Only a few days left...

This last few days in Clarens have been very strange - people are beginning to talk about Christmas (especially those of us who are going to home to various places over the next couple of weeks) but the weather is very, very, very hot and sticky! My english brain can't cope. So I'm sitting here typing in my shorts and t-shirt with the fan on and have just got in from doing a bit of Christmas shopping.

Last week the school had their nativity play and prize giving which I went along to as a number of our Mapheo kids are at the school. The nativity was very sweet. There was an unfortunate incident of diarrhea where a little girl on the stage had an accident but then as she walked off the stage and through the church she left a trail behind her. That was bad enough, but it got worse when a little baby decided to make mud pies with it! So one of the teachers quickly covered all the piles with earth from a nearby plant pot and we all carried on as if nothing had happened!

On Thursday morning I helped a friend who is the deputy head at the school with her class trip. It was fun - we packed the kids into various cars and I drove a bakkie and we went out to a local farm. We walked them down to the river and there they paddled and built rafts (none of which floated successfully!) The really funny thing was seeing what they ate for lunch. These are 7 and 8 year olds and many of them had the biggest bags of crisps, or about 6 slices of bread each. I'll try and get hold of a photo to put on here for you to see.

This is my last week in Clarens - on Friday I leave for Zim and then I go straight home to the UK after that. So I'm away for 6 weeks. It seems like a long time but in reality there's nothing happening here after this week so it would be quite hard to be here for the extra 2 weeks before I fly. Clarens is so small and quiet that a couple of weeks with no work would be very boring! So I'm taking the opportunity to spend some time up in Harare. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm excited to see what's happening in the Newfrontiers churches there and how things have changed since I visited in 2007.

I can't quite believe that I'm at the end of my first year here - it seems to have snuck up on me! It's hard to process everything that's happened. It's been so challenging at times and I know God must have grown me but sometimes that's hard to see in yourself. It's also been a lot of fun and a great adventure. At some point I'll try and blog a round up of the year, but right now I have a whole lot of jobs to get done before I leave on Friday morning!