Sunday in Honde

Rick and Joao giving much needed Maize flour to Pastor Paulo

This Sunday, Rick and I had the privilege (because Dwight was sick in Bed with Malaria)(hes getting better now!) of driving up to Honde, a community about an hour from here, and delivering much needed maize flour to one of our Training school moniters, Pastor Paulo.

Pastor Paulo's son helps Rick with an illustration.

Thanks to generous donations from many back home, we have been able to purchase maize flour to help during the hungry months. Aside from our work for food program, there was money donated specifically to purchase flour for our training school moniters, who are often working two jobs, as well as pastoring local churches so they can continue with their studies and provide for their families.

the drummer.. just a young boy- but look at those muscles!!

Benevolent (Pastor Paulo's son) dances up a storm.

Delivering the flour to Pastor Paulo and his family was a great experience, and we were able to enjoy a time of fellowship with them afterwards. Pastor Paulo's church has experienced some difficulties recently, and combined with this being the rainy/planting season, only his family and his parents and siblings arrived for the service that day. We had a great time of singing and dancing with them- and Rick spoke a word of encouragement to a very weary congregation.

Rick bring a message of encouragement to the small congregation- you can see the half finished church in the background The ladies dancing- even the littlest one was getting right into it!

To make our trip even better- the road between here and Honde (which is being "repaired") is usually a nightmare to drive- but this time, thanks to several days of sunshine, the temporary road was almost mud free, making it much easier to drive! We thank God for these little blessings!

An amazing rain storm rolling in. It was sunny where we were, but just across the valley you could only see half the mountian as the heavy rains came! "Main Street" in Honde

We are no longer alone here at the farm, Dwight and Lynn have arrived safe and sound, as have Francois and Alta. Its good to have everyone back here again. These next two weeks will be busy ones for us, as we are all preparing budgets, & reports, organizing food delivery, and continuing with the numerous projects here at the farm. As I write this, our cottage is fairly shaking from the pounding, scraping and sweeping as the workers prepare our floor for the tile to go in! This is big news for us- it is next to impossible to keep anything clean here, as our floor is rough concrete and cleaning it is very difficult. Even sweeping seems to just make it more dusty as the floor disintegrates. I am looking forward to having a clean-able floor- especially since Rick says we can get a "guard puppy" once we have a decent floor.

Tiles waiting to be installed.

We are also gearing up for a supply trip down to South Africa in the beginning of Feburary- it will be our last trip for several months (unless there is an emergency), as Dwight and Lynn leave again in March for an abreviated furlough trip to Brazil and Canada. So... we know we have to stock up on neccesities while we can! We appreciate your prayers for safety as we continue to travel in our borrowed Isuzu bakkie- Rick informed me the other day that it now has over 294,000 Kilometres on it- and those are AFRICAN bush "highway" kilometres.. not TransCanada Highway km's!On this trip down to South Africa we will be scouting out and pricing a new truck, as we begin to fundraise for a more reliable vehicle. We are looking at fundraising for a Toyota- for one thing parts are more readily available for Toyotas, and secondly- they seem to last forever (or almost forever!). Stay tuned for updates on our search!

God Bless, Rick & Heather.

After a long day of driving... Rick crashes in the hammock!