house, for an amazing price and we will be moving in in early January. We are praising God for his provision. Also, the place we are housesitting for is available to us to use until January 9, so the timing is perfect!

On November 29th, we participated in the church service for World AIDS Day in Ennerdale with a very special group of friends. Pastor Wessie and his Compassion Team gave a heart wrenching overview of AIDS statistics in South Africa, complete with personal testimonies from the congregation and a powerpoint presentation showing all the projects where people are being served a helped by their church and ministry partners. OC Africa was recognized as a ministry partner as there are 3 missionary families from our team who all contribute to serving in Ennerdale and Finetown. (Finetown is the impoverished community next to Ennerdale where there is 80% HIV infection rate and where the majority of the Compassionate Care Team’s efforts are focused) In 2008 we took our short term team to Finetown for a week of service doing work in a pre-school, assisting at an orphanage, doing house visits to encourage and give food parcels, doing grief conferences, teaching first aid, and more. It was a blessing to participate! The few pictures we took turned out blurry, sorry.

On Friday we sponsored a Christmas party for the AIDS group I have been involved with in the past. This group is our “test group” for the Bible study lessons I have been writing. I haven’t seen the group since last year’s party since early last year we were preparing for furlough, packing up our rental house, my pregnancy with Titus made me exhausted, and we were in the states for 6+ months. I was so excited to see everyone again! In the past the party was at the church, but this year the venue changed since Pastor Bhembe left the senior pastor position at the church to attend Bible School full time. We arrived at the party destination an hour in advance to set everything up and then waited and waited and WAITED. Dan went with Pastor B to pick up a few people who needed a ride and then we waited and WAITED some more. About four hours later the party finally started, but the 25 people that I had planned the party for still had not arrived. Then we were told the lady who is in charge of the program, who I have worked very closely with in the past, was in the hospital. The van who went to pick up all my sick friends from the church didn’t come while we were there. After about an hour of singing with the local kids and a few grandmothers, Dan and I had to leave to pick up Miesha and Titus from a friend’s house who was babysitting them. The food packets that we made and the feast of a lunch we prepared were still on the agenda, but we were not able to stay any longer. We got a text message later the next day saying my friends from the HIV support group finally did arrive after we left and that everything was a big blessing to them. I have to be honest and say I was a bit disappointed since I wanted to see everyone and to celebrate with them, but obviously God knows best. I hope to get to see them in the New Year. Please pray for THELMA who is my friend who is in the hospital. They don’t know what is wrong with her yet, but she has been unable to keep food down for a week now.

Last Saturday was our Thanksgiving Feast/End of Year Party with our church. We celebrated how God has worked in our church, the growth of our members (we have gone from 80 people to over 300 in the two years Dan and I have been attending!) and there was a beautiful presence of thankfulness. We took a picture of the “small" group that we co-led the six months we were here and I have attached the photo here. About a third of the group wasn’t there for the photo, so you’ll only see about 30 of the 50 of us.

Tomorrow is Miesha's 2nd birthday! She is an amazing little girl and we love her so much. We are grateful to God for the gift of her presence in our family. Here are a few of the many faces of Miesha:

Thank you for your love and prayers for our family.

I hope to be blogging more in the New Year...I'll make it my New Year's Resolution!

Smiles,
Janell

my version of nesting

2009-08-21T23:25:00.007+02:00

Our baby boy is due to arrive in 3 days and I am doing my version of nesting...catching up on Facebook, blogging, missionary correspondence, emails, scheduling stuff, etc. Nesting is very different when you are living in other people's spaces!

We had a GREAT time at the beach and for those of you who are my FB friends, pop over there to see some super pics. Here are some highlights:

This is Miesha seeing the Pacific Ocean for the first time and sticking her feet in the frigid water. Such a cutie!

At Long Beach...checking out the International Kite Festival. It was far less cheesy than I thought it would be. Some of those kites were AMAZING and HUGE. Miesha's kite was neither amazing, nor huge, but we made it and it cost $2 - who can beat that? BTW, the Nemo kite in the background behind them - we saw it for sale in a store for $600 and in the air there, it is one of the "medium ish" ones. Yikes!

Miesha at the bubble booth

Stay tuned for some super cute baby boy Hartley pics early next week! Yippee!!!

Janell

quick update

2009-08-21T22:30:00.004+02:00

Hello all,
We are counting down the days and hours now until our baby boy appears! At dinner with some supporters Friday evening they asked how we knew exactly when he was coming and we were teasing them saying that we were so busy we told the Lord it would be helpful if He could fit him into our schedule on a Monday evening and God said that worked for Him too (smile) …the reality is we actually have a scheduled c-section on Aug 24th. So close now!!! This is the part of every pregnancy where the mom wants to fit a fast forward button to skip this uncomfortable final phase and get to the part where you can hold the baby. We have plans to take Miesha with us to the coast for a few days to celebrate our 9th anniversary this coming week and we are hoping he’ll wait to make his appearance until our scheduled date. Dan and I were chuckling as we realized tonight that in the three and a half months that we have been in the USA, we have constantly been living with people/family with the exception of one night when we arrived a day before our hosts came home. We are really looking forward to having just the 3 of us in a beach house for a couple days. We also think it is important to have some quality time with Miesha before baby #2 comes and turns her world upside down.

Miesha has caught yet another flu bug and when I took her to the Dr to check things out, he said she has a combination of clogged tear ducts, a sinus infection, a nasty cough, and it seems her 2 year molars are coming in early…all of which are making her pretty miserable! Please pray that she’ll fight these bugs off soon and that she’ll be well by the time baby arrives.
Dan is enjoying a few days break from working on the house and is requesting prayer for his back. Now that he has slowed down a bit, he realizes that the project is causing an old back injury to throb a bit more than is comfortable.

I am doing good generally, with only the usual aches and pains from the final weeks of pregnancy to complain about.

Dan keeps telling us about the fun he had coaching at the kid’s evangelism soccer camp and he did a great job preaching last week (on a very challenging assigned passage – Gen 29-30!) – thanks for your prayers.

Janell

It has been a LONG.......time

2009-07-29T07:16:00.004+02:00

I can't believe that it has been 4 months since I have written on my blog. I must confess that in the past, I have often copied and pasted other missionary letters I have written for the mission here since the news was practically the same. It seems that even that has been too much work!

Here is the last 4 months in a nutshell:

Africa to USA: we packed up our rental house and flew to the states the last week of April. It was a relatively uneventful flight and Miesha was a good little traveler.

Pregnancy update: we now have one month left till baby boy Hartley arrives. We have mostly agreed on a name, but we are taking our top three choices to the hospital and we'll see what he looks like when he arrives. He will come via c-section and it will be at Providence Portland near my parent's home in Portland, OR. I am still TIRED a lot, but most days I can usually sneak in an afternoon nap. Thanks mom!

Furlough travel: We have visited our WONDERFUL sponsoring churches and have put 14,000 miles on the car that was so graciously loaned to us. I deliberately have not counted how many beds we've slept in, but most of them have been really comfortable. We are mostly traveling back and forth between Seattle and Portland now, although we have a trip to the coast, a trip to ID, and a trip to Canada on the schedule before we fly back to Africa. Miesha now gets fussy when she sees me pulling out the duffle bags. I totally understand how she feels!

Building project: Part of the reason we chose to come back to the USA in summer was so that Dan could help his brother do a house remodel. They are working crazy hours and almost have the 3rd story framed.

Things we love about USA: times with our families, family pictures, chatting IN PERSON with so many friends, connecting with friends at our churches here, helping with camps/VBS, summertime heat (except for this week; sheesh... 105F!!!), ice cream, Mexican food, root beer, and more.

Things we miss about Africa: our church, our community group, my mom's group, our friends and missionary teammates, our pets, having our own space and privacy, cheap movies and meals out (date nights!), getting to do short term teams, our ministry partners, and more!

Hard to believe that our time here is already half over!

If you are lucky, I may add pictures in the next couple months. lol!

April update

2009-04-19T13:54:00.004+02:00

We are still recovering from the 7 days that we invested into our church’s youth conference and family camp. On Monday, it took about 6 hours of driving to get there since all of us in our convoy were pulling ridiculously heavy trailers with sound equipment, freezers, camp stoves, portable showers and more. The place is actually a farm that God told a family in our denomination to purchase and convert into a conference center. Last year for the youth camp, it was in the middle of construction and kids slept on cement floors in the converted stable. (not ideal!) This year, it was much improved, but they weren’t quite ready to handle the 600 people that descended on them for Easter weekend. We had to bring in loads and loads of supplies to make the venue workable.

On Tuesday, they put Dan in charge and by the end of the day, the open field on the farm did resemble a proper campsite complete with the portable showers and makeshift toilets, electrical outlets, lights on poles, and generators to service the 230 campers. (We stayed at a nearby B&B since we vividly remembered how challenging it was the year before and frankly, at 5 months pregnant, anything that isn’t my own bed feels like roughing it!)

Dan worked approximately 14 hr days all week to get the campsites ready, the sound system up and running (in two different places), playing drums on the worship team, and then trouble shooting all the problems that cropped up all week. J He was highly commended for his contribution and our pastor told me that there was no way they could’ve pulled off this high level of an event without Dan’s help. Our assistant pastor said that all the men are happy Dan is going home to the states for six months so that their wives will stop placing such unrealistic expectations on them based on what they saw Dan doing!

At the youth camp, there were approximately 150 students ranging in age from 13-30 and they met with the Lord in a powerful way! Many committed their lives to Christian service and all were challenged to live out their faith in a way that would practically impact their communities for Christ. This is an applicable message for people all over the world, but especially here in Africa.

At the family camp 450 more people joined the students till we had 597 people walking around the property! We didn’t fit into the gorgeous conference hall where the students had met, so the church hired a tent that could seat 500 people underneath and we all enjoyed the Lord’s presence outside! There were two sessions a day and most lasted somewhere between 3-4 hours. The worship would last for 1.5-2 hrs and then the teaching was after that! We are used to this length of service now, having been here over 3 years, but I am telling you – the time seemed to fly by! It is incredibly liberating not to have to worry about time and just enjoy God’s presence together. We were challenged and encouraged and loved the extra time with church friends as we are transitioning out for a season.

I am SO sorry that I don’t have pictures to show you in this letter, but Dan is out of town and took the camera with my camp pics with him. I’ll post some on facebook when I get a chance.

Dan is in the Eastern Cape this weekend with his friend Rob on a hunting trip. Rob’s relative is a professional hunter and was happy to let Dan come for a couple days to go exploring and hunting with them for free. It was Dan’s birthday on the 18th and he is having a fabulous time. He text messaged me around 9am on his birthday and he had already shot a springbok. (see pic)

Talk about incredible birthday memories! (it isn’t too late to send him birthday wishes – danielhartley@oci.org ) Although as he was leaving he was stressing about all the things we still need to finish here around the house, this trip away will be restful and rejuvenating and just what he needs!

We get on a plane soon and we have been very blessed by all the friends surrounding us to help us pack and move things out of the house we have been renting. We can’t wait to rest with our families and to see all our friends!

Please pray for Miesha – our poor girl has been pretty sick since we’ve been home from camp. She was running a slight fever for two days, but I thought it was because she is in process of cutting 4 more teeth. On Thursday, about halfway through the day she broke out into a horrible rash on her torso and face. I took her to the Dr and they confirmed it was an unknown viral infection and that I should just try to make her comfortable until the virus runs its course. She was up lots of times during the night and this morning she vomited after her breakfast. I am hoping the Dr knows what she is talking about and it isn’t anything more serious. Please pray with us that Miesha will be restored to complete health again right away. It is challenging to pack with a sick little gal who needs to be held all the time.

Please pray that we’ll be able to find a family who will be willing to take care of our cats while we are gone.

We are in Swaziland Monday and Tuesday this week with Jasmine and with the Chomba family. Please pray we have an incredible time encouraging them.

Lastly and of most importance – please pray for South Africa this WEDNESDAY during the presidential elections. There is a ton of tension and there is always the potential for violence. Please pray for PEACE throughout the whole process.

Thank you! We can’t wait to see you all again soon.

Smiles,
Janell for us 3.5

PS. We had another ultrasound this last week and our baby is still a boy!

cat update

2009-03-13T20:42:00.002+02:00

Okay, I haven't killed the cat yet...I gave him "grace" which was basically a one night extension before we held his execution trial. Last night after new flea powder and the familiar (more expensive) food, he actually was quiet all night long. No scratching on the door endlessly. No yowling.

Today I actually remembered why I used to like him so much. It is amazing what a good night's sleep will do for your perspective on life.

A good night's sleep...what a great idea. Even though it is only 8:46pm I think I am going to go to bed. It has already felt like a long day and I can always clean the house tomorrow. (except I say that every day...) lol.

I am famous...sorta

2009-03-12T21:29:00.002+02:00

The other day I realized that a picture of me is on the home page of our mission agency's webpage.

http://www.onechallenge.org/

Check it out! I am labeled "long term missions".

I couldn't possibly be wearing a more "missionary" outfit in that photo! We didn't want to offend the local chief that we were visiting for the first time, so I went ultra conservative.

I realize that I may be a bit behind the times fashion wise living over here for 3 years now, but I promise that isn't a true representation of my current closet. hee hee!

I hate my cat

2009-03-12T20:46:00.008+02:00

I must preface this posting by saying I really do enjoy felines. With the exception of the years I was in college, I have always had a cat/cats in my life and I really do like them. I like their soft fur, playing games with them, having them sleep on me while I am watching movies or having a quiet time. They bring lots of joy into my life...until recently.

We own two cats here in Africa and their names are Pepsi and Cheeto. We named them after food we miss from the states, but lucky for us Pepsi (the soft drink) is now really easy to find. We still miss cheetos, esp the crunchy ones. They have the puffy cheetos here, but I swear to you when you open a bag, the smell is way too similar to a litter box smell. I promise, it is true. It isn't just my pregnancy nose. Dan totally agrees. GROSS.

All day today I have been comforting myself with all the different ways I could creatively kill my cat, Pepsi. Until this week, he has been my favorite cat I have ever owned in my life, but not anymore. He picked the wrong week to pick on me.

As most of you know, this pregnancy has been rough on me. I have been sick off and on and REALLY REALLY tired. Dan mentioned that he doesn't understand how someone can sleep so much and still be tired. Even though I am solidly in my 2nd trimester now, it still hasn't eased up much and I have to have at least one (if not two!) naps or serious caffine in order to make it through the day. I also sleep anywhere between 10-11 hrs a night. Making this little grapefruit sized person is wearing me out. I think part of it is my interrupted sleep: Miesha still gets up once a night for a bottle. (we are working on that going away soon!) Because of that, I still have "mommy ears" and wake up pretty easily with little noises, especially if it is her.

This week, the cats officially have fleas. It is bad, but we Frontlined them and they aren't scratching as much. We know they are uncomfortable, but we seriously have done all we can to help them there and they just have to tough it out now. Also, they have made it abundantly clear that they don't like the current (cheaper) food we have been buying for them by barely eating it and by taking every opportunity to regurgitate hairballs on my bath mats.

The icing on the cake is that Pepsi has started yowling and scratching on our bathroom door off and on throughout the night all week. Last night that blasted cat's scratching woke me up 7x. When my alarm went off this morning, I felt already that I was overdue for a nap.

If he is lucky, I won't kill him, but I might lock him outside for a few weeks or I might drop him off 6 weeks early to the family's house who is watching him while we are in the states. I might give him a swimming lesson in the deep end of our bath tub. I might drug him. hee!

Any other ideas?? (we don't have any guns here...)

Here is a photo of the two flea transporters sleeping (where they shouldn't be) on Miesha's changing table.

And here is a pic of the little cutie who I don't mind waking up at night for.

SO Tired

2009-02-24T19:22:00.003+02:00

I think that if you looked up the definition of "Exhausted" in the dictionary today, you'd find my name under the definition. I seriously have never been this tired in my entire life. My first trimester is totally kicking my butt. Dan said that he has never seen someone sleep so much and still be so tired! That is why I have been ignoring my blog and only posting stuff that I wrote already for something else. Hee!

Poor guy. He has really stepped up to help around the house, with Miesha, basically with everything I usually do. He might actually write the prayer letter for me this month! Lol.

I have a Dr's appointment tomorrow. It is too soon yet to tell the sex, but we definitely will want to know as soon as we can. I am betting this one is a boy! Only a boy could wear me down this much and just be the size of a lime.

We will probably have another ultrasound tomorrow and I love seeing the little person grow and hearing the heartbeat.

If you are a praying friend of mine, please ask the Lord to give me an extra dose of energy in these next couple days. I really need it. There are a zillion things we need to do before we fly back to the states in less than 2 months.

I read somewhere that lions sleep 20 hours a day...that sounds pretty good right now!

a normal week...

2009-02-23T17:10:00.003+02:00

Hey everyone, hope you are all well. I have made this week a quick easy read for you!

