We're on the verge of having to do a whole lot of updating on this website.  I look at the current vocation, history, and giving opportunities links and realize these all need work.  In the mean time, here's a brief update on what's going on.
 
On December 1st, Lord willing, we'll get on an airplane and fly to Kenya for two weeks with a student from ESSA, who hopes to lead us around his home country, into his remote village, with some gigs preaching and taking lots of photos and seeing lots of new sites and shaking hands and using our ten words in Swahili. Then we'll return to the U.S. long term.  We start out living in a missionary guest house in Whitewater (Chrissy's home town).  We've lined up a number of speaking engagements around Southern and Eastern United States for the months of February and March, plus some midwestern ones before and after.  Adam also plans to pack in time to finish his Master's Thesis in Theology.  Phoebe will start public school, Zeke will go on being Zeke, and then, well, it remains to see where in the U.S. (preferably the midwest) we will live and work by the summer of 2010.
 
One of my biggest hopes in leaving Africa, which to me is not an easy goodbye, is that we would not feel like we were running away from anything.  You may know that it has been a very hard year financially for the seminary where we work, and as Adam was asked to be the fill-in part-time financial manager and fundraiser, he faced a lot of near-impossible tasks that would have been nice, at times, to throw aside and leave behind.  While there's no perfect fix-everything cure that we're able to leave with the seminary, we have seen the following beautiful actions of God in the last couple weeks, each one reassurance that God goes on working here just as well whether or not we are here.
-A Cultural Day at ESSA: This was a tradition that got left behind over the last couple years of staff turnover at ESSA, but Chrissy played a part in resurrecting the tradition.  On a Thursday afternoon students showed up in their home country clothes, shared their traditional foods, and exchanged songs, dancing, shouting, and a whole lot of joy.  It was a perfect respite from the tension students have borne as they worry about not having scholarships or a principal next year.
 
-A principal?  We're waiting eagerly to hear if the candidate for principal who has invited to join ESSA next year will accept.  If not him, we go on praying for someone else, as the current principal is wonderful but needs to return to his home country of Nigeria next year.  Once a principal is hired, we pray he'll be able to hire someone to replace Adam as a full-time, more qualified, and local South African financial manager/fundraiser.
 
-Reconcilliation: There were several crucial meetings between past staff, council members, current ESSA leadership, and an external mediating organization, that included apologies and honesty, repairing relationships that have festered unhealed for over a year.  We feel this is important groundwork for any local fundraising and recruitment attempts that can be made.  There were also some beautiful meetings held between students who had been hurt or offended by various things, who are working toward forgiveness.
 
-Glen Isla School:  Ok, I know I mentioned this, but it's just so cool to see the new renovations almost complete at Glen Isla, all done by the Department of Education.  Funds we raised went toward a DVD player, TV, generator, kindergarten carpet tables and chairs, some books and posters, and I'm waiting to hear from the principal about how to use the remaining funds.
 
-Pastor "Welcome" Mxolisi: Our old pastor from where we used to live was one of Adam's closest friends in South Africa.  Over the last years he has married, had a daughter, and is moving to his wife's home area to work as a coordinator of missions activities for the churches in that area.  While he will be sorely missed at the orphan home where he has served for a long time, a great high school teacher will be taking over as pastor of the church we used to attend.  We pray for more men to support the church left behind (the church includes a lot of teens and women), but we also are excited to see how god uses the gifts that God has planted in him.
 
-Sofi's community center:  Again, we had little part in this, but it's exciting anyway.  Back when we lived in Winterton, we had planned to work with this center to start a microenterprise development program, but there were unsettled land rights issues holding it up for over a year.  Now that's cleared up, and the place is hopping.  There's been others coming and going doing entrepreneurship training, plus there are lots of homebased care workers who meet there, a health clinic, a physical therapy room, a computer center and (I think) a hospice in the works, and lots of advising and counseling help available for anyone who drops in.  Hooray for Winterton!