Swaziland - by Charlene

Our family took a little Christmas holiday by going to the Kingdom of Swaziland for night this week. Yes, it really is a kingdom that is ruled by a king that the Swazi folks seem to be very proud of. The HIV/AIDs rate is the highest of anywhere in the world and hovers somewhere around 50%. There is much publicity around HIV prevention, abstinence and faithfulness in marriage but the king claims he is doing his part by remaining faithful to all 13 of his wives! The legalized polygamy can’t be helping the HIV rate.

We got to meet some fellow MCCers, Thembelihle Mavimbela (known in Canada as Julie Stauffer) and Hlobi Nxumalo (I can’t begin to describe how this name is pronounced except to say the “x” is a clicking sound). Hlobi and Julie are doing HIV/AIDS prevention work in school and the community at large. We enjoyed talking to them and we also had a chance to visit their homesteads. It was interesting to see how extended families all live together on the same property with lots of clusters of little buildings complete with a wood-fired stove and no running water.

We had a nice time seeing what we could of the beautiful green mountains – it was foggy and overcast and most of the mountaintops were in the clouds but it was beautiful just the same. We did some shopping as Swaziland is known for its beautifully crafted local products. Okay, maybe the shopping was a big drawing card for me and I was happy to use some Christmas money to buy a batik wall-hanging for our living room wall. We did some market shopping and Erin realized that if everyone is offered a “special price for you”, maybe the real prices aren’t so real to begin with – that’s my girl!

I’m sure we’ll be back again in the future with some of our visiting guests as the Swazi border is only about 2 hours away.

Happy New Year everyone!

The Christmas Blog - by John

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the veld… Uh, no, we’re not going there. Instead, we reflect on the year and the grace of God that brought us to this most un-Winnipeg like place, and send best wishes to all our friends and family.

• We think of our families at home, and thank them for their thoughts, gifts and prayers.
• We remember our fellow MCC Trainees, who are also experiencing Christmas in a different place, but in the same spirit.
• We think of our friends at home, who we miss, and we wish they could share our experience more fully.
• To everyone who is reading this blog, whoever you are: Thanks for taking an interest in our lives. If we can ask one thing, please send us a chatty email filled with the details of your lives.

It’s been less than a year since we first felt the tug to go do something different, and look where we have ended up! We encourage all of our friends and family to continue to server their brothers, sisters and neighbours wherever and whomever they are.

Today we have already opened our presents, and are going over to Chuck and Heather’s for lunch. Chuck and Heather have invited a number of other families, should be fun! We had a big thunderstorm last night after a hot day in the 30’s, but it’s a little cooler today, with mist in the valley. Now, a few updates on our recent experiences:

Skype

We have been using Skype over the last few days to talk to our families back in Winnipeg, and it works great! For the uninitiated, Skype is a program that allows you to talk computer to computer, for free. We have found that the voice quality is better than the telephone, although there are delays. Funny thing is, even though it costs us a little bit because of the internet service we have (2 Rand/Megabyte), it’s actually cheaper to talk to someone in Winnipeg with Skype than to make a local call, and it’s even more ironic when you realize that we are using our cell phone as a modem to get to the internet. We would encourage you to download Skype at www.skype.com and give it a try. Our Skype ID is wielerfamily. Talk to you soon!

Christmas Eve at the Mega Church

Last night we went to the Christmas Eve service at the local Mega Church. It was…something else. The program started with the praise band cranking out extremely loud and non-traditional arrangements of carols, some to a reggae beat. This was followed by a drama, but before the drama began, an announcement was made that they couldn’t find enough kids to participate, so the kids parts were being played by adults. OK, this should be interesting. The stage was dark, when suddenly eight rather older ladies, dressed like teenagers from the 50’s, bounded out on stage and started dancing to the music. Then they started singing, or rather, lip-synching along with a pre-recorded soundtrack. The whole show in fact was played off of a CD, with everyone lip-synching. It was one of those American made, ultra-poppy Christian kids drama/all-dancing/all-singing/Jesus-affirming/ultra-commercial/over-produced/Britney-meets-Mother Mary-meets Barney types of shows, you know the kind. Could be cute in a kind of diabetic-coma-inducing way if actually played and sung by live children, but way, WAY over the top the way it was presented here. The oddest part was the fact that the soundtrack had children’s voices singing and speaking, but it looked like everyone on stage was 50 and older.

