Trip to the South

Hi Friends this is a very quick update sent from an internet cafe in Luderitz, Namibia. Luderitz is a small coastal town that looks like a cross between an old German village and a small town in the Greek Isles. 100 year old German buildings built on rocks in bright colors around Luderitz bay. We are here as part of our 10 day mission trip to the South of the country. Yesterday we had a great service at St. Peters and St. Lukes and did two baptisms. We leave tomorrow for areas even further south. Please keep us in your prayers.  You can keep up with where we are on twitter or facebook or by checking the twitter feed on the left side of the blog. Peace, Jeremy

Quick Update

Hi everyone hope you are all doing well.  Penny and I are doing fine and are very, very busy. Since we returned to Namibia we have been going in 100 different directions. While this is good it takes away from our time to sit down and write on the blog. In fact the longer we go without a post the more overwhelmed we feel about how much has happened and how long the next post would need to be. So in an attempt to get out of the non-blogging rut we will try to post a few short things over the next few weeks. We will also try to put together some Web Albums to show you where we have been.

 

Our Tip Home

From May 19-June 22 we were in Alabama visiting family and friends. We had a wonderful time seeing everyone. It was our first trip home since coming to Namibia. The highlight of the trip was meeting our new nephew Max my sister Monica's first child. He is such a cool kid, and as good as Skype is to stay in touch, there is no way to reproduce holding a baby in real life. Our trip included visits to many Church in the Diocese of Alabama and we will be trying to send home more items for purchase. Overall we want to say thank you to everyone for you r love and support and please continue to keep us in your prayers.

 

Penny's Birthday

Some of you have probably seen our new profiles pictures on Facebook. Those were taken at a place called Sossusvlei about 5 hours south of where we live.  They are considered by most experts to be the oldest and tallest desert dunes in the world. Many of the dunes are 1000 feet tall. It is a truly incredible place on the same level as the Grand Canyon. We took the trip as a way of celebrating Penny's 40^th Birthday on July 18. We camped two nights and stayed in a lodge two nights. It was really windy while we were there. In fact when we camped we had to tie our tent to the truck to keep it from blowing away. It was a great time.

 

St. George's Cathedral

Coming back to the day to day work at the Cathedral was like coming back to any job after being away for a while. There were a lot of things that needed to be dealt with and a pile of messages to deal with.  We have recently been doing renovation and restoration work around the Cathedral grounds that has been needed for years. We are now finished with phase one and hopefully will be moving on to phase two soon.  We are working on lots of outreach projects, training new lay ministers, teaching confirmation classes (35 students so far) and planning weddings (5 in the works for the next couple of months).    Our newest project is going to be the Anglican Rosary Project to benefit our Loaves and Fishes homeless ministry. We are recruiting women and men from our ministry to make Anglican Rosaries that we will buy from them and then sell to benefit Loaves and Fishes.  We hope to have the first rosaries made by the beginning of September  and I am taking orders.

The other exciting thing happening at the Cathedral is an upcoming mission and ministry trip to the South of the country.  On August 21, 6 members of the Cathedral, including me and Penny will be headed South 8 hours to celebrate communion and perform baptisms for parishes and outstations that have not seen a priest for a year. It will be a 10 day trip and we are getting very excited.

 

I am out of time to write more now. Next post I will update everyone on the Clergy training project. Peace, Jeremy

Sorry Friends

This is just a quick note to let you all know that since we have been home we have had quite a time with both the internet and our phone. We have had almost none of either. Hopefully we will be back in touch and be able to post some photos from our trip home and of our upcoming trip to the Sossusvlei Dunes for Penny's Birthday. Peace, Jeremy

Back in Windhoek

Hey Everyone just a quick note to tell you that we are home safely after a long week of travel. It is about 5pm and we are unpacking for as long as we can stand up. We still don't have home internet connection so I am not sure how often we will be able to email. I am at an internet cafe now not far from our house. We had a great visit home. Thanks to everyone for everything. We cannot express how great the trip was for us and we cannot wait to see you all again. Love, Penny and Jeremy

Help For Linea

Dear Friends
We have been having and incredible time on our home stay. We spent the morning at St. John's in Decatur and had a great time. I want to say another very special thank you to Rev. Richard Lawson and Ms. Monica Romano. Monica has been travelling over the past two week to wherever we have been speaking to be our all around audio/visual professional. She created two DVD's of our photos and has been an incredible help. Yesterday was very special because we got to go "home" for a visit to our old parish in Athens, St. Timothy's. This visit was all the more special because we were joined there by The Rev. Deacon Linea Haufiku from Namibia. She is currently continuing her theological studies at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas but she is spending the summer on an internship in the Diocese of Alabama. She added so much to last night's discussion. Here is a photo of her (on the left) with the Rev'd Nangula Kathindi the coordinator of the Diocesan HIV/AIDS program. Since the time this photos was taken he has cut her hair. I made a request last night for some small amount of support for Linea while she is in the U.S. studying. Although she receives tuition and housing she still has to buy groceries and other household needs for herself AND she sends money home to support her mother and the 6 children that live with her now. Many people at St. Timothy's gave her a love offering last night but also requested her information to continue supporting her into the future. Thanks to everyone who made last night possible. Here is the information:

The Rev. Deacon Linea Haufiku
SUMMER ADDRESS IN ALABAMA
107 Forest Glen Dr.
Madison, AL 35758
(256) 479-5674

PERMANENT ADDRESS IN AUSTIN, TX
3007 Duval Street
Apt. 303 N
Austin, TX 78705

First Week Home

Hi Everyone. I hope that everyone is having a great week. We are finally recovering from the trip home and have been criss-crossing the state visiting family for the past week. We are in Birmingham until Monday when we will head to North Alabama. So far it has been a great trip we spent Memorial Day with my sisters family and

the new baby Max. These photos are from their house. My bro-in

-law Phil made some incredible smoked BBQ and we had a nice relaxing day. This past Sunday night we went to St. Francis to share a little about our mission work. Monica Romano produced a great video for us and we had a really great evening. Thank you to everyone who donated to the cause. This weekend we will still be in Bham and I will be preaching at St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Cahaba Heights. They have two services, one at 9am and one at 11:15am. During the Christian Education hour Penny and I will be giving a presentation on our mission work and selling all sorts of Namibian gifts to raise money for the cause.

Next week we are headed to North Alabama to visit with our friends from the Athens/Decatur/Huntsville/ Madison/Florence areas. We will be at St. John's in Decatur on Sunday the 7th of June. That night we will be at St Timothy's in Athens for a dinner and talk at 5:30pm. Ok that's all for now. Have a good weekend and follow us on Twitter. Peace, Jeremy and Penny

Feeling the trip

There is a great comment by one of the characters of Willam Gibson's book Pattern Recognition. She says that when you fly long distances you move faster than your soul and leave it behind. It takes a few days for it to catch up. Today it feels like our soul has come crashing into our body. Since Wednesday when we arived we have been doing OK with the jet-lag but today it has hit us like a ton of bricks almost at the exact same time. We are doing alright but are having waves of dizziness and upset stomachs. I am sure it will pass. Please join us tomorow night at St. Francis of Assisi in Indian Springs for our first official dinner and talk if you can. Blessings and Peace, Jeremy and Penny