Something other than animals

So I thought I would give you a break from animal pictures.  I have waited to show you our Kingdom Hall because I wanted to take some good pictures of it.  It's an unusual hall, and unique around here.  It's an A-Frame building.  

View from the front.

View from the Parking lot to the entrance.

The A-Frame carport doesn't afford much coverage from the weather so you have to stand right in the center of it to not get rained on.  We have a slate roof.  

Imagine installing that!

The landscaping is quite nice, and we have some beautiful flowers.

The white ones are unusual to see.

Here is a view of the inside.  The platform is almost a tiny bit like a pulpit.  Matt says it's kinda funny standing up there and looking out from a little alcove.

Thought you'd like to see a picture of our first meeting.  I waited til now to post it because I wanted to show you more of the hall and it took me 2.5 months to take those pictures.  That is just how I roll.

Matt gave his first public talk here in December.  He gave the "How Real is God to You?" outline.  Notice the South African rand he is using.  Nelson Mandela is on our money here.

He did a good job!

Well, that is our hall,  if any of you come visit you will know what to expect.  However, you will have to come here yourself to feel how warm & friendly our congregation is. (After all those animal pictures I expect you have all been making diligent searches for tickets online. ;)

Lost and Found

.......and picking up from where we left off.

So I hope you all enjoyed those cute little lions.  We sure did.  It was a fantastic day for sure.  We borrowed a car, courtesy of some generous friends here and we went off on our adventure, departing at the unheard of hour of 6am.  We had scheduled another activity at the park, called Walk with the Lions.  We were pretty excited about it and needed to be there by 8 am.  Unfortunately we got a teeeeeeeensy bit lost.  We ended up going to Pretoria instead.  I don't know if I can really explain without a map so...

Sometimes when you are in a foreign country and haven't driven on the other side of the road except once and haven't been to the place you are trying to get to and don't have a smartphone yet and don't have a GPS either people get lost.  Anyways, we all poured over the maps that the owner of the car had prudently left in the center console. (Except my Matt, who as the driver sensibly kept his eyes on the road and kept driving us to get us out of a seemingly not great part of town, while the other Matt, Margaret and I put our heads together).  And we did make it. Phew.  And on the plus side, I've learned I'm not interested in that part of Pretoria for my future touring plans.  

So grateful to see the signs, and the gate to our destination:

We did miss out on the Walk with the Lions.  Matt and I had definite plans of going again but we were sad that our friends missed it.  

However, the day was still a huge success.  First of all we had a nice rest under some trees with some iced tea.  Then we got ready for the main event.  

Ukutula is a place where you can stay over, play with lions, walk with lions and learn about the research they do with the lions.  Now, don't get the wrong idea about research.  They have the rare white lions there, and are learning about the gene that makes the white lions.  White lions are not albino, but just white.  Baby tawny lions have spots when they are born, baby white lions do not, which make them more vulnerable in the wild.  Ukutula also does research about feline aids and TB in cats.  Many of the lions in Kruger Park are actually sick, and they are trying to figure out if there is any way to help lions in the wild to be healthier.  They have many volunteers that help with the lions here too.  While we were there they had 3 different sizes of lion cubs we could interact with.  The babies, which you have seen...awww..I'll just put a couple more on.  They are about 4 weeks:

So sweet.

 A couple cubs were practicing their escape artist skills:

Made it over the fence!

      The staff said that they only climb out when they see their brothers and sisters outside the pen. When they are together then they don't try to escape.

Then we went to see "the devils."  They are named that because of their tendency to make mischief.  (After they grow past that phase they go to the pen where they keep lions to walk with.)

Look at those paws.  This guy left Matthew (not my Matt, but our friend Matt) with a "Souvenir."

They can also be sweet.

The last set of cubs we got to visit were the medium ones.  Big enough for more play but little enough not to draw blood. :D  Check out the cuteness!

That cub is seriously smiling at Margaret.

That is one of my absolute favorite pictures of the day.  There was a cub there named Ella, she is a white lion. She wasn't born there at Ukutula but she is staying there for now.  She was unsteady on her feet during our visit and not very used to people, but she let us hold her a little:

Playing with lions makes me happy!

Well that was all for the cubs.  We had some more nice experiences that day, I'll share more later since this post is long enough!

(Sorry it's been so long between posts, it's just so busy here and this post took time because I wanted to sort though my pictures and share some of the best shots with you all.)

We Took Our First Vacation Day

Ok guys, I know I've made you wait a long time for the next post, so I thought, lets make it a good one.  I won't need to employ too much witty commentary because the pictures are truly worth a thousand words.   I may just sprinkle a few words here and there.....

Last weekend we enjoyed a visit from our dear friends we met on our first project in Moldova.  If you followed my blog from then you will remember that when Matthew and Margaret came to the project there, the brothers thought they were Matt's parents because they had the same name.  We have called them our construction parents ever since.  We visited them earlier this year, on our way home from Nigeria and  had a fantabulous time.  When we said goodbye at the train station we had no idea that we would see them again this same year.  However, it turned out that they got to pass through S.A. branch en route home from an assignment of their own.  So we were #reunitedagain as they say on Instagram.  We decided that the best thing to do was take our first day off as construction servants and go see.......(drumroll)........

Ha!  Gotcha.  We did see these during the day and enjoyed them too, but that was while we were waiting for this......(drumroll, for reals this time)......

Oh but wait, it gets better!!!

Seeeeriously gets even better:

Already has well developed claws, check those bad boys out.

The only thing as good as seeing your man holding a baby lion is getting to hold one yourself:

I shall call you squishy and you shall be my squishy. - Dory

Well I don't want to overwhelm you with too many pictures in one post, but I will post another one soon, with more lions.

To be continued.........