South Africa - Post 4

Well to be honest, I thought I was going to get everything in with 3 posts, but I wanted to do one last post to show you more pictures of Masiphumele (the township/squattercamp where our youth live).

Below is Wendy in front of her home. Wendy is on the leadership team for our youth.

This is just a picture to help show the homes in Masi, and how close they are. Masi is very over populated, and people are continuing to build shacks even in the marsh at the edge of Masi.

Occasionally fires will break out in Masi, and unfortunately the fire will destroy many homes because the homes are so close together. Below is us making our way back to one of our youth's homes. We would go to their homes, meet their families (if they live with anyone) and pray for them.

There are a couple of water ways/creeks that go through Masi. You can also see the power lines spliced and more homes, made of whatever materials are available. Then in the background, you see the God's beautiful creation in the mountains around Cape Town/Fishoek.

The "front" part of Masi off the main road has paved roads and is the "formal" portion of the township. This is where the government has helped build clinics and schools and these roads. The previous pictures have been more of the "informal" part of Masi, where tons and tons of people have move here to live.

Another view of Masi.

This church (Masi Baptist) is where some of our youth attend. This church has been a great partner with Hope2Africa, letting our youth rehearse their repertoire and have Bible studies here during the year.

Thanks so much for reading about our trip with Hope2Africa to South Africa. You can continue to pray for this organization and God's work in these youth. We pray that they will reflect Jesus to their community and country!

Our church will be going on another trip this year, Sept/October of 2012. You can also be praying for that upcoming trip. Hope2Africa will be sending teams in April 2012 as well. Thanks for your prayers!

South Africa - Post 3

As I mentioned in the last post, we would end each day of camp with prayer and surprises. We took TONS of donations from people all over the United States (THANK YOU!!) to our youth in South Africa. We also were given financial donations to purchase shoes and clothes for the youth as well. Here are some pictures of donations we were able to give the youth.

First we unpacked all our donations to see what we had and figure out what days we could take the items to the youth. The donations included towels, soap, school supplies and some clothes. We purchased pants/skirts and 2 pairs of shoes for each youth as well. Here's a picture of some of the shoppers with shoes:

(Picture courtesy of Kathy)

Here are some of the ladies modeling their new dress shoes. They also got a pair of tennis shoes. They guys got a nice pair and a casual pair as well. :)

Here are when the youth got their towels and clothes and other goodies.

Another exciting gift was back packs. Each of the youth got one of these bags. :)

My favorite gift that God allowed us to give was the bag of groceries. Thanks to a generous donation, we were able to purchase 1 bag of groceries for each youth to take home. We believe this bag will last their family about a week. It included apples, cheese, beans, rice, coffee, bread, cooking oil, some other items, and a couple of treats like a rotisserie chicken and a candy bar.

(picture courtesy of Kathy)

On our last day of camp (Thursday), we had a shortened camp, then went out into Masi for the youth to perform. This year they set up at the "flats", which are apartments that the government came in and built. The next post will show more pictures of Masiphumelele. Most people in Masi do not live in these flats.

The youth started with prayer. :) They go and set up their speakers and sound board and do the entire performance on their own.

(Picture thanks to Kathy)

Then the youth began their performance with the new dance they learned in Amandi's dance class. The rest of the performance includes dramas and songs that share truth about Jesus and His love. Here are more pictures of their performance:

Another drama -

In this next picture you can kind of see the crowd that had gathered.

One last song. The youth also end their performance with the gospel and handing out tracks in Xhosa (their native language).

Finally, I have a brief video of part of their performance.

South Africa - post 2

First, I figured I should introduce our team, since I didn't do that on the last post. :) This is us at Imhoff Farms (gorgeous and yummy food) after church on Sunday.

(photo courtesy of Kathy)

Right to Left - Brian, me, Karen, Amandi, Evan, Jenny, Kathy, Mary Lou, Reggie, Chris and Tim. Tim is actually from South Africa and was our driver, but he really became part of our team and helped us out.

So, just like last year, while we were in South Africa, we were hosting an Arts Camp for 20+ impoverished South African youth. These youth are selected by their churches to be a part of Hope2Africa each year. Throughout the year these youth get together twice a week; once for a Bible study and once for rehearsal. They have a director (Vuyo) who organizes their meetings and checks in on them and reports back to the Hope2Africa President and Board here in the US. They rehearse songs and dramas that they use to share the Gospel in their community.

Here we are having a team meeting before starting our first day of Camp.

We started our days with a devotional and brief meeting. Kathy and Chris aren't in the picture because they were cooking breakfast to take to the youth that day.

