Jesus the reason for every season

He isn't just for this season He is for every season, day and moment. His road isn't easy, often is hard. His way is hardly ever our way and His time is most definitely not our time. Yet, He is the only reason we life and breath.

Our first Christmas away from home was bittersweet. Lovely because we are blessed to be with our family and we were blessed to see our children's happy faces. Bitter because we miss our families back home and know they miss us. Blessed because we know we have eternity with them because they know Jesus too.

Tomorrow we will continue with Jesus. Putting off our flesh and putting on Christ. Remembering that He died so that we may live and give our lives back to Him daily.

Merry Christmas and remember Jesus is the reason for everything!

Andrea and the Render gang

Say hello to my little friends... who live in my backyard...eeek!

This morning started with Drew and I going outside to peg washing (hang our laundry). Drew yelled because he has kicked a frog, and he said it felt super gross. So, we set out to find it and it was huge and well hidden. We would have never seen it, if we were not looking for it. This made us start LOOKING... because what else have we been missing. We pegged our wash and then walked back really looking and we found a huge snail.

Then we noticed all these dirt mounds all over the ground so drew whacked one and a frog came out... but it scared him and he wacked the frog too (poor frog). The frog lived, but it was a nasty, globby frog with yellow spots on it's back. We heard he may be poisonous. I have to google him.

Those were the critters between my wash line and back door. That I saw, there's probably many more.

Here are some others we have found living around our home over the past few months.

Millipede? Centipede? I'm not sure what it is, but I bet it has pede in it's name. These are pretty big, but when you mess with them they roll into a ball. They dont hurt you!!!

This little guy usually climbs up the wall of my house, but today we found one inside...ewww! Anyway, you may want to avert your eyes to the next pictures because I think they are doing something private in these pics???? but I really dont know??? It looks like they should have some alone time.

             what a beautiful color they are!

This is one of the weirdest little things ever. I thought there was a small piece of bark in the house and went to sweep it out and noticed it moved. Upon further inspection I noticed it was NOT bark but some strange bark like "thing". What is it an insect? 

It has a head like thing stick out from inside it's bark like outer shell... strange indeed!

The next is my favorite!!! (said in all sarcasm I can muster) My family and close friends will know how much this just kills me that this is living in the trees outside of my house. Oh, there is a good probability that they are also living in my attic... good times, good times.

This precious little guy is called the blue headed agama. They really are pretty... pretty scary! Their heads and bodies change all sorts of pretty shades of blue and orange/yellow when they are doing their little mating dance. We have lots of these. One day Drew and Gabe were climbing a tree and it ran over Gabe's hand and fell onto Drew's shoulder! If that would have happened to me I would have fallen out of the tree and met my demise. Hence, you will not find me climbing any trees! I was thinking about doing just that... really I was.

That is your nature walk through our yard. What do you think? 

Blessings Friends,

Andrea

Cleaning out the Roundovale, Day 1

This is the before shot of the roundovale.  Check out the dryer in the back right corner as a reference.  This pile was about eye level.  I would say that we got about 20% of the way through the roundovale.  A roundovale is a traditional African building.  They are normally round.  This roundovale is very big, probably about 40' across (or 13 meters if your here).  It at one time served as youth room, with computers for school, a pool table and a small lounge area.  Our goal is to return it to its former glory.  It has since become a catch all for everything.  This is one of two buildings on the site that is not a place where kids sleep, so it has become a storage room.  The second storage room is much smaller and is already pretty filled with clothes.  Hopefully once we go through and organize the clothes they will fit in there.

As you can probably imagine we were wondering what kind of critters we would see in here.  We found rats, baby rats, lots of rat feces, spiders, roaches, and silver fish.

The mattress that are not used at the orphanage will be donated to others in the township.  Alot of what we came across were clothes and toys.  The clothes are being put into the other storage building were the will start to washed and put away.  We will keep you posted on our progress, back tomorrow for day two.

Shelby