In any case, the ladies shook and wiggled while “singing” about humility, a troop of “solid gold” dancers dressed in sequined vests added a certain Vegas touch, and it was all wrapped up with two guys in a camel costume, a very brief manger scene and a faith affirming voice-over message. It was a long, long way from a Christmas Eve service in our tradition, that’s for sure. Nonetheless, the audience…er… congregation seemed to eat it up, and when the balloons fell from the ceiling at the end (really), there was tumultuous applause. We’ll chalk this one up to cross-cultural differences.

Here's a picture of our tree, with actual presents under it, and more decorated.

And here our our beautiful girls in their new clothes.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years to all, please email us and let us know what Santa brought. We wish for peace and health for all, no exceptions.

Camp Murphy and the MCC Retreat - by John

Camp Murphy

It’s been almost two weeks since my last blog entry, and those two weeks have been as different as possible. First, let me describe the week before this last one. I will call it the “if something can go wrong, it will”, or the “Camp Murphy” week. The week started with the start of the kid’s camp, and everything started well. However, there were two important things that you had to know. The first was that we had a terrific thunderstorm a few days previously. The thunderstorm brought with it some bad lightning, and one particular bolt hit a nearby pole, and took out the power for about five hours, all the telephones on campus, the security system, the fax machine, and unbeknownst to us, one of the two water pumps. The other thing to note was that camp brought the number of people on campus to a new level, never before seen. There were about 40 campers, 25 young leaders, 25 caregivers, five or six Canadian camp volunteers, and all of the staff (including us).

Well, the thunderstorm also announced the beginning of a week of rain and cool weather. The tents started leaking (we suspected that they would), we dug drainage ditches around the tents to prevent them from floating away, and whenever it wasn’t raining everyone hung out their sleeping bags to dry. Because one of the pumps was burned out, the other water pump decided it was bearing too heavy a load and decided to burn out its controller, and suddenly we were without water. While this was happening, the septic field decided that too many people were using it, and overflowed, while at the same time the kitchen drain, which attached to a different septic field, decided that it too would add to our troubles and get itself plugged up. The new toilets for the camp, which we had just finished installing, decided to start leaking, as if to mock our efforts. Oh, and we also had a big important meeting happening in a few days, for which we wanted the campus to be in top shape. And the rains continued for four out of seven days of camp, causing all our best plans to be altered on the fly.

Nothing to do but roll up our sleeves and attack the problems! I personally dug out and fixed the sewer (with help from one of the local guys) (Yeech), the electrician fixed the water pump problem, which took two days of very intermittent supply, the security system guy came in and diagnosed the security system (a total meltdown, complete with burned out motherboard), etc. etc. and by the end of the week we were in pretty good shape.

What was amazing that everyone kept up their good spirits and didn’t really complain, and by the end of the week camp was deemed a success.

The MCC Retreat

All of last week we were at a regional MCC retreat, which was held near White River at the Ekukaneni (yes, just like in the song “Siya Humba Ekukaneni Kweiko”) Retreat Center. In a word, it was great! We met the MCC people working in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa.
What a great bunch of people! We really connected to everyone, and found a number of interesting and surprising connections (i.e. oh, I know your cousin). It was really good to find out what everyone else was doing, particularly because most of the folks were veterans and could offer us all sorts of insights into how things worked. Perhaps the most interesting and moving sessions was when the Country Reps from Zimbabwe described the difficult situation in their country, and some of the underlying racial tensions between the Shona and Ndebele people, seemingly egged on by the government. Dear Readers, I’m not generally into political statements, but I would encourage you to look into the situation in Zimbabwe and pray for the country, it looks like another Rwanda in the making.

