Miles For Smiles Assembly

I've lifted this straight out of the school's weekly newsletter:

"MILES FOR SMILES
THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
THANK YOU!
Through the combined efforts of the International School of Helderberg and Macquarie Securities South Africa, we raised a phenomenal R71878.70 [almost £5700] for Operation Smile South Africa!
Over the last 5 years we have raised almost R200 000-00 for Operation Smile.

Wonderwall

We're very proud of Joel as he played with his fellow guitarists at the school's Music Cafe this morning.

They played Wonderwall by Oasis and did really well.

Local Rag

An update for those of you who sponsored our boys in their Miles For Smiles ride a few weeks ago.

Our local rag the District Mail ran this article today with a lovely photo of Eli in it.

Prayer Request

We're planning to do quite a big outreach next Friday and Saturday as we have another celebration meeting in Macassar on Sunday morning with our friends from Mitchell's Plain and Simon's Town.

We have a few events planned, one of which will be to pamper ladies in the community by doing their nails, hair and make-up whilst serving them with coffee and a muffin.

Hair Pulling!

I'm no techno geek when it comes to computers but equally I'm not afraid of stripping one down and having a tinker. After all, if I do mess it up I'll only be saving the computer the time and trouble of messing itself up.

Miles For Smiles

Eli and Joel had such a blast this morning at what has become their school's annual charity event.  They were so proud to ride for Operation Smile in their Miles for Smiles cycle ride.  They were particularly thrilled because the school is hoping to crack their target of raising R50,000 for much needed cleft palate operations for children this year and between them they have raised just under R2,000.  Thank you so much to all you who so generously sponsored the boys, it really made a difference.

Vicky

I was really saddened to hear of the death of Vicky last night.  I knew he had been sick for a while now but it's such a shame to see yet another young man die of HIV related illnesses when he could and should have been on ARV's over two years ago.

A Rant

In 2001 during some of Zimbabwe’s darkest days we drove from Harare to Cape Town, it was mainly for holiday purposes and a bloomin' good one it was too, but we also had to leave Zim' for a while due to the mess there. It’s a long story!

While we were in South Africa we had a great time and met some fab people, some of whom we went on to work with when we moved to SA three years later. I remember at the time having a number of conversations with folk about the Zim' situation and was asked the same question a few times.

Mr Bounce

I could leave this as a wordless post with just the photos and most of you would guess who I would be talking about.

My boy doesn't stay still for long, though the telly is teaching him to pay attention for increasing amounts of time. Not sure if that's a good thing or not?! Anyway, beyond the world of the electronic babysitter, Eli is one incredibly active young man and constantly looking for mischief things to do. One of the things I love about him is how he'll take something he learnt and apply it to an area or something for which it wasn't really intended.

Moonsquirters

Percy Thrower I am not so where Eli gets his desire for a bit of gardening is a mystery but one that shall be capitalised upon.

A while back he asked if he could grow some tomatoes and somehow he managed to sweet-talk mummy into taking him shopping for seeds etc.

That was a couple of months ago and today Eli has eleven very healthy looking tomato plants which he actually grew from seed.

So this afternoon he was über excited to see that one of his plants has two small green tomatoes on it. Bless him, he had no idea what they were because they were so small and green, apparently "they don't look like the ones in the packets".

Mother's Day

Yesterday was a particularly special day as Tree of Life honoured all the mums amongst our family on Mother's Day.  We had a brilliant time together in church during which each mum was given a little, beautifully created posy of flowers with an attached t-light. We then got the men praying for their women, which was very special.