Back to Jo'Burg

Hello again everyone. It has been 2 weeks and I have a lot to talk about. We are settling in quite nicely here. It occurred to me that you might not have any clue about what Johannesburg, South Africa is like so let me try and describe it for you. It is a large city with a population of about 8 million people. We have not even ventured into the downtown area yet. The city is surrounded by hills/mountains depending on where you live right now. Us Floridians would call it a mountain. We have opposite seasons from the States. We are in winter right now. It is usually about 30 - 60 F. They say it has been a pretty mild winter. We have been in winter for 7 months now so we can't wait for it to be over. Back to Jo'burg. The traffic is not too bad except when it is the good luck your stuck. All of the houses have walls and barbed wire around them. Very hard to meet your neighbors. The crime can be bad here. It is a case of either you have money or you don't no real in between. There are more BMW's here then I have ever seen. Most people do not follow traffic rules. Stop signs mean slow down, look and go. Motorcyclists are crazy. We live in a flat at the Baptist Missionary Services Compound. The IMB built 4 flats for missionaries to live in here. If you are a Baptist this is what your Lottie Moon offering goes to. We are so grateful. We drive a Condor. It seats about 7. We are so blessed to have all of this.

The children are doing well in school. They will be on holiday for the whole month of August. A much needed break for all of us. We will be going to a prayer retreat in Durban on the coast at the end of August. We are planning on staying a few days after to have so family time by the Indian Ocean. We are all excited. Yesterday Micah participated in his schools field day. It was a lot of fun. They do things big here. Remember that he goes to an all boys school so there was a lot of competition. The girls have been going to birthday parties and having play dates with new friends. David and I have also made some South African friends so that is fun.

We joined a church here called Edenvale Baptist Church. On Wednesdays we have joined a cell group. It consists of about 10 couples. Most have children. Last week the group went to a government run hospital here. This was very different than any hospital I had ever seen. They also have private hospitals here but the people in this hospital could not afford it. There were many dying of AIDS there. Most did not have anyone to visit them. They welcomed us. We gave them Bibles and prayed with them. Please pray for these sweet people.

David is still doing his classes and is working hard at the office. His boss and family left on stateside last Friday. We are missing them already. They will be living in Tennessee for 5 months and coming back in January. We also are losing another of our BIMS missionaries to retirement next week. She has been serving for 20+ years. She is an amazing lady and we will miss her also.

Good news. I finally finished the bunk beds. They are together and Emily slept in hers last night. It took about a month to strip the old wood and put new finish on it. It gave the girls so much more room in the room.

We have been connecting with a lot of our old friends through Facebook. I have also been putting pictures there. Please join so we can talk to you too. This is not a commercial for Facebook it is just an easy way to keep in touch.

Thank you as always for your prayers, notes, e-mails, encouragement. We love them. Keep them coming.

Prayer/Praise Requests:

Prayer: That our crate will get here soon.

Prayer: for the patients at the hospital that we visited.

Prayer: for the leadership of the IMB and our Regional Team.

Prayer: For the Naude family on Stateside and Sarah as she retires.

Praise: The beds are done!

Praise: We have all made friends.

Any Road At Any Cost

Hello everyone. Sorry about not writing last week. We have been very busy with different things. The children are still in school and making friends. Leah and Micah have both been invited to birthday parties. Leah went to one at an ice skating rink yesterday. Emily and Micah went to skate too. They all had a great time.

David has been busy at work and has started his new class. They are only 8 week classes so they are really intense. He has been studying every night. I have become the furniture restainer. I have stained 2 bookshelves, 1 side table and 1 foyer table. I am now in the process of stripping the wood on the girls bunkbeds and re-staining them. It is a long process but they really look good. I will show you the before and after pictures when I get finished. While I have been doing this work I have had a lot of time to listen to c.d.'s. This week I was listening to all of my Point of Grace c.d.'s. If you are like me different songs have different memories. I was remembering singing at McGregor Baptist Church with my friends. It was good memories. One song really got me to thinking. The song is called Any Road at Any Cost. I was thinking about different e-mails that I have been getting. Some of you that read this blog don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If you are reading this and you feel like you have no idea what that means but you feel that something is leading you to want to know more let me encourage you to either e-mail David or me or to visit a bible believing church tomorrow. Do it you won't regret it. I know right now it is summer time in the States. Time to reflect on your year a service in the church and time to pray about what to do next year. If there is something that you feel like God is calling you to do but you don't think you could possibly do it, like teaching Sunday School, auditioning for the Christmas Pageant, going on a mission trip or becoming a career missionary, do it anyway. Take that step out of the boat and walk on water. It's an amazing journey. For those of you that are like us friends on the field either around the world or doing ministry at home. Know that we are praying for you. I know I have said this but I can't imagine doing language school on top of everything else. You all are awesome and we miss you.