The Retreat wasn’t all serious discussion however. We had a very moving Christmas service
some wonderful worship times, and a hilarious talent night, complete with (so bad it was good) disco dancing, a complete recitation from memory and with authentic accent of “A Childs Christmas in Wales”, Christian Rap, two teenage boys wearing dresses and lipsynching the “Barbie”song and Limbo dancing. A good time was had by all. At the end of the week everyone was sorry to see everyone else leave, and I can say that our family made a bunch of new friends. I was very impressed with the dedication and spirit of all of the MCC volunteers, especially those in difficult circumstances and remote locations. Mind you, they all described South Africa as “not really Africa”, so we are planning a number of visits to other countries to see what they mean.

Christmas is only a week away, and today we bought our Christmas Tree. Actually, it’s a palm, we have potted it, put it in our living room, and hung it with a few decorations. It’s in the mid thirties today, and hard to get into the Christmas spirit. My thoughts have been drawn to remembering Christmas past, going to Oma and Opa’s in Niverville, eating Halvah from the white Camel box, and going home under a very cold and crystal clear night sky, when the snow would squeak underfoot. That’s not going to happen this year, but we are creating interesting memories none-the-less.

Charlene's Christmas List

I confess that I’m a bit of a list fanatic, I think some of my family members must be as well because usually by this time of year I have written a Christmas Wish List for my mom and my mother-in-law (who I’m sure are long finished with their shopping) and in another week or two, I would be asked for one from John. This year is different from any other year as there haven’t been any lists made and we are barely aware that Christmas is right around the corner but our children have been reminding us. MCC has more than met all of our basic needs but here are a few things (in random order) that MCC is unable to provide for us:

1. A steaming hot Tim Horton’s large double-double
2. A copy of the Saturday Free Press complete with all the flyers and color comics
3. A bag of La Cocina tortilla chips
4. Manitoba Farmer Sausage
5. Oma’s borscht
6. My mom’s platter of Christmas cookies with lots of shortbread
7. My cat purring next to my pillow
8. A night out at Earl’s (or anywhere) with my best friends
9. A cure to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa (but we’re working on it)
10. World peace!

We’ve already had our first booking at the Wieler African Guesthouse and John’s aunt is coming from Ottawa for a week in April. We’re thrilled to have company to show around the place we now call home and we’re already thinking about what small taste of home we could ask her to bring in her suitcase for us (possibly a bag of chocolate chips?).

Camp Starts Today - By John

Well, today is the momentous day that the orphan kids start arriving for their week of camp. The physical preparations are pretty much in place, with the exception of some last minute painting and plastering and food buying. Last night, Mavis, who is in charge of the food, told us that after a very major grocery buying trip she had forgotten about bread, so this morning we drove down to the Pick-and-Pay and bought 30 loaves of bread (pretty much cleaned them out of sandwich loaves), after delivering them she said that should cover it for lunch and she’ll let us know if she needs more before breakfast tomorrow!

The camps theme is “I have a future”, because the kids who are attending come from very difficult circumstances and most think that they don’t have a future. Typically, the girls will turn to prostitution and the boys to crime, so this camp is an attempt to show them that they have potential and hope.

The counselors are eager and I think a little nervous, as this is the culmination of a training process that started last January. They have been at camp for the last week, working out the details of the activities and setting up the tents and so on. We had a big rainstorm a few nights ago, and found out that the tents hadn’t been set up correctly, and so a man from the local Boy Scouts came and gave us some good pointers (Thanks Jerry!). The basic problem was that the tents roofs weren’t “tight” enough. Since then, “Tight” (pronounced “TAAIEET” has become the new buzzword around here (meaning “good”) so everything from the tents to the singing to the food is “Tight!”. On Thursday night we had a big send-off for the Canadians who came and helped with the camp construction. A local gospel band came to play, and before you knew it (actually during the sound check) everyone was dancing (except our girls, who had embarrassed and terrified looks on their faces to see their Mom dancing with an African man). There were some very interesting moves shown by both the Africans and Canadians. The band was great, five guys singing, drums and keyboards, and it was a LOT of fun. Here is a link to the video (about 2 Meg)

Here are some pictures of the camp. This is a picture of the registration,

the next is of the completed climbing wall (yay!)

and the third of the tents. There are 10 tents in all.

