All over the place
01NOV2004 :: 11:10pm :: Okhandja, Namibia :: NIED Computer lab
Today was kind off all over the place, with me sitting in on some training for national directors. We had a devotional time this morning, where i played the guitar again (my fingers were hurting, after having not played for a long time) and Hein shared some about what the Lord has been teaching him lately. Next we did some corporate praying for various issues (thanksgiving, travel safety, guidance). Then Mike Shepard, the chairman of the international board, did some teaching on how to develop a board; Jos was next on the responsibilities of board members and some practical tips and precautions. Kate wasn't feeling well at this point, so she headed back up to our room. She was running a low fever, had a bad headache and was feeling light-headed. We had a small catastrophe in the kitchen as a water faucet broke; turned out to be a "water break" for our meeting (haha). We resumed again, and went until about 1pm. At this point I went up to check on Kate, and we prayed for a bit as part of our fasting time. Next I went down to talk to Jenny (a Namibian volunteer here) and Sylvia (Jos's wife) who both wanted us to come to kids' clubs with them. I ended up choosing to go with Jenny to a kid's club over in a poorer section of town. We drove over in an older VW jetta that CHI is renting; it is a bit hard to drive with an all-or-nothing clutch, and the reverse being up and to the left (with a push down) on the gearshift. Anyway, we made it over there. The kids' club consisted of about a half hour of games, once everyone was there and we filled up the water balloons. The played various games, including a classic water balloon toss, and the game where everyone ties an air balloon around their ankle and tries to stomp the other guy's balloon. When that was done, Jenny shared a small story about Jesus, then the kids came up with a drama to describe the story in another way, but using the same principles. Then we gave them suckers and left. One cool thing we got to do was give a certain girl a doll baby we had brought from a couple in our small group that had been here in June. I took several pictures and will put them up in the next few days. I can't really adequately describe the conditions these people were living in. Generally small block buildings with corrugated metal roofs, and an outhouse in the back corner of the lot. The few short glimpses I got into the house revealed old, worn out furniture and a lack of any real modern convenience or luxury. They did have electricity and some running water, i think. The lots are all fenced in by brick walls and there are chickens and dogs running all over the place. There is litter *everywhere* in the whole neighborhood; several times when we were driving i saw guys just through down the plastic bottle they were drinking from (as they walked in the middle of the street, not seeming to care if any cars were approaching). Any spare lots looked like dumps with all of the trash just strewn about and in small heaps. Hopefully the pictures will add some context to my description. We made it back, and i caught the tail end of Jos's training on goals and objectives (in case i haven't yet mentioned it, this week is training week for all of the national directors). It was interesting to see how CHI plans to measure its impact on the nation's young people. Jos's goal is to at least present the message of Christ through various means to .5% of the nation's population, which would be about 8500 people in Namibia, but many more in Kenya, and the DRC. After that we had a small devotion time for breaking our fast, and then had a good chicken and potato soup supper. I hung around and relaxed in our room for a while, until I heard that Joe was going to a local education center, where he knows a guy who lets him into the computer lab to use the internet. Joe took me with him and I got some time on a broadband connection, which was good. The computer security in the place made it hard to really download a few big files that i wanted to get, though. One useful thing was seeing our webpage in a different browser. It revealed an atrocious font on our homepage. I guess I forgot to change a setting I was fooling around with at one point, and my browser (on our laptop) doesn't support it, so it was reverting to a serif font, and looked at least presentable. So I just fixed that, and apalogize to anyone who had to try to read it in that font. Anyway, I did some surfing and emailing, and downloaded a few files onto my mini-drive. We were there for quite a while, and returned around 11:30pm. I finished my journal entry and we went to bed.
Today was kind off all over the place, with me sitting in on some training for national directors. We had a devotional time this morning, where i played the guitar again (my fingers were hurting, after having not played for a long time) and Hein shared some about what the Lord has been teaching him lately. Next we did some corporate praying for various issues (thanksgiving, travel safety, guidance). Then Mike Shepard, the chairman of the international board, did some teaching on how to develop a board; Jos was next on the responsibilities of board members and some practical tips and precautions. Kate wasn't feeling well at this point, so she headed back up to our room. She was running a low fever, had a bad headache and was feeling light-headed. We had a small catastrophe in the kitchen as a water faucet broke; turned out to be a "water break" for our meeting (haha). We resumed again, and went until about 1pm. At this point I went up to check on Kate, and we prayed for a bit as part of our fasting time. Next I went down to talk to Jenny (a Namibian volunteer here) and Sylvia (Jos's wife) who both wanted us to come to kids' clubs with them. I ended up choosing to go with Jenny to a kid's club over in a poorer section of town. We drove over in an older VW jetta that CHI is renting; it is a bit hard to drive with an all-or-nothing clutch, and the reverse being up and to the left (with a push down) on the gearshift. Anyway, we made it over there. The kids' club consisted of about a half hour of games, once everyone was there and we filled up the water balloons. The played various games, including a classic water balloon toss, and the game where everyone ties an air balloon around their ankle and tries to stomp the other guy's balloon. When that was done, Jenny shared a small story about Jesus, then the kids came up with a drama to describe the story in another way, but using the same principles. Then we gave them suckers and left. One cool thing we got to do was give a certain girl a doll baby we had brought from a couple in our small group that had been here in June. I took several pictures and will put them up in the next few days. I can't really adequately describe the conditions these people were living in. Generally small block buildings with corrugated metal roofs, and an outhouse in the back corner of the lot. The few short glimpses I got into the house revealed old, worn out furniture and a lack of any real modern convenience or luxury. They did have electricity and some running water, i think. The lots are all fenced in by brick walls and there are chickens and dogs running all over the place. There is litter *everywhere* in the whole neighborhood; several times when we were driving i saw guys just through down the plastic bottle they were drinking from (as they walked in the middle of the street, not seeming to care if any cars were approaching). Any spare lots looked like dumps with all of the trash just strewn about and in small heaps. Hopefully the pictures will add some context to my description. We made it back, and i caught the tail end of Jos's training on goals and objectives (in case i haven't yet mentioned it, this week is training week for all of the national directors). It was interesting to see how CHI plans to measure its impact on the nation's young people. Jos's goal is to at least present the message of Christ through various means to .5% of the nation's population, which would be about 8500 people in Namibia, but many more in Kenya, and the DRC. After that we had a small devotion time for breaking our fast, and then had a good chicken and potato soup supper. I hung around and relaxed in our room for a while, until I heard that Joe was going to a local education center, where he knows a guy who lets him into the computer lab to use the internet. Joe took me with him and I got some time on a broadband connection, which was good. The computer security in the place made it hard to really download a few big files that i wanted to get, though. One useful thing was seeing our webpage in a different browser. It revealed an atrocious font on our homepage. I guess I forgot to change a setting I was fooling around with at one point, and my browser (on our laptop) doesn't support it, so it was reverting to a serif font, and looked at least presentable. So I just fixed that, and apalogize to anyone who had to try to read it in that font. Anyway, I did some surfing and emailing, and downloaded a few files onto my mini-drive. We were there for quite a while, and returned around 11:30pm. I finished my journal entry and we went to bed.
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