Dan was gone traveling 4 days this past week and Miesha and I are happy to have him back with us now. He was in Bloemfountein all day Mon helping to prepare for a youth conference we are assisting with in another month. Then, he was in Swaziland at Hope House Orphanage from Thursday-Saturday laying carpet and installing tile. The boys are SO pleased! I’ll have some pictures up here someday.

This week we anticipate things being a little slower and will catch up with some office things and pack a few more boxes.

For our teammates – John and Jay are once again heading up to Zimbabwe to provide some much needed water purification tablets and food to the pastors we partner with and to do some planning for the year. Please pray for safety for their travels and that they will be a blessing and encouragement to the people they meet with up there. Most of all, they’d really like an easy, straightforward border crossing. The last couple times at the border it has taken them 3-5 hours to get through and the customs officials keep changing the laws and trying to get bribes. It is always a really frustrating experience. (One time John was in line for 4 hours in 106F temp and had to stand so close to other people that they were actually dripping sweat onto his feet! And, if you think the dripping sweat is bad, imagine the smell! How is that for a cultural experience??) Please also remember their families as they are often hit with unexpected challenges while the husbands/dads are away. The border crossing will be our Tuesday morning, your Monday night if you’d like to pray at the exact time they’ll be at the Beitbridge Border.

The best news of this week:

Miesha officially started walking! Before now she would take up to 5 steps if we forced her, but now it is her own idea and she is all over the place. It will be a fun new season for us!

this week's adventures

2009-02-08T22:27:00.006+02:00

This week we had fun being missionaries and for those of you who read our weekly prayer updates, you are aware that a week away was just what we needed! Our time traveling with the Canadian short term team this week was certainly full of adventure.

Our power kept going out as we were preparing to leave our house to begin the journey so we left a little later than we wanted to. Dan actually had to start our generator to get the garage doors to close securely! Then we traveled approx 5 hours to the Bulembu border crossing. The last hour of the drive was an extremely rugged dirt road with a lot of cows, hairpin turns, and sharp shale on it. It is one of the prettiest roads in South Africa with incredible views of the mountains and waterfalls. Our trailer was full of tiles and carpet for the orphan home and Dan estimated we were pulling around 2,000 lbs at a pretty fast clip since we were trying to get to the border before they closed. Our truck can handle it, but apparently our tires couldn’t and we popped two tires 2 minutes before we reached the border post. One had 3 small holes in it, and the other had a slash and almost came completely off the rim by the time we made it to the border. Also, Miesha’s little tummy had trouble with the bumps and turns and we had some eruptive vomit about 10 minutes before the border. We couldn’t stop because we were so pressed for time. Poor little girl - she was pretty miserable. We made it fine through the South African side, but we were two minutes late reaching the Swaziland side and Dan and Craig actually had to wander around the buildings looking for someone to help us. At first they told us we’d have to sleep in no man’s land, but then finally agreed to help us when a beautiful Canadian calendar, a first aid kit, and some stickers appeared. We hate bribing, but I feel much more comfortable bribing with stickers than with money! We were quite the sorry group of travelers: Miesha and Heather were covered in vomit (pink vomit no less!) and Dan had donated his shirt to help clean up the mess in the back seat so he was wearing Heather’s sweatshirt rather than go shirtless to customs… We finally made it through the Swazi border and then changed the destroyed tire by the side of the road.

We limped down the hill into Bulembu around supper time, happy to have finally arrived! We spent the evening with Jasmine (the American teacher we took up to Bulembu in early January) and had a lot of fun catching up with her and encouraging her. What a day!

The next morning we patched up the other tire then visited Jasmine’s school, met the kids she is teaching, and Principle Skinner showed us around. It is amazing! The school where she is teaching is the same school our short term team cleaned out 18 months ago. At that time the school had been abandoned for quite some time and everywhere you went there was approx 2 feet of paper, books, sawdust, or cow poop.

Now it is sparkling white, they have carpet and desks, and it actually looks like a proper school.

The transformation is absolutely unbelievable! About half the 150 children at the school are orphaned children who are in Christian foster homes in Bulembu, and the others are Bulembu Ministry Staff kids or from the community. Jasmine has 12 kids in her class and they range from age 6-11. Her goal is to teach them all to read in the next six months. Since some of the kids have never been to school and some struggle with English, this is going to be a challenge for her. She does have an assistant who is fluent in SiSwati which will help her a great deal in communicating early on.

We then went down the mountain into Motjane, Swaziland and had tea with the Chomba family. It was wonderful to see them again and we enjoyed meeting the newest member to the family – Takazane. He is approximately 15 years old and is now the 35th child this family supports!

We also spent time with Pastor Solomon and Grace Fasamati who run Christian school in the same area. Our visit was timely since their son is in the hospital in extreme pain and Grace hadn’t slept in 2 days trying to care for him. (Based on the symptoms, it sure sounded like a kidney stone to us. Hopefully the Drs will be able to sort it out soon and help him.) It was good to spend time with them and encourage them. There are so few people building into the lives of those who are in leadership here.

The next day, the Canadian guys taught on coaching, transitions, and church health to the Swazi pastors at a conference and several enjoyed it so much that they are now coming to the longer conference this coming week in Johannesburg to learn more. Dan wanted to try to finish the rooms in the orphan house while the other guys were training, but it just didn’t work out. The weather was rainy and it was super muddy. We are also going to have to do something about the ants before the carpet is laid. He decided to leave the supplies and head up again in a week or two to finish everything.

We then took the guys to Kruger Park for a day and a half, saw some incredible wildlife up close, then headed back to Johannesburg last night.

So finally, after 35 hours of driving, 2 flat tires, pink baby vomit, cranky border guards, fun with Jasmine, encouraging Chombas, Fasamatis, and 40 Swazi pastors, seeing animals in their natural habitat and way more meals on the road then we wanted (imagine ground beef with mushroom pancakes - blech!) we are now VERY happily at home!

For those of you who were praying for my morning sickness – it worked!! I didn’t feel sick the whole week and this morning (Sunday) it is back. I certainly don’t mind battling this in my home, but having a reprieve on the road was wonderful. Thank you for all your prayers for us.

This coming week, Dan and I will begin co-leading a new Community Group for our local church. We are looking forward to impacting the lives of more Africans on a weekly basis. This starts Wed. The Canadian team is doing another conference from Tues – Friday this week. Please pray for great attendance, open hearts, clear communication and for the info to be relevant to impact African churches for eternity!

Janell

A Challenging Season

2009-01-31T18:35:00.003+02:00

Dan had a conversation with a friend the other day just after his house had been robbed. He was saying that it was so hard to be sold out for God because it immediately makes you a target and he was getting tired of all these hard things that kept happening to him and his family. He thought it would be easier to live a mediocre life because there was still a bit of blessing, but then you were left alone because you were not a threat to the enemy. It got me thinking…he certainly has a point. These last couple months and weeks have been super challenging for us Hartleys and our missionary teammates. We feel like we are living with targets on our backs currently!

We are in need of prayer support more than ever.

Here are a few of the things that have happened recently:

As you know, we Hartleys took a couple of health hits a couple months ago with chicken pox, a kidney stone, an infected appendix getting cut out, and recently I had a severe allergic reaction to 2 shrimp I ate and was itchy and had a unsightly rash for 2 days. Currently my “morning/afternoon/all day” sickness from the pregnancy is making life really challenging right now. The nausea is awful and so far the prescription I have isn’t helping much. I know it is just for a season, but ugh! One of my sisters had a miscarriage a couple weeks ago and as you can imagine, there is nothing that makes you want to jump on a plane more than family who is hurting. I wish we were able to be there in person to support them.

Our teammates, the Siakis, have been planting a church and they have had some really challenging issues because their worship leader is sleeping with his girlfriend and his parents (who are in leadership at the church also) didn’t have any issues with it and invited her to live in their home. She moved right into the worship leader’s bedroom! The whole church found out about it and took sides – pastor vs. worship leader. (In Africa, it is common in many cultures for the future wife to prove she is fertile by getting pregnant before they get engaged. NOT good for believers!) Obviously this has been super stressful for the Siakis! Then, shortly after this came to light, the assistant pastor dropped dead with no warning. It was a huge loss for their church as well as personally as Pastor Keith had helped with counseling the wayward couple and the family as well as firmly supported Paul Siaki in his stance against sex before marriage.

The Witherow family had a really close call last weekend. They were invited to the Allen’s house (another American missionary family – she is in my Beth Moore study) for lunch and while they were ringing the gate bell to be let in, the Allens were actually in process of being robbed at gunpoint. The robbers had jumped the fence, came in through the sliding glass doors, tied the family up, beat the dad on the head and took a bunch of their stuff. The Witherows were still in the driveway trying to figure out what was going on when the Joe Allan ran out of the house all bloody and asked them to call the cops. John Witherow sent his wife and kids home and stayed to help. The Allens ended up moving in with the Witherows this week until they can sort out increased security and/or a new place to live. Then after listening and listening and listening to the Allen family process their trauma, on Thursday night, Witherows took another hit. Heather’s mom called to say that her sister (Heather’s Aunt) had been found dead and the initial reports indicate that it may have been suicide. Talk about a tough week!

Two close friends from church were also robbed recently. One family was robbed while on a mission trip and the other family was robbed during the day when the house was locked. They broke through a window and locked the nanny in the closet while they took things. Their 18mo old daughter was standing in her crib watching the robbers run through the house. Wow.

A good friend of mine had her purse stolen at knife point and it happened just a few weeks after she miscarried. I had the privilege of processing the events with her.

I don’t write these things to scare you or to glamorize what we face over here, but it has been a challenging, stressful, difficult season for us and people close to us and we really need your prayers. More than ever, we need God’s protection over our homes and families; we need peace and trust in God so that we won’t live in fear. God has been doing some amazing things and we obviously are threats for the enemy!

On Sunday evening, a small short term team from Canada is arriving to do some training at some conferences here for two weeks. This team is lead by our former teammates Craig and Heather Kraft who moved back to Canada last May. Dan and I aren’t in charge of this one, but we will be assisting on multiple levels. Craig and Heather will be staying at our house for two weeks and we are really looking forward to time with them. We’ll be driving to Swaziland with the team from Tues – Friday to help them with a conference and Dan will install carpet and tile at the Chomba’s Hope House Orphanage. This will be the final touch on the room and the orphan guys will be able to begin using it! This is a major milestone and we are really excited about it! I’ll send pictures next week.

Will you take a moment to pray for us as you read this?

- Pray for PEACE and COMFORT for the Allen family who are all pretty traumatized by the armed robbery

- Pray for Heather Witherow for REST and for COMFORT for her, her parents, her Aunt’s son, and that they will be able to connect with family through the time zones to encourage and support each other.

- Pray for the Siakis, that God will soften their worship leader’s heart to receive correction and to be turned back to the Lord. Pray that God will bring a wonderful, godly man to come alongside them to support them to replace their asst pastor.

- Pray for the Days, Janse Van Vuurens, and the Robberts who were burglarized recently – for PEACE and the ability to SLEEP WITHOUT FEAR.

- It seems almost silly for me to ask you to pray about my nausea after the severity of the above requests, but our upcoming week is filled with company and travel and it would be wonderful to have a respite from feeling so sick in order to do ministry.

- Pray for the Canadians as they do ministry in Swaziland this week for a successful conference and be an encouragement and blessing to the Swazis.

We couldn’t do all God has called us to do here without your prayers and support of us.

THANK YOU!

Janell for us 4

PS. Just for fun, I have attached a picture of the security measures of a house that is right across the street from our church. They have the highest level of security we have seen here so far! They have 28 electrified wires, spotlight sensors, video monitoring, and razor wire fencing on their fence and gate. While most houses aren’t quite that extreme, the majority in our neighborhood have electric wire and/or razor wire around their property. As far as we know, it isn’t anybody famous. This is just part of life here. I bet these owners added another layer of electric fencing after they saw me taking a bunch of pictures of their fence!

Inappropriate New Years Resolutions

2009-01-27T22:10:00.005+02:00

For all you ladies whose New Years Resolutions had something to do with decreasing your weight this picture is for you!

You know how all the diet plans have you cutting this out and adding that in to try to get skinny...well this one is a no brainer to cut out:

Yup, right there between the sausages and hot dogs, here in Africa for the low, low price of R5.02 ($.50) you too can own your own bag of FAT. No thanks!

Since I think that selling fat is inappropriate, I thought I might as well add another photo which is slightly inappropriate, but oh SO funny!

Sometimes when English is your second language...

Pregnant Again!

2009-01-27T21:48:00.004+02:00

Thank you for your prayers for us last week. We are all doing well and Miesha’s spots disappeared before we went to the Dr which is a huge praise. We still don’t know what it was, but are thankful it passed so quickly.

We have a fun announcement this week – we are PREGNANT again! Baby Hartley #2 is due in early September. The kids will be 21 months apart. We are approx 8 weeks along and only have 225 days left till our due date. We are excited that this one will be born in the States and we’ll be near family for this delivery. We had our first Dr appt a week ago Thursday and everything seems to be going great. We already have our first picture of this little one who is currently the size of a small kidney bean!

The fact that Miesha is holding her Daddy's NRA (National Rifle Assoc) junkmail article has NOTHING to do with how she feels about being a big sister...I hope!

Hartley happenings in the New Year

2009-01-11T10:34:00.006+02:00

Hello everyone – hope the New Year is treating you well!

I am sitting in front of my computer on Sunday morning with a steaming cup of American coffee (thanks Hartleys for the Christmas box!!) and I am trying to think of what to write about. The last couple weeks have been a bit of a blur!

Here is a short summary:

We had a lot of fun helping Jasmine acclimate back to life in Africa, we threw her a big party and then we drove her to Bulembu, Swaziland where she started her teacher training. (it was only supposed to be a 5 hr drive, but Dan and I realized we forgot our passports an hour into the trip and that added 2 more hours…sigh!) From Bulembu, we headed back to Motjane, Swaziland and stayed with our dear friends the Chombas for a couple days. Dan did more work on the building for the orphan boys and then we gave Maggie Chomba’s sister Edna a ride back to Johannesburg so that she could catch the bus from here to go back to Zambia. Dan and Edna woke up at 4:30 am and they drove to the bus station to try to book a ticket for a bus leaving that day. It certainly was an adventure trying to sort out what bus, what time, waiting on standby, and then finally her making it aboard 4 hours later. Whew! The next possible bus was three days later, so she got really lucky. That same afternoon, we also did an airport run to welcome back our team leader’s wife Jenny Teichert and their daughter Ann from furlough. (Karl and their sons are returning in another week) We’ve had several big rain storms and a neighbor’s tree fell onto the Teichert’s electric fence, so Dan also sorted that out for them before they came home.

So…airport runs, shopping for teaching supplies, throwing parties, repairing electric fences, giving rides, fixing the floor on the building for the orphan boys, fixing laptops, helping a teammate build a coffee table, writing articles for ministry, fixing a water heater, bus station runs, chauffeuring Jasmine to Swaziland, international border crossings, beginning to pack up our house (we are not keeping this rental house while we are in the states), having ministry partners over for meals and more are all in a week’s work for these missionaries. There certainly isn’t much of a routine these days which works fine for us. Dan thinks that working normal office hours is boring!

(Dan is fixing the water heater in the Chomba’s roof!)

In the upcoming weeks, Dan may go up to Zimbabwe to help deliver water purification supplies (the cholera epidemic there is steadily worsening – you can find more info online on news websites) and we are likely to return to Swaziland for a few days so Dan can lay tile and carpet in the orphan boy’s living room and kitchen area. Once that is finished, they can officially move in and start using the completely renovated space. Dan made a table for them and some missionary friends who moved back to Canada gave us some chairs that we will take up to them to use.

We hope to find a tremendous deal on international tickets this week. We are home for furlough from approx late April to late Oct in 09. Yeah!!

And lastly, Miesha and I are “bunking” from church this morning. (“bunking” is what they call playing hookie here) As I was dressing her for church I noticed that both of her legs are covered in red bumps. It is possible that a tribe of mosquitoes snacked on her legs all night, but it is likely to be something more interesting for us to deal with. We will take her into the Dr tomorrow morning to get it checked out.

Prayer points:

- wisdom for Dan as he sorts out the dates for the international trips

- LOW LOW price on USA tickets for us

- that Miesha’s spots will be accurately diagnosed, she won’t be too uncomfortable and that whatever it is will go away quickly!!

Thank you for your love and prayers for us! My coffee is finished now and I am off to cuddle with a spotty little girl.

Janell for us 3

Here are Miesha and Joshua Chomba – they were born on the same day, 15 minutes apart from each other.

Nokwanda is holding Miesha. She is one of the orphans that the Chombas have adopted. She is such a sweetie and has the best "morning hair" ever!!

2008-12-30T16:04:00.004+02:00

We hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas celebration and a Happy New Year to you also!

