We have been in South Africa for 2 1/2 weeks but it has been no stop running.  As soon as we arrived we began to prepare for the team from the Journey Church in New York City as well as Doug and Melissa Willmarth from McKinney.  Philip had his hands full buying mattresses, putting down flooring in the duplexes and getting the dormitory cleaned out.

The kids and I started getting in a routine for school.  We are still trying to get everything working so that we have school in the morning and they can play or work in the afternoon.

Our big garden looks great thanks to Festas.  We have added a smaller garden in our backyard and have planted onions, celery, tomatoes, herbs, cucumber and watermelons.  We’ll see if we are as successful as Festas.

We have a new addition to our family, Sunny the ridgeless Ridgeback.  She was free because she doesn’t have the ridge on her back and no one else wanted her.  She has been pretty good but she is still a puppy and is supposed to be pretty big when she grows.

We have spent some time at the DebeNek Primary School as the team here last week painted the outside of the school, cleaned out overgrown flowerbeds and spent a morning playing with the kindergarten class.  We hope to continue helping them with projects as we can.  The team from FBC McKinney who are coming in January will help put up a playground in their yard.  We are hoping that we can make some relationships so that they will come to Fort White for classes that we will offer.  One program that we want to start in the new year is Dv8 (Deviate).  It is a program that our church is doing and is very successful.  The focus for Dv8 is to teach the kids that Jesus is the only way to Heaven.  The kids here also need to be taught this.  We’ll see what happens in January.

I have added pictures to our Shutterfly account and we’d love for you to see them.  Go to http://thefudgefive.shutterfly.com and the password is HereAmI.

More to come when I have more time to…

We are already looking at our departure date that is just a little over a week away.  Three months have seems to fly by as we had the chance to see family, visit with friends and create new connections with people who feel led to support what we feel God has called us to do.

Our flight is on November 9th from DFW to Washington.  We then board the long trip to Johannesburg and will stay the night there.  We will hopefully get to see the Evens for a short visit before we board the flight to East London on November 11th.

Ten days after we arrive in East London we will have the Journey team from New York and a couple from our home church come stay at Fort White to do projects and help us set up connections with some of the schools in our area.  We then will be looking forward to the 25 people coming from FBC McKinney in January to lead a holiday club (VBS) and help with building projects.

God has blessed us so great with friends and family like you.  We can’t say thank you enough to the Haskins who have so graciously hosted us for the last 3 months at their guest house.  We love you guys and will miss you.  Harold Eldridge, we were so blessed to get to use your suburban while we were here.  It really helped us on our longs drives to see family.  There are so many I want to say thank you to and I hope to be able to do that in person before we leave.

Please feel very welcome to come visit us anytime you can.  We have the space and I’m sure we could find some thing for you to do.

We love you all and feel very blessed to have you in our lives.

Check out our pictures from this summer at http://thefudgefive.shutterfly.com.  The password is HereAmI (you must use the caps on H, A and I).

“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done” Are we really ok with that? When it comes right down to it, are we ok with making plans, telling people what we are going to do, raising support for a certain project and then having your plans change due to what God wants us to do? Sometimes it is really hard to watch the changes occur and sometimes it’s thrilling. In our case at Fort White, it has been exciting to watch as what was planned by man has had a makeover by God.

When we first were approached to come to Fort White in South Africa, it was because they wanted to start a school at the campus. Being a teacher, they pursued us with the plan that I would be teaching and running the school. My first thought was that I really didn’t know how to run a school, but I’m sure I could work it out since God was on my side – in my weakness, He will be made strong. My second thought was, “Am I really ready to go back into the classroom full time?” Since my 11-year-old was born, I haven’t had the desire to be in the classroom full time. I have enjoyed teaching at Vacation Bible School or in a Sunday school setting, but a full time teacher is a different thing. “If that is what You are calling me to do Lord, then I guess I’m ready to go back into the classroom full time.”

So, our energy this summer (winter here) was spent making the schoolhouse ready for a school to start in January 2010. Dr. Alf Kettles had been working diligently on getting the paperwork filled out to have a proper school at Fort White. Unfortunately, right before he left to go work in Ireland for a few months the paper work was sent back to him with a new packet that was supposed to be filled out in the first place. Quite frustrated, Alf started again but had to leave it to the rest of the board to finish.

