First Day of Training - Kelsey de Lannoy

What a day!

Kelsey here with the latest on our South Africa 2010 Mission trip.

So we were all up pretty early again for our 7:30am breakfast time. Most of us seem to have our internal clocks running on schedule, although some have needed to take a sleeping pill. Mike is especially happy to have his first full night's sleep since we've been here. ;)

Here's John at Breakfast:

Here's a pic of Phoebe's intense "zebra 'fro" that we get to see every morning:

We have amazing house caretakers (Mark B. says to call them "angels" or "saints") who cook us breakfast and dinner each day. We're pretty spoiled, I guess. This morning they cooked us beef & cheese omelettes. Everyone loved them. I'm not an omelette fan so I stuck to toast and a banana. (The bananas are FANtastic here, by the way!) Myra is all about the orange juice here, so breakfast has been her favorite meal so far.

After we cleaned our plates, it was time for some devotionals. Mark B. put together a great devo for us to go through so today we kicked it off with a study of Isaiah 6:8-9 - "And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' Then I said, 'Here I am! Send me.' And he said, 'Go.'" ....Then we shared how we each responded to God's call for us to go on this mission trip. It was great hearing how the Lord had worked everything together in different ways to make it possible for each of us to go.

We drove over to the orphanage and met with some our South African team members. They were REALLY excited to see us again. They all climbed in the van before we could get out.

We spent time dividing up into teams and designated who would teach what this week. We begin teaching the Smart Choices curriculum tomorrow -- so excited!! We've been studying it for the past few months and now it's finally time to deliver it to the high school students (and to one college...I believe Zululand University).

Then around 2pm we went to the mall in Richard's Bay. We split up into a few different groups and grabbed lunch on our own. Sam, Zack, Colby, Myra and I all bought South African football (soccer) jerseys.

On our way home, we stopped to buy some gifts from a few roadside artists. They had some neat handmade wooden crafts like bowls, wall decor, and also lots of bracelets and necklaces.

Last but not least, we came back to our B&B and had a great dinner and some not-so-great green cream soda.

Thanks for all your prayers. We could sure use them this week as we begin to teach the Smart Choices curriculum in various different schools. Cheers!