We enjoyed a laid back Christmas brunch with two other missionary families and then had a quiet evening at home playing games with a gal from church. We also had our annual Boxing Day BBQ with the missionaries we work with. Dan had a horrible sore throat for a couple days (including Christmas!) but we are thankful it cleared up in time since the two of us led worship this morning for our teammate Paul’s church plant. It is an Anglican church so it was a little more reserved than we are used to, but it was an interesting change of pace.

Our church is sending approximately 20 young people on a mission trip this week to a small little town on the ocean called Kenton on Sea. Kenton is a party town and during the week between Christmas and New Year, approximately 8,000 young people pitch tents on the beach, listen to their favorite live rock bands, they drink WAY too much, they sleep around, and do drugs. Our church has a free coffee bar that is open all night to help kids sober up, there is a medic who helps with the obvious side effects of drinking too much, they watch out for the gals who might get taken advantage of and they have a lot of fun trying to engage people in conversations about God. They were a huge blessing to the community last year and saw a lot of people give their lives to Christ. Please pray that God will work powerfully in and through the lives of those who go, that they will have many opportunities to share the love of Christ and that many people will respond and give their lives to Christ.

One of the gals who came on our first short term team is returning to Africa to teach school in Bulembu, Swaziland for 1 year. We love Jasmine and are excited she is coming back! It just proves to us the value of short term teams since many who come for a short time end up coming back to commit for longer seasons! She lands on the 2^nd, we are hosting a “welcome back” BBQ for her on the 3^rd and then we are driving her to the Swazi school on the 4^th. We will likely end up back at the Chomba’s home for an extra day or two and Dan can do a little more work on the building we are finishing for the orphan guys who live with Lewis and Maggie. We are looking forward to more time with this wonderful family!

Sorry it has been so long since I've written here. To resolve the picture issue I had to ditch internet explorer and start all over with a new search engine. Switching things around on my technology isn't my favorite, but at least now you can see pictures again. yeah! I haven't been paying much attention to my blog since I have been enjoying facebook so much! I'll post pictures of Miesha's birthday party soon. Smiles, Janell

Help!

2008-12-17T11:39:00.000+02:00

All you really experienced and consistent bloggers out there - this rookie needs some help!

I no longer have the ability to upload pics into my blogs. The actual feature is gone from my "create" posting page. Any suggestions?

Thanksgiving in Africa!

2008-11-30T07:39:00.001+02:00

We ended up with 100+ people for the Thanksgiving Feast at our church that we helped to coordinate. It was amazing to be able to share such a special holiday with so many people who we are becoming friends with. Dan carved 10 turkeys in an hour (with an electric knife!) and did a fantastic speech to give everyone a history lesson for the reason for thanksgiving. I went shopping for food for 6 hrs on Tues and then cooked for 3 days with Janet (who is a catering expert and should really count for 5 people) and the Bible students at the church. (these students also were on the Swaziland and Zambian mission trips with us earlier this year) It was really amazing – everyone loved it and has asked us if we can do it again next year. We are up for it!!

Dec 1st is World AIDS Day. It is a time to remember those who are suffering from AIDS and to raise awareness about the disease. Three families from our missionary team will be participating in a special service at Ennerdale Uniting Reformed Church with Pastor Wessie. We partnered with this church’s compassion ministry with our short term team in June and did AIDS visitation to homes and to Village of Hope Hospice Center. After church tomorrow, we will be returning to Village of Hope and I am excited to see everyone and to reconnect with some of the patients.

Then, this coming Thursday we will be hosting a Christmas Party for the AIDS ministry at Moroka Church of the Nazarene. I have worked with this group for almost 2 years and this will be our 2nd Christmas Party. Last year, this was my favorite ministry event of the year and I am looking forward to it very much. This is also a very handy way to utilize the thanksgiving leftovers from the church party - bring on the turkey!! The Bible students from our church will be helping at this event also. For some of them, it will be their first exposure to people who are sick with AIDS.

Thanks again for praying for my recovery from the operation. I think it is truly a miracle that I am doing so well and credit it to all the prayers on my behalf. I haven’t had pain in days (even with all the long hours of prep for Thanksgiving) and even the scar is really faint. God is good.

I’ll write a long newsy posting with pictures once we have completed the Christmas party on Thursday.

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Love,
Janell

Parties

2008-11-21T12:48:00.002+02:00

While I haven't gone out much - this recovery has given me some good "deep thinking" time, I have read some books, have watched a couple chick flicks (thank you Barb!) and have decided to enjoy all the people who are giving to our family here. Sometimes it takes getting some of your guts cut out in a foreign country for me to slow down enough to realize how many people love us!!

For the many phone calls, e-mails, encouraging notes, flowers, CHOCOLATES, visits and meals - we are SO GRATEFUL. I was even given a very-hard-to-find-in-Africa Dr. Pepper! (thanks Michelle) Funny how much Dr. Pepper is speeding up my recovery!

I get the fantastic priviledge of planning two holiday parties and at this point I can do a lot of planning from my computer or while sitting down which is working well.

I am having fun searching for Thanksgiving recipes, checking out what Martha Stewart's website recommends for centerpieces, and trying to figure out where I can find autumn colored stuff when it is spring here in Africa. The Thanksgiving Feast is for a group of about 120 at our church. This morning in my Beth Moore study I was reading about Thanksgiving in the Old Testament. Well, actually it is when the Israelites were preparing to build the sanctuary in the desert so that the presence of God would dwell with them. Their songs of thanks and their outpouring of gifts - so many that Moses had to tell them to stop giving. It is one of the few times where the Israelites did things right!

I am trying to brainstorm creatve ways (besides an open mic to share what you are thankful for) that will cause my friends here to reflect deeply and meaningfully on how God has blessed them and to say thank you in a new way. If you have any ideas...please let me know!!

The week after our big Thanksgiving Feast at our church, on Dec. 4th we will be throwing a huge party in Soweto for my friends who are sick with AIDS. As usual, the party is already growing from "only around 25" to closer to 50. I think I am going to mentally prepare for 80 so I don't get surprised later on! This was one of my favorite events last year and I know I am going to love it again this year. We are going to do a Christmas program with a devotional by yours truly, some Christmas games, have a choir sing, eat together and have a special gift giving time. For many, this will be their only Christmas gift. When I asked my friends Mafika and Dumi what they wanted for their gift this year, their answers broke my heart. They asked for a toothbrush, laundry soap, and body soap. They need the basics this year. Since times are hard everywhere, those who are the recipients of charity feel the lack most keenly.

It will be so rewarding to be able to bless them all. Thank you to Fairfield Community Church for sponsoring this event!

Janell is home

2008-11-17T12:09:00.002+02:00

Hey Everyone –

This is Janell writing and I am happy to be HOME and writing you myself! J I had no idea that this weekend was going to be so eventful. On Friday, I had actually started writing a letter to everyone explaining how everything had been fairly “normal” for us since Dan’s kidney stone, but I am going to scrap that letter and start over.

While spending time in the hospital is not my idea of a good time, I did receive good care, my inflamed appendix is gone forever, and I am the happy recipient of some great pain pills, so life will slowly get back to normal here. I am under strict orders not to pick Miesha up for 6 weeks to protect my internal stitches from tearing, but I have no idea how we are going to manage that one. My missionary friends are bringing meals this week which will help a lot. We actually have the Vanderhaar family staying with us through Wed and they have been super helpful to watch Miesha while Dan was at the hospital with me. Megan has been cooking…they have been a blessing.

I am so thankful that Dan turned down several opportunities to travel in the next couple weeks. Actually, he would’ve been in Zimbabwe this whole time if he had said yes to one request and could've been hunting this weekend with friends. Praise God he was home. He gets a gold medal for being a great husband and dad through crises time for both Miesha (chicken pox) and myself!

Miesha is pretty emotional. I am sure it was a bit confusing to have been gone so much. I am looking forward to snuggling with her again when she wakes up from her nap this morning.

THANK YOU all so much for your prayers for our family. It has been challenging, but we feel your prayers and are so grateful for the many friends we have here who are helping us also. Thank you for your notes while I was in the hospital. It was fun to hear from so many of you.

Janell

hosp update #2

2008-11-17T12:07:00.000+02:00

I realize that you have gotten a lot of info on our family in the last few days, but I am not sure how to whittle down her email list. This may be the last email from me (Dan) on her computer. Hopefully the next one will come from her. I’m sure she would write from the hospital, but there is no connection there.

Janell came through her surgery really well. She is now appendix free. We hope and pray that was the issue. Only time will tell. Depending on how well she recovers, she may have to stay through till late Monday just to make sure she is rested. Here’s the irony, the nurses come in every hour waking you up by cleaning, and emptying the trash, and asking if you would like some tea (at 5 in the a.m.) and checking blood pressure, etc. Not so restful. So Janell is determined to fake how well she is doing, even if she is not, just to get out of there and sleep in her own bed. Praying for a speedy recovery might not be a bad idea in order to warrant an early release.

I think I have printed off 15 full pages of email well wishes so far. Thank you so very much. It evokes much emotion realizing how much we are loved. And Miesha too. I have received at least 8 sms’s (text messages) asking to watch Miesha. She is very flattered. We are grateful for everything we have received from our friends. It makes living on the other side of the world a touch easier.

Blessings to all of you.

Dan for Janell and Miesha.

Hosp update

2008-11-17T12:06:00.000+02:00

Hey again,

OK, we have the scoop.

Things do not happen fast around here as far as hospitals go. And no one will do anything until you either pay up front, or sign your life away and commit to paying your bill. And it’s not one bill. It is the Dr., surgery staff, hospital, anesthesiologist, pharmacy, x-ray, blood lab, all on separate accounts even though it is the same building. It looks like a western hospital, but doesn’t work quite the same.

Anyway, the CT scan ruled out anything to do with Janell’s reproductive system, but did not really quantify her appendix. However, the doctor wants to take out the appendix just to be on the safe side. Who knows what an appendix does anymore anyway. I think it was to filter the moisture out of the body before the flood. After the flood it just became a placeholder. Who knows? Janell will be coming home a few ounces lighter.

Her surgery is at 2:00pm CAT. That is 4:00am PST(We are currently 10hrs ahead of the west coast). She will then stay over tonight (Saturday), and possibly Sunday night depending on her recovery.

Miesha is doing very well and as far as I know slept from 9pm until 5am, took a bottle, and then slept another 2 hours. That was very nice. Her 21 pox are going away and she hasn’t had any more appear for the last 2 days.

I think that is all the important info. Thank you for all of the love and well wishes for Janell. I have been printing them and taking them to her. They definitely brighten her up!

Blessings,

Dan

Hartleys are having a bad week

2008-11-17T12:04:00.000+02:00

It is I, Dan, writing from Janell’s computer.

I am writing this message because Janell is currently sleeping in the hospital. It seems she is trying to outdo me on hospital visits here in South Africa. It wasn’t enough that Miesha came down with chicken pox three days ago, Janell wanted in on the action. She had some abdomen pain that started a few days ago. Then this morning she was sitting at her computer dripping sweat. I then knew something was wrong. Janell is usually freezing until the temperature reaches the mid 90’s. This morning it was only 71 degrees.

We spent the afternoon and evening doing blood work and ultrasound scans. No we are not pregnant, but we needed to rule it out. It looks as though she may have appendicitis. The doctor is about 80% sure, but is going to do a CT Scan in the morning to confirm. He needs to confirm that it is not something to do with her ovary.

So, would you please take a moment to pray for Janell.

That she will be at peace and get rest as she is on her own in the hospital. They don’t let anyone stay over for any reason. She said that she was sad I was going, but I think she is more sad that she won’t be waking up with Miesha at 3 a.m.

That the Dr. will be confident and accurate in his diagnosis.

Pray also that our little girl won’t be to miserable as she finishes her bought with the chicken pox.

Also for me as I will be a stay at home dad for a few days. I’ve got it all under control except the waking up at night part. I sleep pretty hard, (much to Janell’s dismay) and Miesha might end up learning to sleep thru because her dad might not hear her. Which might not be such a bad thing.

I will send an update out sometime tomorrow when we know more.

Thank you for all your love and support,

Dan

facebook

2008-11-08T21:49:00.003+02:00

My sister finally convinced me that it was finally time to take the plunge and join

I had a bad experience with myspace (my site was hijacked and "I" started sending porn to random friends and relatives. SOOOOOOOOOOOOO embarassing!) so I had sworn of "those websites" forever. However, facebook has been pretty fun. I have found a lot of new and old friends and the picture posting stuff is easy. I am going to create a bunch of albums this week.

For all you facebookin' friends of mine - come and find me!

Election Response in Africa

2008-11-06T10:16:00.005+02:00

Okay, I have to admit straight away...I didn't vote this year! We tried to set up our absentee voting ballots back in February and ever since then there has been issues. To make a long story shorter - we never got our ballots.

We have heard several times from friends here, "When America sneezes, the rest of the world gets a cold." Meaning that, when America's financial infrastructure crumbles, so does the rest of the world's. When America makes policies on gay marriages, the rest of the world votes on them too. When America elects a new president, it impacts many things in other countries around the world.

In church on Sunday a guest pastor from Uganda preached and their country is really going to suffer because of the financial crunch in the states. They receive a great deal of foreign aid from 5 Western wealthy countries and without it, people won't get seeds to plant, they won't receive subsidy for education, no food suppliments, and things generally will just be harder.

It has been interesting to observe how our continent feels about the American Presidential elections. I never met one person in the last year who wanted McCain to win. EVERYONE wanted a black president and it didn't matter at all what his views or opinions are. Before the elections, someone told us that if Obama didn't win, it would prove that racism was indeed alive and well still in America. (What??) Since Apartheid (racism was the law) was only discontinued in 1994 in South Africa, here there is still a strong sense that someone's race (or tribe) still is the biggest factor in whether or not to vote for someone. If you don't think this is true - just you watch and see what the South African Presidential election results will be next year!

On the radio yesterday when people were calling in to discuss the results - people were actually crying with joy and dreaming about all the things Obama will do to help the continent of Africa. Kenya actually proclaimed a National Holiday in Obama's honor. Wow.

Dan and I are of the opinion that Obamba will have his hands completely full with trying to save the USA economy and will likely not be able to assist in solving the African problems as well.

We definitely do not agree with many of the things that Obama stands for, but we are excited that America does have a black president and we will pray for him like we do many other world leaders.

Randy Alcorn (I enjoy his books tremendously!) wrote a great blog today: http://www.randyalcorn.blogspot.com/ Definitely check it out!

The answers are...

2008-11-06T10:10:00.003+02:00

Slops =

Paw Paw =

Spanspek =

Thanks to all of you who guessed. And yes, Trayson...googling is cheating!

Smiles,

Janell

What did I buy??

2008-11-03T13:32:00.001+02:00

Today, I wore my "slops" to the grocery store and I bought a "paw paw" and a "spanspek". What do you think these are? Leave me your guesses in my comments section and then I'll tell you what they are in a couple days!

Miesha is a M & M

2008-10-27T22:16:00.003+02:00

I love M & Ms and I love Miesha...

Love Letter = Animals!

2008-10-27T12:17:00.005+02:00

In my mom's group at church a couple weeks ago we were talking about "love letters from God" to people. The idea is from the book Captivating. Basically it is something in your life that is unique, unexpected or supernatural and is special and meaningful -basically it is like God shouting "I love you" to your heart. I am not explaining this very well...

Anyway, last Thursday I met up with some other missionaries at the Botanical Gardens to celebrate my teammate Sarah's birthday. As I was waiting for everyone, I saw around 100 butterflies in 15 minutes. I LOVE butterflies. I was pretty excited because I thought this was God's love letter to me this week. Then, about an hour later, I saw a pretty large tortoise. I have NEVER seen a tortoise at the Botanical Gardens and this was my 6th or 7th visit. I was excited and asked the Lord - is this the love letter? I kept walking around the garden and by the time Miesha and I were back at the entrance gate we had seen 3 tortoises and two funny looking rodents, a crazy colored grasshopper and this waterfall.

Both Miesha and the tortoise didn't want thier photo taken!

Even in the middle of a massive, crime filled city - there are still evidences of God all around me if I take time to look for them.

Then, today Dan brought home this funny looking creature:

He was working on our pastor's computer at the church and the groundskeeper found this cameleon. He was bright green when calm and turned real dark when we introduced him to our cat!

The Papaya Song is BACK!!!!!

2008-10-26T20:31:00.007+02:00

Hello Everyone!

This has been a full week for us!

We really enjoyed family camp with our church last weekend. We caravanned with a family who just joined our life group and ended up being the first ones to arrive. We walked around the grounds for around 30 minutes and then unloaded everything quickly since the first storm of the rainy season was upon us! We haven’t had a good rain since June so this was welcomed, but it did complicate things a bit for family camp! There was intense thunder and lightening and the municipality of the county kept turning the power off to keep the lightening from damaging things. We ate all of our evening meals in candle light and had the evening sessions and talent show illuminated via generator. It was great atmosphere, but challenging because of all the mud and having to stumble around in the dark! We would do it all over again in a heartbeat. We loved getting to know everyone a little better.

