What’s up in Cape Town

Howdy Faithful Folks,

What’s up in Cape Town, you ask? Well, let me tell you. Tuesday of this past week was a national holiday, Heritage Day aka “Braii Day.” (Braii is essentially outdoor grilling or barbequing.) We went to buy Gina a guitar for her 16^th birthday which was at the beginning of the month but we didn’t find a guitar that was good until Tuesday. Watched “Turbo” about a racing snail in the theater. Rode around in the minibuses quite a bit. And went to a braii at the Petersons, where we celebrated our heritage by grilling “Texan Steak” and cuddling “the Sether”.

Mark finished his second and last block class in Chinese Law and Investment in Africa. He feels like he understands it all and is happy to be done with the intense classroom time. Other than that, there’s a big rugby match today – the SA national team is playing just a few kilometers from our house. The weather is starting to warm up. And we both took a stress inventory and realized that we have a lot of stressful things going on in our lives. The most pressing right now are post-graudate fellowship applications, which will both be turned in by the end of the week, and my visitor visa renewal application, which is totally out of our control but under God’s control!

Also, I’m working on my second paper for my Conflict Transformation program, and it’s quite interesting. My thesis is: Small international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are overlooked and uninformed regarding conflict-sensitive development principles, and they could make a significant contribution to international peacebuilding if consulted.