During our time here, Mark Presley and Dustin Taylor came to document the work that was being done at Fort White. One day, they went with Philip and Festas to a school near by. The principal told them that the government allows 4 teachers for their school of 90 students. The problem is that the school has grade 1 through grade 12. This means that one teacher has three or four grades to teach at one time. Another issue that we would have to consider would be if we started at school at Fort White, we would take some of the students away from that school. That might be helpful to four or five children that would come to our school, but that would mean we make their student numbers lower, in turn having the government fund less teachers. That would be awful.

So as we listened to the community and felt a pull from God, we were not at peace about starting a school at Fort White. During the same time, Dr. Kettles was struggling in Ireland. He was not at peace about the paper work and the process that seemed to not be working for us to start a school. He called Philip one day with a heavy heart and Philip could tell that he was having a hard time working through this problem. Philip finally said, “Alf, we don’t feel like we should start a school at Fort White. We feel like we should compliment the schools that are already in the area.” Dr. Kettles almost jumped through the phone. He was so excited because he was thinking the same thing but was concerned that we had our hearts set on starting a proper school.

It turned out that everyone on the board, as well as our family, had been feeling the same about starting the school. It seems that the schools around us don’t have extra mural sports, libraries, music programs, chapel times, computer classes or life skills training. These are all the things that we could offer at Fort White. How exciting to watch the plans unfold for what God has planned for the Place of Hope, Indawo Yethemba.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Jeremiah 29:11

Two and a half months; 76 days; 1824 hours; 109,440 minutes; 6,566,400 seconds.  The numbers are big but the time has quickly past.  We are down to the last 11 days in South Africa before we come back to Texas for a three-month period.  Why, some are asking, are we even coming back to America right now?  If you know the full story, we had just planned to come to Fort White for the summer (winter here).  We were going to help renovate the buildings and help them get their facility ready for whatever they were going to use them for.  Then, after Philip’s trip here in February, we felt a strong desire to stay longer.  Our flight was already planned for us to come back in August, so here we come!

The last couple of weeks have been very busy.  We continue to work on the buildings and are seeing some improvements around.  The schoolhouse looks quite nice on the inside.  We still have work to do on the floors, but it’s looking slick!

We had a team from Washington State come to do a sports camp at Fort White.  We went over and gathered children from the school in Ngcamgeni.  The kids were ages 9 – 14.  They played for three hours straight.  It was a fun day and once again we enjoyed getting to meet new people who decided that it was important to show the love of God to the people near us.

I (Becky) went to Johannesburg to see David and Liz Even.  It was good to meet some of their people that they work with.  It’s a fun group and I can see that they love the Evens.  The McKinney youth group was there at the same time that I went.  We all stayed at Camp Eden with J-Life.  The students worked in Extension 23 all week meeting the kids there, telling their story at the schools, playing with the small children while some of them put up playground equipment and having a youth meeting each night.  I was impressed with our youth and their ability to open up to other teens in order to show them that God’s hope and love are worth finding.  Great job Amber as you lead the team in Joburg!

The day after I returned, Dustin Taylor and Mark Presley came to our house at Fort White.  They were taking pictures and filming all of our ministries that are taking place in South Africa and they came to Fort White to see what was happening.  It rained 3 out of the 4 days that they were here.  We did get the footage that they wanted to get but we also got to have a new adventure.  Our family had never turned right out of our road into Fort White so we decided to check it out.  I mean, there might have been a Wal-Mart or an El Chico right around the corner and we would have never known!!!  Well, there wasn’t but there is a beautiful mountain named Hogsback that we drove up.  We would have walked down to one of the waterfalls, but it was a bit muddy from the rain and it was getting dark.  Another day! Philip picked up David Even on Sunday and it increased our number to 8.  I loved it!  The house was full of people and laughter.

In all of the commotion of people coming and going, a man and his crew came to replace the roof on the chapel.  You might have read Philip’s note about Ray Paddle.  He is from Australia but had to stop his work on the chapel due to a diagnosis of Leukemia.  So Ray, thank you for your work on the chapel and I’ve posted some pictures for you to see the finished product.  It is fabulous!!!

