On Monday night, we were invited for dinner to some friends' house. That was lovely! It was so good to just get off the compound and have some time to chat with some friends and get to know them a bit better.
Then on Tuesday night, Jackie and I invited some of the translators who are staying on the compound for the workshop over to our house for some games. We had a great time playing charades and Four on the Couch. It cracks me up to get older African men to play charades! They LOVE it, and everyone has such a great time laughing together. We can all be completely silly together. And then, since they're all real pastor-types, we ended the evening with a good time of prayer together. That was great - to be able to go from completely silly to completely serious and united in prayer. I love that sort of mix!
Here's a photo of some of the guys acting out something... don't even remember what it was that they were acting out anymore!
The next day, Jackie and I hosted a spa evening in our house! We started off the evening with some pilates, then spent some time making ourselves beautiful... manicures, masks, deep conditioning for the hair, foot-baths... there are some photos of me being beautiful, but of course, they're not on my camera! So here's a photo I took of my friend here making herself beautiful, just to give you an idea of what the evening was like! There were 10 of us in our house looking just like this. I'm sure the guard, who was doing his nightly rounds, must have thought we were all completely nuts!
So yeah, it was lovely to feel a little beautiful for once. It's tough to do around here when everything is so dirty and I'm always so sweaty!On Saturday, I also got to go out for lunch with a young woman who's just moved here from the UK. She's a friend of a friend, so I took her out to the Ethiopian restaurant for some lunch. Yum yum. One of the very friendly Eritrean waiters there told me that he had become a believer this past week! So that was quite interesting and quite exciting! I think I'll try to hook him up with someone that I know here and I hope that perhaps he can get some discipleship or something from this older man that I know. I think this waiter would be more than happy to have some, um, er, one on one Bible study with me... but yeah, well, I just think it would better coming from someone else! I had a really nice visit with this new girl who's come.
Then, since I was over on that end of town, I stopped by the new houses of some of the folks who used to live on our compound. Of course, only one couple was home - everyone else was in the office! But I had a nice visit with the ones who were there. It was just so nice to have the time and opportunity to get out on my own and do some visiting. It felt like such a "normal" thing to be able to just go out with friends. Little things like that really make me feel like this is "home", and that I do live here and have a place to "belong" here.
Goodness, this blog is getting really long, so I think I'll stop now. I was going to post a picture of the beginnings of the water colour that I started this afternoon - again with some friends who came over to spend an "art afternoon" with me here. I was very ambitious and got a start on something, but it might take a few more days for it to turn into a complete picture. I feel quite refreshed and ready to face another week of work, now that I spent a great weekend relaxing with friends!
Maybe the email will even start working tomorrow!
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