It’s exciting to see that over 100 Thrive Africa DVD’s have been requested from our website and subsequently mailed out. The DVD was made last year and even though I didn’t do any of the filming I did get to design the case. It’s a great DVD that goes really good job of introducing people to the ministry and what we’re all about. We put up the “Request a DVD” page late last year so it’s been encouraging to see that so many people now have our DVD in their video collection.

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Man, how I love me some tuna fish. It’s easy to make, healthy, and a pretty cheap meal. So when I first came in to South Africa I was thrilled they had StarKist Tuna and Hellmann’s mayonnaise. The only two ingredients needed to create this wonderful meal. The problem… the Hellmann’s mayonnaise tastes nothing like American Hellmann’s mayonnaise. I tried making the meal a few times, but it was no where near the same and actually quite bad. So, I was thrilled that I got to bring back 3 large jars of American mayonnaise with me to South Africa. I think I’ve already had about 10 tuna fish sandwiches. As good as it is I need to slow down a bit or I’m going to go through all my stash in about 4 months.

I was lucky enough to be able to spend the entire month of February back in the states taking a little break from ministry work and also getting to see my family and friends. I can’t begin to tell you how much fun it was to see everybody. As I mentioned in a previous post I got to do a lot of fun things. A few of the top ones would have to be seeing my dad get married, going to the Daytona 500, being around friends that inspire me , hearing about my brothers internship at a local radio station, going to New York… the list actually goes on and on.

I guess at the end of the day it was simply just great to see people that I hadn’t seen in over a year and hear what was going on in their lives. It was just so encouraging to have so many people, even strangers care so much about what I’m doing. It truly was joyful to be back. I’m really starting to understand what Paul was talking about when he wrote some of his letters to the people supporting him and how it was their faith that encouraged him so much. 1 Thessalonians 3: 7-10

I know it sounds crazy, but I literally had to schedule time to hang out with my friends and family, because I knew if I didn’t it wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t mind it that much, but it just seem a bit odd that I had to plan out a vacation day that went something like… morning - work on ministry newsletter, afternoon - steam clean carpets at my rental property, evening - dinner with friends, late evening - head over to Tom’s for some Halo 2. I guess there are some things I’m still learning come with being a missionary. I was hoping for a little vacation time during my vacation, but alas, I guess not.

The Gators have done it again… National Champs! This time it’s a repeat for the basketball title. Not since Duke in 92′ has a team one a back-to-back titles. I really can’t believe this is the third time I get to write about the Gators being National Champs. Just recently in January it was for the football title, then a year ago it was for basketball. I’m kind of getting used to this.

The only downside to all these title games is that they start really late over here, but PRAISE GOD that they actually play the games on tv at all. It’s kind of funny that the average African has no idea what basketball is but for some reason they televises almost the entire NCAA tournament. As I said, the games usually come on late because of the time difference. This game started at 3:20 AM, so needless to say it was a long night… but since we won it was obviously well worth the pain the next morning. There’s a couple other staff members here, Jen and Rebecca who are always up for the late night games, so I wasn’t the only person braving the storm. We had a blast! It would be surprising if we didn’t wake anybody else up that lives on the property with the amount of noise we were making.

Can’t wait till the next title game!