Pictures from the Graduation Celebration

Last week was graduation for my two village dicipleship classes, “Becoming a Contagious Christian” and “Christ in You” There’s actually 4 classes that are taught in the villages during the week. I teach two and Rebecca also teaches two. Each class had their own graduation party where we handed out certificates to all that faithfully attended followed by free barbeque for everyone.

Teaching 2 classes a week was a bit tough at tims because it’s hard enough to keep projects on schedule working 40 hour weeks, but with these classes I’m out of the office from 2-6 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That said…. it proved to be well worth it. I can’t begin to tell you how much the Lord blessed me during these 4 months. Apart from my growthing closer to the Lord it was such a blessing to see the growth of the students throughout the term. When the students shared testimonies on graduation is was so encouraging to hear what they had to say. There were times during the year when I would just sit and wonder if I was getting through to people. It’s funny how things work out because the ones I didn’t think I was reaching were some of the ones that gave some of the most powerful testimoines. Just goes to show you that God is much bigger than me.

Pictures of “The Workshop”

I’m proud to annouce the Grand Opening of the Thrive Africa’s newly renovated gift shop… aka “The Workshop”. During the winter months (summer time in the states) we open up our gift shop to mission teams we host to buy a variety of South Africa nicknacks, Botswana baskets as well as some Thrive Africa gear. This year our gift shop is totally redesigned, mostly because we had to start from from strach since the old gift shop had been turned into new offices. One of the only places we had left on the property to use as a giftshop was our old workshop building. It turned out to be a great fit… once we filled the cracks in the walls to stop the crazy winter wind and built a cutter to stop water from running all along the floor of the building. It took some very hard work, but in the end we’re all very proud of what it looked like when everything was finally done.

Pictures from the Camp (Thrive Africa website)

We had over 100 women our women’s camp a few weeks ago. The camp was open to pastors’ wives and women in ministry. The women were challenged to rise up and play their role as spiritual leaders in the community. Our guest speakers included Jana Lackey and Linda Madeksho from Love Botswana who spoke powerful messages. There was no doubt that God was moving the lives of these women as they were here. Please pray they that stay ignited with God’s passion so that can go out and change their communities.

Pictures from painting day

A couple weeks ago I managed to pull myself out of bed on a Saturday morning and head into Qwa Qwa for a little painting party at our Leadership Summit office. Along with Matt, Ang, and all the Leadership Summit coaches we swept, dusted, painted, and even did some much needed lawn work on a building a local school has “allowed” us to use for the time being. We use the building for our weekly training and preperation for the following weeks teaching in 8 different public schools. We are now teaching over 1400 kids each week. The building has been a great resource that allows us to meet with our Ledership Summit coaches (teachers) in a centralized location on a weekly basis.

The Lion Park that is. Check out some pictures of the cutest little lion cubs during my recent trip to a local lion park.

It’s been getting colder and colder over the last couple weeks so it was only a matter of time before the snow started falling. Well, today was that day. Being a Florida native snow is a rare site for me so I had no problem going outside and frezzing my butt off for a second to get a quick picture. It is worth mentioning that right after the picture I ran back inside and sat in front of a fire… remember I’m from Florida I’m used to the sun