Hans is in Swaziland!

I dropped Hans at the airport on Saturday and he began his first international speaking trip! He is spending the week in Swaziland teaching in the School of Biblical Studies that is currently running at the YWAM base there. His topic is the book of Mark. There are 12 students in the school from both Swaziland and other parts of the world (South Africa, USA, Brazil...)

I know he would appreciate your prayers for his lectures (he taught today... Monday... and also teaches Tuesday and Thursday.) He'll give you more info on his time when he returns! (He flies back to Cape Town on Friday.)

This picture is of a building at the Swaziland YWAM base.

A few facts about Swaziland:

• It is a small nation that is almost entirely surrounded by South Africa, with a small portion bordering Mozambique.




• It's one of the last kingdoms in the world. The king of Swaziland has 18 wives, and counting! (This is a picture of the king with one of his wives.)
  
  
  
• 46% of the population of Swaziland is under the age of 14.
• Swaziland has the highest HIV infection rate in the world (figures range from 40% to 50% of the population.)
• It is a beautiful mountainous country, sometimes referred to as the Switzerland of Southern Africa.

Near Break In

Recently Hans and I got to experience the crime that South Africa is famous for. Burglaries pick up around the holidays and the building our apartment is in was no exception this holiday season. The other apartments in our building are rented out as vacation rentals, and the thieves must have noticed the guests moving in and out with their luggage and laptops. Thieves broke in to two of the other holiday apartments two days in a row, stealing 3 laptops. The third morning we woke up at 530am to two guys in the process of trying to rip the burglar bars out of one of our windows, which wasn't too difficult considering the rusty nails and corroded wood. But thankfully they made a lot of noise and woke us up. Hans scared them off before they could get into the house. We got the local private security company involved, and they said they saw the guys running away, but they didn't catch them. They were almost certainly junkies looking for something to sell to buy drugs.

That day, Hans proceeded to reinforce all the burglar bars in our house by replacing the rusty screws and added more locks to our front door. It needed to be done, and this close call was all the motivation he needed!

All this to say, we appreciate your prayers for safety! We've been doing surprisingly well, not feeling unsafe or having trouble sleeping. And we haven't had any more trouble. Here's a pic of our damaged burglar bars, and Hans on the rampage with a screw driver.

Christmas Day

Those of you who receive our Friday Photos have already seen these pics, but we wanted to post them here anyhow... double the enjoyment!

On Christmas Day we had a wonderful celebration at the home of our Pastor and his wife. They invited approx 30 people over for lunch and we had a huge spread of both our traditional food (they were being considerate of their North American guests!) and African food. Besides turkey and stuffing, we had all kinds of meats including beef, ham and chicken and all kinds of sides (pap, curried carrots, salads, rice, spinach, etc). We spent the whole afternoon at their home, enjoying conversation, singing, and even a little dancing. We really enjoyed ourselves!

1st pic: Hans and James carving the Turkey

2nd pic: a group from Cameroon (plus our student, Collins from Zambia in the front)

3rd pic: Hans and Nick cutting up the watermelon.

Kirstenbosch Candlelight Christmas Carol Singalong

We are back from our camping trip! Before we get to those pictures, we wanted to post a few other Christmas pictures:

We began our Christmas break on December 19 by going to a Candlelight Christmas Carol Sing-along in the park... at Kirstenbosch Gardens in Cape Town. Kirstenbosch is a beautiful botanical garden/park with a huge amphitheatre where they have picnic concerts every Sunday in the summer. Another annual tradition is this concert, which consists of thousands of people enjoying picnics in the park, and then, when darkness begins to fall, lighting their individual candles (in white paper bags to look like luminaries) and singing Christmas Carols and hearing the Christmas story. It's not advertised as a Christian event (it's put on by Rotary International) but all the songs are traditional Christian Carols and the whole Christmas story is told straight from the Bible (interspersed with appropriate songs). At the end, a pastor from one of the churches in Cape Town gives a short, evangelical message and then the evening is ended with "Silent Night." We went with several of our students and enjoyed a magical evening celebrating the birth of Jesus.