I have hardly blogged this year. I have hardly even kept a journal. I have prayed a lot, grown a lot… been at the end of myself a lot, but alive. Here is a brief overview of my year for anyone who wants to know what I have been up to.
Lesotho
The year started with Barbara and myself with my family travelling to Lesotho to do Resilient Kids training. It was a highlight experience! The loud thunderstorms, heavy rains and, the Chinese extremely loud way of building roads was especially hard for us sensory sensitive people in our family. We enjoyed the experience as a family and it was really great for me to have my children get an idea of what I do. It was sad that Moriah-Jane was not with us, but she had a mostly fabulous holiday in Germany. It was exciting to come home to her.
CACL
The children’s Act for Church Leaders was a project I started working on in the later part of 2013. It is a go to manual for leaders to help them understand and apply the Children’s Act to their churches. The highlight for me at the beginning of the year was our Monday morning skype calls. I had never been in a conference skype meeting before and it was such fun to have a virtual office.
Go green
For my go green project for child protection this year I did it at the church, giving each ministry that has something to do with children an opportunity to share with the church what they do. In the service we prayed for children at risk and then after the service we invited the church to go to the minor hall and learn more about the ministries. It was a great success.
My highlight of the day was Richard’s pleasure expressed about his church that day.
Orphan summit
Getting to go Pretoria for this conference representing the Connect Network, was an amazing experience. There was something powerful about being in a hall full of mostly male African leaders who wanted to make a difference about Orphans in their countries. The Monday night I got the most horrible sms to say that Richard had died. It was such a shock.
Edge Counselling Training
I helped Chantal from Philippi Trust to run a level 2 training at the Edge Church over weekends, one weekend a month at the beginning of the year. I wanted to do it originally to brush up on my skills. It was challenging and I think I grew through the experience. We will finish off the first full training in February next year and then start another lot.
Missions Policy
After Richard’s death one of the tasks I had to work on, besides my role and the implications of change, was to rework the mission’s policy. This was an exciting and challenging task. I got to work with some thinking I have had over the years about missions and the role of the church in it. Needless to say that at the end of 2014 the policy is still under review.
Lesotho
The second Lesotho trip was fun for all sorts of other reasons. Travelling there was fun and the team I went with were also interesting and really amazing people. The training was challenging and the whole experience was a growing experience as we were attempting roll out new trainers in Lesotho. Challenges are a funny things, you do not always know they are there until they are there. We were not as ready to roll out as we thought we were, but we learnt so much that we know we are better prepared for rolling out now.
Daniel
I took Daniel for intake test for high school and it turned out that he was not ready. This was very upsetting for us as for the last two years he has done very well in his exams. The school were my girls are at gave him a chance to join the school to see how he copes. It was tough for him at first, but soon he settled in and astounded all. He goes to grade 8 next year.
Germany
In September, Holger and I went to Germany for a month to become Globe missionaries. It was an amazing experience of friendship, kindness, grace and restoration to us as couple in missions. We loved every bit of the training and the time with family and friends after that. A highlight was meeting Richard, Alex and David. Obviously we could not have done this without Barbara who stayed with the children and ran all their errands with them. I came to a new awareness of the support I have around me and the incredible friends I have.
JIA
When I got back to church it was nearly Jesus In Action time, JIA is a mass outreach in our city every year. This year I chose to do the JIA project by encouraging our church to reach out to ministries associated with our church. It was not easy to pull it off, but there was huge support and the ministries were really blessed. The thinking is to do something at least once a term for our church ministries. JIA will then perhaps be used to reach out to clinics, police and other service organisations in our community.
Nacossa
I returned from Germany to a bunch of training from Nacosa. Barbara and were asked to do their refresher training of Child Care Forum. We were excited as we love this training. We trained in 6 cities, 117 community workers from 28 different organisations 7 CCF Refresher workshops for NACOSA. What a great end to the year.
Mary-Ann
The year was not an easy one hearing about my step sisters cancer when it was already quite far along. I trained in Pietermaritzburg and was able to go and spend an hour and a half with her. It was very clear this would be our last time together. When I said goodbye it was very painful because we both new it was the last time we would hold each other. Mary-Ann died while I was training in P.E on the 5th of December.
My Children
They are getting to the age where I am not allowed to tell their stories without their permission. They gave me permission to give a general blib. They have had an amazing year in their cultural fields, they are all very talented. School itself on the academic side was challenging, but I am proud of all 3 of them. They have worked hard!
So although this year was long and very difficult at times, is has equally been an amazing year full of new things that I did not anticipate when it started. I look forward to 2014 and at this point when asked what I dream about next year, I feel I want pretty much of the same in regards to the highlights of 2014.
