The Big Storm and Construction

We had an incredible hailstorm here today and per the locals, this is quite unusual. It's been raining a lot over the last 3 days with thunderstorms but today the hail started. It hailed for maybe 25 minutes. Unfortunately the heavy rain caused flooding at the farm office and in some of the homes of the staff who live on the farm. We spent the afternoon cleaning up the flood waters and then played outside, kids and adults alike, just as if it had been snowing!

Photos at the Blessman house:

Snowball fights

The kids were definitely in on the action

One of the gates to Shikwaru (Shikwaru is the name of the game farm)

New topic: there is some new construction going on here at the farm. Blessman Ministries is building missionary housing to house both short-term and long-term missionaries. Currently BMI has two long-term missionaries working here full-time, Lisa and Terry. The new buildings consist of 3 houses and one community house. They are traditional African-style houses called rondavels.

Here's a picture of the community house with a partial view of two of the other rondavels:

The other building going on is a huge house being built by OneHope, one of the partnering ministries of BMI. This organization is committed to bringing God's Word to every child on the planet (how's that for a goal?:) In 2009, they will distribute 70 million books called Book of Hope to children throughout the world. We get to partner with them during our eye clinic outreaches where we distribute the Book of Hope while ministering to the children.

Here's a photo of the house they are building. It will hold, I think, about 25 - 30 missionaries at a time.

Last update for the day: We've spent this week preparing for another outreach (ok, well mostly Lisa has been preparing for it but I helped with grocery shopping and inventory:) We leave Sunday for another outreach in a province called Free State. We'll be staying at a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere but supposedly we will have internet access. It should be exciting but you may not hear from me next week if we don't really have internet.