Botswana April 26 Botswana is where we went for an overnight trip. Batswana is another country next to Zimbabwe. We went there to get money for our tour on May 3rd; we can’t get American money in Bulawayo. Anyway, when we got there most…well all of the banks were closed. Of course, none of us thought to use the bank machines. We searched around for a place to stay that was cheap enough that we could pay with the little pulas we had already. We hand’t found a room to stay in so we were gonna camp. But we didn’t have [View Full Entry]

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April 28, 2007 AWANA with Shepherd Today we met up with Shepherd, the guy who was Dakotah’s Camp Counseling Partner at Masiye Camp. Shepherd is the lead leader at the Nketa 8 Baptist Church AWANA that we attended. This church is located west of town in what they call the high density suburbs. Shepherd met us at Bellevue Store and we traveled by ET and on foot to get to the Church. When we got there I thought this was another church that needed a roof, there are nice walls for a nice big building. But we discovered that this new [View Full Entry]

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Isaiah’s House of Love April 24 Yesterday and today we went to Isaiah’s House of Love. Isaiah’s House of Love is a orphanage for babies up to three and a half years old. Until then they encourage people to adopt them. If they are not adopted by then they are takin in by the S.O.S children’s villages but are still able to be adopted. The youngest child under the care of IHOL is just two weeks old and staying in the hospital. In most cases of babies being abandoned the mother comes to the hospital, gives birth, and leaves! And the [View Full Entry]

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April 25 and 26, 2007 Botswana….Lessons That was quite the day and a half. There were two main purposes for this trip and a few smaller. First Molly (Jenni’s car) needed a new battery and I needed to pay for our trip through Hwange and Victoria Falls and Livingstone in US dollars. Nobody can access US dollars here in Zimbabwe and I didn’t bring enough to cover it so off we go to Botswana. Jenni, her friend Aruna, Dakotah and I headed out about 10 am with sandwiches packed in the boot and bottles of water for the drive. The travel [View Full Entry]

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April 23 - 24, 2007 Isaiah’s Umuzi Wothando - Isaiah’s Home of Love Dakotah and I spent a couple of days working with Isaiah’s Umuzi Wothando. This is a home with a vision for abandoned babies in Bulawayo. The vision for the home is to be a halfway house to care for 20-35 babies from newborn to 3.5 years old and arrange for adoption and fostering into families as early as possible and prior to their 4rth birthday. The background for the need for this organization arises from the fact that children are growing up in the hospital, not being cared [View Full Entry]

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Directly to you April 22 Mitchell, No, your hair can’t be half way down your back, if you haven’t been cutting it I haven’t been cutting my hair ether and mine is not half way down my back. Bianca, I’m glad you went to Vancouver to give out blankets, your almost like a missionary too lol, I’m very happy that you’ve been reading my blogs. By the way, can I get you a gift from here? What should it be? Uncle Barry and Aunt Bernadette, Thank you for all your comments! We are very happy to read comments from [View Full Entry]

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April 21, 2007 Kame Ruins. On Saturday Pastor Bonani and his wife Perseverance took a trip out to Kame Ruins, some spell it Khayme Ruins. It was a nice day out there viewing the ancient walls and in their small onsite museum there were artifacts from the stone age when the Bushmen occupied the area. Cindy, I found that game you asked me about, the one with the glass beads. Dakotah knows how to play it. This park once again describes how the Bushman tribe was pushed out of their lands by other tribes. This one though was from the [View Full Entry]

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April 20th, 2007 Khayelihle Children’s Village We were not quite prepared today as we didn’t really know what we were going to encounter. We should have brought a storybook or something. I brought balloons and read them stories from the books that the children had and they taught us some games. It was worth it meeting the children and seeing how well taken care of they are there. I blew up the balloons and handed them out and they proceeded to untie them and play with them. Khayelihle (ky-leet-ley) Children’s Village is an orphanage operated by the Church of Chris [View Full Entry]

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April 18th, 2007 Old Bulawayo-Ko Bulawayo-“Place of Slaughter” This day I learned about Death, History and Tradition Godwill, Sihle, their very cute fat 3 month old boy, Jenni, Kotah and I went out to the historic site of Old Bulawayo rather than attending the Zimbabwe Independence Day Ceremony. Apparently the only people who attend that nowadays are those who go for the free food and beer. On the way to Old Bulawayo, we had some discussions going in the car. The car is always a great place for talking. Godwill was telling us that his aunt had passed away two days [View Full Entry]

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Last days of camp April 16 Camp is now over, The last few days were very hectic, time was the biggest issue. Masiye camp is meant to be an eight day program (at least) but this time it had to be fitted into three days. Usually the first three days would be spent getting to know your group, and then the next five days would be spent doing the tree of life exercises. But, what really happened was we did two days of getting to know each other, then we squeezed the whole eight days of tree of life into the [View Full Entry]

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