The Project

No doubt many of you are wondering just what is going on over here? Lazuli is without a doubt the writer in the family but I am so excited about the project I want to share so here goes. There are many different projects happening around here at the moment, but here are three big ones. First a new shipping warehouse with audio/video building. Second a new residence building. Third a remodel and small addition to the printery to allow for the installation of a second printing press.

Here is a picture of the branch as seen from Google Earth. The biggest roof at the bottom right hand side is the printery. Between the left side edge and the swimming pool about center you see a dark grey square which is the new residence building. At top of the picture there are lots of little white rectangles, those are the modular housing they have set up and just below that is the big red rectangle of dirt that is the new shipping warehouse and audio video building. 

This is what the residence building looks like at the moment.

Here is what the new shipping warehouse/audio video building looks like at the moment. Right now it looks like a bunch of dirt but they have started pouring some footings.

This picture is off to the side but the equipment in it gives it more perspective...

The building itself is 16,000 sq meters and the audio video wing is 3000 sq meters, if you are trying to put that into square feet like I was let me help, its about 204,514 sq feet or, really really big. An American football field is 57,600 sq ft. The new shipping warehouse has to be built so that shipping can move out of the printery and it can be remodeled in time so that when the new press arrives there is a place to put it. The next year will be busy...

What are we working on? Well I (Matt) am assisting another brother to look after the residence building. The majority of the work being done here is by contractors so I am a small part of the day to day interaction. Lazuli has been helping with quality control on concrete. She helps collect fresh concrete from the delivery trucks, log samples and eventually break the samples to see how strong the concrete is. When they don't need her there she helps out in the office.

Well that's the project, hope I didn't bore you to much, I will turn things back over to Lazuli  for the next post....

Orientation Group

On the last Friday of the month, if I remember right, the new volunteers come to Bethel in South Africa.  Our arrival coincided with this time, and so our orientation was a full new Bethelite orientation. We had a week of learning about our new home and work place.  That means you go and meet all the departments, and learn about what they can do for you and what you can do for them as you get established and start your life here.  We were the only ones not from South Africa in our group.  All of the group were so friendly and kind.  Unfortunately, the names were hard for me so I'm still trying to get a handle that.  My name is hard for them too, but they picked it up quicker than I did for them.  I'm also going to use the jet lag excuse.  (How many days/weeks/months is that valid I wonder?)

Meet our group of fellow newcomers:

 Yes, I'm wearing Matt's suit jacket.  It was a lot cooler than it looked that day when I chose my outfit.  I'm getting nervous about "winter." Maybe I should have brought my heavy wool coat.... At least winter doesn't come here til next summer. Summer for all of you north of the equator that is.  It's so confusing. People ask me questions and I'm all "that was this spring".. but it's spring here now..so then I explain.

We had housekeeping training with our housekeeper. For the first time Matt and I got to work together with the housekeeper that our room is assigned to.  I think this is a great idea.  After all, we will be working together to keep our room clean, and it does give you a sense of responsibility when you know your housekeeper personally and know she is such a wonderful sister. Makes you want to leave your room neat as a pin so she will not have more work than she should.  So far, we've done pretty good.  I have to give Matt his due also, he does as much or more sometimes than me on this, those of you who know him well know that he's a great guy like that!

During our first week we also moved to our current assigned room, rearranged and decorated it.

On Friday we had construction orientation and found out what our assignments are.  I'm not going to reveal that in this post though.  Although some of you already know.  Matt has written his first post in years and took the pictures for it and everything, so he gets to tell you that himself.

On that Saturday we were invited to an evening gathering by Darragh's mama. Remember Darragh? The hand reared monkey at Nigeria Bethel?  Anyways, the sister who raised him is here and it's really cool to meet people who have been places you have been, even if it wasn't at the same time.  We had a terrific time eating pizza and playing a quiz game.  And laughing.  Lots of laughing.