This will be the last post while we are here but we will still have the same email when we are back in the US.  We hope to see as many of your as we can when we are stateside.  If you have a church or a group that might be interested in what we are doing, please let us know and we’d love to come talk to your group.  We are still raising support and want to get as many people here as possible.  Already we have 3 groups planning a trip here in November and January.  If you are interested in joining one of these groups or want to bring your own, please let us know.

Signing off for now.
The Fudges

We continue in our goal to have the schoolhouse and the hall finished at Fort White before we leave to go back to America on August 14.  Fortunately, we have had two great teams come this swinter (our summer, their winter) to help us.  Our second team was from Cambridge Baptist Church in East London.  The team was the youth from the church and they did a great job.  We had them rip up all the tile from the school house.  They also painted the rest of the rooms in the schoolhouse that needed to be finished and they started on the building behind the chapel.  They were a fun group of kids with more energy than the Energizer Bunny.  I loved having my house full of people and watching them interact with each other and my kids.  Once again, Thomas made new friends as soon as he met them.  They worked for 3 days and made great strides in the projects that need to be finished.  Thank you Cambridge team and we hope to have you back very soon.

We had a surprise guest when Scott Flowers gave us call one day.  Trenton Glore was from the Journey team that had come a week and a half ago.  He felt he wanted to stay longer in South Africa and continue working where he was needed.  We enjoyed having him stay at Fort White and help work on the roofs.  Thank you Trenton for all of your hard work.

We have 3 1/2 weeks left here in South Africa and our prayer is that we see what God needs us to do before we leave.  We will have one more team here in a week to lead a sports camp with the children from the near by village.  It will be good to meet these children since they will be the ones that might come to the school or to some of the other classes we’d like to teach.  There will be a language barrier but I know that God is a mighty god and works through any barrier we think we have.

Thank you for your prayers and sweet emails.  They are keeping us going.

We had our first experience with a team that came to help at Fort White. I will just say that any team that comes now will have high standards to follow. The group from the Journey Church in New York consisted of 9 members who were all fabulous! The team also consisted of three other missionaries that are stationed in East London; Scott Flowers, Roxie and Melody. We met at Fort White on Friday, July 10 when they came to help renovate the schoolhouse. They worked all day long painting, scraping and organizing different rooms. That evening we had a braii and invited all of the staff at Fort White to join us. There were 24 people eating at the Fudge house. We had a wonderful day which ending with a beautiful clear night to see all of the stars. The team came back on Saturday and worked another day on the school and the hall. Philip, Jeremy and Trey all climbed up on the roof and painted. What troopers!! That evening we said our good-byes but were going to see each other again since we were going to join them at Inkwenkwezi Game Reserve.

On Monday, we met the team at First City and helped them prepare for the Holiday Bible Club that would start on Tuesday. We then went out to the game reserve. We got to know all of the team and fell in love with all of them. We want to thank Auntie Dawn for her gift that day J. The girls and I decided to come back on Tuesday to help with the Holiday Bible Club. Emily and Allie knew all the songs and the motions to the songs they were going to use because of Karin Campbell’s chapel for the last 4 years. (Mrs. Campbell, you would be proud!!)

So, on Tuesday, the Fudge girls drove back to East London to participate in the fun. We were invited to stay the night at the hotel with the team and join them again on Wednesday at First City. We had such a great time and we already miss our new friends. As I drove back to Fort White on Wednesday, I couldn’t help but be in amazement as I realized that we hadn’t even met this team a week ago. Only through the common bond of our Lord, Jesus Christ, can 15 people come together so quickly and form a lasting friendship.

I was blessed to get to have some girl time with fun, Christian women. God knows that it is an important part of my life to have a time to laugh and talk with other sisters in Christ. I look forward to more teams coming as we continue to renovate Fort White and minister to the children of the communities near us.

So, to the 9 from The Journey Church; Dawn, Jeremy, Ashley, Emily, Sherry, Anna, Elizabeth, Calvin and Trey; you are fantastic people. I feel blessed that you came into our lives. I can’t wait to have you back at Fort White and to South Africa. Your time here has impacted many lives. God bless you.

