A new year with new ideas.......

Hello everyone and a very Happy New Year to you all!  I hope that the new year brings you much joy and peace.

Today is a public holiday so I thought I would take the opportunity of updating the blog as I haven't done it since before Christmas.  On Christmas Eve I went to an African Nativity which was really quite well done, although due to the late start (African time) it went on late into the evening.  Here you can see Mary looking very perplexed as Joseph wants nothing to do with her after hearing she is pregnant!

and Joseph in a dilemma as he doesn't understand how Mary could have betrayed him as he loves her so much...

Of course no drama of the nativity is complete without angels...........

and being an African nativity, we had a few traditional dancers thrown in too!!

All in all it was a great show, and the traditional aspects really made it a true African nativity!

Christmas day dawned bright and sunny and as has become a sort of tradition I had a barbeque in the garden with some friends. Here you can see Luso and her family - with the baby Asimeye who is now grown up so much!!

Fidelis is with me for the holidays and he had some of his friends over on Christmas day too...

Asimenye is very busy carrying things to Dad...

When the children are there, we always have to play pin the tail on the donkey...this is Nicolas looking for the donkey which was stuck to this tree.....he did find it eventually!

And no this is not someone from the Taureg in North Africa come to visit us, but it is blessings with the blindfold tied on very creatively!

Pass the parcel is also a favourite and Pemphero got the prize which maybe was not what he would have wanted - a teddy bear!!

Well its now 2013 and Nicolas and I have been making plans for the first quarter of the year in terms of Early Childhood Development.  We are planning to have an induction ceremony for the ECD Board at the end of January and then they can assist us in planning. However, we hope to do some material making workshops with our trainers so that they can be more creative in the things they make with caregivers.  Thanks to people in Ireland sending scraps of material in the training boxes, we spent a couple of days this week looking at various soft toys we could make and then making them.  Even Nicolas made an elephant - you can see him here concentrating hard.........

a tortoise...

a funky chicken...

a frog or possibly a toad as it is quite large......

I am very fussy about the sewing that we do  because we want these toys to be sturdy enough for young children so that they don't pull them apart and eat the stuffing!!

and Nicolas's elephant.........

We have had some good rains in the last couple of weeks.  However, in the south of the country there has been a lot of flooding and many people have lost their homes and crops.    Here the maize is growing well and in my garden this week I have a lot of mushrooms growing - not advisable to eat them I think.  Many of the mushrooms here are edible but I am not sure which are and which are not so I just stay clear of them.  Every year we have many people admitted to hospital due to eating the wrong type of mushrooms.  I must say they do look beautiful in the garden though.

So, its a new year and although I did not make any new year resolutions, we have begun the year with new ideas for the Early Childhood office.  We will be visiting some Presbyteries to sensitize them on Early Childhood and how they can best assist us in congregations; we hope to have workshops with our trainers in material making; we hope to be able to complete another phase of our building project so that possible one class will be able to move to the new site.  In all of this we ask for God's guidance and provision and blessing on our work.  

I had the privilege of being the first person to preach in St Andrew's church on the first Sunday of 2013.  Our theme for the month is 'being sure of our calling and salvation'.  It is the first time I have been asked to preach (probably due to our new minister who I know quite well), but I did enjoy the experience very much.

I also hope to complete my studies in early 2013 and will spend the rest of today writing up my dissertation.  

I hope you also have good plans for 2013 and trust that God will bless you wherever you are.  Thanks for all the positive comments - please keep them coming.

Blessings and love,

Diane