My friend Nova is due to have a baby any day now. Her supposed due date was July 15th... obviously that has come and gone. The latest check-up from the hospital showed the baby is fine and getting big. Nova walked back home from the hospital that day, "To help the baby come faster," she said. Walking definitely is a helpful thing at this stage, but it was still crazy for me to think of a lady 9 months pregnant walking over 2 miles home! How many ladies that pregnant do you know who have walked that far? Quite hilly terrain I might add! Nova was a first for me. I must keep my phone on me at all times because Nova expects me to be the first one at the hospital when she is going into labor. This will be my first time witnessing the birth of a child! And not only that, Nova has asked me to name her child! What an incredible honor! We don't know the gender of the baby, but I have some names picked out and I can only hope that she likes them. :/

Nova and her son have been going to church with me quite regularly. The church I attend is different than other churches here, a lot more contemporary and laid back than most churches in town, and obviously less traditional than the African churches. Nova and Tudesky have both enjoyed the services and Tudesky has started going to Sunday School. He has teamed up with another little buddy of mine, Ethan, and they've made fast friends. Nova reads with Tudesky from the Bible and has mentioned how great those times have been. I wanted to buy Tudesky a kids devotional and found the perfect one at the Christian bookstore. It's got a short daily devotional perfect for his reading level. Nova said he loves that book and she tells me he reads from it often. Knowing that my relationship with both of them is helping them each to grow in their relationship with God is such an encouragement to me.

I have still been meeting with the young lady I've been discipling--I've told her story before. That is going well and we're on Chapter 30-something of The Purpose Driven Life. She asks great questions and I pray that she is really getting a lot out of the study and our time together. There are still rough patches as she deals with her difficult life and struggles with remnants of addiction, but I have seen a lot of progress. Her trust in me has grown and even though I have to show her tough love on occasion, I believe she appreciates it and sees me as someone who really does care about her and the choices she makes.

At FHS, I have started a weekly "creative writing class" with some of the afternoon kids. These kids are between 10-14 and mostly females. The purpose of the class is to help them with their English and grammar, and I also want it to be a time where they can build their self-confidence. Most of these children don't have a safe environment to express themselves. I want to give them an outlet to do that and a place where they can be heard and appreciated. I am really enjoying my time with these young ones and I after just a few weeks I can already tell the ones who also look forward to my time with them. Most of the stories so far have been fictional exercises to get their imaginations going. Some of them were asking who would read their stories and wished I would take them to America so people there could read them. That fit perfectly with my overall desire for this class because eventually I wanted to shift the stories from fictional ones to stories that allowed them to write more about their own lives here in Namibia. Thus began "The Stories of the African Child"... or whatever it should be called. There is no real title for it, but the aim is simple... I have asked the children to write about themselves as Namibian children. I explained to them how my childhood in America was much different from their childhood here. I made up some true-to-life stories of American children and read them aloud, asking the kids to point out the differences between their lives and lives of many children in America. I told them that it is important for people in America to know how children live in other parts of the world, and I explained to them that when I got older and started to learn more about African children I knew that one day I would want to come and help them. Telling their stories will be important for Americans--and others--to read, and maybe one day they would also think to come to Africa and help God's children. I think the children really understood the purpose of this exercise, and it is one that we will continue to work on throughout the coming weeks. What is really neat about this exercise is that it allows the children to write about their lives, giving me the opportunity to read their first drafts and ask questions, have them elaborate on certain points, and even provides a time for me to talk with them about some of the difficult issues they face on a daily basis. Many have lost one or both parents, some are living with family members who don't treat them well, for many it is not unusual for them to go to bed hungry, and going to school with a clean uniform is a luxury. These are things many children in America do not have to face, or at least not as often as children here in Namibia... where being an orphan seems to be more common than having both parents still alive. This week I helped one of the girls finish the second draft of her story. I got her to open up about her childhood memories of her father before he passed away. The day ended with her crying and me trying to console her, but I pray that it was a positive experience overall because she started to remember great things about her father that initially she had no recollection of.

Aside from praying for the relationships mentioned in the updates above, I am praying for continued energy for each day. It is easy to do and do and do and wear yourself out by staying constantly busy with good things. I pray that I will focus on the tasks that are most important and won't allow myself to get wrapped up in mundane duties that aren't making Kingdom impact. The world can be a distracting arena and I want to make the most of my time here.

I am also praying for a dear friend back home who has just been diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma. Kathleen is a precious lady at my home church who is a blessing to everyone who knows her. They will meet tomorrow with an oncologist to talk about treatment options, if there are any. The treatment would be very aggressive and difficult for her due to her age. Please pray with me that Kathleen and her family will feel God's comfort and know His peace during this difficult time.