This week Chuck is out of town in Mozambique, so its our responsibility to finish off some construction and getting ready for a big meeting that’s happening of the 12^th. We are also looking forward to our upcoming MCC retreat which also starts on the 12^th, so it should be a really busy week of supervision and preparation.

Today I made buns according to my Mom's recipe. I haven't been able to find Lard or Shortening, but used something called "White Margarine", and they still tasted pretty good. Hmmm... I'm starting to have thoughts about reviving the "Wood Fired Mud Oven".

Building the Climbing Wall

This week we have been working hard to get the AIDS Orphans Camp ready to go. The camp is focused on providing OVCs (That’s NGO-speak for Orphans and Vulnerable Children) (NGO means “Non Governmental Organization, i.e. private non-profit aid groups) (Yes, we are learning a whole new set of acronyms)

The basic idea behind the camp is to provide a place where OVC kids can come and spend a week in a safe and nurturing environment, and let them have a little fun. The C4L camp (called Orchard Camp, because it is physically located in an orchard) is modeled on one started in Zimbabwe by the Salvation Army. Heather has been planning and organizing the camp for the last year, including training a whole bunch of youth leaders and counselors. The kids-to-counselor ratio is about 5 to 2, which is pretty good. The kids and counselors will be living in tents (big old ex-army tents, about 5 meters per side, and there are all sorts of programs planned for them like arts and crafts, sports, the climbing wall, and even dance.

It’s a really exciting time to be here, and even before the camp starts there is talk about expanding it to Swaziland and Mozambique. It’s a great idea, especially as way of helping AIDS orphans and a very interesting extension of “Christian Camping” that we and so many of our friends participated in when we were growing up. If anyone wants to get involved in setting up and/or running camps in 2006, send us an email at wielerfamily-at-gmail.com (of course, replace the “-at-” with @) (I do this so I don’t get spam) and I will put you in touch with the folks from C4L Canada.

On a personal note, you will see from the pictures some of the structures we are working on. I (John) have now become a high-wire artist, drilling and hammering at great heights (Over 5 meters!). Charlene has been busy with the painting crew, working especially hard on the “ampitheater”, which is now a lovely peach and terracotta color. This week we also bought a washing machine, its an LG brand, and around here they only hook up to cold water. We need to do some work on our bathroom (where the washing machine will be), because we have no water supply for the washing machine, no drain for the washing machine and no power at all in the bathroom. We had the plumber look at it, and he says, “No problem, unless there are rocks under the bathtub”, which is apparently something he has run into in the past.

Erin's new arrival...

Erin Wieler is proud to announce the newest addition to the Wieler Family. “Lady” was born on October 8^th, 2005 and she was just received today. We had set out to get a watch dog for our yard but I don’t think Lady looks too intimidating. She is 3/4 Jack Russell Terrier and part something else. We think she is very adorable but we haven’t had to get up with her at night yet!

Safari Time!

We took full advantage of our day off to take a day trip to Kruger National Park. We arose at 5 a.m. and were out the door by 5:30 and at the park gate at 6:00. It cost us 360 Rand to get in (about $75) but it was well worth it. We got to see zebras, monkeys, buffaloes, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, warthogs and a lion all from up close as well as hippos and three cheetahs from a distance and too many deer-like animals to count (antelope, springbok etc.). We look forward to returning to Kruger when we have guests to show around. Now we really feel like we’re living in Africa!

Botanical Gardens

We went to a really beautiful place this afternoon that is only about 15 minutes away from our house and we encountered lots of vegetation that we have never seen before. If you’re familiar with The Owl and the Pussycat, it appears that we are now living in the land where the bong tree grows. Some of the other trees looked like they could be right out of the pages of a Dr. Seuss book.

If you click on the photos, they will enlarge.

P.S. We have internet access at home now so watch for regular updates!

