We went on a walk last weekend to try and collect some firewood for our fire pit. We weren’t very lucky with the wood, but Mikayla did find some rocks and decided that she wanted to paint them. So on Monday I got out the paint and let her go to town. She had so much fun. Then we took them outside and she would "hide" them in the dirt and we would dig them up like a treasure. Speaking of treasure, she has been having a lot of fun the last two weeks walking around the mission looking for "treasures".
Last week two visitors from the states arrived, Ted and Von. They are friends of Cabrini from the Chicago area and came to help out where they could. Ted was here for a week, but Von gets to stay until the end of the month. We had them over for dinner a couple of nights last week, including a Mexican themed dinner with fish tacos and black beans! On Sunday the boys decided to host an Asian cook off for Mother’s Day dinner. In the end, everyone contributed a little something and it was delicious. We were all royally stuffed by the end of the evening! The menu consisted of Spring Rolls (Beth), Thai Coconut Curry soup (Ben), Fried Rice (Von), Tandoori Impala (Ted), Thai Grilled Chicken (Ted) and Korean BBQ pork belly lettuce wraps (Joe). The sisters contributed doing the dishes, which we were all thankful for because there were a lot!
On Monday I drove Ted into town to do a little souvenir shopping and drop him off at the airport. We had a fun day chatting, shopping and hanging out. And I was really proud of myself because it was my first solo trip to town and back. I think I did pretty well!
Last week was a hard week for the Cabrini family. One of our former staff members (who had only left two weeks ago), lost her two children (both around Mikayla’s age) when they drowned in the canal. The funeral was on Sunday so we spent our morning there. It was such a tragedy and hit everyone really hard. Ben wrote about it on his blog and his words speak well to my thoughts on it. You can read his post here.
When we first arrived in Swaziland, Glenn Cheney was here. He is an author who was doing research for a book he was writing. His book was recently published on Kindle, Nook and IPad. It is called Love and Death in the Kingdom of Swaziland and gives a little insight to what life is like here. There is even a snapshot of Mikayla and the twins in it! You should check it out here!
We received word this evening that one of our night watchmen, Matthew passed away today. He has been sick for awhile, but it is still tough. Too many losses in such a short time here. Mikayla really liked Matthew and would often watch him cut grass or spend the evening "chatting" with him. We will surely miss Matthew.
With all that being said we have had a lot of ups and downs in the last two weeks. Here’s to hoping that the next week is filled with more ups than it is downs…