Our Life Group's "Talent" for the talent show was pretty funny. We taught them two songs that were favorites of Dan's middle schoolers - The Papaya Song and Pharoah Pharoah. We made total fools of ourselves all dressed up in Dan's Hawaiian shirts and doing exaggerated motions - it was a big hit.

We were guessing that after a weekend of playing at camp together that no one would come for the evening service to hear Dan preach. We were joking all week about the four people who would come! We were pleasantly surprised to find out that we were wrong. Dan printed 60 fliers to hand out and there were not enough for everyone. This was the first time that our church had heard him preach and he did a fantastic job!! It fit perfectly with the flow of the sermon series we had been going through all month and also the sessions at camp. It was timely, encouraging, and really blessed people.

We had lunch with the pastor and his wife on Monday afternoon and they asked Dan to consider joining the preaching rotation and also to be available to be a substitute pastor to teach when other pastors in the denomination are away. It was tremendously affirming! Thank you for all of your prayers!

In the 7 days of this week we had 11 meal meetings with different ministry partners. (Lots of eating!!) These last few months have taken us out of our usual communication with them and it was good to catch up with so many people. This week we hope to connect with a few more as well.

Dan is also working on the Thembe Orphan Homes in Pretoria again this week (or maybe it is next??). He loves serving through using his hands and tools!

Miesha is yelling at me wanting her breakfast and we have to dash off to church now. We love you all!

Tounges

2008-10-20T22:38:00.003+02:00

Who do you think she looks like now?!! I hope this is a phase...

(We teach our daughter bad habits when we are bored on long flights!)

New Hartley pictures

2008-10-20T22:17:00.006+02:00

We were asked to contribute a picture of the three of us for a church missions pamphlet something or another and they needed it ASAP. We drove to the church and our friend Luke was photographer for us. As you can see by these photos...Miesha isn't quite sure about him!

Or, maybe she is just tired of us trying to capture her cuteness on camera...

I do love this one...

and this one!!

Funny Pumpkin Pic

2008-10-20T21:48:00.003+02:00

I know this is a diversion from my usual genre of postings...but I couldn't resist! Happy Fall, y'all.

Village of Hope

2008-10-11T10:58:00.005+02:00

One of my favorite days during that short term team was the Saturday we went to visit some patients at the Village of Hope - an AIDS hospice center. We decided that rather than going to sing and preach to them (since they get that quite a bit already), we would go in to pamper them and give them a special party. Approximately 15 ladies from the local church we are partnering with also joined us and we had a wonderful time being the hands of Jesus to love these people who are dying. We soaked their feet and rubbed wonderful smelling lotions over their frail legs. We cut their toe nails and painted the ladies’ finger nails. We did makeovers, we gave them chocolates and coke and brightened up their living room with lots of balloons. Some guys from the worship team went room to room singing worship songs to them. We took their pictures, then printed them and gave them back to them to keep or to give to their families. Ruth took my big book of scrapbooking pages from room to room and let each person choose the special paper behind thier picture. Every person's picture turned out pretty great, but there was one man in particular who had a very winning smile. As I was gluing his picture to the paper he chose, we realized that he had chosen a very "girly" page with phrases like "sassy ladies" and "girls just wanna have fun" in a cute white font on black paper. We had so much fun teasing him about it! One thing I have learned about hanging out with people who are dying is that they love to have their minds taken off of the fact that they are nearing the end. Treating them as if they are normal, teasing them, doing special things to help them know they are special help so much to build bridges. My friend Maria was cutting toe nails - talk about serving!! - and kept telling each sick person, "I left my glasses at home today, but I think I can still see your nails there and I don't think these clippers are too sharp" and they would pull away in shock not wanting to get cut until they realized that she was joking with them! Instead of being nervous about what you might "catch" from them, showing them Jesus's love is pretty easy and then it opens up their hearts to hear more of the gospel.

Usually an easy way to open up a conversation with a stranger in Africa is to ask questions about their family or kids. I wanted to talk with one lady and when I asked if she had children, she turned away from me, and refused to talk to me anymore. I could tell I had made a serious blunder so I asked one of the ladies to interpret for me and see what I had done to offend her. Apparently this lady had two little girls (ages 5 and 2) and no one from her family would agree to help her care for them. She left her little girls with a neighbor when she came to live out the last days of her life at Village of Hope. She didn't want to talk about them because she had no idea how they were or if they were being taken care of. Doesn't that break your heart? It sure did mine! It is hard for me to imagine being in such a desperate place, but it unfortunately is more common here than I originally realized.

God opened up opportunities for us to talk to some of these people and to say “Jesus loves you” in a way that could be received. One lady named Jostina told me that she was angry with God about being sick and lonely and I was able to tell her that this party today and the gift of being loved and cared for by us was evidence that God sees her and still loves her. She cried and gave me a hug. It was an amazing day!

The ladies from the church were so excited about how well the party went and committed to return every two months to do special days like this.

Since I know many of you are curious, Miesha does accompany us while we are doing ministry. However, in cases like this where she would be exposed to sick people, she stays in the car and Dan and I take turns staying with her.

Thank you for your prayers for us. They really do make a difference!!

This is what one of the team members said:
“My name is Kristen Lakjer, and I come from sunny California. Africa has been on my heart for many years. Through prayer and investigating different missions agencies, the Lord directed me to serve in South Africa with Dan and Janell Hartley. I didn’t know what God had in store for my journey to South Africa, but I had full trust that He would guide me a long the way, and He sure did!

I look back on my time here in Africa and there is one experience that stands out most in my mind. I have to tell you a story of Nkhnsane. I met Nkhnsane at Village of Hope, which is an AIDS hospice in Ennerdale. Nkhnsane is twenty-six years old with two daughters, ages seven and nine. What I noticed most about Nkhnsane is the joy she had. I could see the love of God shining through her face. Her smile was so bright that I too could not help but smile. The day I met Nkhnsane she was to go home for three days to visit her family. I was so happy for her. It was a blessing to me to see God being faithful to her, even though she was sick. She told me that everything in her life belongs to God, and that she gets by day to day because she has the love of Jesus in her heart. I was sad to say goodbye to Nkhnsane, not knowing what would happen the next day.

The next day we went to Finetown and made some home visits. One of the homes we happened to visit was Nkhnsane’s family’s home. It was such a joy to meet up with her again. I was able to meet her mother, father, and her two daughters. Even though my time was short with Nkhnsane, I was able to connect with her as a sister in Christ. I will always have her in my prayers and I ask that you remember Nkhnsane as well, because she is now back at Village of hope till she gets to go home again.”

This is her posing in front of the corregated metal shack that her girls and parents live in.

Finetown Recap

2008-10-04T08:34:00.006+02:00

Back to the beginning...

We had Ruth and Kristen with us for three weeks in June/July and we did ministry together in Finetown with Pastor Terrance Wessels. All his friends call him "Wessie". We admire him and the work he and his church do in the impoverished community right down the street from where they live. In this photo, Wessie is in the front, Heather (dark blue) and Jenny (brown sweatshirt) are OC missionary teammates, Kristen is front left, Ruth is front right holding Miesha, Tina (in orange) and Helen (black and white stripes) are members of Wessie's church's Compassionate Care team. Micah Witherow (baseball cap) got the day off of school to come and help us do ministry. I am so glad that his parents let him do this. I think there is no better education than working with and helping people in circumstances which are different than yours. We loved working with this group!

Finetown isn't "fine" at all and it is filled with people deperate for a touch of love and the gift of hope. We worked at a project called Zanzele ("do it yourself") for a week. There are around 60 trained health care volunteers who work in pairs to serve those dying of AIDS in their communties. Zanzele also is a home where 28 orphan kids live with their foster mother Mama Linda. She is my new hero!

Zanzele also has a feeding project on the campus and they give free food to several hundred children each day and also assist some elderly people who do not have any money. The priority is to feed orphans and vulnerable children - can you imagine several hundred orphaned and vulnerable children in your small neighborhood? (vulnerable children is a definition given to kids in several types of situations. The most common scenario is they may still have one parent, but that parent is sick with AIDS and can't work/can't care for them.)

Ruth is a nurse in Canada and she and Dan did a first aid training for the people who work with those sick with AIDS.

Several people said it was a really helpful review and many said they learned something new! Ruth also did a workshop on how to process grief since everyone every day are surrounded by death and those who are dying. There were lots of tears, some good processing, and valuable counseling type listening techniques communicated. One thing I have observed about Africans and how they process grief is that they rarely give themselves permission to cry, to grieve and to talk about their pain. I have seen this several times with the parents are dying, the kids watch their parents get sick and waste away to skeletons, but they are not allowed to ask questions about what is going on. They know their parents are dying, but they can't ask "how much time do you have left? who will care for me when you are gone?" Many never get to hear stories about their parent's lives that are crucial to pass from generation to generation. (Can you tell I am passionate about this?!! This is why I am writing the Bible Study curriculum for my friends who are dying of AIDS. A portion of it is called Leaving A Legacy...teaching them how to write their life stories to pass along to their kids. It is now translated into the Sotho language!)

Below are the healthcare workers who attended the class. There were 4 health facilities represented and these leaders will in turn teach others underneath them to maximize the impact of this training!

Several of the ladies had deep pain that they were willing to share with the group. One lady shared the pain of growing up without her father. She tracked him down and wanted to have a relationship with him. She also asked him if he would help fund her education so she could become a nurse. She only knew him for one year before he died of AIDS and he didn't make any attempt to build relationship with her or to assist her in acheiving her dream of becoming a nurse. She was grieving the loss of a father (even though he was absent) and also her dream of becoming a nurse to help people.

Another lady had just buried a husband two months before and was struggling to process her grief with friends who had a difficult time understanding and supporting her. This training will be an amazing tool these gals can use to help people they meet to process grief.

Was going to resign...now feeling much better!

2008-10-03T15:50:00.006+02:00

I was just browsing through my blog entries and realized that I really haven't updated you on anything that has been going on since June! And boy, there has been a LOT!

For 3 days this week, we went away on a retreat with our missionary teammates. This couldn't have come at a better time since Dan and I were EXHAUSTED and badly in need of rest. There was a point last week where if I was allowed, I think I seriously would've considered resigning from being a missionary and heading back to the states where life would be easier. Miesha wasn't sleeping well (cutting 4 teeth at once...cute little overachiever!) which means I wasn't getting much sleep, I had a sinus infection for 2+ weeks, we had just put my parents on the plane, we said goodbye to a good friend who just moved back to the states (we miss you Marci!) and we had either been traveling with teams or had people staying with us for 70 of the past 109 days. (yes, i just counted!) To top it off, last week Dan had a kidney stone and was in the hospital for 24 hours. Stressful! That came as the "icing on the cake" for me and seemed to suck the last ounce of energy I had left.

Last Sunday in church our pastor's wife Lisa prayed for me. She prayed for refreshment and renewal and for God to "refill my gas tank" so that I could keep going.

The last couple days were good in that regard. We did some swimming, some bike riding, some napping, and feel that our batteries are recharged. PRAISE GOD!

I think that I'll try to update you on our adventures in the past couple months in bits and pieces...starting from the earliest and moving forward from there. God did some amazing things in and through the teams we led and I am excited to share them with you all. (hopefully many of you will have already heard some of the stories because of our email updates, but I'll try to add more pics!)

Thanks for bearing with my lack of postings! I hope to get into a groove here soon. lol

it's been a long time

2008-09-17T09:16:00.004+02:00

This is another posting to say "sheesh, I haven't written anything in forever!" and to again promise that I at least hope to post some really great stories and pictures soon. My parents have now been here 3 weeks and we have enjoyed their visit. My mom watched Miesha for me several times in the afternoons so I could "get stuff done" but instead of blogging I have prioritized SLEEPING and also trying to finish some 80 thank you notes from baby shower gifts given to Miesha in March. SO late...how embarrassing!

Miesha is trying to cut 4 teeth at once and she is SO close - we can see all of them because her gums are so thin. She has been a little more "relational" (can't be without her mother for more than 10 seconds) and also is a little more fussy. For a week there she was up 4-5x a night again. I am tired!!

As much as we've enjoyed my folks here, it will also be nice to be just us again for a while. We have either had people living with us or we have been on the road traveling to do ministry/mission trips for 8 of the last 12 weeks. Miesha told me recently she wants to stay home for longer than a couple days this time.

I totally understand! More coming soon. (I hope!)

I am back!!

2008-08-26T21:46:00.007+02:00

I know that I haven't posted anything in ages...sorry! We have been in Botswana and Zambia the last two weeks and we had so many adventures. Someday I WILL get enough time to write about a few of them. I have all these future blog post ideas floating around in my head. After 16 hours of driving (in one day!!) we got home from our trip late Friday night,recovered a bit on Saturday, went to church and cleaned the house and had a friend over for dinner on Sunday, Monday I did 10 loads of laundry, today we worked to clean up our yard and had some friends over for dinner, and my parents will land in about 9 hours and will be visiting us for 3.5 weeks.

I am excited for Miesha to get more time with them. She has cut two teeth and started crawling!! Such a cutie. She is going through a phase where she constantly wants to be held and climb up her parent's legs to try standing up. I hope my mom will hold Miesha and give me a little extra computer time.

I promise I'll post pictures soon.

Heading to bed. I only got 5 hours of sleep last night because I went to bed late and Miesha was up early. I hope this season of tiredness is temporary, but my friend Heather lovingly told me tonight that my days of sleeping in are pretty much over for the next decade. Sigh...

Resurrection Plant

2008-08-07T15:36:00.006+02:00

I have a before and after picture of a plant that was given to me. A couple weeks ago with Kristen and Ruth we went on a nature hike guided by our new friend Oldrich. He is an expert in nature and conservation and has been creating a nature trail (takes anywhere between 4-7 hours to hike it) to bring in money and tourism for an impoverished community. Great guy and a really neat idea...

At the top of the hill, Oldrich broke off a couple pieces of a plant that looked like it had been burned. He gave me a piece and here it is:

This is the plant after it has been in water for 2 days. Pretty cool!

The locals call it the Resurrection Plant because it obviously looks dead and then comes back to life with water!

I haven't written in awhile because we have been out of town with Team #2 to Swaziland and then after we got home, all 3 of us have been really sick with head colds. Blech.

I am feeling a little bit like this plant before it got water. I am tired, prickly, feeling a bit dry and in need of some refreshment! Please pray for our family. We are in need of healing for our sickness and must be well before we travel up to Zambia early next week with Team #3.

I want to be like this plant and bust out with leaves and healthiness so that I can be a blessing to this next team and to the Zambians we will be ministering to.

So much to do...but if you are lucky, I may get one more blog posted before we go! However, when I get a few more minutes to myself, I have some amazing pics of Swaziland to post for you all to see.

Baby girl just woke up - gotta go!

Week 3 with team

2008-07-09T18:12:00.000+02:00

In our sermon at church this Sunday we were asked a question. “Are you a human BEING or a human DOING?” The preacher went on to say, “The everyday love you show to people is what truly matters. This is the heart of Christ. The love of Christ you have received isn’t just for you, it is meant for you to give it away to others.” This summarizes perfectly what I have seen in the lives of Kristen and Ruth in the last three weeks.

Yesterday we took them to the airport to return home. We have really enjoyed our ministry with them and feel that together we were able to contribute to existing outreaches and to come alongside community leaders and pastors to help them have a deeper impact for Christ. Praise God!

Our Vaalwater ministry this last week was shorter and a little different than we had originally dreamed about doing, but God was definitely in it. We worked with the Africa Community Outreach ministry of Hamish and Terri Rodgers last Monday – Wednesday in a rural area that the locals call “the bush”.

In urban ministry, we have seen a lot of heartbreaking situations and have cried with many people here as they have shared their life stories with us. However, as we were working with the Rodgers in the bush, I found my heart breaking when I heard the stories of almost everyone that they introduced us to. Their ministry is an emergency response to the need they see all around them. They give out food parcels, they build homes for people, they give out baby formula, they purchase school uniforms so children can get an education, they do a feeding ministry which on an average week gives out 1200 meals, and they also work with farm schools to distribute food and supplies to the children.

The biggest need in this community is WATER. One reservoir is cracked and doesn’t hold any water, the other one has an open top to catch rain water which works, but it also catches rats and makes the water filled with disease from the decomposing critters. They have running water in some of the homes for one hour every second day. For the homes without running water, they share the 3 community taps with the other 10,000 people in their area. Can you imagine how much different your life would be without accessible water? No gardens for food, bathing is a luxury, everything is unsanitary since you don’t always have water to wash dishes or clothes, and you have to cook for several days on the days you do have water. While staying in their community, I thanked God every time I had running water.

