This past weekend was quite a tiring one for me. For some reason I took on the task of repainting one of the offices here we call the Fishbowl. The room got its name because more than half of the building has windows all around it. Apart from the painting we also felt this would also be a great time to move the desks around to better use of the space.

For the paintjob I decided to try the sponge technique, which is something that I’ve never done before. I started with a yellow base color. At this point everyone thought I had no idea what I was doing, which is completely valid, because I didn’t really know how it would turn out. After the bright yellow base I used a pumpkin color for the sponge texture. It turned out pretty darn cool and wasn’t really that hard, though I wouldn’t recommend trying to pull this off in only 2 days. There were a couple late nights I had to pull. So in one LONG weekend the Fishbowl took on a whole new Africa look that thankfully everyone else likes.

Check out some of these pictures from recent safari trips. There are some pretty amazing shots in here… and no I didn’t take all these pictures.

There were four birthdays this month that mean quite a lot to me. Two of the birthdays belong to people I’ve never even met yet while the other two I’ve known since I can remember. Two of my best friends each had a baby this month. Kevin and Keena Finn gave birth to Aubry, a beautiful baby girl with a full head of hair. No seriously, I mean a full head of hair. Not far behind, Jason and Shelli Scarborough brought into this world a bouncing baby boy named Cooper. I’m totally bummed I won’t be able to see these kids until their 5 months old. It’s times like this that I miss being this far away from my friends.

Another person with a birthday this past month is my younger brother. Though I didn’t really appreciate him as much as I should have in my younger years (because I was an idiot and thought he was never cool enough) he’s a pretty amazing guy. He’s four years younger, but still managed to buy a house before me and makes more money now than I ever did. I know I can learn a lot from this kid… young man.

Oh yeah, I celebrated my 28th birthday this August, no worries if you didn’t know. To be honest I’m not that good at remembering people’s either. It’s a little bit scary to think I’m only 2 years away from 30. Luckily, I can check “move to Africa” off my list of things to do.

Well, the search for my perfect South Africa vehicle is still underway. I had my heart set on a Jeep Wrangler, but with prices around $20,000 for a 1998 Jeep with about 100,000 miles on it my dreams are fading fast. I’ve broadened my search to vehicle called a Jeep Willy. It’s about half the price and looks just like a Jeep Wrangler, but doesn’t have much on the inside. They are actually old Army trucks with a Jeep body on it. I can’t believe I’m going to pay $10,000 for a car with no power steering.

Don’t believe me about the prices check out AutoTrader South Africa.

I got bored the other day and did a Google search for my name. To my surprise and excitement all 10 results on the first page were about me. The links varied from pages on my blog, a site that featured one of my emails and the infamous Capernaum Cribs video.

Other random links Google found were results in a triathlon I did about 2 years ago, a site I helped a friend build and unfortunately a registration list from a Halo tournament I entered when I was 15. Ok, I was 26.

(Baby lions at a lion park)

On of the promises I made to myself and many others was to update my blog at least twice a week. Sounds easy right? Well I’ve gone about a week and a hlf now without making a single post. I don’t want to make excuses, but I’ve simply been too busy to sit down and collect my thoughts to put into words what God’s been revealing to me lately (I’ll save that for my next big email). Instead I’m going to share with you my “to-do list” from the last couple of weeks so you can see what’s been keeping me away from my blog.

- Prepare AIDS curriculum for printing (50 pages - cover page)
- Cover for village classes - Christ in You & Love, Sex, and Relationships
- T-shirt design for Youth Camps
- Interpreter Camp Flyer
- Youth Camp Flyers
- Hand in Hand Conference Flyers
- Drive mission team to village for evangelism (2 full days)
- Drive mission team to lion park (bonus)
- Drive mission team to Airport and stay overnight for Safari (bonus #2)

Training documents:
- How to use the projector (setting it up with DVD player and laptop, etc.)
- How to change printer cartridges in all printers
- How to operate the DVD player (plugging it in, functions, etc.)
- What to do/check when the internet is not working
- What to do/check when you can’t get on the network/server.
- How to print on mailing labels (page and printer set-up, etc.)

- And, figure out logistics to get container imported from America.

So as you can see I’ve definitely had my hands full over the last couple of weeks and those are just the things I can remember off the top of my head. It’s important to note that I’m not complaining about all this work I love it, but I am sorry that it comes at cost of my updates. I will try my best to keep you all up to date as much as possible in the future.

Crap! I can’t believe I have only 8 more days for me to get out my August email.

As I might have told most of you already there isn’t all that much TV to watch over here. Tuesday night is the only “Must See TV” night with Alias and CSI:Miami back to back. With the picking so slim I will watch just about anything that’s on one of the 10 channels we get. The TV stations must know this because we acually have a channel over here that is totally dedicated to South African Idol. That’s right, it shows nothing but the raw uncut auditions of everyone who wants to be the new Idol in South Africa. You really start to feel for the judges after a while because I’ll watch an hour or so at a time and not see anyone that gets the go ahead for the next round. The think the worst part is that since it’s uncut even the bad singers go for a minute of two before the judges stop them. It’s painful, but at the same time really funny.

My June email newsletter has been featured at Campaign Monitor. This is my second email to get featured on this site. The Thrive Africa email got featured last month.