August 11, 2009 The first Blog entry

This is our first attempt at keeping a blog. Please excuse the spelling and grammatical errors as we try our best to write whats going on while balancing our normal, daily lives. As this goes on, hopefully you will see an improvement in our writing (mostly Derek's writing, Jeannette is a lot better : ) )

We made it to Africa. Jeannette and I arrived last Friday evening to Lilongwe, Malawi in the Southern, central part of Africa. Malawi is a small country and many who are reading this probably have never even heard of it before. Like us, prior to a few years ago we could not have pointed to it on the map. I first came here in 2004 for about 2 weeks to play soccer with some of the local city teams at some of the local stadiums. It was free admission and afterward a pastor would share a message of hope. Local Church leaders would follow up with people who were interested in hearing more about this living hope and hopefully begin a long term relationship. We traveled a lot but through that I was able to get a glimpse of the country and talk to many people.

Well I could go on about the background of our lives but I will hold off on that (feel free to email us if you would like a better context). Maybe that is a Star Wars influence where we start out in the middle of the story and the beginning will be shown at a later date....

Well today we woke up to a call to prayer from a local Mosque at 4:45am like we do every morning. Jeannette started to get up and pray when I told her "Hey, babe its okay that one is not for us...go back to bed" : ) We thought that the Mosque was just over our back wall or had a speaker on our wall pointing to our bedroom window but it turns out it is about 3/4 of a mile away. If you have not heard the call to prayer before it is an experience, especially at 4:45am. The other teachers/staff on campus say you get used to it after awhile. We went back to bed and woke up about 7:45am, did the normal morning routine of shower, get ready, breakfast etc. Jeannette then went off to set up her classroom and I was supposed to help her however I got a Skype call from a good, good friend in San Diego...although he is going to school in San Bernadino (I think I spelled that wrong). After I finished hanging up our laundry to dry, thought about doing some dishes, and then I went off to her classroom to give her a hand. After about an hour I went back to our house (around a 5 minute walk on campus from the school) and had Tea with our gardener who is named Happy, thought about doing dishes again and then decided to write this instead.

Jeannette will be posting some pictures of her classroom a little later on. There is a lot to do as the walls were bare and, as you know Jeannette, she is one to make a classroom amazing...everything from the bulletin boards to, the desks to the door to just about everything. I am looking forward to seeing it in its finished state. School starts on August 24th and she will have about 25, 2nd graders.

Today I am going to try to go to the Market and buy some seeds for our gardener (he came with the house and is a way to provide more jobs here) who will plant them in our garden. Also this week I will be getting prepped with my job as a part time PE Coach for some of the Jr. Highers (I have practiced saying "the more you talk, the more we run!!!" to get ready for them) and for being involved with the African Bible College Athletic Department. Lunch is in about 30 minutes and it looks like we will be having egg sandwiches...a change from the normal PB&J.

Feel free to look at our pictures on Facebook as well as keep up with whats going on during the day...somedays we will write more than others. We will be putting other links to our email and our mailing address here as well. Thanks so much!