Funny Things

OK this is not going to be a typical blog rather a few random things that have happened the last few days. First thing yesterday we woke up and took out the trash only to find a homeless man eating leftovers out of the neighbors trash.  So…we put out our trash and out and a few moments later this man had torn apart our trash bags, made a huge mess and way laying under the tree taking a nap. 

I cannot tell you how many men we have seen peeing on the streets.

Across the street from our house on Sunday the bus stop was turned into an informal gathering place for several black South Africans and I heard the most beautiful singing coming from that place. Then the police drove by and it all stopped.

Yesterday we were feeding our friends dogs and the buggars got out and before I knew it Aly was gone . She had been out of the car and I did not see her run off nor did I see the dogs get out. All I knew is that Darrell yelled from the back if I had seen the dogs and when I turned to ask Alyssa about it she was gone. Panic ran though my body and Darrell and I starting frantically searching fo her by car. 10 minutes went by and we would not find her. I was praying so hard that I thought my head would explode. Here we are in an unfamiliar country, she did not have a cell phone and this place and be quite dangerous especially for a cute, young girl all alone.  Needless to say we did find her and the stinkin’ dogs.

We went to the local pizza place for dinner the other night and when the owner found out what we were doing in SA he gave us our dinner for free and said he would like to partner with us on doing some projects in the Transkei and getting some local kids involved. Very cool!

Brent and Alyssa’s surfing lessons are going great and they are finally ready to get out on the waves on Tuesday. Oh what a beautiful, funny, painful, hurting and amazing place we now live.

Sunday, hallelujah!

Pictured above is our braai area in our house and darrell, Brent and Dan at our first official Oceans of Mercy braai.

Today we went to Gonubie Baptist Church. Driving to the church we saw our new friends Pierre and Leigh and their children walking to the church. They were kind enough to sit with us and introduce us to the pastor and youth pastor after service. The church was definitely not Westside but still there was a beauty to the place. It reminded me of the church I grew up in where the pastor knew everybody’s name, when the pews were wooden and the songs were more traditional. During the service there was a member of the congregation who stood up to give an update on his mission work in the Transkei (the very place Darrell and I will be doing most of our work). Then an announcement was made about an American mission team that was being hosted by the church who was going to be doing work in several of the schools in East London and there was an invitation for anyone in the congregation to join with them in their work when the team arrived in mid-November. It struck me that God has been at work in this place long before I ever arrived and will continue to be working here long after I am gone. The executive director in me was already plotting of ways I could get this congregation to join in partnering with Oceans of Mercy. After all, the people in this church live here, this is their country and these are their people and it occurred to me what a huge asset it is to the kingdom of heaven when the believers of this world unite and seek one another out to fulfill His purpose. The church has a youth ministry and they do activities every Friday night. I am praying that the kids will go with willing hearts and get involved. Alyssa is very 13 at the moment so please be praying for all of us! Brent is studying hard in the hopes that he will be skipped up a grade in January when the new school year begins. Darrell and I are supportive of this effort and truly believe this is an attainable goal. Tomorrow we are headed to Port Elizabeth to help stock the soup kitchens and so that Darrell and I will know where each one is located. We still have not found a car and will most definitely have to increase our planned budget to buy a safe, reliable car for me to drive. So far every car that we have looked at in our price range needs holes in the floor so that the people riding in the car and make it run Flintstone style! We have signed up for a phone and internet and will hopefully have it in a month. In the meantime, I will do my very best to post an update every few days.

