One year in Zithulele

Greetings once again, dear (neglected) friends!

It is alarming how quickly the second half of this year has gone - our last post was at the end of July, and here we are on the final day of 2018. The last five months have been a roller-coaster, and other priorities have had to take centre stage for both of us. Let's try catch you up on the main events! Spoiler: we are all still here and happy but with lots of changes behind and ahead.

The biggest and most exciting change, of course, was the news that we are expecting a new Reynolds addition next April!

As a result, Joanna felt quite ill for large portions of September, and October, and has only really been back on track with energy over the last month or so. This has made her work/life challenging, but Adam has been working hard to keep the home fires burning while she naps!

Babies require a great deal of decision making and preparation. We have decided to deliver here in Zithulele (if all goes according to plan) with our lovely doctor and much support from the community at large. In November we even discovered the baby's gender with a gender reveal cake: blue is for boys and green is for girls. What a fun way for us to find out, and to include some of our friends in the excitement! (She is a girl.)

Other than some tiredness and a bit of nausea, the pregnancy has been progressing smoothly and everyone seems healthy. We are so grateful and looking forward to a new season. The timing really feels perfect: we are well settled in our new space and ready for a new challenge!

Of course the rest of life has still been going on. Adam has made a full recovery from the back operation he had at the end of 2017 which is another huge reason for gratitude. He even built up to (and completed!) the White Clay trail run in September. This was an incredibly tough and hilly come-back race, but it was loads of fun to be a part of and the views were spectacular.

On the home front we have spent time tweaking our space and systems to be more efficient and easier to live in. We have finally built a little porch (with a lot of assistance from various wonderful friends) and fenced in an area of the yard so that we can start a vegetable garden. We're hoping to get spinach production going early in the new year, once we have managed to dig a bed or two in this hard soil!

Our beautiful surroundings continue to give us great joy, so having a place where we can enjoy the view in greater comfort has been lovely. It has also helped a lot with the mud and dust situation!

It is incredible to think that this time last year we had only just arrived in Zithulele and were finding our feet in a completely new environment. Here we are, a year later, finding our feet again, but for different reasons! After a holiday in Cape Town, we even drove the same road back home on roughly the same day of the year. Our mindset was different, of course, but in some ways still the same - an mixture of excitement, trepidation and a deep sense of rightness.

Hopefully, as we go into 2019, the grace of God and the love of our family and friends will continue to enable us to to do the work we enjoy and believe in, while growing our small family into a slightly bigger one.