I’ll share just one story with you: The patriarch of this family I met doesn’t have any legs and is in a wheelchair. Obviously it is impossible for him to find work. His 2 daughters 12 grandchildren live with him in a two room house pictured here (that Hamish and Terri built for them) and have one single bed – most sleep on the dirt floor. Terri told me that when she first met this family, the two smallest children were literally starving to death since they didn’t have any money for food. She pulled the little guys into her arms and said “these two are alive because of me.”

On Monday Dan and Ruth taught a first aid class to a group of 15 people. Most are either community leaders or are in ministry. They were so thankful for the training and said they learned a lot! You can see the first aid kits that were given to them in the picture.

On Tuesday we did a presentation at a farm school. Farm schools are a lot like what you would picture in America 100 years ago. It is a small one or two room building where grades 0-6 are taught at once by one teacher and grades 7-12 are all taught together in the other room. These classrooms are built on the farm property to educate the children of the workers.

Kristen shared her testimony and Ruth did a short hygiene presentation which brought tons of giggles as she used red paint to demonstrate how germs are spread. J We handed out sandwiches and boiled eggs and juice and then gave each of the kids a small toy. Since the children were on school break, they are not likely to get enough food at home so the sandwiches were a welcomed gift. (Kristen with some of the girls from the school)

Wednesday was “soup kitchen” day. We made hundreds of sandwiches to give away at 3 different locations throughout the day. The first one had around 200 kids, the second around 100, the 3rd around 300-400. There was a short gospel message, lots of singing and then food distribution time. I can’t tell you how much joy it gave us to know that at least the kids will go to bed with a satisfied belly that night. (Ruth is handing out milk)

Terri’s mother experienced a decline in her health while we were staying with them so they returned to Johannesburg to be with her and our ministry days with them were cut a little short. However, as several of us were recovering from flu bugs, a few more days of rest were just what we needed. Please continue to pray for “Mum” that she will experience God’s peace and that they will be able to meet her health needs in the coming days.

We have a few days to catch up on sleep and finalize some planning before our next team arrives on the 19th of July. Two guys are coming from North America to join a group of seven South Africans to do a work project in Swaziland. We are excited to be 1/3 of the way through our short term teams!
Miesha is a good little traveler and had a fan club everywhere we took her.

(pics coming soon!)

Week 2 with team

2008-07-09T18:11:00.000+02:00

Hello Everyone,
We have had a really great week! Thank you for praying for us.

Early this week Monday through Wednesday we were in a township called Finetown working at a preschool. Finetown is not a very “fine town”. It is full of shacks and run down residences. People there are struggling to find employment and sustainable incomes to support their families. When we asked Pastor Wessie what we could do to help that would last after we leave the community – he said the teachers at this local crèche (preschool) could really use some training. I recruited our teammates Heather Witherow who was a teacher in the states for 20 years and Jenny Teichert who has taught Sunday School for 10 years. The two of them did a fabulous job and in usual African style, things were a little different than what we expected.

Heather wrote a wonderful summary so I’ll include it here for you to read:

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” Philippians 4:13

Janell sent me a sms right before our time at Zenzele Daycare/Preschool in Finetown was to start saying, “Just a head’s up. Wessie has invited more teachers to the training next week.”

Have you ever been “all ready to go” with something, and then come to find out that you have more work to do at the last minute? That note caused me to fly into high gear and get more teacher packets and materials put together by Monday.

It was worth it.

Last month, Janell and Dan asked Jenny and me if we would be willing to help with their short-term team the last week of June. They only had two STEP people (short-term mission of two weeks) coming this year and needed us to help put together a hands-on workshop on how to teach, structure a preschool day, and provide materials. Their STEP people weren’t teachers, but would help us in any way we needed.

So, on Monday we set out for Finetown not knowing exactly what to expect. We put together a theme of “God Made Me” and modeled how to teach it to all the teachers with the children from Zenzele Preschool/Daycare/HIV/AIDS outreach. We were told to expect 120 children (ages 2-6). However, because the school holidays began this week, we had 40-50 children each day. In addition to them, at 1 pm or so, older children from the community come to the Zenzele facility to get a meal. Once there, they hang out. Throughout the course of the time there, we not only had preschoolers to manage, but the older kids too.

With the help of the other teachers who came to observe and learn, we had more hands to assist us and native Sotho speakers to help when we needed translation.

The little children had never done the things we presented. Playing with play dough, finger painting, coloring with a crayon, making a mask from a paper plate were all new experiences. So, we had to help them by hand in nearly every case. To say we were busy, is an understatement.

The teachers were so thankful to receive the packets and materials we put together for them. Gratitude radiated from them. But also need.

When Jenny asked them what their biggest need was, they all said, “food” in unison. Imagine that. Food is their greatest school supply need as a teacher. They feed their students two meals a day. Not only to teaching, the majority of the teachers prepare food for their children every day.

I put together a questionnaire for the teachers at the end of our time asking how they would like us to follow-up with them. Every teacher had a list, with food at the top of the list. Next were tables, chairs, carpets, toys, school supplies, and teaching materials. All of them asked for teaching on child development and more ideas on how to teach concepts and develop themes. Most of the teachers have never been trained in any way. Running a preschool/crèche provides income for their family.

We had twelve+ teachers participate in our training who represented nine different preschools/crèches in the Finetown Community. Each preschool/crèche has between 40-120 children in attendance.

It was a great week. If you would like to see more pictures and a little 10 second video of our time in Finetown, then please check out my blog…

http://www.insteadbless.blogspot.com/

Thank you for your prayers for me this week and in the future as we contemplate how to follow-up in Finetown.

Thank you for your continued prayers for Zimbabwe too.

With love,
Heather

We loved our 3 days working with the children and pray that the investment we made there will last far into the future. One quick thing to add – while Heather was teaching indoors, Dan was outside working on the play equipment. He quickly became everyone’s favorite because he fixed all the swing sets, slides, and jungle gyms. There was a lot more laughter on the playground once Dan finished welding! J

Wednesday night we left Johannesburg to go up to Kruger National Park and while we were driving I got a phone call that left a huge knot in my stomach. It was from Hamish Rogers, our ministry partner for the second half of this trip. He said that his mother in law had a massive stroke. They did surgery to remove an abscess on her brain and she lapsed into a coma like state for 2 days. They weren’t sure if “Mum” would last the weekend. They weren’t sure they would be able to be a part of the ministry plan we had put into place for next week. Wow. Talk about a change of plans. We weren’t sure what we were going to do. These ministry weeks take quite a bit of planning and I wasn’t sure we could come up with a comparable plan B in time. We did a lot of praying and asking the Lord for wisdom!

Praise God, we heard from Hamish on Saturday night that Mum was awake and sitting up and responding to people around her. This is a huge answer to prayer. We are also thankful to God that Hamish and Terri are still able to do ministry with us Monday – Wednesday this week. We will be working in an impoverished community called Leseding to provide some first aid and sanitation training as well as some youth programs and a feeding program. We hope to contribute towards and further the work they are already doing in their community.

We had a wonderful 2 days in Kruger Park and saw tons of beautiful wild animals in creation. It is always a fantastic experience!!

For this coming week – please pray for:
- our health! Dan, Janell and Kristen are sick with head colds. Please pray that Miesha and Ruth won’t catch it and that we will recover quickly!
- For continued healing for Terri’s mother
- For open doors as we minister in the community of Leseding.
- For Ruth and Kristen to experience all God wants for them here in Africa
- Safety as we travel
- FOR ZIMBABWE. Our brothers and sisters up there are really struggling as this was the week of the run-off elections. Please pray for God’s protection and provision. I am forwarding another email to you with Zim details for prayer.

We are so grateful for your partnership!

Love,
Dan, Janell, Miesha (and Ruth Richardson and Kristen Lakjer this month!)

Week 1 of ministry with team (June 16-22)

2008-07-09T18:04:00.005+02:00

You are so important to what we are doing here!

Let me start by apologizing for not getting a letter out last weekend. It has been SO busy and each night sleep ended up taking priority. As we look back the past two weeks and at what is ahead in the next 14 days, we are thrilled at what we see God doing and are excited about what is ahead!

First off, last week Monday through Friday Dan worked long hours each day to frame in a building for a project called the Themba (hope) Orphan Homes. There are two buildings for orphan homes and another building for kitchen, living room, and offices. Dan framed in the kitchen/office and it was approximately 25ft by 50ft. He was recruited about a month ago to be the lead framer because most structures in this area are made out of bricks and they needed someone with expertise in wood framing to help. It was a delight for him to serve them in this way. In usual Dan style, he grabbed his tools and worked hard until his part was finished. He has no idea how many children will be living there or what the mission statement is for the ministry…he was just happy to help! J

Some other big news, Miesha has a new cousin! Dan’s older brother Jon and his wife Elena welcomed Natasha Gabriella Hartley into their family on June 9th. Congratulations Jon and Elena!

Our first ministry “team” consisting of two ladies from North America arrived on my birthday this last Monday. We have had an amazing 5 days with Ruth and Kristen. They rested and had birthday cake with me on Monday, we visited the Lion Park and had orientation with them on Tuesday, they did ministry preparation with us and met our Life Group Wednesday, on Thursday Ruth and Dan taught a first aid class for 40 home based care givers who call themselves the Angels of Africa. On Friday Ruth taught a class on processing grief to 9 lead caregivers from some local hospice centers. It was beautiful to hear them cry and open up and begin to process some of the loss they have experienced in their lives and to teach them how to help others process also.

We also got to deliver some baby clothes to a lady named Bebe who was going to abort her baby, but was convinced by a Christian lady named Linda to let the baby live. She told Linda that once she had the baby she was going to give it to her. Baby boy Ciyabonga (meaning “we thank you”) was born a week ago. Bebe agreed to nurse him for two weeks before giving him to Linda. Being a new mom myself I couldn’t imagine giving my baby away, but after meeting Bebe I have more compassion for her choice. She is a desperate lady. Her boyfriend is in jail, she has no way of making money and she is currently living in her sister’s two room shack made out of corrugated metal. She has two other children already and no way of providing for them. Although Linda already cares for 28 other orphan children in a house on the property where we have been ministering, she is happy to take in baby Ciyabonga as #29 and to deal with the interrupted sleep and weariness that comes with caring for an infant. Linda is my new hero.

Today (Saturday) we went to visit some patients at the Village of Hope - an AIDS hospice center. We decided that rather than going to sing and preach to them (since they get that quite a bit already), we would go in to pamper them and give them a special party. Approximately 15 ladies from the local church we are partnering with also joined us and we had a wonderful time being the hands of Jesus to love these people who are dying. We soaked their feet and rubbed wonderful smelling lotions over their frail legs. We cut their toe nails and painted the ladies’ finger nails. We did makeovers, we gave them chocolates and coke and brightened up their living room with lots of balloons. Some guys from the worship team went room to room singing worship songs to them. We took their pictures, then printed them and gave them back to them to keep or to give to their families.

God opened up opportunities for us to talk to some of these people and to say “Jesus loves you” in a way that could be received. One lady named Jostina told me that she was angry with God about being sick and lonely and I was able to tell her that this party today and the gift of being loved and cared for by us was evidence that God sees her and still loves her. She cried and gave me a hug. It was an amazing day! The ladies from the church were so excited about how well the party went and committed to return every two months to do special days like this.

Since I know many of you are curious, Miesha does accompany us while we are doing ministry. However, in cases like this where she would be exposed to sick people, she stays in the car and Dan and I take turns staying with her.

Thank you for your prayers for us. They really do make a difference!!

In the coming week on Monday-Wednesday we will be working in a local crèche (pre-school) and our missionary teammate Heather Witherow will be teaching 10 local crèche teachers some techniques for stimulating learning for these kids. The teachers haven’t had any formal training to be a teacher and a few haven’t even graduated from high school. When we asked what we could do to help that would last after we leave, they requested some teacher training…so that is what we are doing! There are 50 kids per teacher and they squeeze into their classroom which is a converted 40ft container! Currently they just sit and sing all day, so hopefully we can give them some tools to make it more fun.

On Thursday through Saturday we will be in Kruger Park doing some game viewing, then transitioning to a new town for ministry next Sunday.

Please pray that we will continue to have rest, good health, that Miesha will continue to be flexible and a good little traveler, and that the Lord will continue to use us to bring hope, joy, and compassion to those we meet. Thank you for being on this journey with us. We couldn’t do it without you!

(I'll insert pics soon!)

Miesha is 6 months old

2008-06-14T22:05:00.005+02:00

A really wise friend of mine told me that the hours go by slowly, but the days go by fast when you have a baby. So true! Can't believe Miesha is already 6 months old. Even when she is an insomniac, she is my favorite baby in the whole world.

It is definitely winter here and she loves her fleece!

This one is my favorite.

I think she looks like a little doll.

So much personality already!! Love the sassy bow.

Maria is my new best friend

2008-06-14T21:46:00.003+02:00

Today, looking around my home I had a funny feeling. An unfamiliar feeling. I have had this feeling before, but not in a long, long time. I felt serene and peaceful.

All my dishes and my laundry are finished at the same time! I look around at the rooms in my house and don't see a speck of dirt. It truly is a miracle!

It isn't like we are slobs, but Dan has been building an orphanage this week, then doing sound for a conference at our church this weekend and has been working 11 and 12 hour days. I have been prioritizing the planning for the upcoming short term teams every second that Miesha is napping. Our precious daughter has become a bit of an insomniac (stayed up till 12:30 last night, up at 1:30, 4:30, and again at 6am this morning!) Man am I tired!! Besides, spending time with our daughter is just WAY more fun than housework!

There was no way I was going to be able to get my house clean to my standards before 2 gals come to live with us for 3 weeks, so I called in reinforcements.

Yes, I had help. My birthday is Monday and as a gift to myself I hired Maria to come and clean today. She was here for most of the day and my house is now sparkling, my stress is GREATLY reduced, and I actually like where I live again!

Best of all, it only cost me the equavilant of $14 and Maria supports 10 family members. That is the best $14 I have spent in a long time. Warm fuzzies everywhere!!!

5 days till our short term team arrives!

2008-06-11T14:10:00.001+02:00

Thanks to all of you who prayed for us this last week! It was an emotionally full week, but the Lord is sustaining us. This last Thursday we drove up to Vaalwater to see the ministry there for ourselves and to finalize the ministry details for that area. I thought that we were pretty “in touch” with the poverty and sickness here in South Africa, but rural poverty is so much more devastating than urban poverty. I have always wondered why people would choose to live in a squatter camp with all the issues there and the reality is that “home” in the rural area isn’t any better and you have a higher chance of getting a job in the city. In the Vaalwater township, they have very few subsidies and there are so many issues. (they get running water for one hour every couple days, 35% AIDS infection rate, unemployment, orphans, child led homes, teenage pregnancy, abuse, poverty, no sewer system, and more) The events and ministry we hope to do in their community will be like a drop in the ocean compared to the vast needs they have, but hopefully they will remember that they were loved and as we pray for them and encourage them they will know God loves them as well. I don’t even know how to begin to describe what we saw, but hopefully some pictures can help us share stories with you in the next couple weeks. We will be working in the Vaalwater and Lesiding communities with Hamish and Terri Rodgers and are looking forward with expectation to what the Lord will have for us there.

This is our final week of preparation before our first team of ladies arrives on June 16. Things are coming together smoothly!

About three weeks ago Dan was asked to be the project manager to frame an orphanage building this week. He has a background in framing and there isn’t any local expertise in this area since all the building structures are made of bricks here. The Americans who are building this orphanage are shipping all the lumber over in a container! The orphanage will be in Pretoria so he will have a substantial commute and be working long hours this week. Please pray with us that things will go smoothly and that he part of the project will be completed on time.

There haven’t been any new reports of attacks against foreigners in Johannesburg this past week – praise God! The city certainly has their hands full with figuring out what to do with 30,000 homeless people, but we have seen the church stepping up to support and encourage which has been a blessing. Please pray God continues to bring His peace and for wisdom for the leadership to know how to respond.

Thank you for your support of us!

the rollercoaster

2008-06-11T14:03:00.001+02:00

(written one week ago!)

You know the feeling you get when you are riding a rollercoaster and you are making the long climb to the top just before you begin the fast decent into the loops and turns? That is pretty close to how Dan and I are feeling lately! The next couple months are shaping up to be very busy and although we are excited for all the loops and turns ahead of us, we still have some hard work to do before we are completely ready.

Local news: In the last three weeks, there have been attacks on foreigners and the shack burnings and business looting have left 35,000 people homeless in South Africa. 25,000 of those are in our city - Johannesburg.

