Nothing says a miracle like going to the dentist and having him not find anything wrong with your teeth. Ok, so maybe that’s the news most people get when they go, but not me. There’s probably a couple reasons why I always get bad news at the dentist. It could be from all the sugar I consume on a daily basis or more likely that I only go to the dentist once every 3 years. Whatever the case, I must be doing something right. No cavities for me.

It might shock some of you that playing a good game of flag football or a pick up game of basketball is near the top of the list of things that I miss most from back home. Since no one plays those sports over here and we live a small town there’s never really a pick-up game of any kind around here. Leaving me yearning to find something… anything.

Well, after 3 years of looking I finally found a weekend game of rugby in town. The only problem is, I’ve never played rugby before and I barely understand all the rules. I knew it would be quite humbling, but I wanted to play something so bad it was worth the embarrassment. It all started off too perfect. The first time Josh and I went out to play they were picking teams and I just saw it coming a mile aways. It started getting down to the last few people and we had yet to be picked. Flashbacks to kickball in elementary school we’re running through my mind. So yes, Josh and I were the last two people picked. Even the 10 year kid was picked for us. Seriously, it really happened. It was pretty funny.

I’ve been out twice now and think I’m getting better, thought I’m still trying to learn all the rules. I didn’t grow up watching the sport so everything is pretty new to me. Think of it as mix between soccer, because the ball is always moving, and football, because you’re running with the ball down field as people are trying to tackle you. You can also kick the ball forward, but can’t through it forward. See why I’m confused. To make things even tougher they don’t speak much English when where playing, so I’ll have no idea why things happen.

Good Times!

I’m happy to report that the container that I’ve been trying to get over here for longer than I can remember has finally found it’s resting place here on our property. True, it did arrive almost two months behind schedule, but it’s here now and I’m just glad everything made it in one piece. As most of you already know the important item, or items on the container were our 30,000 curriculums for our AIDS prevention program. Since I hadn’t seen the final print of the books yet I didn’t wait too long once we opened the container to break open some boxes to get a look at them. And they looked great! These took so much work I’m so happy for everyone involved that they came out looking so good.

Other items on the container were 2 riding lawnmowers and 2 wave runners. The plan has always been to sell these items for a profit over here to help offset the cost of the container. And just in case anyone was wondering the grand total for shipping everything here and also buying the container was a whopping $13,000. That cost was a bit higher than expected and has put the ministry in kind of pinch so we could really use some prayer for extra finances right about now.

I would also like to send out a personal thank you to Joel Chamberlain for putting up almost $3,000 to buy one of the wave runners that was on the container. It all stemmed from a conversation at Dunkin’ Donuts when we were kicking around ideas on how he could help the ministry financially. It turned into a little business deal that he would put up the cash for the wave runner and once we sold it here we would then reimburse him his upfront cost. This only makes sense since we should be able to double our money when we sell the wave runner here in South Africa. In the end, Joel gets his initial investment back and we hopefully make about $3,000 to $4,000. Thanks again Joel for being willing to help us find creative ways for people to invest in the people of Southern Africa.

Anyone interested in something similar. We’re planning on bringing another container over at the end of the year. Let me know.

It was a tough month for me as my grandfather passed away just a couple weeks ago. Though he rarely seemed it, the man was actually 100 years old. His passing was peacefully and pain free, so in that I can rest easier. His health had diminished and it was simply his time. Unfortunatly, I didn’t get to go back for the funeral, but when I called home I heard what sounded to be a party going on in the background. My dad went on to explain that everyone had got together to have a part to celebrate my grandfathers life. I thought that was pretty freakin’ cool.

Back when I was in college and working at my dad’s machine shop there was Pop in his late 80’s at that point, working right along side me, elbow to elbow, just about every day. The times he wasn’t working the man was usually out back with a cigar in his mouth making fishing lures for his annual fishing trips to Canada. It’s hard to believe that not too many years ago he was still driving from Florida to Canada on his own to do some ice fishing for months at a time.

Every time I was back home visiting he would always invite me into his house and want to hear stories. So there we sat, eating Entenmann’s cookies sharing stories with one another.

I will miss the cookies Pop. I will miss the conversations.

Last year I had one intern working in my department helping me out with a lot of design work and just about anything else I might have needed a hand with. This year is a little different story. Not only do I have two interns in my department this year, but each of them have specific skill sets that I think will be hugely beneficial to myself and the ministry.

