Dear Friends and family

Our first week on the Mount of Olives project has been and gone with lots of incidents and demonstration of Gods sufficiency. Christmas eve saw us hit by a storm with Gale force winds and cold rain. As far as I know this is unseasonal. The next day saw temperatures of over 100f, its seems we had a run of inclement weather which took us to task and showed us how little we knew of our new environment. What a learning curve. I will explain the challenges we faced before going on to explain what we actually achieved as I don't want the reader ,  to end this weekly report with the wrong impression.

As I said the weather was extreme but we were for-warned by our sister Elisheva who knows the area and sent us regular weather updates. Nether the less, for-warned didn't mean we were ready for it and this culminated on Thursday with a sequence of events that caused us to rethink a few things.

• 2 of the awnings that seamed to be standing the test suddenly ripped
• The 4 room frame tent advertised as worthy of the most extreme conditions and containing a lot of our stored stuff ripped like tissue paper
• While looking for canvas needles in Swellendam to repair the awnings the belt on the Kombi that controlled power steering, alternator and air con broke in two.
• The 4x4's ignition decided to go haywire leaving us with our small fiesta runaround

After this series of events, with no storage for some of our belongings and no let in the wind I decided to take the ladies and our youngest two and book them into a nearby chalet while us lads stayed put and carried on repairing and working. This allowed us to rethink and put in a plan of action.

• Order another large shed from Smartshax which we will use as a kitchen and living space
• Order a half size store room for our remaining belongings ‚   that will also act as an office temporarily for Moriel
• Temporarily use the girls caravan as storage while the girls stay in the chalet until the sheds are delivered and erected
• We managed to put a new belt on the Kombi thanks to Abre (what a blessing this man has been)
• Today we are moving the caravans so they act as wind breaks for the remaining awning.

Then we have the positive things we have managed to achieve. Its seemed we were just working hard to survive because as you know a dozen people with Abre on board has to be fed and watered and with Paulina also getting an infection in her foot, it was no easy task, but with yours truly doing the cooking we ate very well. Here are some of the achievements as far as we see it.

• Amid the Chaos Christmas day was ‚   special and we had a carol service on the farm which was lovely and peaceful.
• Praise God we managed to fix the Kombi
• Guttering and water tanks were added to the storage shed to harvest rain water (when it comes)
• The toilets which were blown over in the wind were repaired and anchored down
• All the grass was moved into a new composting area we erected
• We managed to obtain a fridge that could be used with the solar panels, this now gives us 2 small fridges

Also managed to make a simple washing contraption (see Lyn in pic)I

Even though its sad we are separated by a few Kilometers at the moment we believe this to be a short term measure, can I say thank you for the numerous phone calls, emails and FB comments of encouragement we have received, bless you for your thoughtfulness.

Please continue to pray for us while we pioneer this undeveloped piece of land. Through these experiences we are learning a lot about Gods sufficiency in crisis and our own short comings. But at the end of the first week we are still standing strong in Him. Things to pray for are as follows.

• The healing of Paulinas foot
• More of His grace and fruit to be shown in our lives
• Practically we have now picked up expenses we did not foresee, for example the need to purchase two more sheds, the cost of keeping the ladies and young ones at the Chalet. Vehicle repairs. These will put us way over budget. So please pray and where burdened by Gods Spirit to do so help in this area

May God direct all our paths in accordance with His will.

In Jesus

Dave and Lyn

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