Flexibility

MCC told us in our initial interview that flexibility is a key attribute they look for when placing individuals. Sure enough, as of this week John & I are the head of two building teams that have come from Canada to help get this campus ready for two one week summer camps that are being run for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). Today I was working with a painting crew while John was doing a bit of construction demolition. John is also in charge of the team that is going to be building the climbing wall. There doesn’t seem to be a real plan on paper for the design of the climbing wall, only that it needs to be 6 metres high. I guess he could have left his business suit and ties at home!
(John) I know that before I left Winnipeg, I had only a vague idea of the job I would be doing. I joked that if I was handed a shovel, I would gladly shovel. Someone forgot to tell Chuck that I was only joking, because my first official duty with C4L was to shovel. I now believe I am a prophet. But seriously, I am having a good time working with the volunteers from Canada, and we are going to get the camp in good shape before the kids show up.

Neighbours

Our girls have two new playmates, Ndzalama and Tsuku, we’re still a little hit and miss with the pronounciations. They are the same ages as our girls and they also attend Penryn school where our girls will go. Their mom is a director at the school so we think that may have had some influence as to how we got in ahead of the waiting list. Ndzalama and Tsuku are trying to educate our girls on the finer points of South African sport but they are met with some challenges, our girls would rather try to balance a ball on their head than learn how to play cricket!

We have (finally) arrived

Hello all, from White River, South Africa! We have been waiting and working a long time to be able to type that sentence, and it feels good.

We arrived in South Africa last friday (the 4th), after a long but uneventful flight. Thankfully, we had no problems with bags (other than that they were very heavy) and customs, and were greeted at Kruger-Mpumalanga International Airport by Chuck and Heather from C4L and Wayne from MCC. It was good to get our feet on the ground. Thank you for all your prayers and support, it sure helped to know that people were thinking about us.

We have started the process of setting up our new house, buying things like pots and pans and such, setting up bank accounts and buying cell phones etc etc. It will be interesting getting internet access, as there are no cable providers and apparently to DSL service in our area, so for now we will be posting from a nearby Internet Cafe. We are particularly happy that as of this morning our girls are accepted at Penryn College, which is just fantastic. We were quite worried about this, and getting them in is a real answer to prayer. Again, we know that many of you have been thinking and praying about this, thanks you.

We have had a good time getting to know our neighbours, we have been already invited over for dinner twice, and had our first taste of "Pap", which is white cornmeal which is cooked till stiff and served with a sauce. It was really good, I'm sure we will have it again soon.

So far the weather has been quite mixed. It was very rainy on Sunday, which is great because this area has been having a real drought. A few days have been nice and warm, but today its cloudy and cool. We have been warned however that its going to get really hot, and we are (sort of) looking forward to it.

Over the next couple of weeks we are going to try to settle into a routine and start actually contributing. Stay tuned for further updates.

Getting Fattened Up

It's Friday afternoon and we have just finished our final session of orientation for the week. Only two more days of orientation to go until we "graduate". MCC is doing a good job of preparing us to meet many different cultural issue, but its tough to be so specific, since we are going to such a broad range of assignments. There are people here going to Kenya, Bolivia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Haiti, Egypt, Ukraine, Uganda, Sri Lanka and of course South Africa. All of those different places have different cultural norms, in one place its polite to shake hands, in another you shouldn't look people in the eye, in another you should never cross your legs, in another its wrong to smile in public (people will think you are insane!). I figure we will just keep our hands in our pockets, and try to blend in. That shouldn't be too hard, eh?

We have been eating pretty well while we are here. Last week Friday we went to an Amish house for supper, mmm good. I was suprised that the family spoke with a clearly mid american accent, no trace of german. Of course, the Amish have been in Pennsylvania for three hundred years. Here's an Amish tip - add a little Velveta to your buttered noodles to give them that extra creamy flavour. We ate a lot. Another culinary highlight was an early morning trip to the local grocery store. They make homemade doughnuts, so we arrived there at seven and got a dozen that were still warm. Yummy, but oh-so-fattening. I've also developed a fondness for a local brand of potato chip ("Grandma Utz") which are fried in lard. Can't be good for me, but they sure taste great. In any case, I'll work it all of when I get to Africa...by running back to back marathons for a week.