It’s almost too good to be true really. One of the guys loves doing video and the other has a lot of experience doing web work. I have been praying for someone to come in and help with videos, so really just that one person would have been a blessing by himself. But with another web guy, like myself, I’m thinking he’ll be able to run with some of the web stuff going on here which will free me up to do other responsibilities I have around this place.

All in all this is shaping up to be a great year and it looks like I’m going to have a lot of help along the way.

The ministry has been open for about 3 weeks now and I’m already having trouble remembering what Christmas was like when I had so much free time on my hands.
With the launch of the new website, printing our village discipleship class curriculums, and redesigning the ministry newsletter I’ve had no problem keeping myself busy around here as of late. I actually had to stop myself from staying in the office well after business hours the other day because of something I’m falling behind on.

I know it sounds like these are bad things, but ultimately it’s what keeps me going. If I wasn’t pressured to get things done on tight deadlines I would probably just lolly-gag around and not get much done around here. Luckily, there are plenty of people around here to light a fire under my you know what.

Tense times… that’s what I was thinking on January 1st when the new Thrive Africa website finally went live. I say finally, because that was the word most people were thinking. It took right around 1 year from when we first started working serious on the website until it launched early this month. Granted, during that time the web site had to get put on hold a few times because other project got priority, but having one year of ideas, meetings, designing, and lots of time it was crucial that the website actually worked.

It’s been almost a full month since the site went live and the questions are out there. Is the website working? Are we accomplishing the goals we set? Was it worth it? Well, according to the stats the answers to those questions is a resounding YES! Not that it’s all about the numbers, and I do enjoy hearing from people that it “looks” great, but it’s the numbers that really tell you if a site is truly working… and the numbers look good!

Along with myself a majority of the credit goes to Alece and Becca (intern from last year) for writing just about every line of copy on the website. If it wasn’t for them there wouldn’t be much there but pretty pictures and lots of misspellings. Thanks ladies!

Be sure to check out the newly desgined 10 Years of Ministry page telling the story of how Thrive Africa got started.

Tomorrow is going to be quite the interesting day. I somehow have to try and manage to stay off the internet for just about the entire day.

You see, the Superbowl doesn’t play here until 1 AM early Monday morning and we’ve got this tradition here at Thrive that we watch the “tape-delay” version at 7 PM Monday night. That means just about every website cnn, espn, etc, will be showing the outcome that I need to stay away from. It’s going to be tough, especially since a lot of the work I do is online, but hopefully I can pull it off.

I’ve already turned off all my news RSS feeds so I don’t skim over them and blow it.

I’ve witnessed a close lighting strike and I’ve heard rolling thunder, but I’ve never quite experienced what I did today. During what seemed to be a normal lighting storm around the base today I was jolted out of my chair by a piercingly load pop echoing throughout my office. After my heart stopped racing and I caught my breath I realized lighting must had struck really close by and that the pop was most likely office equipment that is now as useful as a paper weight. I bent down and looked over all the equipment and surprisingly everything still seemed to be working. It didn’t make much sense, something had to make that noise.

I then left my office and headed over to another office to check on them to try and figure out what happened. As it turns out they heard the same thing to and they thought the noise came from their office. Unfortunately, a laptop in that office was the first fatality. It got fried by the lighting.

It was at this time that I started hearing from others around the base that they no longer had internet. Not a good sign. I headed down to a different office about 50 feet away where I found one of the routers had also been fried by lighting. If you’re keeping count that’s two pieces of equipment down. I couldn’t believe it, it seemed that the lighting surge had traveled to different buildings to just about every outlet. I’ve never seen anything like that.

I later found out that another wireless router down at one of the houses (100 yards away) got fried as well and needed to be replaced. God bless South Africa and their lighting storms.

Since the holiday break is over and I had to go back to the office for the first time in over a month it was time to give my face a little trim. Yes, my face. Over the long break I didn’t shave once in over a month, so as you can image I was a bit scruffy. Some might say I looked quite nasty, while I would say I just looked like a true mountain man. Well, with work starting back up it was time to look like a normal person again. Don’t worry if you missed it, here are a few picks of my transition back. Enjoy the show…

Mountain Man - Enjoying the full beard

I pity the fool! - Just the go-tee

Hello Ladies - How did the mustache ever go out of style?