14 Days To Go...

Paula & Joel have been gone for a week now and I'm counting the days until their return. I know I shouldn't wish time away, but I'm really missing them!!!

Contrary to popular conception, there is no pile of washing up to be done, I haven't run out of mugs or teaspoons and I've only had one Pizza since being on my own! I am house trained and quite nifty in the domestic department when I put my mind to it, since I've been on my own the washing has all been done and there is only a small pile of ironing awaiting my attention. There's not much chance of me losing weight either as I seem to be cooking for two and then spreading the meal over 2 days - which is good.

The week has been a bit odd to say the least and it's not an experience we would rush to repeat. Prior to this year we had never been apart for more than one day in 14 years of marriage , then in July I had a week in Pretoria (which was long, tiring & lonely) and now we're apart for 3 weeks!

Life in CNP over the last week or so has been quite testing, primarily due to the fact that Donovan was arrested for an alleged assault on the son of another church member. This caused all kinds of fallings out and gossip took a major hold on our church members. Donovan was eventually bailed and is now back home, he is due in court again on the 30 Sept. Apparently one of the charges against him has been dropped and to be honest the victim of the second alleged assault is a very unreliable witness, so quite what will happen is anyone's guess. Yesterday I managed to have a good long talk with Dina and she had calmed down by the end of our talk and we prayed together. Dina also agreed that she would attempt to build some bridges with friends in CNP, so please pray for her, pray for strength and grace.

There has also been an incident (not unrelated to the assaults but nothing to do with Donovan!) involving a stolen gun which was then hidden in CNP. Thankfully the police were able to recover the gun before it was put to any kind of use.

Tonight (Tuesday) I have my first invite out so I'm off to see Felicity and Richard, Paula met Felicity through her Thursday afternoon get together with other mums, apparently Richard is also into mountain biking so hopefully I'll have someone else to ride with. If he's up for it I'd like to go to Delvera in Stellenbosch on Saturday so we'll see. I'm also hoping that I might get a chance to go to Sir Lowry's Pass again tomorrow (that's where I got soaked last week!) as it was a great trail to cycle round with a brilliant long & fast downhill stretch.