Here is a blurb from a news article:
More Deaths as South Africa Xenophobic Attacks Escalate.
Tues, 20 May 2008 - News From Africa
Attacks on African migrants in and around the city of Johannesburg, escalated Monday with increased incidences of mob beatings, lootings, rapes and arson attacks. Local police, who have declared the attacks criminal, battled the mobs with rubber bullets in the affected townships. President Thabo Mbeki, ruling party leader Jacob Zuma, former President Nelson Mandela and Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu have condemned the attacks, which have mostly been targeted at Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, who are the largest non-South African Black groups accused by locals of taking their jobs and fuelling crime.

The short version is that South Africa used to be the land of refuge, the land of opportunity and a place of promise for struggling Africans to come to. Johannesburg in particular was a place where if you were a hard worker, you could find a job or start a business and support your family back wherever you came from. There is no way to know exactly how many illegal immigrants have jumped the borders (they don’t exactly line up to be counted in the census!) but tons more Zimbabweans have come south since the most recent presidential election stalemate up there two months ago. The cost of gas is increasing (equivalent of $4.50 per gallon) electricity (53% cost increase this year, while at the same time they are regularly cutting our power for hours at a time) and even basic things like bread have had a significant hike in price in the last month so people with limited resources are starting to get desperate. Crime has increased and the foreigners (specifically Zimbabweans and those from Mozambique) are blamed for many of the issues. People are being chased out of their shacks or their small businesses and their possessions are stolen. Thousands of people are fleeing back to their home countries scared that the mobs will hurt them. It breaks our hearts!

If you are interested in reading more detailed information, the internet has some well written articles. Go to http://www.yahoo.com/, then click the link for “world” news, then “Africa”.

Although this is horrible news; as foreigners ourselves, we have been careful and are not afraid. THEY ARE NOT TARGETING WESTERNERS. However, we’d certainly appreciate your prayers for our safety in the coming weeks!

Here is a run down of what our schedule will be like in the coming months:

This coming week we are finalizing some team plans in Limpopo province Thursday and Friday, and in town we are putting a plan in place for Soweto since we are unavailable to regularly visit in the next months.

June 9-14 - Dan is going to use his construction background as the foreman for a team who is framing a house to be used for an orphanage.
June 16-July 6 – our first short term team is here doing ministry in Johannesburg and in Vaalwater with us. (More details to come in next week’s email)
July 18-Aug 1 – second team doing ministry in Motjane, Swaziland
Aug 8-22 – third short term team made of South Africans traveling to Zambia
Aug 25-Sept 16 – Janell’s parents visit!
Sept 21 – 27 - Dan goes to Zimbabwe (depending on how stable things are there)
Oct 6-10 - Team Retreat, ministry planning for 2009

If you are wondering when we are going to rest in the next four months – we are too! It will be busy, but we LOVE this time of year. We promise to take full advantage of the days we have between trips for “down time”. It will definitely be interesting to see how our precious little girl will do with all the travel. So far, she has proven to adapt remarkably well as we have traveled as a family.

Miesha continues to be a great delight to us and to many others. She is 6 months old now and is quick to smile at anyone, but still prefers to be held by her mom and dad!

There are other things that we are facing which we are not at liberty to share about at this time. Please pray for wisdom for us in these new and challenging circumstances. Thank you for your continued prayers for us and for your support. We can’t do it without you!

Cute Miesha pics

2008-05-26T15:23:00.005+02:00

This weekend we help to put on a farewell party for our boss's boss - the Carlsons. They have served in Africa for 20 years and are now moving back to the states because Dean is going to become one of our mission's Vice Presidents. They are our closest missionary neighbors and we are going to miss them tremendously. I totally got my creative fix this week by putting together a memory book of notes and pictures for the Carlsons and by arranging the flowers for the centerpieces on the tables. Not only was their farewell a great event to honor them and to celebrate what God has done through them...it was an rare occassion that was formal enough to warrant Dan wearing a dress shirt. (I took lots of pictures!)

Here are a few pictures of us at the event:

Miesha "riding" the giraffe mural.

Family picture.

My cute little girl!

Trusting in New Ways

2008-05-20T13:15:00.006+02:00

This past week has been an interesting one for us. It seems like the crime and violence you read/hear about in the news here is coming a little closer to home now.

Four families that we are friends with have had robberies or attempted robberies to their homes in the last WEEK. One of those families has had attempted break ins 3 times in the last 3 weeks.

Also, it is all over the news that foreigners are under attack in South Africa. As Americans, we are not the target this time. They seem to be focusing on Zimbabweans, Mozambiquians, and others from poorer African nations who have jumped the border and who are illegally residing in Johannesburg. These immigrants are very smart and many have started successful businesses or have taken good jobs in the city since they are willing to work for lower wages than the locals and also many of them are better educated and are more qualified for better jobs than the average black person here. No one is really sure why it has accelerated at this time, but the inconclusive Zim elections has increased tension in Southern Africa and many Zim people have fled here to South Africa for safety reasons. There has been a lot of violence in Zim lately too.

I am not sure if this link will work, but Yahoo! featured a story with accurate details the other day. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080519/ap_on_re_af/south_africa_immigrant_attacks;_ylt=AmiHGSKb_xyRgYjvAWCsEH296Q8F

Dan's friend Matt who is a paramedic contacted all the Life Group leaders last Wednesday and put a group together to go down to the Alexandra Police Station to give assistance. They had around 1000 displaced people sleeping at the station hoping for protection. The ladies and kids were sleeping in a conference room and the guys were sleeping out under the stars in the gated parking lot. Many didn't have blankets and it is getting COLD here at night as our season is autumn moving towards winter.

Matt and Dan set up a makeshift clinic and the others from our church sorted donations and ministered to people through dishing up meals or praying for people. We were just learning about making God practical and real to people out on the streets at the Youth Camp and God provided this opportunity almost immediately.

I am definitely learning to trust God in new ways.

Please continue to pray for our health and safety as we minister here. God is good!

A long Hartley update!

2008-05-10T22:44:00.005+02:00

I need to ask a favor of you… In the future, our mission organization will only be sending 6 hard copy letters per year and will send the other 6 via email. If you could take 2 minutes to sign up to receive our letters via email, it will save me HOURS of typing all your addresses in. Go to www.onechallenge.org and click on the link in the upper right hand corner for “sign up to receive your missionary’s letter electronically” and then click on “E through I prayer letter sign up” and then scroll down to click on “Hartley”. They will send you a confirmation email. Thank you!!!

The comfort of our own bed, a nice portable heater, access to the internet, eating normal food again… We just got back from our first youth conference here in South Africa. We were roughing it on a farm about 5 hours away with 250 youth from the Foundation Ministries Churches. We enjoyed the experience and loved watching God work. We are now home nursing ourselves back to health. We all caught a bit of a flu bug!

There are a few ways that this African youth conference differed from retreats we have served at in the states. There wasn’t a huge draw like water skiing or snowboarding to get kids to come. There were only teaching sessions and worship and in the afternoon free time, they played soccer, watched a movie or flirted! We were surprised that so many youth came just for teaching and worship. By “youth” I mean anyone from age 12 up to 35. “Youth” has a different definition here. Obviously, there was a very diverse group of ages, races, and languages.

The accommodations were a little rugged at the camp. On the farm, over 80% of the buildings were under construction. The girl’s dorm was a converted stable. They slept 4-5 gals per stall! There was no heating, but at least there was electricity. I didn’t see where the guys slept, but Dan and I were glad we opted to stay off site at a nearby B&B.

A pastor from England came and taught on prophecy, hearing the Lord’s voice and how to practically take Jesus to people out on the streets. It was down to earth, challenging and very practical. On one of the days, he encouraged them to try laying hands on people and praying for healing. He figured if they were going to “practice” they could do it in a safe place where they could debrief later with leaders. Around 10 people raised their hands wanting to be healed and were prayed for. One young guy’s eyesight was restored, a seized neck released, a girl who broke her back the year before in a horse riding accident felt her back moving into proper alignment again. It was amazing! I think the youth were equaled shocked that their exercise of faith actually produced results. On the last night, the worship session lasted from 7pm-2am! These youth were hungry for an encounter with the Lord. We left around 11:30pm and transitioned my flute and Dan’s sound board to other people. Miesha was a trooper and was a delight to everyone who helped us care for her.

I don’t think the conference would’ve run without Dan! He was in his element serving behind the sound board all day every day. He was constantly adjusting the faulty equipment until it finally ran decently, he recorded all the messages, and in his spare time was soldering cables and wires. When Miesha let me, I was able to contribute playing flute on the worship team. The Holy Spirit moved in ways that are new to Dan and I and we are still processing some of the ways we saw God work. We are standing with open hearts before the Lord, expectant and eager to see what will happen in the future. We are thankful to have been a part of such a wonderful experience.

In the coming weeks, we are focusing on finalizing the plans for the short term teams that are coming to us in June and July. Currently, our sign ups have been super slow – we had 11 last year and this year we have 2 teams of 2. Since it is SO much work to prepare everything, we are planning to extend an invitation to South Africans to join the teams as well. It is obviously cheaper for them to help (no plane ticket!) and will likely take them out of their comfort zones as well. Please pray with us that we will have South Africans join us. We would love to have at least 6 people on each team, but will wait to see who God will bring. Please also pray that the details will come together quickly and easily. We have 4 of the 5 weeks planned, but need wisdom to know what to choose for that final week of service. There are so many different ministries we could choose to help. Please pray God will clearly guide us for that week of ministry.

Please also pray for balance for me! In addition to the short term team planning, I am trying to finalize a bunch of writing for the group with HIV/AIDS and hope to get a lot translated a head of time so that I can take those 5 weeks off to work with the teams without disrupting the lesson plans. Being Dan’s wife and Miesha’s mom are my most important priorities and I still haven’t figured out do everything else I need to do during Miesha’s sporadic nap times or after she goes to bed!

Dan is in process of researching the purchase of a slightly larger vehicle for us. The one we have currently has worked perfect for us, but with the addition of Miesha’s car seat it is becoming too small. It will work fine for one child, but since we eventually hope to have more children and we are constantly giving people rides, we’d like to upgrade now since the exchange rate is great, our mileage on the car is low, and we got some money back from our taxes this year. Please pray that our vehicle will sell quickly, that we can find a good deal on a larger vehicle, and that our finances will add up to keep us debt free. (Generally vehicles cost 50% more here in South Africa than the US due to high taxes and customs tariffs.)

Dan is also researching the purchase of a second form of transportation for him to drive. It will probably be a motorcycle because everything else is too expensive! We are currently sharing one vehicle and that is challenging. In this country it is not wise to be left “stuck” at the house without a vehicle and the team vehicle which we have often borrowed in the past is being sold.

Lastly, in the past 2 years we have been exceedingly blessed because the Lord has always provided over and above what we have needed financially through your support. However, in the past 4 months we have been “in the red” about $1000.00 per month. Please pray that the Lord will provide the needed finances for us. Perhaps you can help the Lord answer this one either by becoming a new financial donor, or possibly increasing your current support if it is within your budget. We are so grateful for your partnership in finances, but more importantly through your encouragement and prayers for us. We couldn’t do it without you. Thank you!!

Bunny loves Kitty

2008-05-10T22:28:00.007+02:00

Okay, this week something really weird happened at our house...something I have never seen before.

We have been wondering for awhile whether our rabbit is male or female and now we know. Our white bunny Marshmallow (pictured in the blog below) is definitely a BOY. We know this for certain because he was totally hitting on our female kitty Cheeto. To keep this blog PG I am not going to give details, but she could definitely sue him for sexual harassment!

Good thing Cheeto is neutered otherwise we might have a litter of "Bittens". You know, bunny/kittens.

More good money down the tube for therapy!

And yes, all our animals are named for food we miss from the states! Java is our dog (coffee is WAY better in the states) Pepsi and Cheeto are our cats, and Marshmallow is our bunny. Here there are no regular flavored marshmallows. You can buy chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, and litchi flavored mallows. Yup - litchi. That one doesn't really work in smores.

My Little Easter Bunny

2008-04-25T23:42:00.005+02:00

I know it is WAY past Easter, but I can't resist posting some adorable photos of my daughter.

Miesha wasn't comfortable sharing the spotlight with our real bunny. This one is probably going to really cost me with her therapy bills someday...but SOOO cute!

Taking a sip from the cup of JOY

2008-04-24T11:49:00.006+02:00

I have recently been challenged recently both by the Joyce Meyer study we are doing in Mom’s Group – Battlefield for the Mind - and also through watching a friend here work through some tough circumstances.

My life here in Africa can either be good or hard and I truly can decide what it is going to be.

I can either focus on the fact that I really miss my family and that my nieces and nephews are growing up without me in their lives, the fact that the crime here is ridiculous and that I need to always be alert and watchful so I don’t become a victim, that ministry is hard and unfamiliar, I make cultural blunders, I don’t understand enough language to get their jokes, I can’t buy some of my favorite things to eat here, imported things from America you have to pay too much for, our car is too small, the cost of gas, and on and on…

OR I can remind myself that being a missionary has been my dream since I was in High School, we are living in one of the most modern cities in Africa so it could be a whole lot worse, the people here are super friendly, forgiving and accommodating when I make mistakes, we have a wonderful church family and are deepening friendships with many people, I am in a great Bible study, the sunsets are amazing, African game parks are SO fun, the ocean is warm, we have internet and web cams for keeping in touch with our families, we love our work here, my husand is watching the baby so I can get some computer time…you get the picture.

My friend started a blog called “instead…bless”. It is this same concept. Instead of complaining…bless. Instead of focusing on yourself…bless others.

It truly is in my mind and I can choose. Today…I choose JOY!

USA trip summary

2008-03-31T21:58:00.010+02:00

Where do I begin?

I have four weeks of wonderful memories floating around in my head that I am trying to sort through and decide which to share with you. Warning – this may be a long one!

We are home now, back in South Africa. Funny that I am saying “home” referring to Africa since for the past 2 years we have been referring to “home” as where our families live in the States. I have been thinking about this throughout our visit and on the LONG journey back and I think that I am more settled about living here now that I have been back to the States. Home to me now means both places. While I am here in Africa, I will always be homesick for family, church, and friends in the USA and while we were in the states, I found myself homesick for Africa – wondering how ministry was doing without us and missing friends from here.

There are many things that we love about both places. We love the tortilla chips and restaurants in the states and we love the wild animals and the weather here in Africa. We love family and friends back home and we have great friends and teammates here. I love that there were an equal amount of phone calls from American teammates and African friends calling to welcome us back. We were missed and that feels good.

When our parents purchased our tickets last September so we could visit them, we were terribly homesick, a little depressed, and a lot discouraged. We tried hard to put a good face forward and to press on with the wonderful ministry we have the opportunity to do here, but there were many days where the sacrifice of being pregnant so far from home and wanting to be near my sisters who were also pregnant, the stress from living in a city with so much crime, the unknowns of our future ministry opportunities, the challenges of attending a church where we didn’t feel included in the fellowship life of the congregation, and no friends in our current season of life…lets just say we took turns talking each other into continuing to be missionaries. Thankfully neither of us wanted to quit on the same day!

Last September we changed churches and this has made a huge difference for us. We are now fully embraced and loved by an international church that isn’t too far from our home. We are leading a wonderful group of Christians in a Bible study at our home and Dan is playing drums on the worship team. It feels GREAT to be in a fellowship where we are being fed spiritually and where we can also serve.

Now, after being home to the States and being embraced by three amazing congregations who fully support us and who are extremely excited about what God is doing in and through us in Africa, it feels like we are recharged to continue pressing on here. From the bottom of our hearts we are thankful to all of you! We were overwhelmed by the outpouring of giving financially for our work here, and especially overwhelmed by all the beautiful little baby girl things that were given to Miesha. She ended up with more luggage then Dan and I combined going back! She is a blessed little girl!! Again, we are so thankful to all of you.

Sidenote: please be patient with me on the thank you notes…have tons to do!

Here are a few highlights from our trip ~

Fairfield, ID: This was where we spent our first weekend and it was amazingly restful for us! It was about as opposite to Johannesburg as could possibly be. A small mountain farming community verses a huge metropolitan city the size of Los Angeles. We were told, “The keys are in the car – help yourself. Just follow the tar road into town, you’ll see the church right there.” There was close to 4 feet of snow in Fairfield and we left African weather in the high 80’s F. It was a WONDERFUL and restful change of pace for us. Thank you to all of you in our Fairfield family for taking such good care of us. A special thanks to Jerry for all the planning she did and to her family for hosting us, rescuing us from the snow bank, and for teaching us to snowmobile. Thank you also to Pastor Chuck and Fay for the lovely meals and for keeping us in faithful prayer at your church.

Being in Portland and Vancouver was my favorite simply because that is where I grew up, where all my family still lives, and were I attended the same church for 11 years and have deep friendships. My family got together almost every day we were there. We made some amazing memories and have some really fun pictures of all the babies. Baby Uriah was born in Oct, Miesha in Dec, and Kyla in early Jan and Jake just turned 4. Here are my sisters and I with all the babies!

