October

Hello everybody,

Sorry about the monstrous gap in between updates, it has been a crazy month. We had Gregg`s family visit us for the past few weeks, which was a huge blessing! It was wonderful to take a few weeks off and see more of SA. We spent a week in Kruger National Park seeing animals, traveled back to show them Lily of the Valley, and then spent a few days visiting family in Cape Town. It was great to have them here, and prove that we are getting some work done at least! Thanks to everyone who sent things with them, the soccer cleat in particular are a huge blessing. Now we just have to work out the best way to distribute them.

Other wise everything else has been pretty regular, as regular as they get around here. Recently we had a double wide portable donated, and it has been designated as living quarters. I have been given the task of adding a bathroom, so hopefully that works out in the next couple weeks. Courtney has been continuing with her random work, this morning she helped get the conference center ready, as well a sorted food for all the houses.

We hope all is well back hope, even though summer is coming to an end. Hopefully autumn will be full of joy for everybody. Happy thanksgiving to everyone back home, it was quite odd missing out on turkey, but at least we had some Kraft Dinner courtesy of our parents! Also September was Rylee`s first birthday which is crazy! Hard to believe she has been around that long!

Thanks for reading and have a great month.

Gregg and Courtney

The whole family up on Table Mountain

Southern most point in Africa

Rylee at Blyde Rive Canyon

Cleat donation!

Rylee`s birthday party!

September Update... wait what?

Hello again everybody! September already! Where has the time gone? 5 months have gone already, it is absolutely crazy. Things around Lily have been business as usual, a lot of children and work, and not very much time! Courtney's volleyball group have not improved in the least, however they are having tons of fun. When the children show up carpentry has been great, although it is evolving into a handyman class. The youth center is nearly finished, as the Hilton Church group came back to help out again. Also my work on the kitchens has finally been going well, and have currently fixed up 5... of 22. Most of them just need a bit of "support" and caulking, but still it takes time. Soccer coaching with Pete (who is here via Ambassadors in Sport) has also been going great, and have been getting to know the people from the surrounding community more and more.

Work this month did get quite somber last week, as we had 2 separate suicide attempts, one quite more serious than the other. Both children are doing well, however it is still a serious matter that is very difficult to deal with.

Also this month we took a couple personal days to go skiing in Lesotho, the small mountain country within South Africa. We went with a few other volunteers an had an absolutely wonderful time, despite that the ski hill was a single run. Lesotho is very different from SA, a high altitude culture of shepherds and blankets! All in all it was much more for an experience than for the actual skiing, but now we can officially say we have hit the slopes in  Africa!

Anyways we are very excited for family to come at the end of this month. They are collecting old soccer cleats to take to us, so if you can, please help out!! As always a huge thanks to all our supporters, we could not be here without you!

Lerato pushing Rylee!

Fresh new toe kicks! Just the tip of the iceberg as you can see.

Solid now. Still quite rotten, but solid!

Support for the U shaped shelf. Turns out a 45"span is not ideal.

Finished ceiling

Fresh paint and windows!

Lesotho! Skiing in jeans!

Almost to much terrain for just one day.

Rylee and Tankiso!

Lily Times

Hello everybody,  

Hopefully everyone is still enjoying their summer back home; the heat here is starting to really arrive. Last week South Africa was shut down due to snow, as much as 40 cm in some parts! It is amazing how a country can be so crippled when it isn’t prepared in the least to deal with it. At Lily we had a massive hail storm, some nearly the size of ping pong balls! After a few rainy cold days the weather turned around and we are now in the low 30s.  

Thing have been great here, we have been getting to know the kids better and better and by now know at least half of the names! Work here is never what you would expect and varies day to day. Every day I make an effort to start working on the kitchens, but then get sidetracked with an airport run, or helping a staff member, or coaching soccer, or any other random thing that Lily throws at us. I have been doing carpentry with some older boys and have mainly been praying that nobody loses and fingers. Somehow the mitre saw turns itself on even after it has been turned off and unplugged. Funny how nobody ever plugs it in but it still gets turned on… I have been starting to feel a little bad for my old shop teachers! Soccer as always has been fun, Courtney even was helping prepare Boboti for a 2 week New York team that came early in the month. She has also been coaching Lily’s first volleyball team and by now they have started to learn to bump. Hopefully the setting and the spiking comes in the not-too-distant future! We have been going to the beach and trying to surf courtesy of Frank's board on our days off, which has been alot of fun.

Yesterday some staff killed a 5 foot Mozambique spitting cobra. As the weather heats up the snakes start coming out of hibernation looking for food. The Cobras are common here, as well as puff adders and black mambas, all of which are extremely venomous. Black mambas for example have been known to kill giraffes, so we are hoping we don’t run into any of them. Lily has never had a snake bite in 20 years, although last year one boy did get some cobra spit in his eyes…. twice! 

Next week we are hoping to take a few boys to Durban to go ice skating, and watch them try recreating Bambi’s first experience with ice! It should be interesting to say the least. Otherwise we have  no huge plans for the next little bit other than to keep on doing what we have been doing, a bit of everything!

Thank-you for all your prayers and support!

An inefficient way to mix mud.

Put it on

Sand it off

New air compressor for lily. Rylee trying to help.

Snow on the hills!

Court's boboti.

Courtney with volunteers Kristy (left) and Steff (right) in Tala

Beginning of the talent show.

A hail man? Courtney teaching the kids new skills!

With Pete and Siya in the hail.

Typically good for cars.

Rylee at the beach!