We have now been at Fort White for 3 weeks, yes only 3 weeks!  It seems like we have been here much longer than that.  To update everyone on the crazy 1st week: 1) We have not had another major wind storm like the first week we were here, thank you dear Lord.  That was so crazy and it brought very cold weather.  Our weather has been quite nice during the day, even hot sometimes, and then very cool to chilly at night. 2) Our hot water heater works great!!!  AND our electricity has been sorted out.  Galvus, the light magician as Thomas called him, spent 3 full days reworking the wires that had been crossed and installing new circuits so we could run more than one appliance at a time.

We did celebrate Thomas’ 7^th birthday on July 9^th.  Our friends, Leo and Linda O’Connor took us on a safari to see all sorts of animals.  We saw zebras, giraffes, wart hogs and a lot of deer looking animals (they call them Bock).  The lions were in a double fenced cage.  They were excited as our Thomas and the O’Connor’s Thomas got on all fours and crawled around like a lion.  I thought that the real lion would pounce if they could get through the fences.  We had a great day.

The day normally looks like this:
7:00 Get up, or at least make Philip get up
7:15 Eat breakfast, or at least make Philip eat breakfast
7:30 Work has started for the day – the guys usually are working by 7:30
Later-ish The rest of us drag ourselves out of bed
10:30 Tea time or diet coke
1:00 Lunch
2:00 Back to work
4:00 The guys decide they are done for the day, Philip still working
5:30 The sun is setting so Philip must come in for the day
6:00 Dinner
6:30 Now what do we do?  No TV, no computer for the kids and it’s dark outside…
8:00 Bed time because we are out of ideas

Right now, I (Becky) am living the life of a farm wife.  I get up, make breakfast, wash dishes by hand, put a load of laundry in, clean up the house (this wind makes my house very dirty), take the laundry out to hang it on the line, start lunch, eat lunch, do the dishes by hand after lunch, go work a little at the school house, feel overwhelmed with everything that still needs to be done, go take down the dried laundry, fold clothes and put them back into the suitcases (still looking for dressers), start dinner, eat dinner, make the girls do the dishes by hand after dinner, get on the computer to chat with friends or update blog, watch a movie that we downloaded before we left (we are running out of movies so I’ve repeated some of them), go to bed.  This will change when the school starts.

The kids day starts when they get up, it is summer break for them.  Thomas usually races out the door to go help Uncle Festus.  Not sure how much help he is, but Thomas loves it.  The other day we were eating lunch and he raced through it.  He asked to be excused and I asked him what he was rushing off to.  He relied, “The chickens aren’t going to feed themselves, are they?”  He’s becoming a great little farm boy.

The girls will go out and play on the wall or sit in the house reading.  We didn’t bring a lot of books with us because they are heavy and we didn’t have the room in our suitcases, so they have decided to read through the bible.  That works!  We’ve got 5 more weeks here, they should get through at least the Old Testament.  All the kids have helped with the school house.  They have scraped old paint off the wall, swept up the old paint, taken down old tile from the bathroom and other odd jobs.  It will mean so much more when we are done for them since they helped do it.

In the next 3 weeks we will have 3 different teams here to help.  I can’t wait to have them here and hopefully will see a great improvement after they have come.  We thank you for your prayers and thoughts of us, and ask that you continue.  We wouldn’t be able to do it without God’s hand in everything we do.  We still have much to do before we can start a school in January.  The paperwork has been sent off for the second time to get a school approved, we’ll wait to hear about that.  We are still trying to decide what grades to teach and who will be teaching those grades.  It seems to all be unsettled at the time being, but it will be exciting to watch as God works it all out.

We still have many projects to complete and the cost keeps adding up.  Please continue to help financially or pray about becoming a part of our financial supporters.

We love you all and would love to hear from you as well.
Becky, Philip, Emily, Allison and Thomas

I think that God was so gracious to give us a few weeks to enjoy South Africa before our work began.  I think it just easier for you to read my diary entries.  I will get pictures for you soon.

