Company and good company

This past weekend was a goody! Friday evening Tess arrived back from PE where she had been on a course for the week. She stopped off at Bushmans River on the way back top visit her cousin Kathryn.
Saturday morning heralded stunning summer weather and we joined Dennis Thompson, his 2yr old daughter Ruth and his crazy dogs Dusty and Mol mol for a swim in the Nahoon river....it was fantastic! I did catch a little too much sun but I reckon I gave as good as I got with my glaringly white untanned body reflecting in a big way! (No pics, I'm afraid, due to over-exposure!!!)

Saturday night we had my companies year-end function. It was good with lots of great food and good live music...
Sunday we slept in before heading to the Thompsons once more for the weekly pancake supper arrangement...

Pictures and things...

Well I have not had much time to keep our blog updated so here are some photo's of what we have been up to over the past couple of weeks.....

Dennis and Michelle are expecting their second child. We had babyshower for them where the boys were allowed to be present as well. It was a good time with lots of laughter. We also got to pray for them and entrust them to the Lord.We had Tess's community service dance at the East London Golf Club.....
Whenever I go to site I try and take the camera with me in case the Eastern Cape is looking like this..Tess and Karen making some of the best strawberry jam I have ever tasted!

Al the guest of honour!

My company recently sponsored Soto public school a set of rugby jerseys and shorts. When they wrote us a letter asking for a company representative to be presesnt at the handing over ceremony and celebration I cracked the nod.

I arrived at the school not knowing exactly what to expect half thinking it could be anything from a goat-slaughtering-spit-braai-ceremony to a 3 day feast and celebration!! The first thing that happened is I was taken by the grade 7 teacher to his class and asked to give a lesson on how to build a bridge. The teacher kept on saying how good it was to have a civil engineer at their school. Now obviously I am not a civil engineer....when I tried to explain this to the teacher he just said "But you work for Rumdel?!?" with a confused look on his face. What could I do? I did a quick skim of the syllabus and proceeded to give a 20 minute lecture on how to build a bridge using diagrams on the blackboard and asking questions of the class. They responded quite well and wherever they lost me the teacher would quickly translate and on we would go.

Then it was on to the ceremony. I had a place at the main table and the hall soon filled up and we began. First up was devotions....we sang, we prayed, we stood, we sat, the mc spoke, we sang, the governing body representative spoke, we sang, the principal spoke, we sang, the vice-principal spoke, we sang. Nobody had bothered to find out what my name was so Mr. Rumdel was called on to make a speech and hand over the jerseys etc. This was my second shot at improvised unprepared public speaking in one day and the experince was wearing thin! I told them how many people see the Eastern Cape as the poorest area in the coutry but I said that we are rich in the people we have, that everybody has to start somewhere and that it is quite possible that there were future Springboks among the pupils. I also reminded them that Nelson Mandela comes from the Eastern Cape. Then I handed over the jerseys to 2 bewildered looking kids and everbody clapped.....then of course....we sang.

A short time later we moved next door for refreshments. This was in a junior primary class and it was fairly amusing to see all these large (some extremely large) adults perched on these small chairs shovellling away at the chicken, bread and drinks provided. The chicken was actually very good and I was thankful that it was not sheeps eyes or other uninteresting bits of other animals!!! I had a good time chatting to the principal and 2 teachers. The one teacher decided that I was a nice guy and therefore must be a pastor! I told them I was not but it turns out that 2 of them were! We chatted a bit about church etc and they wanted me to sing for them but I declined. I did have a CD in the car of a song I have recently recorded so I offered them a listen.
They accepted and we all piled into the Landrover and cranked a bit of guitar and drums worship...they enjoyed it and the principal said I must get him a copy so I gave him that one which he called his "precious gift". He also said that I must thank my wife!!! Still can't figure out that connection... Anyway it was time for me to leave, by now I had progressed from being called "Mr.Rumdel" to "Gardener"...or as they were saying it "Gudna".

So after swopping numbers so I can go and catch a rugby match in the future they all said goodbye to Gudna and I was on my way....