Saturdays are not relaxing.

Hi all! Well, I left home a week ago today- just realized that as I'm typing this. It seriously feels like I have been out here for close to three weeks; we are just staying so busy. It's great that our schedules are so full, but we are all thrilled to have Sunday as a rest day (after church, of course).

Ok, so last night's Fire By Night (not Friday Night Fire, like I was referring to it before...looks like Teen Challenge is still stuck in me) was amazing. It was the soft kickoff for their third term- kind of like what youth group is like coming back from summer vacation. Next week is the big event. Before the service started, I spent 20 minutes talking to 3 girls who are boarders at the school. Wait, let me back up. FNF is the youth night for the All Nations Village Church; they bus the kids who board at the Okovango International School (OIS) over and then head into town to pick up the local teens as well. So before the service started I was able to talk to 3 girls who are boarders at OIS. That was really fun. They had a few questions about what MN is like, but mostly they were asking all about my husband. Girls are girls, right? :)

There were about 175 teens from the area that were at the service, and they sure had fun. Lots of energy, lots of dancing. There are two young missionaries on staff here, Matt and Kelly Clayton, who are currently serving as both the children and youth pastors. They do a great job with the kids. The service started off with a dance-off between the teens and they had to work their way up to dancing against Matt. The prize was 50P, which is a pretty decent chunk of money for these kids. It was funny to watch- I was glad that we had been warned earlier that day by Zhie about how people dance in church; I was still thrown off by their hip thrusts.

It was very cool to participate in praise and worship with these kids. I just stepped back and thought "is this really happening? Am I really at a youth service praising God in Africa with Batswana teens??" Pretty cool, people. Pretty cool.

Afterwards I was exhausted and was asleep by 10:30p. Unfortnately, my body is still getting used to all of this, and I was awake by 4:30. By 10am we were starting our work projects, and stuck with it until 3pm. I can now run a circular saw and fix porches! Also, we worked on putting up screens at the house. Let me tell you- this is not a nice, simple 2 minute job. Nope. We have a roll of wire screen that we need to measure and cut, then staple it to the pane, then pull and tighten and staple some more, then cut a spot so that we can open the window, then create a velcro thingamajig to cover it when the window is open, etc. I will take a pic sometime when I think of it and then I'll post it so you know what I'm talking about. All I know is that it took a lot of time and our hands were completely cut up afterwards. But, the screens are up! That's what matters.

We then went over to the directors' house to make and eat dinner and then hang out at the firepit. That was a nice evening.

Well, that was my Saturday! I hope most are not like this. We need more rest time! Hope you're all doing great!