June 19, Fri – Moved into Ft. White house, Alf and Dorothy helped and we got the kids room’s set up.  There was a lot of bedding that was donated and the kids rooms were fully finished with the donations.  The girls have matching duvet covers and curtains with pink sheets.  They were thrilled.  Thomas’ duvet cover has pictures of video games on it, he was pretty excited.  Thomas got his first egg and carried it around with him for an hour.  He then dropped it but it was only cracked so we put it in our fridge.  We spent our first night at Ft. White.  Philip woke up at 12:30 thinking it was 5:30.

June 20, Sat – I made Thomas and Emily eggs for breakfast with their eggs that they got from the chickens. It was a long day of getting the house organized.  We didn’t have any hot water yet so we had to boil all of our water.  I decided to wash all the dishes in the house so I was boiling water all day long.  Then we all had to take a bath so we boiled another 12 pots of water.

June 21, Sun – We went to Ebenezer Family Church today.  The pastor showed slides of his trip to Israel.  We made fried chicken for Father’s Day and then took a nap.  Allie got an egg for the cookies that we made for Father’s Day.  She was so big; she had finally decided that she could go into the coop to get an egg.  Philip helped the guys with their computers and they started discussing possibilities for things we could do for the kids in the villages when they are on holiday in a week.  Lord, please give me the wisdom and knowledge of what to start.  Very windy tonight, it almost rained but it missed us.

June 22, Mon – Just keep grouting, grouting, grouting!  I grouted the bathroom and started on the second one.  They tried to work on our hot water heater today but ended up just as they had started this morning.  When you turn on the sink’s facet, the shower comes on.  Crazy house!  At about 9:00pm, we heard a pop and then running water.  When we investigated, the toilet that we had been using (the only one of the 3 that work) was spraying water from the pipes below the toilet.  Philip turned off the water to the house. We will have an electrician come out on Wednesday and he can iron out the electrical problems that we are having.  Hopefully we can get a plumber out here too.  We have made plans to go have a shower at the Kettles tomorrow.

June 23, Tues – We went to the Kettle’s house today to take showers and do some laundry.  We had lunch with them and spent some time talking to them.  We went to Rama’s and bought a small counter to go next to my oven because I needed a counter to cook on.  We got a pizza and came home.

June 24, Wed – We had a long night due to the massive winds we had all night.  Around 3:00am our lights went out.  You could see so many stars because everyone’s electricity has gone out.  The sound of the wind was so loud and it sounded like the roof was going to be torn off.  It was loud in my house, which is a concrete structure.  My thoughts were with the people who live in the townships and my heart was hurting for those people.  They have built their home of our anything they have found.  A lot of them use tin that is on my roof.  If it is loud at my house, I cannot imagine how loud it is at their house.  Does it feel like the entire house is about to blow away?  Does the wind cut through their home where the seems are connected?  Lord, be with these people and cover them with Your warmth; an unexplainable warmth that also gives them peace during this storm.  We got up and got things started for the day, breakfast, grouting, etc.  At 10:00, Alf and his brother came to bring us a propane tank so we could have something to cook on if we needed it.  We had tea with them and the guys.  Then the electrician came to look at our wiring and figure out a way to get our hot water heater working.  He said that he could come back on Friday.  Then Leo O’Connor came and brought us lunch.  We spoke with Leo about some groups coming to do a sports camp here and then about some other ideas concerning Ft. White.  We had a great lunch and then it was quiet in our house, but only from people’s voices.  The winds continued to roar until about 6:00 when it died down some.  We went to bed early.

June 25, Thurs – The Wyatt’s and their family came by the house today to visit for a while on their way to the mountains.  Our kids love their kids, so they all enjoyed being here together.  We went into East London to shower again and eat with the Kettles.

June 26, Fri – We waited for the electrician to come, but he never called.  I continued to grout the bathroom and Philip took the kids to the schoolhouse to scrape paint in the halls so the walls could be patched and repainted soon.  They all did a great job and enjoyed helping dad.  We went into town so we could buy a gas heater.  We bought the heater and a tank, which we took to a gas shop but they wouldn’t fill it because it wasn’t certified.  So we went to another shop that sold us a canister filled with gas and took back the canister that couldn’t be filled.  It just seems to take longer with everything we do.  We have been really cold in the house and the heater will be a big help.