While we're there, we have Bible Study/Devotionals every morning and multiple art classes. We start by feeding

The picture above is from our first day of camp and first devotional time. After devotional we'd break up into smaller groups to discuss that day's lesson. The rest of the day consisted of different classes. There was music and dance, which everyone participated in. Then there was also Art, Computers and Hand Sewing, which the youth had to pick which one they wanted to go to.

Here are a couple of pictures from Music Class - led by Karen.

Here is Mary Lou's hand sewing class. They made these cute draw string bags all by hand in 1 week. Pretty awesome.

(photo courtesy of Kathy)

Here are some action shots of Dance class, which was led by Amandi. Dance was new to our camp this year and it was a HUGE hit. Amandi was great instructor and taught the youth about glorifying God through dance!
(photo courtesy of Kathy)

Art was another class. Brian and Evan led art class. Here is a photo of their mural in progress. Vuyo, the Hope2Africa Masi Director, coordinated with Living Way to paint this mural on their office wall. This was a draft.

The art class also made Wind Chimes out of anything they could find in Masi. They talked about how the Holy Spirit is like the wind. The Spirit is always there even though you don't see it, but you'll see the effects of the Spirit, like hearing the chimes of a wind chime.

Reggie and I led computer class. We learned about Google Documents, some Facebook privacy items and budgeting. :)

There was also Drama class worked in with Music class this year. The main point of camp is that the Youth learn these songs and dramas and develop a repertoire. Then they go out into their community and use the Arts to share about Jesus with their neighbors.

So we had these classes for 4.5-ish days. We'd end camp each day with prayer and something we were thankful to God for, and surprises! I'll get a third post up soon about surprises and how we ended the week of camp - with the youth performing in Masi!

Thanks for reading (and being patient with me getting all this up). :)

South Africa - post 1

Hey Everyone,

Well it's been a few months since we got back from South Africa, but I still wanted to post about our second trip to South Africa. We had a great time loving life and praising God in South Africa. We traveled about 30 hours to get to just outside of Cape Town, South Africa to "work" with 19 youth for 6 precious (way too short) days.

We arrived late on Thursday night in Cape Town and pretty much crashed. We had a pretty tight space for about 18 hours. This was the "before" picture. We were looking pretty rough afterwards. :)

However, we started bright and early Friday morning with a team R&R/fun day. It was a little strange, but we had our team day first, instead of last (as it was last year), because that's just how it worked out best for the schedule.

Anyway, Friday morning we hopped on a boat for a ride out to Seal Island, where parts of shark week are filmed. We did not see any great white sharks, however we had TWO sightings of humpback whales!! It is whale season in South Africa, but usually you see Southern Right whales, not humpbacks. It was a great experience. I am also thankful that I did not get sea sick at all on the boat ride.

Amandi, Chris, Becky and Brian on the front of the boat.

Us on the boat :)

The view going out to Seal Island.

All these black dots are seals!

Then we also took a scenic drive around. No scenic drive is complete in South Africa without seeing some wildlife. This time we saw imfene (baboons).

Then we were able to have a little meet and greet with some of our Hope2Africa youth on Friday afternoon. It was great to meet some of the new youth and see familiar faces from last year.

They sang for us and we introduced ourselves. We laughed and danced and had fun. Then we had to leave them and get ready for Camp Day#1 starting the next morning.

The next post will have more pictures and info about Camp. :)

Christmas Season!

YAY for Christmas! I figured I should blog, since we haven't in a LONG time...sorry anyone who reads.

We had a great time in South Africa, and I kept meaning to finish a blog about that and just haven't...so hopefully soon you'll see a blog about South Africa.

We had a great Thanksgiving, seeing both families. The morning of Thanksgiving, we "earned" our turkey by running/walking a 5K race as part of the Atlanta Half Marathon. My brother ran the half marathon (very quickly - a PR for him), and Brian and I ran most of the 5k and my mom and sister walked the 5K. I also did a personal best time of 32:45 minutes. I walked some, so I think I can easily get to running the entire 5K at 30 minutes or less. That's the next goal. :)

Then we drove to Lake Sinclair to enjoy lunch with some of our extended family. My dad and I thought the food was even better this year, for some reason. :) Thanks to all of those who cooked! :)

Friday, after my black Friday shopping (and Brian's work day), we drove up to Cumming to spend Thanksgiving weekend with the Fox family. We enjoyed left over turkey and BBQ. Watched a sad GT/UGA game and played some fun card games. I learned how to play Spades. :)

So back to Black Friday shopping. This year I shopped by myself (kind of weird), but a quick trip. I bought gifts for everyone (minus a few online purchases).

