We leave Friday for an 18 day road trip to visit partners around the country, and we wanted to get a note out to you before we leave. The boys end their term and are released early Friday morning for a two week break. We're taking this chance to drive north (of course, I know) to visit Grace Community Church in Cradock this weekend—they have a pastors' seminar on Saturday where we can meet everyone, and then we'll be at one of the churches Sunday and visit the local community. Then we're on to Mthatha to have a day or two with the head of Bethany Bible College. Both of these communities had MMN workers in the past, and we are all interested in continuing the relationship, listening to their current situation and learning how we might be able to help with future capacity building.
We then keep heading north to Pietermaritzburg to stay with the other MMN family in South Africa, the Sudermans, whom we stayed with in August. We will also meet the two new Mennonite Central Committee couples that have moved there (that reminds me to bring our hymnal for some yummy four-part singing) and learn about what the Mennonites are organizing and getting involved in—one couple fills the new Peace Coordinator position. It should be nice to spend some time with these folks, find some support for our work with Oscar, have time in the Peace library, and re-acquaint ourselves with the Anabaptist network based there. We'll stay through Easter, and then go around the mountain to the neighboring country of Lesotho to visit my cousin! She and her family live in the capital Maseru; her husband is a pilot with MAF and I haven't seen her in years. Both the Suderman and Derksen-Borror families with whom we're staying have kids, albeit younger. That will be a nice energy to be around, and more importantly I think we will all enjoy some contact with North Americans for a change. And this last place has Great Dane puppies to play with—how we have missed our pets…
So the last couple weeks has seen us continuing to get established (something might actually make it into our bank account yet!) and learning and meeting people. It is also the start of the grants and funding season, and we have started helping Oscar with a stack of calls for proposals. Grant writing is much more sophisticated here than Chad or Uganda, and we are doing our best to keep up. I've decided that writing for grants is a pernicious mix of heady, theoretical university paper-writing and the self-promoting canned stuff of job applications. And maybe I'm just ready for a change of scenery—but Oscar has let us know that he is ready for us to be shouldering tasks once we are returned in April.
The boys have not found school too challenging yet to have been stressed with exams (we'll see how the term results are) and they are curious what this road trip will be like. We're happy to show them more of this country, as this little corner is just that. Jacob was inspired by seeing online videos of his Irish dance school doing their annual St. Pat's presentations, and so he volunteered to do a short demonstration at the all-school assembly on Friday. We're pleased to see him put on his dance shoes again after these three months, but he also went to bed sad after practicing, so hard times do still come as well as go.
The big accomplishment this week is that we are completely off our US phone plan—we all have South African phone numbers now. We don't expect you to call us, but we can connect with you for free using What's App if you have a cell phone. Or let us know if you have a different favorite way of connecting. Facebook Messenger has worked for video calling, and we have Skype, too.
I know some of you have mailed things—it takes a while for things to reach us, and it's been suggested that we have the tracking number of packages to see if they get stuck somewhere. Time to do our last errands for the trip, get the proposal off, clean out the fridge, and say goodbye to our sunny beach—it will be fall by the time we get back.
Our love to you, and thanks for your prayers for travel mercies: that's for the car, for our cultural learning and connections, for happy spirits in the closed confines of the car, health and rest on the way. And we love to hear your news! E-mail what is going on with you—we love to read!
Kathryn, for Dan and the boys, too
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