3rd February 2011

Today was a miraculous day! It rained – only a little but it was enough to water the garden and answer my prayers! But even better than that we got the ram pump going!!!!! We had been waiting for our friend to come and help us but he just couldn’t make it and so I said to Matt why not ask Herbert who stays with near us and does odd jobs for us. We did and he did know what to do. It was so awesome to watch the water from the spring flowing down the canal again and so see all the years of dirt clearing way for the water to flow forth! We spent a few hours down there between the actual pump and the source of the water while Herbert was working on the pump! At one point the water burst forth through the pump and sprayed Herbert and I but it felt so amazing to actually feel water on my face knowing that it was going to to go up to our house soon

I left the guys down there and went back up to the house to call Moses to fix a few leaks along the canal and while I was standing there I was suddenly aware of water coming out of the ground near the gate. William started to dig it up and there was the water just gushing out of a broken pipe. There was some old pipe left over from digging it all up a few months ago and Matt was able to use that and connect it to the broken pipe and start filling the tanks up. Wow I can’t express the joy we felt that day to see water coming out of the ground!! The cold taps in the house are still unfortunately blocked so we couldn’t get the water to go into the house just yet but we will get that done soon as we get back here from Harare. We were able to fill the boiler up though so we had our second hot bath! Amazing!!! Thank you Lord for being so faithful!

(We are in a bit of a rush to leave for Harare - Perdo and Holmes are going to visit their grandparents.. and so pics from the day of water to come in the next issue)

2nd February 2011

A new month! Still no rain! The clouds build up every day but the rain doesn’t come. Crazy how we can go from a week with high rain falls of 62mm to nothing – absolutely nothing! Tests my faith so much. Our drums and tanks all running dry again and we got no other working source of water at the moment. The ram pump from the spring is almost ready, but unfortunately almost doesn’t fill the tanks up! Have to keep trusting our King to provide. I found myself starting to get down and the feeling of “Can I really do this?” but read verses on joy and how the joy of the Lord is my strength and to be joyful in all things – even when we got no water I need to get my inner joy from the Lord. So much easier said than done – but it is a good exercise to exercise daily! Can I be joyful when we are in desperate times for water?? I am trying!

Having Perdo and Holmes is such a breath of fresh air at times like this. They are so sweet and joyful and just so happy to see me all the time. Pedro decided this morning that my leg was his chewing toy! He soon realized that it wasn’t when I jumped up. Poor things we had to take them to the vet yesterday for their 3 month rabies injection, the closest vet being in Nyanga which is a good hour drive away from us. Let’s just say that they are not used to being in a vehicle and ended up vomiting all over the place – car sickness!! They were very relieved to be back at home and on ground that stood still.

The clouds have built up again today – Lord please open the heavens!

31st January 2011

I can’t believe it is the end of the month tomorrow – already! Amazing how time flies! There are some very dark clouds above us – after a beautiful sunny day, the storm is on its way. We need some more rain to fill up the tank that is now connected to the boiler and connected in such a way that it will bring in cold water too! We haven’t had rain since it was set up so we wait to see how it is going to work.

We extended the family yesterday with two cute puppies. Not sure what kind of dog they are but they are very sweet and playful. The one is very playful whilst the other is more inquisitive and thoughtful. We called the playful one Pedro (Matt’s name for it?) and we have been stuck on a name for the other one – the lady we got it from wanted to call it Frosty because he is mostly white and we called him that for a while but Matt said it wasn’t really a strong manly name. We thought about it for a while and I jokingly said Sherlock Holmes, but after some thinking and looking at him he actually looks like he has a Sherlock Holmes cap on when his ears up (he is white with rusty ears) and as he is so inquisitive it fits perfectly! So our puppies are Pedro and Holmes!

29th January 2011

There has been an amazing amount of rain the last few days. We had 62mm over Wednesday/Thursday and another 42mm yesterday. The outside of the house looks like a swimming pool often! We have had a rather all over the place week. Went to Mutare (an hour away from us), went to our friends the Edwards (they have the most amazing shower, and always good food!) where we were able to collect a few more herbs for the herb garden and talk about our new additions to the Golden Harvest family – some rabbits. Yesterday on our way home from the Edwards’ we stopped at the Bonda Children’s home – 3kms up the road from us – and we were able to meet the Sisters there and chat about us being more involved with them. I am hoping to be there more full time – helping the children with homework, doing crafts, I even thought it would be quite fun eventually to start a little choir with them. It made my heart leap at the idea of being involved and doing what I love. It made all of “Love Revolution” come so alive and I just want to do so much to help them. They have so many needs just in the buildings that we can help with. The Sister we chatted with was kind of like of great you are welcome to come any time, and after asking us about 3 times where we stayed, she thought we were just visiting, we finally told her the road and she said oh ok we used to know the Hardy’s on that road – to which Matt was able to tell her that they are his grandparents and she was over the moon! She said she knew Mai Hardy and that the head sister was good friends with her. On our way out she told us that we were no longer visitors but family!!