This is our last weekend in North America, so we will do some last minute shopping, for things like books (there is a used bookstore nearby), camera accesories and other little things. Tonight we are going to the "Green Dragon" farmers market, tommorow to the Target, but on Sunday we are going to the nature preserve, and won't buy anything.

We also got our airline tickets and visas, so now we can actually arrive in SA without getting thrown in jail or being deported. I have ordered a computer, so hopefully by the time we get to our new place it will be in place and the next blog entry will be from way far away. Stay tuned!

Here we are in Akron PA

Hi everyone from Akron, PA. We are in Akron, which is where MCC headquarters are, for two weeks of Orientation. We got here yesterday, after a week of leave taking and goodbyes. It was hard to say goodbye to our families, but also good to get "the show on the road" so to speak, as it seemed the preparations to leave were going on for a long time. We have to point out again how much love and support our family, friends and church have shown us while we were getting ready to go.

The last few days had a few minor challenges. Air Canada changed the baggage allowance, so our bags could only weigh 50 lbs. each. We spent part of our last evening moving things from bag to bag in order to ensure we would be under the weight limit (and we were!). However, I have to beg forgiveness for my surlyness while sorting out which shoes should go in which suitcase, its obviously not a task I am well suited for. We still managed to bring over 500 pounds of luggage all together so we can't really complain.

We have already met a number of great people on very interesting assignments, and we are really looking forward to getting into the heart of the orientation. The campus at MCC is very nice. We are staying at the "Welcoming Place", which is a grouping of buildings, each having a different contintent name. Our building is "The Americas". The girls are thrilled that they get their own room to share and don't have to stay with their parents.

The Last Week in Winnipeg

We are down to the final week in Winnipeg, and things are starting to really wrap up. I (John) left work for the last time on Friday, and I have to say it was a bit of an odd feeling wrapping things up. I'm sure that Ian, Perry, Kurt, Tom, Geoff and all the rest of the eHealth people will make do without me, but they sure are taking on a lot. It will be very interesting to see how things look in three years!

We have just celebrated Thanksgiving at home and at church. As usual, its been a great weekend to reflect on how good we have it in North America, at least at the material level. Much turkey and pie has reinforced the need for exercise. We also had our blessing/send-off at church, which we very much appreciated, and for us it reinforced the idea that it takes a church to send out an family on an MCC assignment.

Ahead of us now is a weekend of leave taking and wrapping up. We are going to miss all of our friends and family a lot! We have a few items to take care of before we leave, including selling the Honda. If you are at all interested, please give us a call. Without being too tounge-in-cheek, buying our car at this time would make you a blessing to us. And its not like this is some terrible charity case car, its really very decent and reliable.

Its a 98 Honda Civic LX, four door, 5 speed with AC and remote start. We are the third owner, Stacey Boschman, our sister-in-law owned it before us, and she bought is from one of her relatives. Long story short, a reliable and practical car thats good on gas. Please give us a call at 781 9989 if you are at all interested.

We got a picture of our house in White River. The picture really has us excited! If you look closely, you will see that there are mountains in the background. We have been told that the C4L campus is on a bit of a hill, and is quite scenic.

14 days and counting

Two weeks from tomorrow we will be in the air, flying to Akron Pennsylvania for our orientation. It's been a whirlwind of activity since the last post, its hard to keep track of all the things that have happened, but let me try to summarize:

• We've officially moved out of our house. We have rented the house, and last weekend moved into the Wieler parents basement. It's a little odd to be living in Mom and Dad's basement after so many years, but the hospitality and support shown to us has been fabulous. The move itself was great, a HUGE thank you to Simon at Wiebe's Moving and Storage, and Ken Klassen for the help with the move and the storage of our furniture, that took a great load off our mind. We, well actually Charlene mostly, with the help of a bunch of our friends and family, spent the last week doing the final house cleaning, and we handed the keys over officially on Friday afternoon.
  