June 27, Sat – We started working early again.  I finished the grouting in the bathroom and Philip took the kids to clean out the classrooms in the schoolhouse.  Dorothy and Alf came with Arnold and AJ to deliver some furniture to Festus and Shyandla.  They had tea and cookies; white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, requested by Alf.  He even bought the chocolate and nuts for the cookies.  It seems that my cookies are a hit in South Africa.  I do miss our brown sugar.  The sugar here is a little more coarse.  We started lunch and a group of youth came to our door from Cambridge Baptist Church.  They had spent a few days renovating our house before we got to South Africa and they enjoyed seeing what we have done with the place.  They will be coming again in the middle of July to do more renovations and lead a day of VBS (Holiday Bible Club).  Hopefully the electrician can come on Tuesday.  He has quoted 8000 rand for the repairs.  Dr. Kettles has offered to pay for the repairs but my hope is that we can have people donate toward that.    Our water heater has been working but it cannot share the circuit with the other appliances.  So it is either hot water or cooking.  We got stuff out for dinner and our oven kept shutting off, Philip had just taken a hot shower and washed dishes.  We put the food back in the refrigerator and went into town to eat at Spurs.  We got home and the kids took warm baths and we put them to bed.

June 28, Sun – We went to Bethany Emmanuel Church this morning.  We had seen the sign that said the service started at 9:00 so we got to church about 9:00, but no one was there.  We were met a lady named Jennifer and she introduced us to the pastor and the music team.  The service wasn’t going to start until 9:30 since it was a school holiday.  We hung around and met some of the other people.  The Pastor and his wife, Rueben and Patricia, invited us to lunch.  We also ate with Jennifer and her 4 children and another missionary, Suzanne, with her 3 children.  We enjoyed our lunch and desserts and went home.  Philip and I laid down to take a good Sunday nap and then Meegan and Wayne came by.  They had gone to Hogsback Mountain and we going back to King Williams Town.  We have had more drop-in visitors at our house in Fort White then we ever did at our house in McKinney.  We have enjoyed getting to know all of the people here and they have a true interest in how things are going for us.

written by Philip

We are officially moved out to Ft. White (as of Friday). The house is still in progress of repairs, but it is livable. The hot water heater has not been installed yet and so we boiled 12 pots of water last night for baths. I first spent 45 minutes scrubbing the bathtub from decades of grime (it was truly disgusting)….and it is nice and sparkly clean now. I tiled the laundry room floor yesterday and did a few other odd jobs around the house (mostly sweeping…sweeping…and more sweeping). Today we are going to paint the kitchen cabinets (I think) and maybe a few of the other cabinets that are in the girls room. They are so dingy, but are sound cabinets…a good dusting and a fresh coat of clean white paint will make them like new.

Thomas is fascinated with the chickens. That is the first thing he wants to do when he wakes up of a morning, is to go and see how many eggs have been laid. They are running about 30 a day, so every time he checks on them there are more eggs on the ground…and he comes running back each time to tell us the count. We let him go in and get one on Friday afternoon, and he carried it around for an hour or so…then he dropped it and cracked the shell, but not enough to expose the yoke. So, we put it in the refrigerator and Becky scrambled it for him on Saturday morning. He thought that was the coolest thing. Mugamet’s grandson is visiting this weekend (he is 6) and Thomas and him played all day yesterday…sunup to sundown. He even ate chili with us last night. Each time he reached for some grated cheese to put in his chili he would say “I always like cheese…”…Becky and I laughed each time. I finally up-ended the cheese into his chili … he had eaten most of it anyway.

Emily and Allison have been reading books and drawing pictures of the area. They spend most of the day outside, laying on the remnants of a car ramp outside. The ramp is one that you would have driven a car up onto so that you could work beneath it for changing oil or whatever else one does underneath a car. They have begun to decorate their room (they room together), and were very pleased that they had been donated a set of pink bed sheets. One of the ladies from the church in Gonubie had donated a small round table with 3 legs that they have taken to put between their two beds to serve as a bedside table. There is all manner of ‘decorations’ posed on that bedside table, so much that it is overflowing.