Lesotho
The year started with Barbara and myself with my family travelling to Lesotho to do Resilient Kids training. It was a highlight experience! The loud thunderstorms, heavy rains and, the Chinese extremely loud way of building roads was especially hard for us sensory sensitive people in our family. We enjoyed the experience as a family and it was really great for me to have my children get an idea of what I do. It was sad that Moriah-Jane was not with us, but she had a mostly fabulous holiday in Germany. It was exciting to come home to her.
CACL
The children’s Act for Church Leaders was a project I started working on in the later part of 2013. It is a go to manual for leaders to help them understand and apply the Children’s Act to their churches. The highlight for me at the beginning of the year was our Monday morning skype calls. I had never been in a conference skype meeting before and it was such fun to have a virtual office.
Go green
For my go green project for child protection this year I did it at the church, giving each ministry that has something to do with children an opportunity to share with the church what they do. In the service we prayed for children at risk and then after the service we invited the church to go to the minor hall and learn more about the ministries. It was a great success.
My highlight of the day was Richard’s pleasure expressed about his church that day.
Orphan summit
Getting to go Pretoria for this conference representing the Connect Network, was an amazing experience. There was something powerful about being in a hall full of mostly male African leaders who wanted to make a difference about Orphans in their countries. The Monday night I got the most horrible sms to say that Richard had died. It was such a shock.
Edge Counselling Training
I helped Chantal from Philippi Trust to run a level 2 training at the Edge Church over weekends, one weekend a month at the beginning of the year. I wanted to do it originally to brush up on my skills. It was challenging and I think I grew through the experience. We will finish off the first full training in February next year and then start another lot.
Missions Policy
After Richard’s death one of the tasks I had to work on, besides my role and the implications of change, was to rework the mission’s policy. This was an exciting and challenging task. I got to work with some thinking I have had over the years about missions and the role of the church in it. Needless to say that at the end of 2014 the policy is still under review.
Lesotho
The second Lesotho trip was fun for all sorts of other reasons. Travelling there was fun and the team I went with were also interesting and really amazing people. The training was challenging and the whole experience was a growing experience as we were attempting roll out new trainers in Lesotho. Challenges are a funny things, you do not always know they are there until they are there. We were not as ready to roll out as we thought we were, but we learnt so much that we know we are better prepared for rolling out now.
Daniel
I took Daniel for intake test for high school and it turned out that he was not ready. This was very upsetting for us as for the last two years he has done very well in his exams. The school were my girls are at gave him a chance to join the school to see how he copes. It was tough for him at first, but soon he settled in and astounded all. He goes to grade 8 next year.
Germany
In September, Holger and I went to Germany for a month to become Globe missionaries. It was an amazing experience of friendship, kindness, grace and restoration to us as couple in missions. We loved every bit of the training and the time with family and friends after that. A highlight was meeting Richard, Alex and David. Obviously we could not have done this without Barbara who stayed with the children and ran all their errands with them. I came to a new awareness of the support I have around me and the incredible friends I have.
JIA
When I got back to church it was nearly Jesus In Action time, JIA is a mass outreach in our city every year. This year I chose to do the JIA project by encouraging our church to reach out to ministries associated with our church. It was not easy to pull it off, but there was huge support and the ministries were really blessed. The thinking is to do something at least once a term for our church ministries. JIA will then perhaps be used to reach out to clinics, police and other service organisations in our community.
Nacossa
I returned from Germany to a bunch of training from Nacosa. Barbara and were asked to do their refresher training of Child Care Forum. We were excited as we love this training. We trained in 6 cities, 117 community workers from 28 different organisations 7 CCF Refresher workshops for NACOSA. What a great end to the year.
Mary-Ann
The year was not an easy one hearing about my step sisters cancer when it was already quite far along. I trained in Pietermaritzburg and was able to go and spend an hour and a half with her. It was very clear this would be our last time together. When I said goodbye it was very painful because we both new it was the last time we would hold each other. Mary-Ann died while I was training in P.E on the 5th of December.
My Children
They are getting to the age where I am not allowed to tell their stories without their permission. They gave me permission to give a general blib. They have had an amazing year in their cultural fields, they are all very talented. School itself on the academic side was challenging, but I am proud of all 3 of them. They have worked hard!
So although this year was long and very difficult at times, is has equally been an amazing year full of new things that I did not anticipate when it started. I look forward to 2014 and at this point when asked what I dream about next year, I feel I want pretty much of the same in regards to the highlights of 2014.
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