Wednesday, August 26, 2009

New URL

Hi Everyone! I know it's been a LONG time since I've posted, but the reason is... because I'm no longer in South Africa. Soon I will be off to college, and I want to start a new blog about college life and my life in the states. I will, however post pictures of SA still on this blog whenever I get a hold of my old pics (Gordon still needs to burn the rest of them onto CDs) and when I go back to visit.

I hope you'll come back and look at this blog every now and then to remember the faces behind the names we ask prayer for in our prayer letters.

Also, I'm changing the URL of this blog from ajb-amy.blogspot.com to badgettsinsa.blogspot.com as of a week or so from now. Just so hopefully enough people will see that it's been changed. I'm not sure if people are automatically updated on that or not.

My new blog's URL is: amyjbee.blogspot.com. It currently has no title or posts. I'm working on it. If you have any suggestions for a title for my new blog... please drop them in the comments section of this post.. I'd be very grateful!

God Bless!

Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Smiths, Preacher Rob and Kaapsehoop

Here is a post I meant to do a while ago... as in when I actually took these pictures. BUT I never did...

Our evangelist friends the Smiths were visiting us with 2 other guys from the Porter's church near Witbank (they're BIMI missionaries too) this past March. Bro. Smith has 7 children, ages ranging from 17 to 3--I think. Anyway we have a lot of fun with these guys, and while they were here we got to take a trip to Kaapsehoop which is about 45 minutes away from White River.

Kaapsehoop is a very small town, but it is famous for the wild horses that roam the area. There are also many crafty people living there and several pancake restaurants.


Preacher Rob (one of the guys from the Porter's church) preached for our Wednesday night service that week.


Getting close to the "wild" horses. They came right up to us, we guessed it was probably because so many people feed them.





Bethany, me, Leah and Ashley



I liked this dog at the pancake restaurant we went to.... he was just chillin out underneath one of the tables :). And he was the neatest mix... looks like a spaniel mixed with a hound or something.



Here is a bowl I really wanted at the shop of a lady who makes pottery. There was another lady who hand made really beautiful jewelry.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Mother's Day Luncheon

Hi everyone... I know it has been way too long since I have posted anything, so hopefully the rest of this week I'll try to catch you guys up.

The main reason for the wait has been because of our moving. Hopefully tomorrow I'll go around and take pictures of our new house!
But for now, here are some pictures from our Mother's Day Luncheon that we had May 10.
It went really well. The men served the ladies, we didn't have to do anything! It was really awesome :).. but now all the men are saying, yeah... we can't wait to get the same thing on Father's Day!

One of the guys, Given, wrote this on the board.. he's very artisic!

They set the tables so nicely!


Mom and Gracious


Maureen and Lineth


Mom teaching (or preaching - as dad joked) the lesson.
_________________________________________________________

I thought I'd put in some older pictures here at the end.....
These are from when dad was chairman of the Red Cross Society here in White River.
This was his only meeting, where they decided to close it down and from then on work from the Nelspruit chapter.
Now we are praying that the Municipality will let us stay at the Red Cross for the same yearly rent that they had it-- 13 Rand... which is a little less that $1.30!


Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Election Day - SA 2009

Today was election day here in South Africa. You may have heard about some of it.. we only get liberal news networks here, so the only network I've heard mention the elections here (other than the SA news) was CNN. Most people believe that the ANC (African National Congress) will win this year's election.. again. Their leader, Jacob Zuma, has been accused of rape and 783 counts of corruption. Many of these accusations have been dismissed so far, but he is still under investigation. Most of the population will vote for the ANC because they were the most influential party (or organization then) that put a stop to Apartheid. Aparatheid oppressed the black population of South Africa for many years. For this reason, many of the people here will turn a blind eye to what wrongs Jacob Zuma has done and still vote for the ANC.

There are 42 parties on the ballot, including: the DA (Democratic Alliance), COPE and ID.

All over town on every single lamp post there are tons of campaign posters. Below is an example.

