Mar 18, 2010 | Baby Photos, Stories
Hero Hub’s parents left bright and early this morning. I am so so so glad they came to visit. There were a lot of special moments. I teared up when Gun-guh (Bear’s name for Grandpa) took the Bear for one more stroll yesterday evening. And last night the Bear decided to demonstrate his mastery over the skill of walking, both hands pressed flat against his belly, chin tucked in, toddling around the flat while we enjoyed our meal together. Gun-muh tried and tried to capture a picture but he was just too fast!
We got him up to say goodbye this morning and it was tough to know that he didn’t really understand what was going on.
I was teary during our prayers at breakfast, thanking the Lord for the time we shared and praying they’ll have a safe trip home to Bloemfontein. And as the Bear enjoyed his bottle of milk just before his nap, HH said “Grandma and Grandpa are on their way back to Bloemfontein. I really hope you’re going to have memories of them.”
That did it.
The combination of a busy and wonderful visit, the reminder of how much I miss my family back in the States, my sister with my new baby niece entering the scene almost 10,000 miles away yes I checked, and the hot water heater having gone on strike was enough to give me a few tears, and a realisation that I need to sit still for while. Some of these things feel like great gain, some a great part of the cost of this endeavour.
God is so good. I am so thankful that Mark’s parents were able to join us and spend some time with us, and especially the Bear. This was the #2 factor in our decision to move to South Africa, only preceded by a desire to listen and submit to the direction of God. Seeing what we came for happen in reality is awesome, and I think that’s how we’re going to feel when we start blessing people with shoes next month.
I have some Bible verses I’d like to converse about a little later, and a desire to request more input from you. Mayhaps?
In the meantime, just give a moment — with all the joy, the hustle-bustle, the laughs and the tears around here, my heart’s in the recovery room.
xCC
Mar 16, 2010 | South Africa, Travel..ling Tuesdays
Happy Tuesday! I hope your week is going grrreat! Hero Hub’s folks are still here and we went down to the Strand beachfront yesterday, so his Dad could buy a pellet gun, and the Bear could have a little swim. Strand (Afrikaans for “Beach”) is the next town over from Gordon’s Bay, if you’re headed towards Cape Town. So we were at die strand at Strand. 🙂
I took a few quick shots of the market, and lots at the beach. Hope you approve.
Here’s hubs and his folks haggling for the pellet gun. I didn’t want to get too close because our nice camera might’ve made them decide we could afford to pay more.
See the bit of mountain in the background? That’s the same set of mountains you see in lots of the pics in Gordon’s Bay. Does that help orientate you?  Good, you know where we are. Let’s press on.
This is something we haven’t quite figured out yet.
Where does this stuff come from? Why is it so cheap? Yes, that’s Oil of Olay…Centrum…Head and Shoulders…??? It doesn’t feel right to buy this stuff here, knowing that it is very likely that the people who worked hard to create these products will not be getting a cut. That’s our guess anyway.
Would you like to see a little more “marketing?”
Where do these things come from? These girls are selling them too…
Where else can you buy a leather belt, fake crocs, an Australian flag and an Arsenal (Emirates) soccer jersey, all in one store?
And just a few doors down you can get a Hannah Montana backpack! Hot!
Okay. So I was mistaken. I actually took a lot of pictures in the market. And now I need to make lunch for every body. I woke up this morning dreaming about making proper southern biscuits. (For my British and South African friends, I don’t mean something like cookies–they’re more like scones or rolls).  And so I need to get started because we’re having some for lunch! Will you forgive me if we pick up the Strand Travelling Tuesday with a Part Two next week? I took some pretty pictures and it’ll be worth the wait, I’m sure!
xCC
Mar 12, 2010 | South Africa
Oh my friends! I have so many thoughts to share with you and things I’d like to ask your opinion about, but at the moment I am enjoying the company of my mother and father-in-law, visiting from exotic Bloemfontein! Plus there is the issue of working on making this website a pretty place for you to come and visit now that I have integrated the ads from BlogHer. What a challenge! (Btw, if you have any design skills and would like to help make this a prettier place, let me know!)
I thought I would just give you a taste of the loveliness of enjoying grandparents with the Bear — as I’ve told you before, there is just something special about seeing grandparents and grandchildren together that tugs at my heart strings!  We’ll be enjoying this slice of life for a few more days…
Clearly the Bear is being polite and not smiling because he has a mouthful of food.
We just need to convince Hero Hub’s sister to come for a visit at the same time and we really will have the whole gang (that lives inside South Africa) here!
HH and I will even have a date night tonight with Gun-guh and Granny holding down the fort! Our first one this year! More to come, but in the meantime, do you have any special traditions you’d like to share when you get the gang together?
xCC
Mar 6, 2010 | Baby Photos, Stories
As promised…I have a great story to share! Part of the reason it’s great is because of readers like you! Shall we get started?
So. My Mom sent a gift, a Happy 18 Months, Bear! slash we didn’t get to see each other at Christmas slash Happy Valentine’s sort of gift. She is great like that. And as I shared with you previously, there was drama surrounding the receiving of said gift, involving a very high customs and duties fee being demanded by South African Revenue Service (SARS). We were at the end of a tight month, really working to stay inside our budget, and five days away from payday, the thought of the gift being held ransom was rather discouraging. And I shared all that with you.