• The good-bye parties have started. My work goodbye reception was Wedenesday evening, and I had a great time. Ian (my Boss) had some very nice remarks, and it was wonderful to see so many of my friends and colleagues come out. Its a funny feeling wrapping up a sixteen year career. This weekend we have a bunch of family gatherings, which will be a lot of fun, but busy. We have already attended one party on Saturday, and there are two more today (Sunday). Our church "Small Group" also had a send off for us at Crescent Drive park last week, that was both a lot of fun, and very meaningful to us. We can't emphasize enough how greatful we are for all the help and support that has been given us. I guess we are learning (to paraphrase the famous saying) that "it takes a village (or a church community) to move a family to South Africa", or something like that. I can't image how difficult this move would have been if we would have had everyones help.
• We are giving everyone our "Missionary Picture" with our email and blog address (you probably already have one if you are reading this).
  
  

Some folks have asked for our actual mailing address in South Africa. Here it is

John and Charlene Wieler, c/o C4L
PO Box 2510, White River,
Republic of South Africa 1240.

Click here to go see our geographic location using Google maps.

One Month To Go!

Well, we've only got one month to go! We are making good progress:

• Rented the house for October 1.
  
• Sold the Van and the Computer.
  
• Found spots for almost all the big furniture.
  
• Started packing (summer clothes only so far).
  
• Gotten all our shots.

It's been quite a bit of work and lots of little details need to be taken care of. For instance, for our South Africa Visas, we need a chest X-Ray to show that we don't have TB. And we need a police report, and a Health Report signed by a doctor, etc etc.

We will be moving out of the house into Mom and Dad Wielers basement on Sept 24, which is less than two weeks away. A slight sense of panic has set in, but we are coping. A LOT of people have offered to help us out, which is great, and we are slowly starting to get to the point of needing help and being organized enough to figure out who can do what. I'm sure we will be fine by the time the 24th rolls around.

We now have all our travel details arranged. We will be leaving for Akron Pennsylvania on October 17 for two weeks of orientation. After orientation, we fly from Philadelphia to Atlanta on Nov. 2, overnight in Atlanta and then take a VERY LONG direct flight to South Africa. We leave Atlanta at 10:30 AM on Nov. 3, and arrived in Jo'berg at 10:45 AM the next day. We will be flying on a very big plane, an Airbus A340-600 (see picture).



By the way, C4L, the organization we are working with, has a canadian presence. Check out their web site here, they have some pictures from White River and some interesting background on the work of C4L.

Getting Ready to go

Hello Dear Readers. By now you know that our family has accepted a three year assignment with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). Our assignment will take us to White River, South Africa, where we will be working with a local organization called C4L, which is a training center, whose mission is "to sharpen the skills of people (mainly from civil society but not to the exclusion of government and business) - so that they can serve others better."

We will be leaving for two weeks of orientation on October 17, and will be in White River by early November. As you can imagine, there is a lot to do between now and then, and we are busy packing, trying to rent the house, sell the cars, do all the legal stuff and not loose track of our children!

The response to this move in our lives has been extremely positive. Our friends and family has been very supportive, and we have been overwhelmed by offers to help us out. It seems that we aren't organized well enough to take advantage of everyones offers, but hey, it's still almost two months till we leave, we will be able to think of something to do, probably at the last minute.

It's also been very interesting to see peoples initial reaction when we tell them where we are going. The most common response has been "WOW!!", often followed by "Congratulations". Quite a few people seem envious in a positive way, sort of like "I've always wanted to do that". So far, no one has told us that we are crazy, they are probably too polite.

We are going to try to keep this blog fairly current, especially as we start our service, so please come back from time to time. Also take note of the email addresses that we will use when in South Africa. They are:

charlene.wieler@gmail.com
john.wieler@gmail.com
danica.wieler@gmail.com
erin.wieler@gmail.com

Important Update
Both our cars are now fully safetied and for sale

1. 1998 Honda Civic LX - four door, five speed, AC, Remote Start, 152,000km
   
2. 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan Sport, AC, all the power bits and pieces, 85,000km

Call or email me if you are at all interested!