We just enjoyed Christmas with my side of the family this past weekend at the lake. We had a great time playing games and hanging out and eating way too much. My mom loves to cook and this year was very yummy. We had a new red velvet cheesecake that was awesome along with our traditional roast, green beans, rice, homemade crescent rolls and another new addition - roasted cauliflower (really good!). My family also always makes sausage balls, sausage pinwheels and homemade cinnamon rolls for Christmas Morning. So I'll be making sure to hit the gym this week. :)

This week B and I have to work some, but we're also getting our furnaces and condensing units replaced. That replacement might get their own post.

Anyway, we hope you're having a Merry Christmas! We're excited about Christmas, Part 2 coming up this weekend with Brian's family.

KP Corporate 5k Run/Walk

Link

This year Brian and I did the KP Corporate 5K run/walk with my company. We've done this same race in the past, but we missed it the last 2 years. It was fun to go out and run around downtown and see coworkers doing it too.

It was even MORE fun this year, because I'm in better shape than I have been in the past. In the past I'd say that I walked more than I ran. This year I ran almost the entire thing! We estimate that I walked about 0.5 mile of the race, but we averaged about 11 minute miles, finishing up in just over 33 minutes, which is great for me!

Now I need to start doing 5Ks at 30 minutes and run the entire race. :)

Soon I'll post about my "improvements" to my Military Fitness Test. Next week or weekend I'm going to retest myself on my 2 mile run time, sit-ups and push-ups. I haven't been working out as much as I should have been, but I know I've at least improved on my push-ups and running. I'll attempt to do a pull up, but I haven't really been working on that strength at all (oops). :)

Dining Room Project!

Two weekends ago we spent the weekend painting our dining room. The room we think was a bright pink or red that was painted over with a white or cream before we bought the house. When we bought the house the room was a slight pink hue. Needless to say I didn't want a pink dining room.

Here's what it looked like before (I forgot to get one before we started taping off).:)

We also painted the chandelier in the room (which came with the house). We didn't really like the silver with gold specks.

We rigged up a paint booth for Brian to paint the chandelier. :)

Then here are our "final" pictures of the space. The chandelier is now a dark gray color. :)

And the room is two tones of gray. :) We already had great molding and chair rail, so we just avoided getting gray paint on it.

We want to add window treatments in a bright yellow with a yellow/gray/black pattern. We found some fabric we like, but it's quite expensive...so we'll see what we find.
We are happy with the result. One day we might buy furniture for in there...

One another note, we're getting really excited about going back to South Africa!! If you want to be on our email list for updates on our trip (and prayer requests) just let us know.

~Lindsey

Gun fire

Well earlier today I got an email from my mom earlier today that they went to go see Captain America (and she liked it). She said as they were backing out of the parking spot when they noticed a bunch of teenage-ish people running to the end of the parking lot. Then they heard 6-10 gun shots fired in the theater parking lot!!
They even saw a guy walk in front of their truck that appeared to be carrying a silver pistol in his hand!!! AHH!
They were ok, but a bullet did hit their truck.
So scary! I'm thankful God kept them safe.

She said only one person was injury and no one was killed, per the news.

But goodness, that is not an email you ever expect!

August!

Maybe I'll be better about blogging this month! Maybe not...we'll see.
Anyway, this month started with a work trip to Bethesda, MD. I had a conference there at NIH (National Institutes of Health). It was actually a really good conference.
It was also fun just being around DC. Monday night we went into DC and walked around the mall and at dinner down there. DC is really pretty nice and the Metro made it really easy to get around.

Then the weekend after that trip I went to KY to visit my sister. :) Thanks to work and going to South Africa, I had enough skymiles to fly there for free. I got there Friday and that night we saw Crazy, Stupid Love; which was good. Then Saturday we went to the Louisville zoo, but I forgot my camera. :(

Then we drove over into Indiana just because we were that close and could. I do have evidence of that thanks to my sister's phone, well the picture of us coming back into KY.

Then that night we did a 5K that started at 8pm. It was all around the city while the sun was setting. It was fun.
So far it's been a fun and travel-filled month. :) We'll see how the rest of the month is! We have plans to make over one of the rooms in our house...hopefully it'll actually happen and I can get some before and after pictures.

July Update

Hey Friends!

Well this July has flown by! The best part was an AWESOME vacation with our friends to St Thomas! We spent LOTS of time at the beach and snorkeling. It was so relaxing. St Thomas was gorgeous, definitely reminded us of God's phenomenal artistic abilities.

Enjoy a few pics....

This was the pool at the wonderful place we stayed (thanks friends!!)

One day we ventured over to St John and hiked down to a gorgeous deserted beach. It was fun! We didn't take an "after" picture of our feet though.

