Making New Friends

Saturday, July 5

We awoke to our alarms again this morning as we wanted to get a good visit in with Z before her 11am nap.  It was hard to crawl out of our heated bed at 7:30am to a FREEZING cold room.  The temperature at night goes down to about 0 degrees and although we each have small heaters in our room South Africans do not build their homes to retain heat.    The nice feature we discovered was the heated blankets under out sheets!  We would just turn them on high before going to bed and be toasty and warm upon climbing in.  The first night Gene “fried” as he didn’t realize there was a setting on both sides of the beds so Corry’s side got turned off and he couldn’t figure out why his side was still so hot!

We are spending  the weekend in Matatiele at a B and B called Upmarket Accommodations.  This place is run by an 84 years old women we call “Grandma Polly”.  Our stay includes dinner and breakfast so it has been a treat to have home cooked meals made for us!  Breakfast’s first course is cereal with cold or warm milk and yogurt.  That is followed up by eggs, bacon, sausage, toast and more.   Dinner is served by candlelight with fine china and linen napkins.  At least 3 different types of vegetables, a meat dish, rice and warm custard over cake was our dinner every night.  Grandma Polly made us feel at home the entire weekend and we truly appreciated it!!  Plus D was allowed to pick a “sweetie”(marshmallow) after the meal so she was happy. 

Today will be our last day of visiting the orphanage much to D’s disappointment.  D has made fast friends with the children there and thought we should invite them all back to our guesthouse to play even longer.  A very special character named Rowen gave us tours and entertainment on every visit.  Almost all the children we have met will grow up in this orphanage.  Due to the rural location there are not a lot of foster homes available plus it is much too far out for domestic adoptive families to make the effort when there are closer locations and so many children in need.    

D getting a big push from Rowan on the swing at the orphanage.

We again spent as much time with Z as we could in the afternoon as to acclimatize her to us a bit as she will be dropped off at our guesthouse following church tomorrow.   She still cries a little at dad but will warm up after some patience and time. Men are not often seen in the orphanage, white men, almost never so she is very uncertain about these strange creatures!

D running to Z cottage to visit her for the last time before she lives with us forever!

We continue to pray that this change in Z's life goes smoothly and that we as a family do all we can  to ease this abrupt transition.