25 Dec. 3013 - 4 Jan. 2014

Well, I trust the fat man did his thing this Christmas for you and all are happy, fatter and, in most cases, poorer. However, on the positive side, if it were not for the holiday pounds that are acquired with so very little effort during this time of the year, most of us would not ever make any New Year’s resolutions – you know those solemn oaths made with the most earnest commitments and never ever to be broken. The common oath is to lose all of those pounds that mysteriously leaped upon you and grabbed on with a death grip (which generally means they are yours, not unlike a civil marriage vow – until death do you part). However, I don’t think I have ever met anyone who has not experienced a severe case of amnesia in more than two days after the sealing blood has sealed the oath. However, each new day as you awake and with great vigor arise from your slumber leaping upon the floor causing the jolly roll around the midriff to flex itself, a faint glimmer of remembrance pecks away at the interior of your brain, like a chick trying to emerge from its shell, trying to resurrect the oath but to no avail. And thus, we are free for another year. 

Christmas Day at Blue Water Bay

 As I explained before, Christmas is pretty low key here in South Africa and for us; it did not seem much like Christmas this year. However, Angie, in her determination to make it a memorable day, decided that since we were without family and friends, we would pack a lunch and go to the beach. I was reluctant because I thought the beaches would be packed and I just have a basic dislike for the beaches. However, off we went with cooler in hand filled with our ham sandwich, potato chips and Christmas pudding – The Christmas pudding was good and did bring to mind a glimmer of the Christmas spirit.

We drove to an area I thought would have a remote section of beach that would not be packed with people and surprisingly it was not. The people, who were there, were frolicking in the waves, digging in the sand and, in general, delighting in letting the sun cook them to a nice even Christmas red. So we spread out our beach cloth, opened the cooler and smacked our little lippys over our gourmet lunch while the ocean waves played for us their repetitious splish-splash lullaby.

Christmas Dinner at Blue Water Bay

The remainder of the Christmas day was spent hosting the local missionaries while they used our Skype to call their family members. They all had prearranged times to Skype their family members and for most, they were able to connect and have a joyful reunion. However, for a couple it did not turn out so well; either the family member(s) forgot or had more pressing matters to attend to which brought moisture to the eyes of the missionaries – sad. Overall, it was a valuable experience, which will be used to greatly refine the process next time.

I was curious about how South Africans would handle New Years Eve. Were they going to have drinking binges to see who could have the worst headache the next morning, crank up the woofers to a level that would require megaphones to hear one another and excite their vocal cords to mimic laughter and gaiety, or let the evening pass with calm and peacefulness? Well, to my knowledge, everyone in our neighborhood chose the latter except for our neighbors located behind us. Unfortunately, these merry wishers live in a different housing complex than we do which also has its own security gate. Hence, there was no way to communicate with them to attempt to encourage a reduction in the decibels of their woofers and vocal cords. In an effort to disconnect from their festivities, we retrieved a movie the previous tenants left here, cranked up the volume and enjoyed a bag of popcorn. Sometime after midnight, the sandman took pity on us and we both drifted off into dreamland.

Now we look forward to the remainder of this 2014 year with excitement for what might be in store for us. There is so much work to do and hopefully we will be successful in helping many people to change their lives for the better. It would be easy to dedicate the rest of our lives to this work and as a result, we are anxious for each new day to begin, knowing that somewhere the Lord has someone for us to assist to become self-reliant both temporally and spiritually.

               Our last Career Workshop for 2013
                  Held at Motherwell, So. Africa