Next time the post will be from Matt so stay tuned, :)

When We Arrived

When we arrived in here at the airport, it was such a relief to just be here! As a requirement for our arrival we had to fill out cards with personal information, which is normal when you travel to another country.  What was unusual about these cards was the nature of the questions.  They were all health oriented.  They are being extremely careful about people coming in with any symptoms of sickness as they are trying to keep an eye on the Ebola situation.  I heard a rumor that they will not let anyone pass the border that has been to one of the heavily affected countries, but I'm not sure if that is accurate or not.  Anyways, they are being very cautious.  Many of our friends and family have expressed concern about us being in Africa during this time, but take comfort in knowing that I, who am very sensitive to anything I consider affecting me and my little bubble am not concerned about it. Plus, the affected countries are FAR FAR away.  Africa is enormous.  It's a 5-6 hour flight to those countries from here,  that's how far away they are. So don't worry, we are as safe from that as our friends and family back home are.

Another awesome thing is that all of our bags made it here.  Yup.  All 8 duffel bags came out like clockwork.  We, or rather, Matt loaded them onto 2 trolleys and we made our way to the arrivals hall. I couldn't really see over mine but I could see Matt's head so I just followed him.  I was also thrilled to see that there was a kind brother waiting for us.  It is soooooo nice to have someone ready to take you to your new home after all that travel time.

The guys loaded our bags up.

Being a girl is so good in these situations.  All I had to do was get myself and my backpack in the car.  I feel a teensy weensy bit bad, since Matt has traveled the same as me and then he has to lift these bags when we get there, but I do enjoy all the chivalry let me tell you. And I did say thank you. So.

When you drive, or rather, ride, through a new place when you first arrive it is so interesting to watch your new surroundings.  Normally I just soak it in.  I was kind of in a daze this time though and so I just have this impression of muted colors.  Muted compared to other places I've been anyways.  It seemed at first like the houses and hills just blended together.  The rains haven't really started yet so the earth is brown and red. And the houses and buildings seemed to all either be stucco or brick, in similar colors.  At home most houses are stick built so they are painted many colors.  Anyways, that was my initial impression.

We pulled into Bethel, which was thrilling for me, you can do street view on Google Earth and see what it's like to come up to the gates, which I did before I came here.  The brother took us to our room and he and Matt unloaded our bags.

This room was just temporary however, our real room wasn't ready so we were here for the first few days.  It's in the modular housing down at the front of the property and this unit has another room with kitchen and bathroom in between so we shared with another couple at first.  We have since moved and I will share pictures of our current home later.  Its up in the main Bethel Residences.

We had a knock on our door after a little while and Joel and Vanessa (who we had connected to through our buddies in Florida;) came to check on us and invited us for dinner to their home.  They hosted us through the first weekend and made sure we could get to the dining room and to the commissary.  Reading between the lines, to the food sources!  After a nap we went to their place. We had a really nice time with them, the gave us our first taste of South African meat, Matt was thrilled.  They showed us some pictures of their past adventures, and we had a nice visit.

Then it was time for more sleep.  Lots of it. :)

A Long Layover

Well, we made it!  We are on the other side of the world again, and as a first for us, the other side of the equator.  Our other travels have taken us very close to the equator (which means, the hot zone) but this is the first time we have been in the southern hemisphere.  Takes a LONG time to get here too.  We traveled around 40 hours.  You can imagine how tired we have been.  I don't sleep on planes well, although I think I did manage some cat naps, however, even if you could sleep on the plane, could you really sleep in those tiny seats? The planes we came in were by British Airways, and although the screens were older in the back of the headrests, I did find the seats MUCH more comfortable than other airlines I have been on.  So that was nice.

On the way we had a 12+ hour layover in London.  We had planned to go see a few sights that we have missed on previous visits but we were so tired when we got there that we decided to go back to the British Museum.  Some very good reasons for going there were these:

1. It's huge, so even though we have spent lots of time there before, we haven't seen all of it.
2. It's free, so even though we had to pay to get there on the Underground and pay for baggage storage for our carryons at the airport, we didn't have to pay to get in.
3. We knew where it was so there wasn't too much stress, it felt comfortable to go back, after all, we were just there in May.
4. It's a pretty place to visit.
5. There is a good "chippy" near to it that we liked last time. Wondering what a chippy is?