Becky worked most of the day in the kitchen, getting that organized and cleaned. What a chore to clean that kitchen. She must have boiled water for 10 hours for all the scrubbing of dishes and for baths etc. She then spent the afternoon and evening trying to sort out suitcases and unpack clothes. It is a little difficult at the moment to find places for clothing as the ‘closets’ (as we’ll call them) are pretty dirty and have no shelving, drawers, etc. So, she made each person their own suitcase filled with their clothes.

We were surprised by the amount of fires that we see while driving in the area. There are dozens of grass fires that will pop up each day. They will burn through a few dozen acres, and then die out. The plants are so dry that they burn quite easily. We thought that they must be started by careless cigarettes or trash burning gone bad, but it turns out that they are started by bits of glass that focus the sunlight onto the grass. Every time we see one, Thomas yells ‘Fire!’ and makes sure that we all see where it is. He was so concerned about it that he has already searched our yard and picked up any pieces of glass that he has found. We are glad that we live on a slope and not in a valley, as it seems the smoke settles down in valleys…I can’t imagine living in smoke for very long. I remember a few years ago when Oklahoma had a lot of grass fires and the smoke blowing down…imagine that constantly.

A few prayer requests:
– Hot Water!
– finances for the school renovations
– an introduction to the village leaders in the next few days

You’ve been more than a friend to me

You fight off my enemies

You’ve spoken truth over my life.

You’ll never know what it means to me

Just to know you’ve been on your knees for me

Oh you have blessed my life

More than you’ll ever know.

This song by Watermark is exactly how we feel right now.  We have reflected on the two weeks that we have been in South Africa only to realize that God’s protective hand has been all over us.  We know that your prayers have aided in that protection.  We thank you and as another part of the song says, “And all the while I am hoping that I do the kind of praying for you that you’ve done for me.  That’s the way it ought a be.”

We have felt more like we have been on a vacation the last two weeks because our house at Fort White is not complete.  Our hosts have been very gracious with their home and in entertaining us.  We have been to the beach a few times and had multiple dinners at their friend’s home.  We have met a few families with children and our kids have had a great time playing with them.  We have been out to the house at Ft. White a few times and we have all the furniture and appliances that we bought at the house ready to install.  We are still waiting on the electrical wiring to be finished and, very important, the hot water heater to be installed.  It looks like we might move out to the house on Friday, June 19.

Here are a few pictures of our home being worked on and other pictures that I’ve taken this past couple of weeks. I’ll try to explain a few pictures.  The first set are some pictures taken at Fort White.  The first picture is of some of our Ft. White family.  The two people at the ends are Barbara and Collin Tomlinson.  They live in Cape Town right now but will be moving out to Ft. White in January.  He is a teacher and we will be teaching together.  They are retired missionaries from Turkey.  The other people are the Kettles, Alf and Dorothy, and Vuyani (spelling?).  Alf and Vuyani are on the Ft. White board.

You’ll see other pictures of our house in progress.  It really does look like it is coming along.  The kitchen is still a bit torn up, but it will be very nice when they are done.  The other pictures are some pictures of Ft. White.   There is one of Thomas and a new friend.  He is the grandson of the man who is doing all the work on our house, Mugamet.  Thomas and Mo (he can’t remember his full name, his mom kept calling him Mo) hit it off.  But even with all the work that we are doing at Ft. White we can’t forget that we are there to touch lives for Jesus.  There is one picture of the closest village Ncgamgeni, continue to pray for the lives of these people who need to have God’s hope.

The other pictures are from our time with Alf and Dorothy and their son David at a village called Cintsa.  David and his family, Ally, Lindsey, Matthew and Jonathan, were staying at a friends beach house for their long weekend and invited us to come for the day.  It was beautiful and we enjoyed our time with them.  The kids once again got along great.  Check out Squishy, the kids pet jellyfish.  He turned out to not be the most ideal pet.

Your prayers are always welcomed.  We will know more of our needs after we get out to our house.  We love you all and are so thankful for our Internet connection; I don’t feel so stranded.  Would always love to hear from you: Germanfudges@gmail.com or rebeccafudge@yahoo.com