The last couple weekends we have been to some really fun outings. 2 weeks ago we went to The Lion Park. We got to feed giraffe, pet baby lions and go on a safari. We saw about 30 lions. They had just fed them so we got to watch them eat. It was a driving safari so they were standing right next to the car at some points. They are huge. One female stood as high as the window. Awesome creatures! We also saw zebra and wilderbeasts. We had a lot of fun. Last weekend we went out to Irene market which is an outdoor Africaans market that has antiques, crafts, food yum and camel rides. The girls can now say they have ridden on a camel. We had a fun time together. This week the children have had the week off and there a lot of families with children staying at the compound so the children have been busy. Yesterday we had a 4th of July picnic. We were afraid that it would be to cold to have outside but it turned out to be really nice and there weren't any flies so that was good. We are settling in nicely to our new home but we are still waiting for our crate to arrive. It will be like Christmas when it finally gets here. I can't even remember what exactly we put in there.

Micah had a great birthday. He got to open his presents from our family on Skype so they could see him open them. It was neat. We took him to dinner and he openned presents from us that day. He had fun. Thank you to everyone who sent e-cards and wishes to him.

Prayer Requests:
Praise: Micah had a great birthday.

Priase: that we are settling in.

Prayer: that our crate gets here quickly.

Prayer: that we will know what ministry God wants us to be a part of here.

Thank you to everyone. We are praying that you will go down any road at any cost.

Finding Joy

This picture is not our new flat. It is the tents we stayed in during 40/40.


Hello again everyone. Just over a week has gone by and already things are so different here. We have finally moved into our permanent flat. We have been very busy decorating and trying to make it our home. We got our beds on Friday so we were very excited. We live right next door to where David works so it has been really nice to spend time together. We never had that in the states. I started taking a Beth Moore Bible Study every Wednesday morning. It is on the book of Daniel. It has really been great for me to focus more on God and less on me. It gives you perspective. I have been trying to find joy in all things new. Like for instance last week I wrote about having to pick the children up at 3 different times every day. Well I figured out that when doing this I could spend quality time with each one personally talking about their day. It has really worked out quite nicely. The children are really doing well in school.

We have found a church and we are very excited about joining it. We visited several different churches but in the end we picked Edenvale Baptist Church as the church we will be members of. It is much smaller than our home church. The children seem to really like going. So we are very excited.

We are learning the lay of the land more and more each day. It seems that driving on the other side of the road isn't as difficult as we thought it might be. This weekend we got to see some friends that went to FPO and 40/40 with us. They are in town for 3 weeks to go to another training. It was so nice to see them and hang out. They are serving in Malawi.

David is liking his job. He has a lot to learn in a short period of time. We are praying that the power doesn't go out again so that the computers still run. Last week they were out for 2 days. This did give us time to do things that needed to get done before we moved. He will be starting classes again next week so please pray for him. It can get pretty stressful especially if the Internet goes down.

Last week I forgot to say Happy Father's Day to all the dads in my life. You know who you are. I hope you had a great one. We had a national holiday yesterday so the kids got the day off. We went to a movie and had a great time together.

Micah's birthday is next Wednesday. There is a team coming over this Thursday bringing presents from our family over. He doesn't think he is getting anything from his grandparents so he will be so surprised. Say a prayer for him on the 25th if you think about it.

Prayer/Praise Requests:

Praise - We have moved to our permanent residence.

Praise - We got our work permits today!

Praise - We found a church.

Prayer - for Micah on his birthday.

Prayer - that we would get our crate soon.

Prayer - for a little girl named Alexus. She is 4 and needs a new kidney. Her mom is a real estate agent that I met while showing the old flat to renters.

Prayer - that now that we are getting settled we could find where God wants us to minister.

Prayer - for David's job and school.