Dilemma

We have settled into our new place and are finding ways to make it feel like home.  We were so blessed when we moved in because the owner of the house had 2 housekeepers that he employed full time. He did not have enough work for them to do so he had them work at our house. They helped do the ironing (which there was a ton of because we brought everything over in vacuum seal bags), laundry and cleaning (no dishwashers here).  Here’s my dilemma…these two awesome women, Nancy and Mavis, are losing their jobs. I would LOVE to employ one of the ladies to help with the housework once a week. The cost would be about $12 and I am struggling with whether or not to do this. First let me say that I am no domestic diva and did have someone in the US that I paid to clean my house once a week so I have absolutely no problem having someone else in my home helping out. Hiring one of these ladies would be a huge help to me and would help keep food on their table.  Here is the dilemma, we are sponsored to be here by amazing, awesome men and women who are making a monetary sacrifice to allow us to serve God in the mission field. Is it good stewardship to use some of that money to employ someone to help do a task that I am fully capable of doing but totally dislike doing? I have made the pro and con argument to myself for the last several days. It could be good stewardship if by having someone to clean and do laundry and ironing (there are very few dryers here because of the high cost of electricity) once a week frees me to do more ministry or to do it better.  It could be bad stewardship if people who sponsor us feel that by hiring a helper we are wasting their funds and decide to stop supporting our family.  It is so strange to be in this position…to have to think of spending $12 dollars so deeply.

I am attaching some pictures of our totally awesome new house. You cannot begin to know all of the doors God has been opening for us over here. We are staying in a much nicer house that we should be able to afford all because the owner reduced the rent because he felt we would care for and respect his property as he is moving out of the country. The home owners have sold to us nearly everything we need to run a house at ½ the price that we can buy in the stores. We were blessed to have Nancy and Mavis help get our household organized and ready when we moved in.  The owners of the Bed and Breakfast (Pierre and Leigh) we were staying at when we arrived are letting us use bookshelves, people all around town are keeping they eyes out for a car for us and call us regularly with leads. Some of you may know that my favorite sound is the sound of children laughing, singing and playing without inhibition.  Our new home is next door to a daycare center and I hear these sweet little children singing all day.  I had really hoped that we could find a house with a lemon tree and an avocado tree. Our new home has a lemon tree in the back yard and our neighbor to the back has an avocado tree that some of the branches droop into our yard and we are able to pick avocados from.  God is in the details of our lives so apparently right now.  We are so blessed.

Agee’s vs. Bread Machine

So this AM I had a song buzzing through my head as is the case many mornings.  Today it was “Living in America”.  This occurring as I headed to the shower at 6 AM as the light was shining in waking me up.  By the way, no daylight savings time in Africa.  0430 sun is coming up and 0830 sun is going down.  Gives us a glimpse into what many of our grandparents generation must have experienced, but I digress.  After humming a few bars, singing in my head and under my breath as not to disturb the owners of the Bed & Breakfast – and I do mean DISTURB.  I looked around at my surroundings, the tiled bathroom the exposed plumbing and electrical, and turned on the gravity fed shower and chuckled at my minds choice of songs.  Still a good song, but not so appropriate for this American… at least for a while. 

Another funny from yesterday was our first solo bread purchase, now many of you may think this is a bit silly but here is the story.  Bread is not sliced and prepackaged as it is the U.S.  At our first store we bought bread the “bread attendant” sliced it for us and we did not have the forethought to observe the process carefully.  We bagged the unsliced bread and proceeded to the checkout line to make the purchase.  Checkout was smooth, no hang-ups or snags for us there.  Then we both saw the bread cutting machine at the doorway and we quickly glanced at each other the hesitation evident on both our faces.  We smiled at each other reassuringly as we approached the machine.  It is a rather large affair to cut bread about the size of a small chest freezer with two large arms sticking out from the side much like a handle for some farm implement that requires all your strength to manage.  Stainless steel bars with saw blades for the business end of the machine and a label of thick cut and thin cut on the face.  Jennifer being the braver of us pulled the bread from the bag and placed it on the front of the machine and we began surveying our options of how to slice our bread.  I believe we were both hoping for some automation to take place as we both just watched for a brief moment as the machine did nothing.  I looked to the back of it for some insipiration while Jen took the front and neither of us could figure it out.  Much to our relief and a bit of embarrassment a checker had been watching us from the counter and decided to take pity on the foreigners.  She came over and quickly placed the bread in the back of the hopper and pulled the lever quickly pushing the bread through the saw blades to the front of the machine.  As if she were dealing with true simple folk she then picked up the loaf and placed it on the bagging area and slipped it efficiently into the bag completing the procedure with a practiced ease.  We just looked at her and the cashier and shrugged and smiled and they smiled and giggled a little too.  We have no doubt that we were the topic of conversation once we walk out of the store.  As we ate our PB&J for breakfast we remembered this story and had to laugh at ourselves.  We thanked her many times and left the store hopefully a bit wiser… so words to the wise, see the bread attendant and observe on when you come to visit the Agee’s in Africa.