What I hadn’t shared yet was that over the course of those few days when we were discouraged and trying to figure out what to do, I was spending time reading the Bible (I like to do that, ya know) and I found myself in I Peter 2, which has a discussion of the importance of submitting to government. For a few days we’d been speaking with FedEx and their South African partners Supaswift, we’d been on the phone to SARS, and we’d been on the internet trying to discern whether we were actually being correctly charged for my Mom’s gift, since they were asking close to 70% of the gift’s declared value. At one point, FedEx made the suggestion that we could change the customs form to read ZAR 200.00 (meaning 200 South African Rand) instead of $200. And then no customs would be due. To say the least, this felt dodgy.  We also considered sending the package back to the US and having friends who are coming next month bring it over. But that didn’t seem much different.
So back to 1 Peter 2. This passage says, Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good. It goes on to say Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the King. I flipped over to Romans 13 after reading this, to be reminded again that the Lord does indeed instruct us to submit to government. And then I remembered when Jesus and Peter were visiting the temple and they were asked to pay the temple tax. Even though Jesus was greater than the temple, being the Son of God and all, still he sent Peter to the lake to catch a fish, and the fish had a coin in its mouth which would pay the tax.
All of that combined to indicate to me that we should pay the fines, even though they seemed exorbitant and ridiculous. The prayer that followed this was: Lord, You provided the coin in the mouth of the fish for Peter to pay taxes, even though it didn’t seem right. Will you please provide for us to pay the taxes due for the gift from my mother? Help us to submit and properly obey the government here.
And so He did. Without seeing it in any way connected, I shared with you my discouragement about what was going on. Five minutes after this blog post hit the web, I received a Facebook message from a friend who said “Do you have a PayPal account? I’d like to send you some spendable encouragement.” Within twenty minutes we’d been blessed with a financial gift which was just $40 shy of what we needed for the taxes. ENCOURAGEMENT, HELLO OLD FRIEND! But the story doesn’t end there!
The next morning I received an email from other friends who said they wanted to pay for us to be able to receive the gift, and they asked how much we needed. I wrote them back and sad “We’ve already been blessed with this much, and we only need this much more, but really we can cover it ourselves. If you really want to give you can, but you don’t have to worry about it.” There was of course other dialogue and thank you’s but I don’t need to tell you that since you know how long winded I am. I had been encouraged by the gift the night before, and all your emails and comments and messages, and I was full of trust that it was going to come together fine.
AND THEN! The next day I had a voicemail from my Mom saying “Your big brother read your blog and heard about what happened with your gift and he was upset that you were discouraged! He is going to put thus and such in your bank account so don’t you worry! You’re going to get your present!” As you can imagine, this brought me to tears. I didn’t even know my brother read my blog! haha Seriously, I was just really, deeply blessed by this. It has been lonely at times being in a new country, far away from family, friends and familiarity, and this moment just made me feel so surrounded and in community, even if a lot of it is virtual community right now.
Hear me out on this: You might like to chalk this up to coincidence or serendipity, but I have experienced too much coincidence in my life to call it that any more. We told God we would trust Him and walk in His ways, and we asked for His help so that we could do so. And with exceeding abundance, He provided more than enough…in more ways than one!
On Tuesday, my Mom’s gift finally arrived…along with two others! My friend Amiee also sent us a gift, maybe two or three weeks before my Mom sent hers, and Samaritan’s Feet sent us some documents and copies of our founder’s new book…and all of it coincidentally arrived on Tuesday. We opened our gifts and were just so blessed by so much generosity at a time when things have been tight…it was like a second Christmas!
To me, all this is a demonstration of God’s blessing and provision for us when we choose to walk in His ways. Although submitting to the government and paying those fees seemed like a rubbish idea at first, yet the Lord did provide for us to do so, and allowed us to walk with Him through the process. And that, my friends, is the Sermon in a Nutshell.
Since this post has gotten a little long (no surprise there) I’m going to “to be continued” to fill another post with good cheer, happy photos and general prezzie merriment! To arrive in your browser or inbox or google reader very soon! Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. Again and again, thanks.
xCC
P.S. If you’re wondering why the Bear’s outfit changed from picture 1 to picture 2, it’s because we had a little accident that necessitated a gear change and we decided he should sport his new gear for the next set of photos! 🙂
Mar 3, 2010 | Baby Photos, Stories
At first I spelled that “Sneek Peak” and then stared at it and wondered why spell check didn’t agree with me. Anyway! When it rains it pours. And yesterday, the gift heard ’round the world arrived. And. We received not one, not two, but THREE packages from the States on the same day. Crazy, I know.
I have to make much ado about it and put together a big long post because #1 There’s a great testimony behind it. #2 Do you know how much it costs to send anything from the States to South Africa? #3 My Mom is awesome and you could probably create a whole other blog just about her. #4 My friend Amiee sent a surprise gift (three weeks earlier) which miraculously arrived on the same day and was also DELIGHTFUL. #5 Who doesn’t want to see pictures of a second Christmas, in March?
Now a post like that is gonna take some time to put together. I mean I have pictures of the Fed Ex delivery guys for you and everything. And you are probably aware that I’m not good at making a long story short. But in the meantime, I thought I’d give you a Sneak Peek (or a Sneek Peak if you rather) because this picture was just too darlin’ not to throw up on the internet asap.  So here’s your Sneek Peak!
Now you can get back to whatever it was you were up to before this came across your screen, and I’ll have some more Christmas-in-March-delights to share with you soon.
xCC
I create resources to help people find deeper, more meaningful relationships with God through pursuing, pondering, and prayer. The "Shop" link above will take you to the home of many of the lovely resources I’ve created to help you keep walking one day deeper with Jesus.