African Paradis

Alas my time in the USA had to end, I was reluctant to leave but once I arrived in South Africa i was so happy to be back. ( the key word here is ONCE ) Remember in elementary school, middle school, high school and college when the teacher says at least 10,000 times to read the whole question before choosing an answer? This principle apparently also applies to airline itinerary. When I got my itinerary I saw that I was flying out of JFK into Cairo. I also saw that I landed at noon and flew out at midnight. ( However I did not look at the dates...)  After being baffled that I would be sitting in the airport for 12 hours I decided that I would do some exploring and maybe see the pyramids. This is how much reading there is on itineraries  My wonderful sister got me in contact with her friend who lives in Egypt and the plan was that she would pick me up from the airport and we would tour Egypt for a few hours and be back with plenty of time to catch my p...

During my time at home we had some delightful Family Photos done for the first time in more years that I am willing to consider.  The 4 most fly siblings you will ever know During this time I angered my sisters and caused laughter to cascade from my brother's lips because I repeatedly made faces that were against the cultural norm for nice family photos We even allowed the dogs to be photographed. Maggie did not like the antlers I had a grand old time while I was home, it was such a luxury to my family and to spend some time with them. During one of the weekends I was at the Word of Life Bible Institute for the annual missions conference. I was able to see the next group of interns being sent off to their countries and hang out with friends who were in the area. We even indulged ourselves to the point that we purchased the famous local gas station pizza. One thing that I cannot get in South Africa that I miss dearly is Taco Bell. Some p...

Directly after the end of Kids Camp was the start of Teen Camp. During our trip to Mozambique in a brain storm session someone brought up that we should have a game show themed camp, so we did and we called it I Survived a Word of Life Game Show Granted that it was a game show themed camp we got some super tacky suit jackets and proceeded to play such game show games as spinoffs of Wheel of Fortune, The Weakest Link, Ninja Warrior, Minute to Win It, as well as made up games and classic camp games that do not pertain to game shows.  The pool at this camp had a log running right across the center which caused a great amount of ill-fated balancing acts, pushing, shoving and surprisingly not many injuries.  We have played a game called "Poolball" at the Ranch for years and it is splendid, so we brought it to South Africa. However problems arose as we prepared and Poolball is based on baseball which is not common in South Africa so many of the rules which were unde...

In the first weeks of December we have what many kids consider to be the "best week of their life" the cherry on top of the sunday, the icing on the cake, the hair on their head. It is most certainly my favorite time of the year and this event is know as SUMMER CAMP!!! In South Africa we have a weekend of Kids Camp followed by Teen Camp. Inspired by my summers at the Ranch and due to John Page being the former Marshall John and due to the fact that cowboys are fantastic the theme of our kids camp was western themed of "Spur One Another on to Love" taken from the verse Hebrews 10:24 " And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds"  Right away I made some super intese promo posters using the wild wild west as a guide. However after talking with some colleagues we decided that we should make them more kid friendly and less intense and many cartoonish so we ended up with something like this.  Making and decoratin...