November 7, 2010

Snow in Swaziland?

We have now entered the rainy season here in Swaziland and thunderstorms can come upon us rather quickly. We learned a long time ago to keep everything, except our refridgerator, unplugged when we are not using various appliances. Because we have rocks in our backyard, we tend to have lots of lightning hit very close to our house. The kids know our routine well and we all have torches (flashlights) in all our rooms as the electricity goes out quite often.
This past Friday afternoon, the sky looked very dark and I knew a storm was coming soon. I told Doreen Mabuza, our houseworker that comes to assist us with house cleaning twice a week, to go ahead and prepare herself to leave our house early. I was hoping she would have time to get ahead of the storm. Steve was at a Bible study for the afternoon and I was home with the kids. Nathan was still taking his afternoon nap. By the time Make Mabuza changed, the storm was practically at our house. We were expecting rain to come quickly but instead, a horrible hailstorm hit us fast. It started to hit our windows and sounded like it would come through at any time. However, it did not break the windows, praise the Lord! The kids were a bit scared so we immediately started to pray for safety for us and Steve as he was not home yet. Once the worse was over, I grabbed my camera to take a few photos and also assess for any damage. Not long after it was over, Steve came home and the whole storm went away just about as quickly as it had started. Whew....never can tell what crazy adventure we will have each day!

Looks like snow in our backyard but nope...just lots of hail!

Hail was bigger than golf balls but melting fast

Hail on the main highway as Steve was on his way home

November 5, 2010

Harvest Party 2010

No, our family has not decided to start dressing this way on a daily basis! :) We were part of an annual harvest party with missionary friends hosted by Doug and Tasha Myers and their kids. on Saturday, October 30. The Myers family has been hosting the harvest party for several years now. It is a fun time for our families to fellowship, dress up, kids visit nearby missionary houses to get candy/story time, play games, eat together, do lip sync songs, and just plain have loads of fun! It is something our family looks forward to doing now every year and we are anticipating next year's event. Thank you, Lord, for such a great missionary community!
Enjoy some of the photos taken that night.....

Allen Family Photo at Harvest Party - the hillbilly couple, doggie and Barbie

The "girls" photo - great friends!

Group photo with just about everyone

Mr. and Mrs. Hillbilly