Memory Vacation 2009 (part 2)

This post concludes our vacation... We came home after our trip to the Drakensburg so that we could be at our church for Easter, then we got to go camping at the beach! It was the prettiest beach I have ever been to. We left Monday the 13th and it took us pretty much all day to get there because there was a lot of road construction. But as we are missionaries... we are very accustomed to looong road trips. We all had a good time on the way there.

The place we camped at was in an animal park, so we had to go through that animal park where they have cheetahs and leopards, etc... to get to our campsite. They had a cattle grate where we drove in and I guess there was an electric fence around somewhere, but I never saw one.. so, in my mind, it's a wonder we weren't visited by any large cats. :)


Gordon took the picture above on our first morning there... I, on the other hand was still sound asleep in my tent. No way am I waking up at sunrise on vacation! But I am glad that he did, otherwise we wouldn't have this gorgeous picture!


Our lovely campsite. Thanks to Gram for the gazebo. :)






Our campsite was visited by several animals, not including leopards or cheetahs. There were a ton of monkeys trying to snatch up oranges and chips every chance they could get. This trait being where they get the adjective "cheeky" from. And above is a picture of a bushbok that came right up to our campsite... not many of them came so close, but I guess this one was used to being fed, even though that was against the rules.


Saturday, April 18, 2009

Memory Vacation 2009 (part 1)

Finally! We are back from our vacation. We all had a great time and in this post I will explain to you the many things that happened to us and the things we got to see for the first part of our vacation to the Drakensburg Mountains in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

Our trip started off with a bang (literally) because before we even stopped to eat breakfast one of the tires on our trailer burst. Hence the picture below.

Gordon and I took our ACT tests at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg on the way to the Drakensburg. We left Friday morning (April 3rd) and visited with missionary friends of ours-the Howards. Saturday morning we took our test where I was supposed to meet up with my friend from Penryn, Chabi, afterwards. She couldn't make it because she didn't have anyone to drive her there... :(


Sunday morning we went to Antioch Baptist Church with the Howards. Pastor Somzila (pictured below) was trained by Bro. Howard. Because I didn't get to see Chabi on Saturday, I invited her to church and lunch afterwards. We went to pick her up and on the way to church our car blew a head gasket. When we stopped to see what was wrong, dad opened up the hood of the car and all of this rusty water exploded out and onto his nice Sunday shirt! We weren't very far from the church at this point, so we rumbled on the rest of the way there.


While we were waiting to figure out what to do about the car (we were supposed to leave for the mountains after church) Gordon, Chabi and I played around with some kids from the church.

The two on the left are Pastor Somzila's kids. They were so wild!


We couldn't get our hotel room that we had been staying in again, so the Howards graciously let Gordon, mom and Anne stay with them at their hotel apartment which has 2 bedrooms and a living room/kitchen. Dad stayed with Pastor Somzila, as the church is built onto his house. We couldn't get anyone to fix the car on Sunday, so we just had to wait around until Monday.


I got to stay with Chabi and her aunt... then Monday I went to school with her. She attends Witswatersrand University--same place I took the ACT--where she is studying law and linguistics. Dad came to pick me up around 11:30. Here's a picture of Chabi (second from the right) and her cousin, Kini (first on the left--she was also in our class) and another guy from our class at Penryn, Zubhair, and his girlfriend (forget her name, but she's the one on the far right).



So, after all of that mess... we finally arrived at Cayley Lodge in the Drakensburg!
Here is Anne with the owner's children--'If' and 'N'... not sure why they wouldn't tell us their real names, but that's what they told us to call them.

The 2nd day we were there, Wednesday, we went to go see Tugela Falls, the second tallest waterfall in the world. We were under the impression that you could just drive right up to it, but when we got there we found out that it was a 7 km hike, so we just used the binoculars to see it. :)

This is a picture of the Amphitheater. Tugela Falls is on this mountain (somewhere) I can't remember where and I doubt you could zoom in enough on this picture to find it.

The lake by Cayley Lodge from up where the cabins were.

Gordon and Anne on the dock at the lake by Cayley Lodge.

Another view of the lake by Cayley Lodge.