Being at Summit View Church…it is hard to describe. The depth of friendships, all the memories from retreats, worship team, and working in the office all have meant so much to me and helped to form both Dan and I into the people we are today. It was good for our hearts to be back, great to be with friends, amazing to sing familiar worship songs again, and to share our passion for Africa. A special thanks to all the SVC staff and to all of you who contributed so generously towards our ministry here. We are so blessed to have you partnering with us!

We also loved being in Seattle. I love Dan’s family and it was really fun to spend time with them all. We ate salmon with the family at Jon and Elena’s and we went to a local game reserve with Tommy’s family and had a fantastic time spotting deer, moose and bison. We think it is ironic that Miesha’s first “safari” was in Washington! I loved staying up late talking with his parents and we learned a lot about them while planning their 50th wedding anniversary party. It was a beautiful celebration of their life together and it was great for Dan and I to get to introduce Miesha to many relatives and close friends who came. Dan spoke at a men’s retreat and enjoyed talking with many of his friends and mentors in the camp setting and I got to visit with many friends at a baby shower they did for Miesha.

What we wanted on this trip was for our families to get to meet Miesha and to spend some quality time with us and we really feel that happened. We also were able to spend time with the maximum amount of friends because of all these special events and all the baby showers! We love you all. Our next visit will be longer and we hope to connect with many more of you.

We had a wonderful visit home – thanks to all of you who made it so special! If you have good digital pictures to share, we’d love to receive some. Please send them via email in a condensed format to me. (janellhartley@oci.org)

My husband is SO lucky!

2008-02-13T17:00:00.003+02:00

Dan tends to drive with a bit of a lead foot and easily picks up speeding tickets.

This last month Dan was ticketed 6x in the same speed trap about 4 blocks from our house. It is at the bottom of a hill and we were pretty sure that wasn’t legal. He went this morning to renew his license and to ask about the tickets. He got ALL 6 of them revoked since the police hadn’t done the proper paperwork to be at that particular site.

SO LUCKY!

Just after Dan called me with this news, I was driving and saw a similar speed trap which was also at the bottom of a hill. This car was flying down the hill and the policeman actually jumped out into the street in front of the car to flag it over to ticket it since there wasn’t a squad car there…just a couple guys hiding in the bushes with a camera. I was certain he was going to die. CRAZY.

One more ticket story – our Canadian teammate Craig’s middle name is Clinton and on Canadian licenses the first and middle name are on the first line and the last name is on the second. He has gotten out of so many tickets because the police think he is related to Bill Clinton. "How is Bill? Do you think Hilary will win?" Pretty funny!

thanks for your prayers

2008-02-13T16:58:00.000+02:00

I am enjoying the few minutes of quiet here at my computer desk since I have so many things whirling through my mind as we are getting closer and closer to our return to the States! We are really looking forward to seeing everyone again and we have only 10 days left till we get on a plane. In those 10 days we are packing in way too many things!! We have a wedding to attend, a trip to Swaziland for short term team planning (we hope to do the trip in one day!!), a massive conference to help with, and ministry things to wrap up before we leave. Our checklist is long, but definitely not impossible. We are taking a mental break tonight and are going to our teammate’s home for a game night.

First of all – Miesha’s visa did come through and we had it in our hands as of last Wednesday. I don’t want to tell the long version of the story because it was excruciatingly frustrating for us…but the short version is – praise God, it arrived in time!

The guys who traveled up to Zimbabwe had an amazing week and said it was on of their “best ever” trips. God moved in hearts, pastors were trained and they said “even though the electricity is out (often for weeks at a time!) God’s fire is burning bright in their hearts!”

This week we celebrated our anniversary of living and working in South Africa for 2 years. Wow! God is good.

Please pray for us as we prepare for our journey home and for safety in our travels until we see you again.

Super Bowl in Africa...

2008-02-04T12:47:00.001+02:00

Some friends from church were interested in learning how "american football" is played. (Football everywhere else in the world equals soccer!) They decided they would host the party at their house, but we had to help them make it as American as possible with the proper snacks and inviting a bunch of other Americans.

We had the option of watching a rerun at a decent hour Monday evening, but the 12 of us all decided it would be more fun to all hang out in the middle of the night and watch it in real time. We are crazy, but it was fun to be up from 12:30am - 5am explaining football. They kept saying, "That is similar to rugby when they do..." The game was a great one, but not as much fun as in the states since we don't have your commercials here. Dan and I will go on the internet to look at them later today.

2008-02-04T12:43:00.000+02:00

I wanted to write this weekend’s note now since I finally have a few quiet minutes with my laptop and the power is still on!

This Saturday and Sunday, Dan will be helping to lead the “spiritual side” of an extreme sports camp for at youth. A friend from church, Matt Carter, is a paramedic for the camp and together he and Dan will be doing some teaching and leading some worship music.

We were asked to lead a home group at our church and we now have a very diverse group of people meeting with us to “do life together” every Wednesday evening. This last Wed was a wonderful time to get to know one another. Within our group of 10, there are 5 different mother languages spoken and we range in age from 21 up to mid 40s. We were paired together because we all live in the same neighborhood. I think it is going to be wonderful!

Our missionary friends from Cape Town, Kevin and Erica, are staying with us for 9 days, then our house sitters for while we are in the states will be moving in a bit early. We will have people living with us up till the day we fly now. We enjoy hosting, but we’d appreciate your prayers for great communication and that we will still be able to have some family space too.

Please also pray for our teammate Heather Witherow. She has had a really lousy week. Her Aunt committed suicide the first week of January which was absolutely devastating for their entire family. Her Mom’s other sister is dying of cancer and could go anytime. Then last Friday she developed a very painful lump on her neck that the Dr couldn’t identify and she was on 3 different strong medications to try to reduce it. Then, on Sunday, her second son Jake cut his head open on the coffee table just hours before her husband John left to travel to Zimbabwe for the week. Then Monday, her third son Caleb developed a horrible rash called Fifths Disease, so she has been housebound with him. Then, their helper’s son Joseph had a friend shot (critically wounded, but not dead) and another two of his friends were killed when their car hit a donkey this week, so she has been a sounding board for Joseph’s mom Selena. Lastly, their internet completely crashed and on top of that she has to deal with the multiple power outages… Her husband John should arrive back in Johannesburg on Friday evening, but please pray for strength and energy for Heather and family as they face all these things.

Lastly, I am sure many of you are following the Kenyan unrest in the news. It hits a little closer to home for us because we have OC Africa teammates living and working in Nairobi. All the violence there has really impacted them. This week one of the key politicians was shot in an area close to one of their houses. Please pray for safety and wisdom to navigate in day to day situations for the 4 OC families living there.

18 days till we get on a plane!!

Looking forward to seeing you all soon.

Love,
Janell for us 3.

2 visas down, 1 to go

2008-01-25T22:48:00.000+02:00

Thank you for praying with us about our Visa situation. After living for a week as illegal aliens, the visa paperwork was finalized today for Dan and I – PRAISE GOD! However, we still have a problem - they didn’t process a visa for Miesha like we asked them to. So, we need your prayers still for all of her paperwork to go smoothly through the process next week. When we fly to the states in a couple weeks, it would be our preference to bring Miesha back to South Africa with us!

Visa? What visa?????

2008-01-19T17:01:00.000+02:00

Today our visas expire and new visas have not been issued to us. Originally we thought we’d make a mad dash to Swaziland with the Witherow family (also waiting on new visas) so that on our return we could get a 90 day visitor visas and buy ourselves a little more time. Then we learned that we would only be issued a 7 day visa. Since it takes a nearly a full day of driving to go to Swaziland then back again, we agreed it wasn’t worth it. We have a representative who specializes in immigration services working on our behalf and he has told us not to be too concerned or worried. The typical response when these types of things happen is… “This is Africa.”

We’ve been hearing that phrase a lot lately.

This past week we were without power on four separate days for four to five hours at a time. South Africa does not have enough electricity capacity for the consumption needs of its people. As a result, the national electric company has employed “load shedding.” Load shedding is when they turn off the electricity in different regions of the country for periods of time to help offset the need for power. The neighborhood we live in is called Weltevreden Park…we are now calling it Weltevredren DARK.

So far this week, we haven’t been told when it is going to happen, so it’s very difficult to plan. One night, I was making dinner….zap…the power goes off and dinner plans change just like that! I am in line to purchase a few things at a store, then the power goes out and the entire mall shuts down…have to come back another day. At Miesha’s Dr appt, the credit card machine charged us 4x instead of once, and two weeks later we are still waiting for the money to get credited back to us because of technical difficulties. Yes, “This is Africa.”

Another big concern is that when the electricity goes off, it makes it very difficult to leave the house because our security system is affected. Do we leave the house and leave it vulnerable to some one breaking in…or do we stay and keep watch? “This is Africa,” and we don’t ever know what to expect. Yesterday, during our team prayer time at the Witherow’s house, (and yes, the power was off once again!) John got a text message from our security company that five armed men were loose in that neighborhood after just robbing some one at their home. The load shedding puts us all more at risk. John stood watch at the end of prayer time, to make sure everyone left safely. Another team family had their gate derailed Thursday night at 3am. We praise God that their dogs scared away the potential intruders. Dan is at their home as I write this trying to repair the damaged gate so they will feel safe again.

Please continue to pray for our safety.

Dan, Miesha and I want to say a huge THANK YOU for the hundreds of emails, and numerous cards and packages we’ve received in the last month congratulating us and celebrating with us in the birth of our daughter. We have also received many Christmas cards this week! (Mail delivery is a little slower here) We loved getting new pictures from many of you – I have put the updated ones on our fridge. Thank you so much! If you have updated pictures of your family – please send some to us. (compressed pictures via email are easiest) It has been two years now and if you want us to recognize you…

We will send out a USA itinerary in our February email letter to you all. We will be home a few short weeks to rest and be with family, but we hope to connect with many of you as well. Right now, between a beautiful little girl who wants to be held all the time and our electricity issues, I haven’t had as much time as I’d like for emailing and planning (or cleaning the house, or sleeping!).

Miesha is growing and becoming more alert and fun every day. We love her to pieces!

Thank you for praying with us for continued health and SAFETY here in South Africa as well as for our Visa situation to be resolved quickly.

Witherow boys and Miesha

2008-01-14T17:45:00.000+02:00

Our teammates John and Heather Witherow have "done life" with us for 4 years now as we prepared to come and then adjusting to Africa here together. We moved to Africa within 23 hours of each other and God has used them to be such a tremendous blessing to us. They have 3 wonderful boys and this blog is to tell you some cute stories about them.

Their son Jake age 5 is really great with Miesha - always checking in on her and making sure she is happy. When she was crying the other day at their house he asked if we could put a Thomas the Train video in. They make him really happy and he was sure it would make her feel better as well! At first he was a little confused about her name since she was born at Christmas time. Since Christmas is about baby Jesus coming to earth, he mixed up baby Jesus and baby Miesha. Our little girl was called baby Jesus at their house for a couple days!

Then, this week their youngest Caleb, age 4, has started pretending to be baby Miesha. He'll go up to his mom lift up his arms, say he is baby Miesha and "cry" asking to be picked up. Pretty cute!

Happy New Year to you all

2008-01-03T18:06:00.000+02:00

We are so grateful to have had a lovely WARM Christmas here in South Africa surrounded by friends. We certainly missed family, friends and fun traditions from home, but this year our homesickness wasn’t near as bad as last year. We made some new traditions of our own (home made ice-cream on Christmas!) and it helps knowing that we will be home in a few short weeks to be with family. Miesha was a fun distraction as well. She loves to be held and everywhere we go people are happy to accommodate. It is still pretty quiet here and we are trying to catch up on some end of the year projects and emails and SLEEP. We have one more restful week ahead of us and then our “normal” routine will pick up the second week in January. We will help to welcome Jasmine, another short term missionary, who will be here for 6 months helping with home schooling some team kids who will be transitioning back into the Canadian school system later this year.

At church today, instead of the usual music and message, they had a fabulous British style brunch for the few of us who are still in town. Of the 40 of us who attended, 18 were visitors! It was a fun international morning as we connected with families from Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil, and also new families from Johannesburg too! Pastor John had us thank God for His goodness to us in 2007 and it was wonderful to hear so many different languages expressing praise to God. I love how international and colorful our church is. We picked up a bit of Portuguese when we were in Mozambique last year and I am going to need to invest some time with my language notes before the Brazilian family comes over!

Praise report – a couple weeks ago we were concerned that Miesha’s paperwork (birth certificate, passport, ID, etc) wouldn’t be finished in time for us to fly home. We were told by a few “experts” that the process should take 8-10 weeks. We took Miesha on an outing to the US Consulate last week and it turns out that everything is going to be ready in 3 weeks time. We are so grateful! Please pray that the process will continue to go smoothly. Above is a cute baby passport picture. (4 days old)

giving birth overseas

2008-01-02T15:49:00.000+02:00

Sorry for not posting more pictures sooner. Miesha is 3 weeks old today and she has been crowding out my former blogging timeslots in my schedule. Who am I kidding, there is no more schedule! No complaining here – being a mom is so great!

Giving birth in a foreign country…honestly, I have to tell you that over all it was a really good experience. Not that I am super surprised or anything. South Africa is a unique country in that it has both the most modern and the most rugged of options for medical care. We live in the biggest city in the country and since we have international insurance, we were able to have our child at a nice private hospital 3 minutes from our house.

The place was clean, the staff were friendly and other then the fact that occasionally they would forget we were English speakers rather then Afrikaans speakers, it went great. Most everyone figured out we were Americans with funny accents pretty quick and switched over to English for us which we were super grateful for. Our Doctor was the biggest culprit in forgetting! He was chatting with the nurse in Afrikaans while breaking my water and then turned to us and said, “So, we’ll cut her out in about an hour.” He totally forgot to explain in English the new complication and how important it was to do a c-section get baby out quickly. Dan and I were a bit shocked!! It was also weird to be coherent, not feeling anything, and not being able to understand a thing the Doctors are chatting about while cutting me open.

Although I would’ve preferred to have family nearby, a Dr who explains my surgery in English, and be able to recover in the super nice rooms at Salmon Creek Legacy Hospital…I am grateful that our baby is healthy and I am recovering nicely as well. God is good.

Proud Parents

2007-12-18T22:48:00.000+02:00

For unto us a child is born…
Isaiah 9:6a

Miesha Noelle Hartley
born in Johannesburg, South Africa
At 12:12pm on 12-12-2007
7lbs 8oz, 20 ½ inches

Proud Parents: Dan and Janell

We were a week overdue and went to the hospital last Tuesday night to get induced. When the Doctor broke my water Wednesday morning they saw meconium in the amniotic fluid which means that Miesha had a bowel movement in my womb. They made the decision to do a C-section to prevent her from getting any of that in her lungs and we were holding her 90 minutes later. We are so grateful to God that she was born healthy! I am a little sore from the surgery and am moving slowly but other then that both Miesha and I are doing great. She is absolutely delightful and we are enjoying the process of figuring her out. We have deliberately planned a quiet schedule in the next couple weeks and we have great support from our missionary teammates and our friends from church who are bringing us meals.

A few of you have asked…Miesha is pronounced Mee’-sha. The meaning is "who is like unto God". Obviously the online vote was largely in support of the middle name Noelle and the meaning is "born at Christmas time" We agree with you all!

I’ll be posting more pictures in the next couple days.

Thank you for your love and prayers for us in our new adventure of parenting!

weird fruit

2007-12-08T12:29:00.000+02:00

So, I was at the store yesterday and bought some apricots. I got home and ate one...it tasted funny. I just figured it was because it was African, not from the northwest. Then I looked at the label more closely. The store had marked them as apricots, but the label underneath said NECTARICOTS. Yup, it is a funny hybrid Nectarine/Apricot combo. Weird.

No baby news...I am just sitting around eating weird fruit waiting for her to make her arrival.

no baby yet

2007-12-07T12:44:00.001+02:00

Being overdue is not fun. Our Dr. said that he will induce labor at one week past which would be the 12th of Dec. At least we have an end date in sight. I am very ready to carry her on the outside rather then the inside!

This was on last Tues at 39 weeks and 6 days pregnant!

We do need her to come out soon because we need the maximum amount of days to get her birth certificate and passport in process so it will be ready by February when we have tickets to fly to the states. We have a short window of time.

The city of Johannesburg becomes like a ghost town from about December 15-January 10 as at least 50% (if not more!) of the population goes out of town. The malls are practically vacant, no traffic... (Sound like your December shopping experience?!!) Everyone goes on vacation for like a month. Tons of businesses shut down for the month and last year we found out that most churches cancel 3 Sunday services. Yup, no Christmas Eve, Christmas, or New Years service. We seriously had a hard time finding a church to go to for a Christmas service! A little different here.

Something else that is a little different...listening to Christmas music in the car with the air conditioning on!