Thank you as always. You all are so awesome. I pray that you find joy in the Lord this week.

This Is Going To Be A Long One

Home Sweet Home or maybe not quite home but I will get to that. We did finally make it back to Joburg. We have had an interesting week. When we arrived we found out that the flat that is being built for us is not quite finished so they moved us into another flat not to far from where we will live. We will only be here until the 22nd of this month so we will have to re-pack yet again to move. Hopefully for the last time. In this week we have mastered driving on the wrong side of the road and car with a stick shift in your left hand. The drivers here are pretty crazy. Worse than Florida if you can believe that. We have been hooted (honked) at several times.

The children started school last Monday. I know most of your children just ended the school year. Here we have year round school that starts in January and goes to November. The children will have May, August and December (our summer) off. So in the end it all equals out. The children are really liking their teachers and are making friends rapidly. It was truly a miracle that they had space for all three kids. At the girls school they only had 2 spots open in grades 2 and 4. They told us there are waiting lists for all other grades until 2013. Micah did not have a spot until the week before we came back from Zambia. Another boy had to drop out so his space opened. God is so amazing. We have spent all week trying to get uniforms. The kids had uniforms in the states but nothing like these. The girls have to wear a blazer, tie and trousers every day except for one which they wear a track suit and when they are outside they have to wear a school hat. They can only wear a certain color hair accessory and they have to have their hair pulled back at all times. That is just the winter uniform. During summer it's a whole new set. Micah's isn't quite so bad yet. He wears a track suit with shorts underneath and a hat when he is outside. They all had to get new shoes and special socks. School drop off/pick up times are interesting. every day each child has a different time to pick them up at. I actually had to write a weekly schedule out so that I could figure out what time to pick each child up. This is my first week so I will let you know how it goes. For all you moms out there there are no car lines. You basically have to drive up to the school, park and go get your child. Interesting when they have to be picked up at three different times. I am trying to get used to this. Just so you know they all go to Catholic Private School. This of course poses a myriad of questions about why they pray to Mary and why do they use a necklace to pray? The schools are our mission field. Please pray that all of us can be the salt and light there.

In the last week we have gone grocery shopping, gone to the mall, eaten at restaurants and bought furniture and appliances for our new flat. Here are some funny stories about our South African happenings. First, grocery shopping. Here they have different names for a lot of things. So if you go with a list you have to ask half a dozen people what they might call a certain item. Most of the time they have no clue what I'm talking about. For instance, Q-tips are called ear buds here and you can find them with the baby items. Kidney beans are called sugar beans and sour cream is sour cream but it is in the yogurt section. Shortening is called white butter and you can find that with the butter of course. There is about 3 different kinds a sugar. Good luck trying to find the one you want. Then there are the things I haven't been able to find yet. I was so excited the day I finally found dryer sheets. You have to cut them in half here but at least they have them. I told David I can't even imagine living in a country where I can't read or speak the language. It has been hard enough just doing this. Please join with us in praying for all of our friends around the world who are in language school. At the mall here it is one stop shopping. You can go to the grocery store, go see a movie, go to a restaurant or a drug store all at once. Most big stores have large appliances, food, t.v.'s, things for your car, ect. Last week we went to a restaurant for pizza. That day they were having a "special" on pizza's. Each pizza was 36 rand. However, the pizza I wanted only cost 26 rand regularly. But because the pizza was on special we had to pay 36 rand for it. In Zambia we learned the phrase AWA which means Africa Wins Again. We have used this phrase often. We have also been in the process of shopping for appliances and furniture for the new flat. This has been interesting. Believe it or not the appliances here are very different and everyone has their own opinion about what you should get. We were blessed to find a sale at a nice furniture store so last Saturday we bought furniture for our living room. Yesterday we bought all of the appliances and beds. We have never had to choose appliances so this was all new to us. Appliances & food are smaller here so we are trying to get used to that. I feel like I'm always going to the grocery store. Eventually I will figure it all out. Probably about the time that we go stateside.

On a serious note. I am not sure if you saw on the news the riots that were happening in Joburg. It was happening while we were in Zambia. We were not affected by it. They call in Xenophobia. What was happening was that some of the black Africans were upset that refugees and ex patriots were taking homes and jobs that they thought belonged to them. So they started to riot and things got out of control and about 30 people were killed. The South African army was called in. Families are still displaced and grieving. It is very sad. Thank you for thinking about us during this time.