We Gotsa House but No Stinkin’ Car

So We totally thought the car purchase would be one of our easiest hurdles but it has proven to be a pain and MUCH more expensive that we planned. Please pray that God will be with us in the details of buying Darrell’s truck and my hooptie car.  Thank you for all of the awesome comments…you cannot begin to know what they mean to us!

Differences

Several people have asked what some of the differences are between the US and South Africa. Here are some of the things we have learned or observed so far. On a side note, we have been invited by the owners of the B&B we are staying out to have a Braai (cookout) with them on Friday night. We are very excited to hang out with them and get to know them better. Another cool thing that happened today is that a woman hugged me and thanked us for coming to South Africa at the grocery store today. We signed a lease on an awesome home today. The house was a bed and breakfast and the owners re moving to Australia.  They tried selling with no success and agreed to lower rent because we are trustworthy and because we would take their 2 dogs…yep…you heard right. We now have 2 dogs names Chompers and Chippy! Please pray we find a great car in our price range.  The used cars here are much more expensive than we planned. The photo above is of our very first puchase in South Africa, food and in the photo is our new freind Krisit Fair who is also working with Oceans of Mercy.  She and her husband have made our transition so smooth and we are eternally grateful to them.  OK…here’s the differences list.

*Gas stations are full service – no exceptions – and their gas prices are controlled by the government therefore no matter what gas station you go to the price is the same

*Stop lights are called robots and it is illegal to make a left turn on red

*Napkins are called serviettes and if you ask for a napkin they will give you a feminine hygiene product

*There are cows in the highway whenever you get outside the city (and donkeys, monkeys…)

*At every stop light in the city there are people there trying to sell you things or begging

*A doctor or surgery center can be opened by anyone including witch doctors and any ol’ person off the street

*Armored truck guards do not have a long life expectancy and carry some seriously scary guns

*Customer service is nearly non-existence

*There are tons of hitchhikers…even under the no hitchhiking signs

*Ketchup tastes totally different but on the plus side they put peri-peri salt or sauce on everything and it is so stinkin’ good and am assured to miss it if we ever leave

*School uniforms are mandatory in all schools

*A hot water heater is called a geezer (I snickered when I heard someone say that their geezer had gone out and thought they were talking about a person)

 *There are no screens on the windows

*They drive on a different side of the road and the steering wheel is on a different side

*No or rare car seat usage

*The currency is called rand and is currently 7.35 rand to the dollar

*Unemployment is 83%

*Kids are much more independent here – there can easily be a 2 or 3 year old running around the streets without real supervision

*They play cricket and rugby like we play baseball and football

*They have a car called a Chico that is a lot like a VW RAbbit and they are everywhere and apparently only come in white and red (haha)

 *A truck is called a bakkie (pronounced buckey)

*They really do say “Cheerio” and “Cheers” and call french fries chips

*KFC is like McDonalds back home…they are everywhere

*If you want a plastic bag at the grocery store you must pay extra for them

*They don’t say for rent they say for let

*Driving down the road you can see elephants, giraffes, zebras, monkeys, warthogs…

*Cookies are called biscuits

*To say thank you or thank you very much in Afrikaans you say “Donkey” or “Buy a donkey”

*To say how are you in Xhosa (pronounced Kosa) you say MmmJohnny

*There are car guards in every parking lot and you tip them for watching your car and helping you back out of your parking spot…many are not official parking guards rather they are men or women who carry a reflective vest in their pocket waiting for an opportunity to earn an few rand since it is the equivalent of .20 or .30 US we usually just pay it as we know they need the money

