New campus and church surroundings, Izak's colleagues, Pat and Ina (our land-ladies) and Banana muffins!

We thought that we would take a few pictures of the church and seminary for those of you who would like to see where we spend most of our lives these days!

Here is a picture of the seminary offices and the library. The offices are on the upper floors and the library is on the ground floor and the lower floors. We are taking this picture from the J Building. Which is another huge three storey block and many of the classes are taught in this building. Ours are almost all on the third floor which happens to be the floor we took this picture from... 

 This next picture is of the roof of the main church building and you can see glimpses of the church offices and the bookstore which would be found between the seminary buildings and the church offices.

And here is a picture of the church from the outside...

Here is a view of the church with a little bit of a view of the J Building stairs... (we travel up and down these very often!)

Izak has been placed in the shipping department for Grace Books and he still works in the bookshop on every second Sunday. Here are a few pictures of the bookshop before we show the basement where the shipping takes place.

Here is a picture of Obed (a fellow first year seminary student from London... he and his wife have such an encouraging testimony with how they got here and it involves a blog!)

Here are a few more of the bookstore:

 And to give an idea of the great service, here is Grace Books (ie Obed) in action! (Note the smiling customer! I am convinced that it has nothing to do with my photo-taking!)

Now, down to the shipping department! Here is the friendliest shipping employee that I have ever encountered:

Here are Izak's fellow-workers, (Brian in the foreground and Brian in the background)- the Brian in the foreground is apparently a great deal like Izak, only he is the American version!)

And Andrew, in managerial mode!

Also, here are a few pics of Izak in 'shipping' action:

Then, we have had a great deal of rain since we last chatted! I mean it literally rained for days! And on the first day that I heard thunder, I was not sure if it was the beginning of an earthquake since I thought that was more likely than thunder and rain in LA! Fortunately it was thunder! Here are some pics of the rain:
This is the little secret alley that we drive down to park in front of our place. (It looks like only one house's driveway but then when you drive down it, it is in fact a little road that leads to the back of all the houses in Adam's street...)

This is a picture of our house's roof from the landlord's place- I go up the back side stairs to do the washing. (I can just go in through the back, without having to go through their house which makes it convenient for everyone.)

Here are some pics of Pat's garden: (The property is on bedrock and so she has had to go the potted plant route.)

Now, to meet our "land-ladies"! What makes this funny is that it was raining and I had mentioned having Kate (the dog) in the picture too. But Kate hates being out in the rain, so enjoy the following scene development! (I just couldn't resist including them all!)

Ina is on the left and Pat is on the right. Kate the dog has raced back indoors! :)

Speaking about plants! I have been dreaming about getting a house pot plant and we found a beautiful 'braided money tree' which is indigenous to  Mexico and Northern America. We are hoping for it to grow dollars and not Peso's!(the Mexican currency)

Also, I found a free black album on the 'magic table' at Semwives! (it's a table full of items that are free for the taking!) So, I think it looks beautiful in our little place:

I recently had loads of over-ripe banana's (3 to be exact!) And I tried to find a banana muffin recipe that didn't need bicarb or baking soda because I didn't feel like a trip to the store. I stumbled upon this great recipe and used yoghurt (where it gives the option of sour milk,buttermilk or yoghurt etc). I am so pleased that I tried the yoghurt- they were some of the best muffins ever! So moist! You have got to love the site I found it on: (It's called Hillbilly housewife!) http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/bananamuffins.htm

http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/bananamuffins.htm

    

Finally, we have had a few car issues. The old dodge can be true to its name and a little dodgy at times! But here are some action shots of my handy husband rectifying a few issues:

Note the dashboard to the right:

Because of all the little 'extras', this last week was one of the toughest yet... We have had to re-think our daily schedules and tightened the reigns somewhat. At one in the morning on Thursday morning, Izak still had to complete a nine page paper and hadn't started his Hebrew homework yet! By God's grace, he managed to get the paper submitted by 4h30 that Thursday afternoon, but as far as we can help it, we really want to try and work harder to avoid anything like that happening again! We have worked out a new way to keep track of the schedule and tasks due and hopefully this will help smooth the workload and deadlines out!

We look forward to hearing from you! Thanks for all the encouragement and we hope you have enjoyed this book of a blog!