Wednesday, November 23 (Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas play, and rain, plus a bird!)

     Last Sunday, we visited a church called Church of Christ.  Quite a few Americans attend said church, and they invited us over for dinner last Saturday evening.  There were lots of kids, many around our age, and Mom enjoyed meeting the other ladies.  We learned more about the church, are thinking about it being our church home, and enjoyed some pumpkin pie!

     The next evening, all six of us preformed in a Christmas play at New Life church.  It felt really odd to be doing a Christmas play so early in the year, since we're used to preforming on Christmas Eve, but around here, Jo'burg empties over the holidays.  School lets out December 2nd, and everyone goes on vacation, so the churches have to do their Christmas services a month early.  Teresa and Jonathon were both in the family, Esther was an angel, I was Mary, and Becca and Ivan were shepherds.  Pictures courtesy of Nathan and Adrianne Penner.

     I love the rain, don't get me wrong.  I love the thunderstorms around here.  Somehow, they manage to be powerfully peaceful.  The lightning lights the sky up brighter than daytime (contrast at work there!) and the resulting thunder shakes our house.  At night, it vibrates us into waking up.  The rain comes down SO hard, and it's often accompanied by hail.  The sound for falling (hitting?) rain is a beautiful thing to fall asleep to, and we've even gotten some Washington-like drizzle!  My camera was dead, so I couldn't get a picture; this is just for effect, off of the internet.

     Unfortunately, rain has it's down sides too.  We ran out of towels last night - they were blocking up the doors.  Our porch flooded, because it has little drainage, but that dried up this morning.  The worst part: Mom's garden was washed away, and most of the parts that weren't were buried.  Only the tallest plants survived.  And our mango trees have no more mangos - they were stripped off by the rain :(.  We won't leave them outside in a torrential rainburst again! 

    Hopefully, more mangoes will grow, the pool will eventually be clean, the garden will recover, etc., etc... fingers crossed!

     While typing, I saw the most gorgeous bird.  It flew up to our window, which has bars to hang onto, and started pecking the window.  I didn't have my camera on me - I didn't even have my phone!  So I had to resort to getting another picture off of the internet.  I love the way the rust brings out the red tones in the bird's feathers.