Our new mailing address here is PO Box 1759, Edenvale, South Africa 1610.

Just so you know Micah's birthday is June 25th. He will be 6 years old. My does time fly. It takes about a month for things to get mailed to us. You can e-mail any birthday greetings to me at tracy_delac@yahoo.com We are on-line now so please e-mail, comment on the blog or Facebook us. We want to hear form you.

Prayer/Praise Requests: Praise - the children's school. Please pray that they will do well and make friends easily.

Pray - that the building inspector will o.k. our flat so that we can move in.

Pray - that we find a church.

Pray - for all the people that we are coming in contact with at school, or when buying stuff. That we would have the opportunity to witness to them.

Pray - for the families that have been displace or lost loved ones during the riots.

Hello from Zambia Part 2

Well tomorrow we will be flying back to Joburg and we are very excited. Since I last blogged some many things have happened. 40/40 has been difficult. The group as a whole caught some kind of stomach bug. This started the same the day we drove to Petauke. Not fun driving while you are sick. The trip took about 6 hours due to road conditions and sickness stops. It was a beautiful drive, just long. Like I said in the last blog we all stayed in tents. Our family had two tents that faced each other. Unfortunately, they forgot to hook up the electricity in ours. ha ha The day after we arrived our nurse had to leave because of sickness. That night Emily was sick all night. I caught it in the morning and David caught it that afternoon. David ended up getting very dehydrated and had to get an IV put in. He felt better as soon as they put it in. We adjusted to camp life rather quickly after everyone started feeling better. Our field assignments were very much like the ones we had done in Lusaka but now David and I got to go together. We shared the gospel several times and one lady accepted Christ! It was so awesome! We went into their villages and met the head man and got to talk with him. This really was an awesome experience. These people live in little round clay huts with thatched roofs. This is how they have always lived. They are farmers and live with their whole family. On the last 3 days in Petuake we went on our home stay. We stayed in the Petauke town. We stayed with a family that actually had electricity. They even had a t.v. They had one 3 year old boy. The kids were excited because they got to play with the 6 puppies that were there. On Sunday we went to church with them and saw 2 other 40/40 families that were staying in the town. I got to learn to wash my clothes by hand and how to make encima. This is something that Zambians eat for just about every meal. By the end of the home stay my children were asking to eat encima and their son was asking to eat rice. The kids did so well. We have awesome kids. On Monday we drove to a "resort" called Ibis Gardens. We are staying in a house. It is very nice and very different from the tent we stayed in. Tonight we are having our banquet. I can't believe it is finally over. It has been a hard month but God has been so good and we are so thankful. Tomorrow we fly back to Joburg at 7:20 a.m. We are so excited to start our lives in our new home. I just found out today that all three of the children have spots in the school. God never ceases to amaze me. Thank you for praying us through this month. We have felt your prayers. We are back on line now so write to us. tracy_delac@yahoo.com or david_delac@yahoo.com I am on Facebook and we both have Scype numbers. I will let you know our physical address as soon as I know it.

Prayer Requests:
Travel mercies

That the children will meet new friends fast and that they will enjoy school.

That we stay healthy. All of us have been sick this month.

For our family back home. We miss them.

That we find a church in Joburg.

Hello From Zambia

Hello everyone. This will be a quick blog as everyone needs to use this one computer. We made it to Zambia. All of our things arrived with us and as soon as we arrived we started orientation. Most everyone is staying the first 12 days at the Baptist seminary here but if you are fortunate enough to have 3 or more children you stay at the Baptist guest house. The guest house is so nice. I thank god for blessing me with 3 children. We have separate bedrooms, our own bathroom a kitchen and a laundry room that we share with one other family as opposed to 25 other people. The children are in school while we are in orientation. Most days we have Zambian helpers that take us to their compounds and we have different assignments that we have to do. David and I are on different teams (teams consist of 2 people and a helper). It is neat to hear both perspectives when we return. The thing that we have found that is the biggest barrier to sharing the gospel in Lusaka is alcohol. Please pray for these people. The children got to go to a water park on Saturday and had a wonderful time. They will also get to go to a crocodile farm this week. They are having a great time with old friends from VA and new friends that they have met here. Sunday we all went to a craft market. We each bought something Zambian. Sunday night we ate at a Chinese restaurant (yes, even here). When we arrived the electricity was out. But we ate there anyway. There were 24 people eating and we did not get our meal for 2 1/2 hours. It was a true African experience. The electricity has been off 2 times since that. We love candles. On Monday we will leave here and drive to Petauke about 6 hours away. Lusaka is a city. Petauke is very rural. We will live in tents for 12 days. After that we will live with a national family for 3 days. Please be praying for us during this month. I am not sure when I will get to a computer again so let me wish my Mom a very Happy Birthday for Thursday. We love you mom! Thank you to all of you that are praying for us. We can feel your prayers.

