For those of you that missed it, here is the email I sent out this week to my supporters:

Hi Everyone,

Well, we
have made it to the first week of March and I am missing, yet again, another
birthday. Happy (early) Birthday
Austin! This has been another good
week. I showed up Tuesday morning to
school and found out that the teacher I’m working with would not be at school
all week. So I had the class all to
myself all week! I was a little worried
at first, but I actually enjoyed it a lot.
I was able to do whatever I wanted with the kids. I came up with different centers for English
and I think the kids really enjoyed it!
Wednesday afternoon Nicole and I walked a couple of our students home
and briefly met their family. It was a
lot of fun to see where they live and to meet their family. In Swaziland most people outside of
the big cities live on homesteads. These
are basically a large area of land with multiple little houses where the entire
family lives. There is often a farm of
some kind with maize and possibly other vegetables. The homestead we went to on Wednesday
overlooks a game reserve so it was beautiful.
The girls’ gogo, or grandmother, gave us some of their maize as a
gift. Receiving gifts when you visit a
family is the norm here as well, so that works out nicely for us:) We stayed after school this week for sports,
or running. All of the fourth, fifth,
and sixth graders have to stay after school to watch their fellow students
run. Only the best students are chosen
to compete in the competitions coming up in mid March and all the rest just
cheer on their friends. Nicole was
talking to the running coach and told him that she ran track in high school and
he told her to come next week with a change of clothes ready to work with the
girls. So Nicole is now the girl’s
running coach for Mahlanya
Primary School…pretty
exciting. For family ministry on
Saturday we went to our school to play with the kids. We made a slip-n-slide for the kids and they
loved it! At first only two kids were
brave enough to try it, but then they were lining up and were sliding down it
for at least an hour. This week we are
leaving on Thursday to go to South
Africa for a prayer retreat. We will be gone from Thursday morning of this week through Monday night of next week. I guess March Madness will be starting soon,
too bad American College
basketball is not a big deal in Swaziland. I’m sure my family will root extra hard for
the Tarheels in my honor though;) I hope
you all have a good week. Keep me posted
on the basketball tournament:)

Love in Christ,

Allison