*Coloured South Africans are ones who have mixed blood between any two races

*At the grocery stores you much have your fruit and veggies weighed and priced by a person who stands and does this in that section of the store

*There are bread slicer machines in the bread section of the store as they have fresh baked bread…mmmm….good

*From what I can tell, there are no preservatives in the food so you better eat it soon after making the purchase

*The refrigerators are tiny, about half the size of ours

*People rarely use clothes dryers as electricity is very expensive

*You must pay a luxury tax to own a television

*They use the metric system and we truly wish that our grade school teachers were right and that the US had made that switch years ago…all this converting is hurting my brain

*Traffic circles are everywhere and are awful…tell Lenexa to quit while they only have a few

*There is a difference between traffic cops and police – the police will not pull you over because that is the job of a traffic cop

*Cars have the right of way…even on the sidewalks

Smells like home

Since my (Jen’s) last blog we went car shopping in Port Elizabeth (PE). PE is about 4 hours away in is a much larger town than we live in and offers more variety, etc. We found a few good options and will go back tomorrow to talk to more dealers and help restock the soup club’s. I am so excited for Alyssa to go to the townships and get a glimpse of why we are here. I know she has a sensitive soul and wonder if it will be overwhelming for her to see such poverty and despair.

Today was Sunday and I was reminded of the way our towns were when I was a kid. The stores were all closed on Sunday and it was a day dedicated to family. It is the same way here and I must say that although it is not convenient, it is wonderful to be forced to stop running and take the time to enjoy your family in this awesome town we are blessed to live in. Gonubie is the cutest stinkin’ town! We woke up this morning and walked down to the beach. There were families everywhere playing cricket, rugby or just playing in the sand. Alyssa has agreed to help me get into better shape so she got me running on the beach. OK…it was more like running, panting, walking, running panting, walking… We came home and got the car and went looking at roadside cars for sale and to the grocery store for veggies. After returning home we went outside to play cards and I noticed it was starting to get chilly so I went to find a sweatshirt in our still packed luggage. I happened to see one on the outside of one of the vacuum seal bags we had packed and when I opened up the bag I immediately got a burst of a familiar smell – home. When I walked back outside everyone else realized I smelled like home and started sniffing my like a dog looking for a familiar scent. I realized then that it may take a while for this place to ever feel like or smell like home and I wondered if there will be a day when we forget what that once familiar scent ever was.

In Darrell’s Words

I have wanted to write a little something on the blog as an encouragement to all other Christians out there. I have not had time due to all the other responsibilities and to my own procrastination, for those of you who know me I am not the “great communicator” like my wife. Throughout this process of gaining both financial and spiritual support for this mission I have had the great opportunity to get to know many of the people on the fringe of my life whom I would consider acquaintances and strangers. I surrounded myself with what I consider to be pretty solid Christians so felt good about all of them. What I really found out in this process is that the Christian faith is still strong unlike what all the conventional wisdom and naysayers may put out. We had people from Craig’s list and at our garage sales who had plenty of encouraging words to say and even provided sponsorship. We had zero negative responses during the entire time. I consider the “are you crazy” response more of an ambiguous one than a negative one by the way, because we received that response from everyone. We also had positive responses of fellow Christians taking further steps in their faith due to our journey and therefore feel blessed to have been a part of their journey even in a small way. So bottom line is, take heart and get to know your neighbors, say hello and have a chat with strangers and invite fellow Christians to a meal, get to know them as it can be a blessing to us all.

Whiny American Mom – “Here!”

So…this is not going to be the best reflection on myself but it is truthful. On Friday, we promised Aly we could eat breakfast on the beach. We slept in and were running late so we made PB&J’s and ran out of the house. We were out all afternoon and ate lunch out. We ate these yummy “pies” that were filled will meat, cheese, etc. It was a tasty treat to be sure and the woman behind the counter did her very best not to laugh out loud in front of me as I tried to pronounce the name of their latest pie creation. Anyway, it had been a long day and we had still not taken Aly to the beach for her meal. I suggested we pick something from the local fish shop that we had heard was cheap and good and take it to the beach to eat dinner. Darrell reminded me that we did not need to blow all of our money on food and I got so irritated. He was right, of course. We had salami and crackers the night before and had some remaining we should have just eaten again but I am still in American mode and wanted our first weekend to be special which in my book equals going out to eat (sad but true).

