Hey everyone,

I'm taking a
break from the stories I've been sharing the last few weeks to just give you a
quick update. I hope and pray this finds everyone doing well and that you aren't
too cold. We now have a little over three months left in Nsoko. Time is flying
by though many days still feel slow. We have debrief, a time to relax and be
encouraged by some of our leaders that are flying over from the states, in two
weeks.  This also means a trip to South
Africa and faster internet! Yay!

This past week
a friend of Jon's was here, Richard. We ended up doing things as normal for the
first few days and then chased giraffes at a nearby game park. We also visited
another game park further away and saw hippos for the first time in the ‘wild'.
Then Jon and I accompanied Richard back to Johannesburg, South Africa and took
a few busses back to Swaziland. Yesterday was Lila's birthday and although it
didn't start out that way it became quite eventful.

We decided to
watch a few episodes of Grey's Anatomy (we bought the 5^th season for
Lila while we were in South Africa). In the middle of this, one of our South
Africa Novas teammates opened the door to our room. Three of them had caught a
ride to visit us for the day with some World Racers (another AIM program) that
wanted to visit Nsoko again. Such a welcome surprise!

A few minutes
later Jon came in and said that Pastor Gift had called and that we were being
asked to go to a party for some the gogos (grandmothers) of the area. At what time?
It starts at 11:00. At that point it was 11:03...hmm so TIA. ;)

We went to the
gogo party, then had church, then decided quite quickly to go to Nisela's for
dinner with the World Racers and our South Africa teammates. We knew we were
low on gas, but we didn't know just how low and we ran out. We pushed the car
off the bridge we were on and to the side of the road. Bryan and Garret (South Africa
teammate) went to go get gas. They came back but by this time they had to leave
so that they would get across the border before it closed. We went on to go get
more gas at the next town. Always an adventure.