Weekend

Hello!

Its Saturday morning now, its been a little while since Ive had a chance to properly sit down and write what's been happening!

Well I will start by telling you about Sean, the neighbour I spoke about in my last post. Wednesday afternoon we suddenly saw police cars and Seans car driving very fast past down the road. The tenants he had had actually been stealing furniture from Sean but more than that - they had been advertising the cottage online to people and taking deposits! There are about 3 or 4 people that had paid a deposit to the tenant and they had been told that they could move in within the week!

So Sean could now report them to the police and they were removed off the property! Sean is obviously still very upset as he has lost months of rent pay and also other people have lost their deposit money.

But Praise the Lord he answered our prayer which were for the tenants to be completely removed from his home! Sean called us to say thank you to all of us who were praying in the Bible Study on tuesday evening for him for he believes it was a direct result from our prayers. Amen!

Thursday was quite an adventurous day! Because the weather in the winters here is dry and yet gets warm and sunny in the daytime, bush fires as you can imagine are very frequent! Usually August, as Im told, are when most begin because August it starts to even warmer towards summer but is still very dry.

Yet thursday, Mark and Uncle Hans saw a sudden fire and smoke just in the distance. So Mark, Hans and al the Papa's went straight onto the truck and filled it with as much water as possible and drove straight there. Everbody in the area all come to help, because if it is ever your farm you want all the help you can get! So the men came back very late with black hands and very tired! Mark then took me and a few others in the car at about 9 o'clock at night to go see the ruins, it was very dark and the fire was just dying down and the few people left were leaving to go home. As you can imagine there is only so much you can do!

Then that evening I managed to skype my parents which was lovely as it was my mums birthday! Very sad I couldn't spend it with the family, but we chatted for a good hour or so. I also then spoek to Naomi and other friends Jackie and John so was a very late night for me! But Friday was my day off so I didn't mind.

It was about 11.30pm when I came to the cottage and Kirsten got out of bed to help me lock the door (you must always lock everything thing out here especially at night!).

Next thing we know, Kirsten comes into my room in the morning to sayu that she had a blackout just before she got back into bed, and has a huge bump on her head and can't remember a thing. So obviously Mark and Chris were worried and wanted to go get her checked out at the hospital for there was no explanation, and it wasn't just a faint.

Chris always goes into Pretoria on fridays to go collect one of the boys (he is the only one who attends boarding school from Monday-Friday) so at the same time we went into Pretoria to get Kirsten checked out. Since it was my day off Chris gave me the option to get out of the farm for a bit and see one of the shopping malls while they visited the hospital, then afterwards we would get the groceries and then go to the boarding school (we then must be back in time for about 4oclock because they need to car to take the staff home).

Chris dropped me at the shopping mall at 11oclock, but it truns out Kirsten was having ECG's, blood test, brain scans, chest scans and everything! The hospitals here are very efficient. So they ended up not picking me back up till about 3pm, so we ha to quickly grab some groceries but Mark had to travel to collect Fetsi from school because otherwise we would be too late coming home.

Praise the Lord Kirsten is fine and they couldn't see anything wrong, but if it happens again she must go back immediately.

So my day off was quite adventurous again!

Then last night Mark got his telescope out to show us some of the stars! In winter it is incredible clear skies, and because we are in the heart of the bush there is no lights to distract. I can now say I have seen SATURN! It was amazing, you could se the rings so clearly! You could also see the milky way and the 'scorpion'.

Oh! And I almost forgot! Remember last time I told you mark took us to see a lone giraffe? Well yesterday morning while on the road to Pretoria - we saw 4 giraffes!!! One was a baby suckling on its mum! I was so pleased I had my camera on me!

Well Im due back on duty soon, been up since 6 on early shift so keep yawning!

Love to you all, and a special mention to all my amazing friends who are off to CCIW today (Christian Camps in Wales)

Have an awesome time and tell me all about it when you get back!

Till next time!
Gemma x