Hey everybody,

Already over three weeks at Lily, time truly does fly! Hopefully everyone's summer back home is going well, and you are getting time to go enjoy it. Holiday club was a lot of fun, and the children seemed to really enjoy it as well. We even went with the older children a few times out into the community, to give back what we can. One day in particular we went to Howick, a rough slum area, brought some balls, and played with the kids there. The Lily kids then organized games and did a skit and evangelized to the others. It was amazing to see what a few soccer balls can start!

School holidays ended last week and things have gotten a little more regular. Now the the children go to school during the day it opens it up for me to do some proper maintenance. I have recently been trying to fix some of the bikes that are here, but of the 15 I have found I will be lucky to put together more than 3. A group from Pietermaritzburg also came this week and we started to make repairs on the Youth Center. Next week I am hoping to start fixing kitchen cabinets throughout the houses.

Courtney has been keeping very busy with the Nursery every day. After lunch if she has time she usually visits with some of the babies around the other houses. Rylee has made several friends, and loves her mornings with the other kids.

Also I forgot to update the last blog with the before and afters of the pond at Aurora, so there are also a few pictures of that!

Have a great rest of the month everyone!

Before

 

 

 

 

 

During...

Done!

Trying to make sense of these.

SO excited to be doing this.

Even wore my drywalling shirt!

Soccer in Howick

The Lily group (right) singing for the rest of the kids.

Welcome to Lily!! Turn right at the bull!

Arrived at Lily

Hello everyone, 

It has been a very exciting few weeks for us down here. We have finished out last week at Aurora, spent a weekend in Port Shepstone at the Spiritual Life Conference (SLC) and last Friday at Lily of the Valley. Sorry it took so long for a blog, but we couldn’t get onto the blog website because of internet screening reasons. 

It was quite difficult to say good bye to Aurora, as well as all of the family and friends we have made in Pretoria and Johannesburg. We were sad to leave Joburg in our rear view mirror, but at the same time it was exciting to move to a new part of the country, ready to experience something new. Aurora was a good experience, not always easy, but I believe we grew threw our challenges, and made some great friends along the way. 

The SLC was a very nice and relaxing week spent with many other missionaries. It was wonderful to hear from people who have been on the mission field much longer than I have even been alive! They really encouraged us, and it is great to see how much good is being done in South Africa by these people, and how truly dedicated to work they are. It was helpful to finally put faces to the various names I have been hearing and see just how large the South African SIM family is. During the SLC we also had one afternoon at the beach, and now we can officially say we have swam in the Indian Ocean!

On Friday we travelled back to Lily, which is in between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, way out in the boonies. It actually backs on to a game reserve and our very first day we were lucky enough to see a giraffe. We unloaded and are still settling into our 3 bedroom home. It is a huge blessing to finally have our own living space again! We can put Rylee in her room and make noise after 8 pm once again! We are living in the complex amongst the other homes, and so we have had a LOT of visitors every day, and lots of small sets of eyes peering through the windows! Each home has a house mother, and 6 children living in the house with them.  We had a couple of days to settle in and then on Monday we began work Courtney has been helping out in the nursery, which is run for 3 hours a day to give the house moms a break from the young children so that they can get their work done.  Last week we learned that Lily just took in a one month old baby, and has a few 18 and 19 year old boys who haven’t quite left yet, so the age variation is huge!  I have been helping lots with the Holiday Club, running sports and things like that. The kids are on school holidays for the next 2 weeks and so need stuff to do during the days.  Lily was once more of a hospice for children dying of HIV, but with a 98% survival because of modern medicine its role has changed into an orphanage. Around 80 % of the 120 children are HIV positive, but they are just as energetic as any other kids! That does come with its challenges as nearly every soccer game we play, there is blood, but as long as we are careful it is much safer than we would have thought!

We hope that everybody back in Canada is doing well!  Happy Canada Day to everyone!! This is the first Canada Day ever, that I haven’t been in the country, and I must admit that makes me a little sad! As wonderful as South Africa is I still am very much in love with my home nation! We hope everyone had a splendid holiday!

The SLC team.

Rylee at the beach!

Arriving at Lily. Bogged right down.

Our place, house 17.

Our back yard area/ dryer.

Out the front window.

The dining/living/kitchen area. (The day we got here, sorry for the mess!)

Holiday club, dress up relay race.

Courtney and a few of her nursery children.

Waiting for a ball.

June

Hello everyone,

We hope all is well back in Canada; things are going quite well here in South Africa. It has gotten very cold in the last week, temperatures below freezing, with frost at night, and highs of only 10 during the day. Coming from the Great White North I didn’t think it would be too bad, but it is COLD! No heat in the homes means there is no real escape. (Other than driving!) The last few mornings we have been able to see our breath…. Indoors.

 Otherwise it’s going well, the children wrapped up exams last week and have a couple more weeks of classes before the end of term, when they get 2 weeks off. |We only have a few more weeks here in Bapsfontein before we move on, and so we have to wrap up our clubs. Soccer is into its playoffs, another teacher is taking over Courtney’s cross-country group, and golf finishes next week. We really hope that some of these clubs will continue, and only time will tell! On the 25 we travel to Port Shepstone, to attend the SIM Spiritual Life Conference (SLC) for a few days, after which we will immediately start our work at LOTV orphanage. We are excited for the change, but sad to move away from family, friends, and the children at school.

We would once again like to thank everyone for their continued support during our time down here. It means so much to us to see that people are actually reading our blog and keeping up with us! I know we have said it before, but we can’t say it enough, without everyone's support back home none of this would be possible. Also thanks to our family here, you guys have been a huge blessing to us!

Romans 15:5
May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus,

God Bless!

Gregg Courtney and Rylee

Rylee riding like an African!

Courtney's reading group.... taking a break!

The pond I am trying to clean up... after we took 5 toilets and a full trailer full of garbage out of it!