Team Building and Terrace Gets Good News

Today we woke up at Shikwaru to another cool morning but with lots more people around!  That helped to make things warm up a little quicker in the restaurant during our breakfast.  It was fun to watch the new team members reaction as they were seeing Shikwaru and Africa for the first time in daylight.  The grounds here are truly beautiful although very brown right now because of it being the end of Winter and their dry season.  

The plan for today was to have a team building time and hopefully get to know everyone little better.  Kevin started our meeting with a great devotional on excellence versus perfection.  The passage was from Malachi 1:6-8 the people ask Malachi how they have displeased God and he explains by not offering acceptable or excellent sacrifices.  They were not giving their best but rather their “leftovers”.  Because God is excellent in everything He does we need also to be excellent in our service and offerings to Him.  The challenge was to work together on this trip to serve with excellence the people we are ministering to, the team members we are with, the staff at Shikwaru Lodge, and our God and Saviour.  There was also the reminders of the difference between excellence which is good and perfection which negative.  Our prayer is that as a team we will do our best to serve in an excellent way everyday of or trip.

I should also mention that today both our girls had the chance to try school in South Africa.  Terrace decided to stay with us for the Centershot team building but Jaelyn took the opportunity to go to school and see what school in South Africa would be like.

To end our morning session with the team we played of the property  some team building games and then it was time for everyone to get a tour via a game drive for a couple hours.  Just as we were heading outside for the game drive Eugene the PH (professional hunter) came to Terrace and said we have some good news!  Can you believe it, when we were not even thinking about it they had headed out again to look for her impala and today they found it no more than 300 yards form the blind.  They figured it had been dead shortly after the shot and that we had just not been able to find it.  Thanks you Lord for such an added blessing.  Terrace had tears of joy fill her eyes and when she told me I couldn’t believe it and had to fight back a few tears as well.  It was fun to get the news at that point with the other people around that we had told the heart breaking story to the night before.  Now many were congratulating her and giving her hugs for her accomplishments.  

So our plans were now to go see where they found it and then take pictures in the field with it as it was still in perfect conditioning and had not been found by any scavengers despite the time it took to find it.  We were able to have a little game drive of our own to get her impala and celebrate in the usual Shiwaru Lodge African way when you take your first game animal.  Terrace had to have a special song sung for her about “We love to hunt in Africa…” .  If you ant any further details about that story you can ask us and we would be happy to share with you.  Our only regret was that because of school Jaelyn was not there to be apart of the pictures and celebrating.  Although, I think that Terrace enjoyed getting to tell her the news after she returned from school.

After lunch we had multiple team members who have never had any formal Centershot Archery training.  Kevin had asked me if I would be willing to lead an abbreviated training session for them all.  It was fun to be able to spend an hour giving a crash course in Centershot outside in Africa.  Everyone worked hard to learn and we had fun spending some time learning the safety rules and how the range works but we also learned about the many ways that we may adapt things for our various situations here in South Africa.  Rick and Ardon know what I mean as we often have to change our best laid plans at the schools since you really don’t know what your dealing with at each school until you are there.  

Mid afternoon we had a special game drive that we all went on to Etebeni.  This is a huge wildlife preserve where you have the chance to see all the African animals that you can imagine.  It is a great opportunity to see the animals in their natural environment (if your driver can find them) and take pictures.  We learned a lot about tree on this drive as some of the animals were hard to find for most of the afternoon.  The drive goes right until dark and ifs a really fun experience.  We saw a lot of wildlife but two that we did not get to see that I saw last time were elephants and giraffes.  We did end on a high point seeing a rhino and then two cheetahs but by that time is was getting dark and difficult to get good pictures.  What a way to experience God’s creation together with our family and our new friends.

Our day ended with a planning session to figure out how to break up our teams to go to two different schools and what we would do at each school.  I was asked to be a co-leader with Kevin for our team and it was fun to see how everything seemed to fall into place for our team to serve through archery , games, and the Bible lesson.  I know that Crystelle was feeling a little more stressed than most people as she agreed to lead the Bible study.  That always requires more planning and prep before feeling ready.  She developed a great plan to teach the kids about a firm foundation.  The need to build your house on the rock and not the sand from Matt 7:24-27 was the theme, with an object lesson of a mini log house built with pencils that is stable on a rock but washes away when we build it on sand.  Please pray for kids that hear this lesson through the week that they will understand the importance of basing their life on God’s Word and accepting Jesus into their lives to save them from their sins.

We are getting further and further behind in our sleep so please pray for quality rest if not quantity.  Everyone is healthy but perhaps a little sore from being on our feet a lot.  The girls are doing so great with the schedule and we are so pleased that we all came together for this experience.  Please pray that our girls will all bond with the other young ladies and kids that are here and that they would be able to be mentored as well as be mentors and friends for those who are younger than them.  We have nine girls here from age 8-25ish and they all could be a great team of their own.  What a blessing to have this variety of young ladies here to serve!