Promise to post when baby Miesha is born.

African Speed Bumps

2007-12-04T16:38:00.000+02:00

In South Africa they have a couple of different names for speed bumps - most common is "speed humps" but my personal favorite is "traffic calming devices".

This photo is of an African speed bump - don't know about you, but this doesn't do much to calm me at all! And yes, that is a MASSIVE SNAKE!

This photo was not taken by me or anyone else I know...hopefully it is from a part of Africa God will not call us to visit!

Thanksgiving

2007-12-04T16:34:00.000+02:00

This is Skyler Franzen and I on Thanksgiving evening. Her family had us over for a fabulous American style turkey dinner.

This is our "twins" picure!

Christmas Party on Thanksgiving

2007-11-26T09:58:00.000+02:00

Our Thanksgiving was a little different than usual this year. Not only are we far from family, the weather is HOT and it feels more like we should be having a 4th of July BBQ then cooking a turkey…this year we had a Christmas party on Thanksgiving day!

Through the sponsorship of Fairfield Community Church in Idaho and a few other couples who support us, we were able to have a fabulous Christmas event with the group I have been working with at Moroka Church of the Nazarene.

For the last couple months, I have been driving into Moroka once or twice a week to get to know a group of people who are all HIV+ or who have full blown AIDS. They were referred by the Red Cross clinic next door to come to Moroka Church for food. The church has a sponsorship from a local grocer to get “day old” food on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are three Gogos (grandmas) who come to the church 6 days a week to cook this food for approximately 70 school children who wouldn’t get a meal otherwise and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays these adults with HIV or AIDS receive a hot meal also and a few veggies to take home with them. I have also been helping them by giving them vitamins, pain medications and topical creams to help ease the pain in their sores.

This group of patients go to the Red Cross clinic for a checkup and then come next door to the church and do beading together for a couple hours until their lunch is ready. I talked with Gogo Thelma (in the brown and yellow dress with hat) who is in charge of this program about doing a Bible study and health lesson with this group during the time they are waiting. She was SO excited she cried and kissed my neck like 10 times! She knew something was needed, but didn’t know how to do it alone. So, my teammate Heather Witherow and I have been writing Bible studies and health lessons and Gogo Thelma has been either teaching the lessons or giving them to the group to do as a home study. Since only 2-3 out of the group have a passage level of English, we have also been working to get the lessons translated into Sotho and Zulu.

(By the way, Gogo Thelma is Buhle Bhembe’s mother. I have written about Buhle and her work in Slovoville often and many of you in Seattle have met her and her husband Pastor Themba last July.)

God has provided a Sotho translator named Maria and I am very excited about working with her. Maria is a 21 year old orphan who is struggling to find work. In the meantime, she is teaching Sunday School at Moroka church and is also helping out with the children’s program for the 70 kids that come for food every day after school. This translation work with me will be a much needed source of income for her and I am looking forward to working closely with her to build into her life also. (Maria is the one wearing the yellow shawl in the photo)

Back to the party…5 days before, Gogo Thelma and I finally connect via phone and she tells me that the party will be from 10:30-2:00 and (to my surprise!) she had invited several other groups to join us. Since I was in charge of the budget, the news that the party was not for 15-20 people anymore, but she was expecting 60+ and it was turning into a health conference with speakers…well, it was a little challenging for me to adjust to initially. I recruited Dan right away to help me and another teammate Jenny Teichert also came to help which was wonderful – couldn’t have done it without them! That is Africa for you – keeps you on your toes!

We arrived early to help with set up and decorations and 10:30 came and went…no one showed up. By 11:20 we had 6 people there. I was really skeptical about the projected 60 people coming, but sure enough close to noon a steady stream of people came and we filled up the church sanctuary. There was a nutrition lesson, a lesson on HIV/AIDS and then I gave a short Bible lesson that was translated. It was well received!

Jenny and I led some Christmas games while Dan grilled 150 hot dogs. Don’t think they are used to playing Christmas games, but boy did they shed their stuffiness when they saw there were prizes for participating! After, there was a buffet line with lots of interesting African salads the gogos made in addition to the hot dogs.

We then passed out parcels of food and gifts to the group of 15 from the church who have been faithfully coming on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They were SO thankful and grateful. They burst into song and clapped and danced holding their gifts high over their heads. The pictures don’t adequately show how much fun it was. I kept choking up thinking of how such a small parcel could bring such joy. It was SO humbling for Dan and I to be the channel of blessing from you all to this special group. They live on the outskirts of society since there is such an awful stigma about people who have HIV or AIDS and to be included and to receive a special gift…it was overwhelming.

Who knows if they will have another Christmas with us?
Evelyn’s sister died of AIDS the day before the party.

Another lady in the group – Nono – was in the hospital getting treatment and couldn’t come. Honestly, the government hospitals are in such bad shape, I’ve heard many who are sick say they’d rather die at home then endure the hospital. That tells you how sick she has actually become.

Below is our Moroka patient group with Pastor Themba, Pastor John and the Gogos who cook. It’ll be a miracle if 6 of the people in the photo below will be with us next Christmas.
Tough to tell who the sick people are isn’t it!?

Please pray for Evelyn’s family as they grieve and please pray that Nono will get better and have more time with us and her children. Nono’s husband died of AIDS in 2000.

We are so thankful to all of you for helping to make this event possible. This is why I love living here.

Love,
Hartleys

PS. 10 days until our due date - baby Miesha should be coming soon! We’d love prayer for a smooth delivery and for peace as we are so far from family at this special time.

Baby Shower #2

2007-11-19T21:35:00.000+02:00

This last Thursday the ladies from Breakthru Life Church hosted a “stork tea” or baby shower for me. It was beautiful, very memorable, and really different then the shower hosted by the Americans! It was wonderful to get to know some of the gals better – thank goodness for name tags. We played a game, then they went around the room and all told me the 3-5 minute version of their life story (complete with an embarrassing moment!) so I could get to know them better. There was a baby shower dance for me… which actually wasn’t as cheesy as the pictures make it look. I did however get wrapped up in this gauzy pink fabric at the end!

The song they danced to was Twila Paris – May the Lord Bless You and Keep You – it was a beautiful and very worshipful song. There was an extended time of prayer and several of the gals had words from the Lord about Miesha which was amazing and really blessed me. The gifts were great and then we ate goodies together till super late.

Dan and I spent a couple hours last Saturday finalizing things in the nursery. Here are some pictures. I really like how it turned out. A couple of you asked why the crib is so tall – we are going to put a mosquito net over it eventually. Then don’t have screens on ANY of the windows or doors here which gets problematic on really hot nights with bugs. Bugs are bigger here…but that is for another posting!

Just need a few more of those fabric boxes, then it will be perfect.

Went to the Dr today and he said everything is progressing great. Miesha is now 7lbs and we have around 2 weeks left. He thinks she’ll come early and with the heat now – that would be fine by me!

the countdown begins!

2007-11-14T21:03:00.000+02:00

I had a wonderful baby shower a couple days ago. My missionary teammates threw me a great party and it was so fun to have so many of my favorite women all in the same room. Including the kids who came, there were 25 of us – I felt very loved!!

I want to “introduce” you to some of the women in my life here through this photo.

In the back row: Zanelle (the friendliest lady at Jabavu church. She and her husband just took over pasturing another local church…I miss her!), Sarah (OC team), Denao (my friend Buhle’s step daughter), Maria (she is translating the Bible studies and health lessons I have been writing into the Sotho language for me), Trully (a Sunday School teacher at Moroka church – helped a ton with our short term team), Ria (our office receptionist), Lunga (Buhle’s daughter, one of my favorites!!), Michelle and little girl Tori (missionary with Impact Africa – she and her husband helped us a ton with short term team planning, they’ve done it for 17 yrs! We watch Survivor at their house every week – they are only 2 seasons behind in Africa. I am trying my hardest not to cheat and look on the web to find out who wins!), Heather (OC team), Corina (we trade books back and forth), Barbara (OC team), Angie (Zanelle’s daughter, she left Jabavu to start a church plant with her finance), Buhle (the friend I do the most ministry with – I write about her all the time!) and Annie (OC team daughter). Middle row: Mpumi (Angie’s cousin), Makhotso (I have been informally discipling her about a year now), Marci (another missionary friend with Impact Africa), ME, Heather Witherow (OC team – came to Africa the same time as us), Lesedi (Angie’s son), Jenny (OC team, Annie’s mom). Front row: Isabelle and Michaela (OC team, Barb’s girls), and Skyler (Michelle’s other daughter).

I am positive that is more info than you wanted or needed, but at least now you can refer back to this photo when I write about these ladies!

As I write this, we are exactly 3 weeks away from our due date. We have been in meetings all day for the last two days, hosted mom’s group at my house, had one shower, one to go this week, am planning a 40th birthday party at our house for Friday morning, then am coordinating 2 Christmas parties in the next two weeks…not to mention Thanksgiving. Thank goodness I only have to make pies! I am tired and feel even more so thinking about what is ahead. Baby Miesha can come anytime after Thanksgiving and then I think we’ll be ready. In South Africa, most everyone takes their vacation between Dec 10 and Jan 10 and the entire city of Johannesburg (the size of Los Angeles) feels like a ghost town. The business you'll experience in December with year-end everything and all the holiday parties...that is November for us. I am looking forward to our slower schedule in December to adjust to being a mom!!

As I am sure most of you know – my husband is amazing. A couple months ago Dan decided he’d love to make the baby crib and changing table. He went to a baby store, found a crib he liked, took a couple photos, went to Builder’s Warehouse (a sorry substitute for Home Depot!) and bought all the stuff he thought he’d need and came home and made this fabulous crib. Here are a couple photos of the process.

Our Doctor keeps saying he is convinced Miesha is going to come early. I am not sure to believe him or not. Regardless, she is coming a lot sooner then we originally expected and I am glad that she is coming before the heat of summer really kicks in. It is really starting to get hot here.(remember, seasons are opposite…southern hemisphere/northern hemisphere!) The waiting game begins!!

8 months pregnant and Kruger National Park

2007-11-03T18:26:00.000+02:00

Our missionary team had a gal from Oregon come and shadow us for the month of October. Erica is considering joining our organization and has a heart for Africa. We thoroughly enjoyed having her with us and it was fun to plan her itinerary and show her around. She went to Zimbabwe and Swaziland and visited local ministries in Johannesburg with myself and other teammates.

On her first day with us, we took her to the Lion Park just outside of Johannesburg. The animals there are relatively tame and provide some great photo moments.

Dan and I are with a very friendly giraffe named Gammit and Erica is in the lion cub pen.

This is a rare "white" lion with bluish eyes. Gorgeous!!

Since Dan and I work with short term missionaries and short term teams as a part of our job description, we did lots of driving with Erica around Southern Africa. While normally that isn’t a big deal since we LOVE traveling, being 8 months pregnant made the time in the car a little more challenging. I calculated out that Dan and I spent 30 hours in the car in 3 days last weekend. I think that is a record somewhere…at least for doing that voluntarily.

We showed Erica through Kruger Park and saw some fabulous animals. I’ll post some of my favorites here:

Also, my friend Beckie F told me I should definitely try to get a picture of me pregnant with an elephant over here. She was convinced that no matter how big my belly was that an elephant in the background would make me feel smaller. We captured that photo moment in Kruger!! This was a smallish elephant, but that is okay. I didn’t really want to pose next to a huge one.

Pregnancy in South Africa

2007-11-03T18:05:00.000+02:00

In case you haven’t guessed yet by the voting buttons and the timeline till our due date………yes, we are pregnant and are expecting our baby girl in late November or early December. We are going to call her Miesha and would love your vote for her middle name.

Some fun facts about pregnancy in Africa:

At the black African church in Jabavu that we’ve been attending off and on since we’ve arrived, they don’t say “pregnant” or “pregnancy”. When they started noticing my growing bump, they said, “Oh, you are blessed! When is the little blessing due?” I really like that!

Another English speaking multi-racial church near our home that we have been visiting asked if they could do a baby shower for us. They keep calling Dan’s cell phone to ask him details about dates, girl or boy, etc. We picked a date together and he called them back, just to find out that baby showers in South Africa are surprises. That cultural tidbit we did not know before!!

I was invited to my friend Lollie’s baby shower. She is a white African and an Afrikaans speaker (this usually means her ancestors were Dutch). While most others here call them baby showers, in this case I was invited to Lollie’s Stork Tea. That was a first for me! Her sister emailed me the invitation and directions to the tea garden and it said this: “Jy word vriendelik uitgenooi na Lollie se ooievaarstee. Sien asb uitnodiging!” Yeah, I didn’t understand much of it either. (I was the only first language English speaker invited!!) Of course my email filter thought it was junk and I didn’t find it till after the shower, so I called Lollie to ask for directions. I realize now that since showers are surprises, I ruined that for her without knowing it! That is living in a new culture for you. Sorry Lollie!

This photo was taken at 7 months pregnant. I'll post an updated one soon.

What the heck do missionaries actually do?

2007-11-03T14:16:00.000+02:00

We’ve asked ourselves that often in the last 21 months!! We have hosted tons of people in our home - often it is pastor who needs a bed for a night or two and a ride to the airport. We love having pastor’s families over for dinner too. This provides a GREAT opportunity to encourage and challenge them in their life and ministry – we love it! Sometimes it is plucking chickens, giving food hungry kids at a feeding program, or stringing beads and swapping life stories with a group of HIV+ people. Sometimes it is preaching at church or teaching at a conference. Sometimes it is planning a trip for American teams to come and experience life and ministry in Africa. Sometimes it is fixing computers or cars or plumbing or any of the other thousand things my husband knows how to fix. Sometimes it is writing/teaching Bible studies. I seem to spend a lot of time cooking and driving in my car to random places in Southern Africa. Lol!

It seems to boil down to a few things for us. We want to help Africans become more like Christ, we want to give tools to African leaders so that they can grow their churches, reach more people for Christ, and serve/be lights in their communities to draw more people to Christ.

Our mission organization calls themselves a “Barnabas Mission” and I really gel with that idea. Quick background – Barnabas was a guy in the New Testament of the Bible who served alongside this superstar missionary named Paul. Barnabas was just an ordinary man, but he was nicknamed “Son of Encouragement” and basically helped Paul be the extraordinary person in ministry he was known for. In translating this to our life here in Africa – we are not the upfront people all the time. Rather, we serve Africans and work alongside them, coach them, teach them, and love them so that the Africans can better reach the people in their circles of influence for Christ. Doesn’t it make sense that the people who understand the language, culture, history, customs, and cuisine the best are the ones on the front lines communicating the truth of God to others?

We think so too.

Hello!?

2007-11-03T13:50:00.000+02:00

In how many languages can you greet someone?

Confession here – I LOVE TRAVELLING!! One of the greatest perks about being a missionary is traveling and learning about people in a bunch of places. As a teenager, I was blessed with the unique opportunity to travel to a bunch of different countries on short term mission trips. I feel that during those trips, God opened my eyes to what He was doing in the world and I remembering praying “If you want me to…I’ll go.”

At that time I didn’t have any idea to which country or culture I would be interested in ministering to, but seemed drawn to Europe since that was where I was most familiar.

God brought me a wonderful man and I have been married to the love of my life for 7 years now. Wow – I am so blessed!

We had the same heart to serve overseas and told each other that we would each visit the other’s favorite country and see if God was leading us to move there and minister. Our first trip was to see South Africa and the plan was to see the Czech Republic next. Well, it was obvious to me that the Lord was drawing my heart to Africa also, so we started the process of formally joining a mission organization. (We never went to Czech!)

After a couple years of raising support, we moved to Johannesburg, South Africa in February of 2006.

I promise that being a missionary is one of the greatest and hardest careers in the world. Our first year here, we were commissioned to “learn language and culture” so that we wouldn’t make as many cultural blunders as missionaries in the past and could earn credibility with the Africans. That turned out to be quite the endeavor! The country of South Africa has 11 nationally recognized languages and at least as many different cultures to learn about. We took Zulu language classes formally and were coached by language tutors in Northern Sotho, Tsonga/Shangaan, and Afrikaans. In addition to the 11 in SA, when we traveled to Mozambique, we tried to pick up some Portuguese and when we traveled to Zimbabwe, we tried to learn some Shona. My brain felt scrambled all year…actually it still feels that way!

We couldn’t possibly retain everything, so now I have the greatest little cheat sheets on 3x5 cards that I keep in my purse to refer back to as needed. Everyone you meet who has gone to school knows way more English then I know of any of their language, so after I attempt to greet them properly, we switch into English after that. It truly does make a difference to Africans to know you are at least trying to learn about their language and culture. We have tried to make a habit of asking “what is your first language” of people we meet in order to greet them or say “thank you” in their language. It is fun to see their faces light up in appreciation.

So, the final tally is: I know how to say hello in 25 languages

That is another fun perk about being a missionary!