Glorifying Steps

We have been in Lesotho for 18 days now!

God is so good!

We have settled quite nicely into our home in Katse. Tyler has begun some home improvement projects and Rachel has conquered her fear of cooking four hours from a grocery store. The meals are really yummy and the house is feeling more and more like a home.

We have had the opportunity to visit both of the churches we will be working with on Sunday mornings and have loved the time of worship. We sing really loud and hope the noises we are making are close to the words in the song! Rachel can’t wait to know the words and understand what we are singing at church. When you come, you better be ready to move. Everyone is clapping along and swaying to the songs. It’s such a cool atmosphere!

But don’t get us wrong, we do really miss worship at The Exchange!

Over the past few weeks we have also gotten the opportunity to see the Care Centers at work. Every day we head up to one of the Care Centers. We have been spending time getting to know the Care Center women and learning the flow of each Center’s day. We have been able to get a good grasp on what they do and the level the Centers are at. Both Centers are requesting new toys and teaching materials, which gives us an opportunity to look through the storage room where teams have brought supplies and pick out a few things to use over the coming weeks. It’s our goal to have the women plan out “centers” for the kids each day – Bible, Reading, and Math. And of course, they need something fun everyday like a puzzle, craft, or game! Rachel is excited to use her organizing skills in lesson planning and Tyler is eager to help the women come up with great ideas for activities.

One of our biggest tasks right now is learning the kid’s names. We have taken pictures of everyone and have their names written next to them and then spelled out phonetically. We go through this list and try to memorize the names. It has been harder than we thought – probably because of the pronunciation. But we know over time we will get all the names down. And then after that we are going to nail down some Sesotho! Rachel has already started making flash cards for practice.

Last Friday we made the long drive to Maseru, the capital city of Lesotho, to work on our immigration paperwork. JB and Liz Bundrick were so kind to not only invite us into their home but also show us around town and help us with every step we needed to take to apply for our residency permits. It was a full day with relatively no hiccups. Praise God!

Now we wait about five months to hear if we have been approved for our permits.

Also, throughout these first weeks we have been apart of the Marketplace portion of what Reclaimed does. Tyler and Brett have been working hard with the chicken project. Both Care Centers have 50 laying hens and are producing tons of eggs!

Amazing!

They put aside the eggs the children will eat that day and the rest of the eggs they sell to people in the community. Such a cool way for them to make money. We hope to begin gardens next week so they can grow vegetables for the children to eat too.

Lastly, we have gotten the women started on making more leather journals. They are all meeting each morning before the children get out of school. So far, the paper is all cut and folded and the leather is cut to the right size. Next week they will begin binding the journals together!

We look forward to a few more weeks of learning the details of the job, building relationships, and setting good patterns for the work!

With Love,
Tyler & Rachel