The Underground is very easy to get around on, once you understand the maps.  My first experience on the Underground when I went with my best friend to England when I was 18 was a little more shaky, couldn't figure it out and walked back and forth with luggage alot (lots of stairs.) til we figured out the maps and accents of those trying to help us.  Now it's easy, we are old hands at it. After we came out of the Underground this time, we decided to have a rest in a park on the way to the museum:

We sat down to have a snack before we continued on.  The bench had a sweet dedication on it:

Awww!

We enjoyed the museum, as much as we could through our air travel fog.  We went up to an area that we had not been to before and couldn't find without directions from staff.  It was the Japanese section and we watched a demonstration of traditional Japanese tea ceremony.  Being tea buffs ourselves we had to check it out.  Let me tell you.  Some of our friends might think Matt and I take our tea seriously.  Wrong!  We are absolute cavemen in comparison.  The tea ceremony is a fine art that we are way behind in.  It was interesting to learn about, there were some rude people that kept blocking my view, but I graciously (in imitation of the Japanese) just gave way and moved to another area to continue looking on. Soaking up the culture folks. Soaking it up.  After the tea demonstration we looked around at some of the other displays.  One display caught my eye particularly.  Now, I know that looking at people's museum pictures can be boring, so I'm going to limit these, but this one is especially relevant.  I took this picture for Ed, Andy and Travis, so guys, here you go:

Just what does this remind you of?  Looks like a golf implement to me.  Unmistakable.  The crazy thing is, it was in the Japanese section.  Now. The Scots would have you think that the game of golf originated in Scotland.  And the modern day game did.  HOWEVER, the more ancient origins are a little cloudy.  There are a lot of theories on it, but I think the mystery is solved after our wander through the museum last weekend...Notice the little plate accompanying this display:

It says "they may have been used in rituals but the details are unknown." Um, I'm guessing these anthropologists are not golfers, because it seems pretty obvious that the "unknown rituals" were golf. They may not have called it golf then, but these are clearly ancient ritualistic golf clubs.  See what you can learn on a quick trip to the British Museum on a long layover? Mystery solved.

As we were walking out, I had another brain fog induced epiphany. The Origins of Golf Discovery was just the tip of the iceberg.  There were a lot of people there that day, and it occurred to me, the museum is an amazing place, filled with an astounding variety of things, but most things there are man made, and the natural things there are attributed to nature, and not our Creator. But the most unique sights in the museum, are not man's discoveries, but the people that come to see them.  Nothing in the museum can compare to the people in it, they are the most fantastic creation in the museum.

After all that thinking, it was time to eat!

No trip to the UK, no matter how brief could be complete without fish and chips.  Hence the visit to the nearby "chippy."

YUMO!

I have tried fish and chips all over the world.  Nothing compares to the homeland of this delicious meal.  Don't come here without trying them.  Look for a thinner section of fish as opposed to a thicker one, its crispier.  So good.

We went back to the airport early.  Turns out it was a good thing because we had a few delays in getting back and we didn't have to stress. After a little duty free shopping, we boarded our flight to South Africa.  It takes way longer to get to South Africa from Europe than it takes to get to London from the States.  You might not think so at first but those 11 hours on our last flight don't lie.

Well, thats all for this one.  I'll try to get another post out here soon. Oh, a note to any of our dear friends and family who may be thinking of coming to see us and find themselves intimidated by the length of our travel and the notes of how tired we are.  Remember, there are direct flights to South Africa from the States.  Also, keep in mind, we had packed our apartment (with the help of some wonderful friends) said goodbye to families and friends we love as though they were our families and we also traveled around before we left.  So our tiredness is different than yours would be in coming.  It was the culmination of many things to get here, so don't be scared!   We will be grateful for your hugs and the great time we would have. Also, you could pet lions. I mean, that's worth it right? ;) Just sayin.