this week's adventures

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

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

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!

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

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!!