Today the Edwards’ came to help with the ram pump (the pump that is at the stream below the house that used to pump water to the house) but part of the canal needed fixing (Matt was out there this morning with Moses clearing all the dirt out of the canal so the water can run down it properly again) so they couldn’t help with that but they did bring us our new additions – 5 rabbits and 3 chickens! It feels way more like home now! The rabbits are going to breed eventually and then we want to be able to sell them and train the people around us to breed them themselves – they are a great source of protein for people who hardly ever get to eat meat! The rabbits are our pest control – they are the kind called Bantam which mainly just wander around eating bugs – they can eat all the grasshoppers that are in the herbs! SO they are all housed and it feels very exciting! I was looking at the poor bunny rabbits and thinking there is NO way that I would ever want to do away with one of them – they are just so cute and cuddly. My friend said to me DO NOT name them! Then you are too attached!

The guys found a disgusting looking spider today as well. It was minding its own business in its hole but they felt the need to dig it out to view it closer. I think it is still in the cage they put it in. Man it was huge. What we call a baboon spider. Probably a cousin to the Tarantula but it’s brown. When they touched it with a stick it would rear up and start hissing. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it!

The most exciting part of today has been the HOT bath we just had. Now for those who now – we have been having bucket baths for the last 2 years – which was made more thrilling by an outside grass shelter that we were using for outside showers but when the weather is like it is today – misty, wet and cold – an outside shower is not that fun. The boiler out the back was redone a while ago but we have not been able to get the water into the house. (We now have a tank set up under the garage roof that will collect the rain water and send that too the boiler tank to keep it full). We had managed to get it coming into the kitchen but not the bathroom. So Darryl Edwards came to help with that to see if there was a blocked pipe somewhere, but Praise the Lord it turned out it was just the tap in the bathroom, so we lit the fire and we had hot water in the bath coming out of the tap! Wow!!! It was terribly dirty but it was HOT! You know that saying throwing the baby out with the bath water – well the baby would definitely get lost in that bath. I tried to disguise it with some bubble bath but it didn’t last long. But really I didn’t care today – I was having a real hot bath at Golden Harvest!

25th January 2011

We had planned on going to the Bonda children’s home today but that plan was stopped by the fact that the truck was in the car-port and directly behind it was a very deep trench dug for the water pipes! Tomorrow we go! Today has not been too eventful, there was a lot of rain so most outside work was put on hold, I finished painting the walls in the living room that had been bashed through end of 2009, so it looks like a normal room again.

I have finished reading “Love Revolution” and these are my final words to you from it that I hope encourage you and set your heart free to live well and love well! Joyce Meyer quotes Erwin McManus from his book The Barbarian Way:

“Let go of sanitized Christianity and get back to the powerful, raw and ancient faith that chooses revolution over compromise, peril over safety, and passion over lukewarm and watered-down religions.”

Christ’s passion drove Him to the cross. Will ours at least drive us to sacrifice some of our old ways so the next generation might experience the transforming power of Revolutionary Love?

24th January 2011

We are back at GH. We had a pleasant trip down to South Africa for a few days. It was mainly a short trip to see mom M and to celebrate my birthday, so we took the Edwards’ with us and made it into a little rest time at Tshipise (hot springs that are pumped into pools! Amazing!) and a bit of a shopping for supplies trip.

Our return trip turned into a faith drive. Crossing the border was a breeze and the trip was going well until we needed fuel and there was just none in Zim. We were driving along and not finding anything so had to use what was in the fuel canister that we had with us which filled us up another 20 liters and then when that came to an end – we had just 2 liters left in the tank and we were all kind of thinking uh what do we do now and praying that the Lord would find us some, but everywhere kept saying no. Our last chance was a funny little place that had a few shops on the side of the road and there were no cars by the fuel tanks so we just figured there wasn’t any, but stopped anyway and sure enough the Lord provided!! He is without fail Faithful!!

We were welcomed home to a very big surprise. Moses had been working on the front lawn all week and planting flowers and he has even supplied us with a rock pool at the front of the garden. We had mentioned it to him when he asked us where we wanted a pond or swimming pool while he was mapping out the garden, but it was a future plan in our minds! However it was in his immediate plans! We just need a lovely hot sunny day now to try it out! What a blessing he is!

From that “Love Revolution” book I’ve been reading, here are a few Love tips to try out:

· Speak love. Come right out and say it.

· Put your love in writing – tell someone today!

· Risk doing outrageously loving things.

· Love takes a willingness to rejoice and weep.

· Learn to love different people in different ways.

This year I have decided to try those and to just love people more anyway that I can. You up for this challenge too?