Here is the one picture from our horseback riding adventure on Thursday. This was one of our guides who helped mom at the back of the line. It wasn't a small horse-walking thing either.. we were galloping and stuff and had to post so that we weren't bouncing up and down like crazy... so between all of that I couldn't really take any pictures on the horse I was riding--his name was Mahog. Yeah, so with all the bouncing I got a bruise on my elbow from my camera.. urg, that part was not fun. I still had fun and would do it again.. just with out my camera hanging around my neck. :)

Here's a pic of the whole family before we left Cayley Lodge.

And lastly, a picture of us kids on Easter Sunday.


Saturday, March 21, 2009

Anne's 8th Birthday

Another Birthday post for today... Anne's 8th Birthday from July 29, 2008. They aren't the greatest pictures. I haven't quite gotten down night-time shooting (picture-taking?). Anne wanted to have her friends over, so we invited the Quartersons who have 4 boys and 2 girls. I'm sorry to say I didn't get a group picture of them, but maybe I'll post one from another time later.



Blowing out the candles...

Hugging one of her presents from the
Quartersons, a bag full of toy horses!


Present from mom and dad.

I thought I'd also post some pictures I took today from our garden. I really love fall, and I can't stand to be inside when the weather is so nice, so I took my camera outside and started snapping away...

This is dad's favorite tree... it only blooms in March.
The sun is to the left here, so that's why it seems
faded on that side of the tree.



Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Gordon's 17th Birthday

The post today is for my Gram, because she really wanted to see pictures from Gordon and Anne's birthday, but the CD we sent back home with Gordon didn't work. But now that I have a blog, that's no longer a problem!

These here are pictures from Gordon's 17th birthday from August 29, 2008.


Opening presents.


Gordon's buddies who came over. This was right
after their class camp so, not all of his friends
could come.
(L to R): Nick Berlein, Bubba, Josh Mather-Pike


Gordon's cake! The best part of any birthday!!!
Mom and I made a German Chocolate cake, and I
made the banner in the background there.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

House Pictures

Today I have posted pictures of our house, most of them are from the backyard, because that's where it's the prettiest. Also, when we moved in, they called the backyard the front because really it does look more like the front than the actual front (where the road is). Maybe I'll try to get a nicer one of that area soon, I don't think the one I posted is too great.

Just to let y'all know, we are moving out of this house soon, to a house a couple streets away, probably around the end of April or beginning of May. I won't be here to take pictures, but I'll be sure to make Gordon do it or something.


Our street: Flamboyant Street. This is actually
taken at the opposite end of the street from where
our house is. Our house is at the very end of the street
on the left from this point of view.


The front of our house.


The back garden (or yard) showing the veranda.


Okay, if you put yourself where I was standing
while taking the next picture, this part of the garden
would be behind you. Just go down those stairs and
you'll see the pool. ;)


Gordon said this picture made our pool look bigger
than it actually is, so I decided to let him be right
and posted it.

Monday, March 16, 2009

More people pictures from Sunday March 15

Alright you guys, I'm really sorry I didn't post more pictures last week like I said, but here they finally are--more pictures of people from our church. All of these were taken yesterday.



This is the taxi that comes to get our people every
Sunday after church, sometimes the taxi is a bit
bigger, but this is the type of taxi you will see all
over South Africa.


The lady in this picture is Marie. The older girl
to her right (our left) is her neice Rose, and the
smaller girl beside Rose is Primrose, and she just
stuck herself in this picture. :)

The other two kids are Nhlanhla and Junya
(he's in the middle). All of these people come from
the farm except Primrose--she really is a ham for
the camera.


This is Terry, he is Gracious's son, one of
our church members.You can see a picture of
her with mom and Marie from the Family Fellowship post.


This is Jessica, she has just recently started
coming to church. Here she is holding her John & Romans
and New Testament. We give out the John &
Romans free then if they read that all the way
through, we give them a New Testament. If they
read the NT, we give them a whole Bible.


And lastly, 3 boys that come to church, they're cousins:
(L to R): Siyabonga, Lunga, and Mzwake.