Hi... Remember me??

Hello Friends and Family,

First let me begin by begging your forgiveness for being so tardy in making a posting to this blog. Life has been busy now that I'm working full time in the MAF office. I am still waiting to have a wireless connection at home so I haven't been online as much as I hope to be in the future. I'm sorry for being MIA for over a month - Good Heavens! I'll be more regular in my postings from here on...

Rest assured I am just fine and have been learning to live in Maseru. Lots of new things to learn:
- Driving a manual transmission
- Driving on the left side of the road
- Office duties
- Sesotho (the indigenous language - heart language)

I have been busy with some fun activities as well - I'll give you the recap:

My second week here Ben Leonard and Gregg Prickett were here and led a team building retreat with our Lesotho Team - it was awesome! We stayed at Mabula Game Lodge and I had the greatest time leading worship with Ben. Other highlights were a game drive where we saw Wildebeests, Zebra and Eland - Holding a meerkat (think Timone from The Lion King) and star gazing at a campfire seeing a gajillion stars.

Gregg and Ben left and we hosted 3 MAF advocates for the next 2 weeks. I travelled with them to TY which is a village known for its weavers. They weave beautiful wall hangings there out of dyed mohair (goat wool) The weavings are spectacular and amazingly reasonable to purchase considering the amount of time it takes to make one. In the US we'd pay hundreds of dollars for something they charge about $30 - $50 for. The weaver women are so talented, friendly and gracious! Their faces lit up when I spoke the very little Sesotho I knew at that point. I bought a weaving for my home - it is beautiful and I really enjoy it. The picture of the woman weaving on the right is a piece she had already spent a month on - there have to be 500 colors in her weaving.

After the Advocates left we hosted another team from the US called Simply the Story. They led a seminar on how to tell stories from the Bible in an "oral tradition" in order to share the Gospel with those who cannot read or have no access to a Bible. The seminar was a week long and we had many Basotho people in the class. I loved it and found it a valuable skill to use here - especially with mountain village Basothos who speak very little English. The great thing was 4 of our National staff; Thoahlane, Mamotsoane, Lineo and Sefiri; attended the class with me so I got to know them so much better. I work with them at the hangar but don't get the opportunity to really speak with them while we are working. They are amazing people who love jesus so much! They are all helping me learn Sesotho and I have asked them to speak only Sesotho to me at the hangar. They are so patient with me and I'm so grateful to them! Please be praying I'll be able to learn the language so I can have meaningful conversations with people here.

This brings me to last weekend when I went to Morija for a Sesotho Cultural Weekend. I joined several other people who have recently arrived in Lesotho and learned a little language, a little history and saw some more of this beautiful country I now call home. We went to Thaba Bosiu, which is the birthplace of the Basotho Nation. King Moshoeshoe I is burried on top of Thaba Bosiu; it is a plateau he chose as a fortress for the Basotho people. The original name of the country of Lesotho is Basotholand. Moshoeshoe in the 1800's invited French missionaries into Lesotho because he observed countries with missionaries were more peaceful than those who didn't have them. Moshoeshoe was an amazing leader and a contemporary of Zhaka Zulu. He sought peace and prosperity for himself and his people rather than warring as ddi his contemporary leaders. The French missionaries settled in Morija which is land Moshoeshoe gave to them. The oldest church in this nation is found in Morija I'll post a picture of it so you can see it. If you're interested in learning more about the history of missionaries inLesotho there is a book titled, "Murder In Morija" and you can read all about the history. I plan to read the book sometime in the next couple of weeks as soon as a friend finishes it :)

Well - for now that's enough news and I'll write more soon as I now have internet and can more easily make regularly updates.

The World Cup has begun and we are all feeling Ayoba! I'll be going to a 2nd round game on June 27th - so we don't yet know who will be playing in the game but we are VERY excited. Tonight is the USA vs England game and if the USA wins it is possible I'll see them play - how cool would that be?! I'll keep you posted!

Love from Lesotho!
Kimberly