The Christmas Stranger!

Evangel's production, the Christmas Stranger, has been in the works since October, 2007, and now is FINALLY finished!!! Yippee! We're taking orders.

The script was written by my mom back in the '70's and adapted and expanded by Evangel. It includes THE Christmas story. It has some tender moments, but is also hilarious in spots.

Here's the guy who played Baby Jesus (top) and the guy who was the Angel Gabriel (bottom), Baby Daniel and our Joshua.

Aunt Joy relaxing!

It's a Dog's Life

Berwick is in training and we're having great fun with her. She can sit, stay (if she's not too hungry), speak (if she's hungry), heel ( a little bit) and fetch (unless she's tired). She is learning to put her head under a cushion when we say, "Shame" and she jumps through a hoop nicely. Aunt Joy brought us a book called 101 Dog Tricks which has great pictures as well as good ideas. Unfortunately, I get the job of "modesting up" the trainer with a black permanent marker/kokie as her cute little outfits are skimpy.

Josh and Jesse

Jesse and Josh

Josh has had his buddy Jesse over nearly every day. They love to swim and surf across the pool. I figured it was safe to let the bunnies loose in the garden while they were down there swimming, but they put HUGE holes in the garden, so that wasn't my greatest idea.

Axis and Allies with Oliver

Timmy's been having a major battle with Lit.and  Creative Writing class, and I think he's going to win! But today he's relaxing with his buddy Oliver, playing a game they invented which is a cross between Axis and Allies and Risk.
Josh too.  

It's Saturday!

After a busy week of homeschooling, I'm glad to have a change of pace today. Paul went to the prison 5 days this week, with his sister Joy, who had a few wild adventures. Prison is always an adventure, but she got locked into the bathroom one day, and met with a flood of overflowing sewage another. I'd say she's due for a little R & R.

Doing school work is challenging right now, because most of the kids' friends are still on holiday, and the weather is hot and enticing for outdoor activities more then sitting around figuring out long division.

The BIG NEWS of the week is that Evangel finished her production of The Christmas Stranger! She started filming over a year ago, dragging practically every local friend into the making of it. It has background music, gorgeous scenery, and 2 stories in there! The first story is of a family challenged to make a stranger feel welcome in their home at the Christmas season, and the second story comes with the acting out of THE Christmas Story as the Dad (played by new dad, our own James Young) reads it to his family.

It is alternately touching and hilarious. Evangel's working on the cover for the DVD jacket right now, and then it's ready to send out!

Christmas and New Year's Days

Merry Christmas! We’ve been having a doozy here. First, we welcomed Paul home from Nigeria, just 48 hours later then he should have been. I never blogged while he was in Nigeria, because he had the camara, but now I have this picture of him in his new Nigerian outfit. That’s my guy with the glittering green elephants on his shirt.

He had to hit the ground running because we were scheduled to have a huge prison ministry on the 24th and 25th, so we had to run all over town buying oranges and other little treats. I went to Makro to get some goodies, and had debit card failure so Paul had to drive all the way over to rescue me.

So Christmas we had a little family time at home, and the kids opened their shoes (instead of Christmas stockings), or actually, Paul’s shoes. They always borrow from him as his are so much bigger so they think they get more. Then a quick breakfast and family devotionss, and the 4 of us went to Polsmoor. Sorry, no photos of that as we’d have had to get special permission to bring a camera in to the prison, and we weren’t that organized, plus we had our hands full.

It’s too bad, too, because we would have had cute pictures of Evangel as the Polsmoor Princess. They let us use one of the huge wagons from the kitchen for our treats, and Evangel grabbed a ride on the top while a couple of prisoners grunt and groan to push her along. Actually they loved it.

We made it around to all the guys ages 18-22, which is about 1300 at the moment. It took 2 days, plus on the third day (Boxing Day), James and Paul went back to some younger guys as well as to the hospital and single cells.

Gloria got lunch for us as we came home seriously hungry as we were about 2 hours later then usual for lunch. The turkey was more satisfying then your average Christmas turkey, after all that prison stuff.

Paul preached, James did the sound equipment, and Evangel and I handed out treats with different people helping us. Evangel steadfastly refused to look at the guys, and buried her nose in a book whenever she wasn’t needed. I doubt they knew she was only 13, but I missed most of the comments as they’re in Afrikaans or Xhosa.

Christmas was fun. After lunch we had a relaxed gift time. My favorite was a beautiful Chinese bathrobe from Paul. Paul’s favorites were books. Evangel got a neat little ice cream maker. Timmy can’t decide between a book on helicopters or his army canteen or his scooter. Josh has a toss up between a squirt toy and his scooter. It was special to sit and enjoy the moment.

We had another Christmasy moment a few days earlier. My friend Margie took us to see Christmas lights. They were gorgeous. My only regret was taking our dog, Berwick. We had to walk, and Berwick kind of collapsed on us. She just lay right down in the road and went on strike. She’s only about 3 months old, she’s still a baby so we carried her, and then she whined. It made it a long night. Gloria had baby Daniel in a stroller/pram so when they opted to ride home instead of walking, I grabbed that stroller and popped our lazy puppy in. She’s going to be a big German shepherd, so I hope she gets over needing to ride around in a stroller as we’re going to look pretty funny if we keep doing this.






New Year’s Day

Paul preached and drew for crowds at the Pavilion in Muizenberg for New Year’s Day. I love this outreach. It’s great fun to get into the crowds and pass out “This Was Your Life” tracts to hundreds of people. Peter Hammond came with his 2 sons and and 2 other guys, and a LOT of enthusiasm. We like his style.

David Frew; his wife Tessa and their 3 kids drove about 17 hours to come to Cape Town to be with us for this one. They have a 3 year old name David who had absolutely no refusals for his tracts as he is just too cute! The only sluggard in our group was baby Daniel, and since he’s only 4 months old, we’ll let him relax for this year.

We all have stories of good reactions or funny reactions of individuals. One guy told David Frew, “I’m too drunk to understand this right now, but if you can come to the bus station where I work, and explain it to me, I’d like to hear this.”

One nice guy tried to teach me Xhosa, and I managed to pick up 3 words, but I don’t know how to spell ‘em so I won’t write them.

Evangel had several people read the cover of the tract, “This Was Your Life” and then react with, “This isn’t the end of my life.” But they really don’t have a clue how long they have left.

Joy and I had one of our last contacts with a man who said, “I just leave religion alone and read the Bible.” He expected us to argue I think, but we just chimed in, “That’s great, just read the Bible and obey it and you’ll be fine!” He was drunk, so we suspected he hadn’t overly immersed himself in it.