Some may be wondering why we just did not find something cheap to cook but since we currently do not have a kitchen and are staying in a granny’s quarters that is not an option at the moment. Soon enough we will be in a house and can cook and shop without having to factor in not having a stove.

I truly am upset with myself for being a whiny American. Here I am in a country with children starving all around me and my first instinct is to sulk about not being able to go out to eat. What is wrong with me???? I am one sinful human being with a sinful nature and am so thankful that in all of my brokenness I have a savior that offers me grace instead of punishment and guilt. I only wish it was easy to forgive myself for my selfishness and just let it go.

The night ended with Darrell and the kids going to the beach for dinner. I did help pack them a great picnic basket with salami, cheese and crackers for dinner. I promise that tomorrow when we eat another PB&J for breakfast and salami and crackers for dinner I will give thanks that the Lord has allowed me to go to bed with a full belly. I will choose to rejoice in the fact that my kids are safe and not starving. I will choose not to be a whiny American.

We’ve Arrived!!!

We arrived safe and sound late Monday evening and drove to Gonubie (a town just outside East London). We arrived with all of our bags and most of our sanity. We’ve been staying at a very cute bed and breakfast near the ocean called the Rose and Ale. The only downside is that all 4 of us are sharing a room and we may be reaching our maximum allowable family time. We know that these first few weeks are going to be easy compared to the 80+ hours a week we will soon be working. Here’s a breakdown of what we’ve been up to the last few days. Oh…were 7 hours ahead of our friends in KC…in case you were wondering.

Day 1 – October 12

Arrive, check into bed and breakfast and pass out from exhaustion.

Day 2 – October 13

We met with Daniel Fair (he and his wife Kristi are the other missionaries here) in the morning and set about getting the lay of the land. He took us to the mall area so we would buy SIM cards and minutes for our cell phones. You have to register your cell phones and SIM cards now in South Africa so it may be up to 2 weeks before they activate our phones. We then did a quick drive by the kid’s school – Hudson Park High School and then went to pick up our rental car. I got the cheapest car I could and I must say Darrell looks like he could single handedly pick up the car! We continued our first full day in South Africa by talking with a few rental agents about finding us a home, then drove around town writing down phone numbers for every rental we could find. We ended the day by having pizza (we were going to braii aka cookout but it was raining) at Dan and Kristi’s house and enjoying their awesome company.

Day 3 – October 14

Dan had to travel to Port Elizabeth today to do child sponsorship work so it was our day to hang out with Kristi. We toured Gonubie High School as well as Hudson Park High School where the kids had already been accepted. We were hoping that Gonubie High School was going to be just as awesome as Hudson Park so we would not have a long commute to get them to school in the morning but it was not and the kids will definitely be attending Hudson Park. That made Aly happy as the Gonubie uniforms are orange and black…yep, just like Halloween. The reason we are not living close to the kid’s school is because the school is located in the city of East London and the rent around the school is very high, approximately $1,000/month. We only budgeted for $650! We looked at a few rentals and it looks like we may have actually found a place. Once we make a final decision I will let you all know and post a few pictures. The day ended on an awesome note with a braii at Dan and Kristi’s house. Kristi and Aly painted their nails as we watched the movie Coraline. Aly said that she thought the movie was like a horror movie for kids. Since it looks like we have found a place to live we are going to tackle finding vehicles tomorrow. We found out that we were awarded the grant that we applied for to purchase Darrell’s truck so that has made the weight on my shoulders much lighter. We are so thankful!

*Thank you to everyone who prayed for us as we traveled. We appreciate your continued love and support.

With love,

Jennifer