{"id":976,"date":"2010-01-25T10:11:59","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T16:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/?p=976"},"modified":"2010-01-25T10:11:59","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T16:11:59","slug":"swaziland-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/2010\/01\/25\/swaziland-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Swaziland Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been a little while since I have written about our Swaziland plans.\u00a0 Lucky for you we have some news to share.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Malolotja Nature Reserve in Northwest Swaziland<\/p><\/div>\n

We just renewed our passports and purchased our tickets for our summer exploration trip (let’s hope that is $3,600 well spent).\u00a0 We will be flying out of Nashville on July 12 and returning on July 26.\u00a0 Since the flight is over 20 hours (with a stop off in the west African country of Senegal) that will shave a day off our trip each way giving us 11 or so days to explore the country.<\/p>\n

Our goal for this trip to get a good feel for the country, and meet with as many people\/groups\/organizations as possible in preparation for a move to the Kingdom in 2011 (You can read more details about our plans to move to Swaziland here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.)\u00a0 Right now we are hoping to find an organization we can work with for our first six months.\u00a0 That way we can have some stability when we move, but are not having to commit ourselves for multiple years without being very familiar with the specifics.<\/p>\n

So far we have made contact with 4-5 people on the ground.\u00a0 We are hoping to follow up on several leads with strong potential and then leave enough time open during our trip so that we can discover other connections we had not planned on.\u00a0 I have a feeling we will be playing a lot of this trip by ear.<\/p>\n

One thing we have found is that it is much easier to get a hold of the Western Christian organizations than it is to contact the local and secular organizations.\u00a0 Unfortunately we are also finding most of the Christian groups are a bit too evangelical and charismatic for our comfort.\u00a0 We are open to working with Christian groups, but we want our focus to be on indigenous solutions and community development, not proselytizing.\u00a0 In many ways Beth and I feel like we would do better with a “regular” job where we can live out our faith a part of it.\u00a0 Our main focus in moving to Swaziland is to expose Mikayla (and ourselves) to life outside the United States so our worldview can be informed and shaped in a global context.\u00a0 Of course we want to be apart of something good and make an impact where ever we are, but that is not our primary goal.<\/p>\n

Of other Swazi news, Beth and I have been working on our siSwati<\/a>, but I must admit we are not as dedicated as we should be–we are still working on the standard greetings and responses.\u00a0 Hopefully by July we will have the basics down and then can spend the next year mastering it.<\/p>\n

That’s the update for now.\u00a0 I will let you know more as it develops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been a little while since I have written about our Swaziland plans.\u00a0 Lucky for you we have some news to share. We just renewed our passports and purchased our tickets for our summer exploration trip (let’s hope that is $3,600 well spent).\u00a0 We will be flying out of Nashville on July 12 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,140],"tags":[762,192],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-swaziland","tag-swaziland","tag-travel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":979,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}