Rachel's House--More Progres

Rachel, Mama, and Kristell cleaned the plaster and mortar off the window frames.

The first coat of mud is done on the drywall. Also Daddy built the shelves for a pantry and closet. That was a lot of slow, tedious work, but we all think it turned out really nice.

Here's a closer view of the pantry. The sink will be just to the right of the pantry under the window. Daddy wants to paint pantry shelves before he puts the last piece of sheetrock on.

Today Daddy started putting glass in the windows.

Bro. Mahlomola put wood preservative on all the planks outside.

Rachel's House

On April 1st, a team from Mission Helps came to help build a house for Rachel Cutler here at Matukeng. We are amazed at how God worked through this team of expert builders to get a house put up in eight working days!

Here's the team. From left to right they are Forrest Wheeler, Dave Weaver (team leader) Jon McVey, Jonathan Lucas, Steve Mease, and Dave Holderbaum.

Before the team arrived we poured the footer.

Day 1: They built trusses and Steve Mease started laying up the walls.

Day 2: The big push was to continue laying up the walls. By evening, Steve had this front side done and we cast one window sill.

Day 3: It rained all day! Around 4:30pm, the clouds lifted and we a dug 100+ foot trench for the sewer pipe.

Day 4: Steve finished up laying the blocks except for one gable end. Forrest Wheeler and Dave Holderbaum worked on plumbing. We cast some more window sills.

Day 5: The team put up the trusses and continued with plumbing.

Day 6: Jon McVey and Steve Mease plastered inside. The rest put the tin on the roof. I worked on leveling up the floor so we could pour it Monday.

Day 7: Sunday--we went to Popenyane for church. Pastor Pitso Thaisi is sitting on the front row.

Day 8: Jon McVey finished the plastering first thing in the morning, then we poured the floor. Here's Jonathan Lucas using a homemade bull float.

Day 9: Forrest Wheeler and Dave Holderbaum finished up the plumbing. Jonathan Lucas worked on putting conduit in for electricity. (We don't have electricity here yet, but when/if it comes it will be easy to wire the house. The rest of the team built the interior partitions.

Day 10: The last day the team worked here, they hung the ceilings and put sheet rock on the partition walls, and some other finishing touches. There's still lots to be done, but we are amazed at how much was done in only eight working days.

My parents flew in the same day the Mission Helps team flew out of Johannesburg. They will be helping to get the house finished up. Please keep praying for us!

Ha Motheho

Today Kristell wasn't feeling well, so Steph stayed home from church with her. She's had a cold, fever, and seems to be teething. I took Katilyn with me to church at Ha Motheho. When we left this morning it was cloudy and a bit cool, but I thought it would warm up. It didn't and Ha Motheho is very exposed to the wind and colder than Matukeng. After church we were supposed to go to a house where there had been a death and hold a short service. 'Me Matoka (the mother of 'Me Manthabi who works in our house) took Kaitlyn and Thabiso by her house and put them in blankets to keep them warm as we walked to the house.

Pictures

Here's a few pictures to give you an idea of what's going on in our lives.

Kaitlyn is such a great traveler. We bought her this backpack just before we left America. She loved it and did such a great job of carrying it through airports in New York City, London, Johannesburg, and Bloemfontein. It wasn't too heavy--just some extra clothes, toys, etc.

We spent the first weekend we were home with the van der Merwe's in South Africa. While we were there, S.W., their oldest son, was getting ready to plant some oats. Instead of oats he planted a tractor! This was the wettest summer in many years in South Africa. Every thing is green, but a lot of bridges and roads washed out in Lesotho.

Kaitlyn and Kristell were playing house with a sheet stretched over the table. You can see Kristell is pretty spunky! She loves to climb--chairs, tables, steps, stools, anything she can find to gain altitude.

I thought it was a wastebasket. She thought it was a hat!

The church here at Matukeng planned a surprise "welcome home" service for us this Sunday. We didn't know anything was going on until we got to the church and found it all decorated.

This was the message written on the bulletin board. You can see why we are so happy here!

Kaitlyn went up with the Sunday School children, but she didn't know the song they were singing. She'll have to start practicing every Sunday afternoon with them again.

After the service was over, everyone shared a nice meal of rice, beans, and fried chicken. We were very touched by their love and care!

Back Home in Africa

Hi everyone,

It's been a LONG time since we've updated this poor blog. Hopefully we'll do a little better now that we're back in Africa.

Our trip back home went fairly well inspite of being VERY long. We flew from JFK to London Heathrow where we had an 11 hour layover. Then we flew from there to Johannesburg. After going through immigration and customs, we flew on to Bloemfontein where Aunt Hessie van der Merwe picked us up. It was really nice to spend the weekend with them on the farm before going back to Lesotho on Monday.

Since we've got home we've mainly been unpacking, putting away, and working on immigration. As you think of us, please pray that we'll be able to get our permanent residence permits for Lesotho in the next few months. Before we get the permits, we have to have a background police check done by the Lesotho police which takes several months. Hopefully once that's done we'll have the permits in another 2-3 months. At least we were able to get 6-months "permit pending" stamps in our passports.

Kaitlyn and Kristell have been enjoying playing outside and of course Kaitlyn is having a great time with Thabiso. Kristell is getting to know our friends at Matukeng, but she's still a little shy. Her main things right now are eating carrots and swinging. I'm supposed to preach at Matukeng this Sunday.

I'm sorry that I don't have any current pictures to post. I forgot to download them from the camera last night. I'll try to post some again, maybe still this weekend???

This picture is during Seabreeze Campmeeting at Hobe Sound.