This was at Magen's Bay. We checked out a lot of other cool beaches too.

This was our first night there. This is the beach at the place we stayed. :)

This was our view out the window. :)

My brother had his b-day while we were gone and he passed his comps too! He gets to continue on with his PhD program. :)

Emily (b's sister) and I hosted a wedding shower for some great friends at church. It was fun to just hang out with them and celebrate their upcoming wedding. :)

I made some cupcakes:

Emily really did most of the work. She did a great job!

Then I had a project due for work, but it wasn't as stressful as deadlines usually are! I thank God for that. I think I'm really learning to trust Him more and worry less. :) Hopefully I can keep learning that.

We also got to celebrate our friends Jason and Lindsey's wedding this month. Their wedding was beautiful and the reception was lots of fun! I forgot a camera though...

It was also fun to see friends from Tech that we hadn't seen in a while.

Next on the agenda is a trip to KY to see my sister and do another 5k. :) Hopefully we'll do more than one post next month. :)

Busy life...

Oh the busy life we live. How hard this makes it to be consistent and much less remember to post, even just once a week.

Right now work for me has been pretty busy, a good busy as I feel challenged and that I am doing good work and I can tell my boss and team appreciate the work I am doing.

Along with work we are busy preparing for our trips. Vacation first then our next Hope2Africa mission trip. We are blessed with the chance to return to Cape Town and continue loving on African youth who live is such terrible conditions. We are also enjoying being the team leaders for this trip for our church. Lindsey is doing a wonderful job leading and I am enjoying supporting her. We have a great team and I am excited what God will do through us. Praying that we will be filled with His Holy Spirit and ready to be poured out to the youth. Also praying that our team will put away our own expectations and our own fears/pride and just allow God to use us in whatever way will bring Him the most glory and help develop these future leaders all the more to continue to be men and women of God in their community.

We attended Lindsey's work Summer picnic last weekend. A fun lunch complete with face painting, open mic, slip 'n slide for the kiddos, and good burgers and dogs. It was fun to see some of the people that Lindsey works with every day and get a chance to catch up with the ones I actually know.

We also just hosted our H2A team for a team dinner at our house. I made marinated chuck roast, bacon au gratin potatoes, green beans, salad for an army and french bread. It was a lot of fun around the table. I enjoyed the fellowshipping and as our H2A youth coined the term, swallowshipping. It was fun, even though we did miss some of the team that couldn't make it.

Hoping to see my family on Saturday, but will for sure see Lindsey's sunday afternoon and monday for the 4th. Also Lindsey will be working at the Atlantic Station celebration on Sat that our church volunteers at. Anyway still lots of other things going on as well, but I think I hit all the big ones. We will try to get some pictures up soon.

Oh if you want details on how to support us in prayer or otherwise for our trip to Cape Town, send us a note and we can get you the info.

US Military Fitness Test (for Lindsey)

I've decided to use the military fitness testing as my workout for this summer. It all started with some guys in the office making a little wager with each other using this military fitness test as a guideline. A coworker of mine and I almost joined them until we realized that they are probably spending between $40-$80 just to participate in the wager.

So I decided to just do it on my own. Basically I gave myself a "baseline" test last week. The test included how many push-ups (boy push-ups), sit-ups (all the way up so my elbows touch my knees) and pull-ups I could do along with how fast I could run 2 miles.

Then there were these charts online of "scores" for how many reps you could do (here's the charts I used and the guys at work are using). So I gave myself a score after my baseline test.

Now I'm working out to improve my run time, and increase my reps of the other exercises. I have 90 days (so do the guys at work), before I will "test" myself again to see how I improved.

Here's my baseline results:

Push-ups: 6 (equals 25 pts for me)

Sit-ups: 21 (equals 34 pts for me)

Pull-ups: 0 (equals 0 pts for me)

Run: 21:35 minutes (equals 10 pts for me)

Baseline Score: 69 out of a possible 400

*Oh, I should mention that the pull-ups are something the Marines add in. They aren't included in the link above. The guys at work basically made up their own scoring for pull-ups.

Now I'm working out and running to try and improve my score. I don't think I'll reach 400 points ever, nevertheless in 90 days, but I want to at least be able to "pass" by the army standards.

Passing means I need a score of 60 in each category and a minimum score of 180 (excluding pull-ups). That means, at a minimum, I need to be able to do:

Push-ups: 17

Sit-ups: 45

Pull-ups: 5 (my own personal goal)

Run: 20:30 minutes

I think it's all very possible. I actually want to be able to do the run in under 20 minutes. Well i want to exceed all of these "passing" scores. We will see! I'll update in mid-August. :)

Has anyone else ever tried this type of workout?