We made it to South Africa

Hello everyone. We are finally here. We had a really good trip. Thursday we left my parents house at about 5:00 p.m. It was really hard saying goodbye to our families but we know that we are in God's will being here. When we arrived at the airport we were a bit worried about the weight of some of our bags but we had prayed about it and we got the nicest lady at the counter. Would you believe she only weighed 2 bags? We were so blessed. Going through security we were pulled out of line to be frisked and have all of our stuff gone through. We couldn't believe that they would frisk a 5 year old. We were really glad we arrived so early. We had plenty of time before our flight took off. We thought it would be easy getting on the plane because we got to get on first with the children. But they had forgotten to scan our passports so we had to stand there while they typed each one into the computer and we ended up being the last ones to get on the plane. We were surprised when there was still plenty of space for all of our carry ons. The first plane ride was great. The kids did really well. They loved the personal movie screens that were right in front of them. They watched movies the whole way. They did sleep some. We got to Germany at about 5:00 a.m. our time. We stayed in that airport for 10 hours. We even found our journeyman Mary. It was a long wait but we all managed to sleep a little. That airport is very expensive. A small bottle of water was $5.00. We spent $33.00 at McDonald's. We were glad we weren't staying in Europe. We got on the second plane at about 10:30 p.m. our time. By the way we are 6 hours ahead of you. We didn't leave the airport until about 11;15 because of weather. This plane did not have the personal movie players and it was hard for the kids to see the movies. The children slept most of the way. This plane was bigger but seemed a lot more crowded with less space. It was pretty uncomfortable for 10 hours. We did meet a a guy that owned some hotels in Hazy View which is outside of Krueger National Park. He really helped us out at the airport. He also gave us his card so when we go on holiday he said he can set us up. Pray for him his name is Andre. The airport at Joburg went really smoothly. We actually got all 10 bags. We were met by about 10 people from BIMS (this is where we live). They helped us a lot and we had no problems at the airport. We are staying at the BIMS compound now. There is a McDonald's and a KFC right down the road. We got to see our new home. It is not quite done but it is very close. We are praying that it gets finished before we get back from 40/40 in Zambia so that we can move right in. The children have already picked out their bedrooms. They are excited. Emily and Leah still have to share a room but these rooms look bigger than their last one. Yesterday morning we went to breakfast with friends. He is the Cost Center Manager here. David and he will be working together. We really could see God's hand in all of this while talking with them. We are so blessed to be working with such wonderful people. Last night we had hamburgers and hotdogs with all of the people that will be living at the BIMS compound with us. Micah fell asleep in my arms at about 6:30. He was crashed out. He slept until about 10:00 a.m. today. Today we went to lunch at the Tadlock's house. It was yummy. We me Phyllis while we were in VA and she promised the children she would make a coca cola cake for Emily. It was so good. After lunch we drove around and got to see where the children might go to school. Tonight we ate at McDonald's. We have been to the grocery store twice. They seem to have basically everything we do just different brand names. Tomorrow David and I have orientation. We will be learning to drive on the other side of the road and car so it should be fun. Thank you for all of your prayers through this. On Wednesday we get back on a plane and fly to Zambia for a month for our African orientation. We will not be able to take our computer so I don't know if I will ever get a chance to blog. Please pray for us that month. We really covet your prayers.

Prayer and Praise requests:
Praise -we are here with all of our bags.

Praise - our flat is almost finished and ready for us to move in.

Praise - we love the people here.

Praise - the children are doing great here.

Prayer - that we learn how to drive here.

Prayer- that we are ready for 40/40 in every way.

Prayer - that we stay healthy

Prayer - that the children will get into the school that God wants them to be in.

You all are such a blessing to us.