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19 December 2014

Adams Mission Kingdom Hall Build

As you may know, I am involved in volunteering my time and energy and work on Kingdom Hall construction.
What this means is that I go and work my butt off on a building site, for free, because I enjoy it and I feel its a way of my showing love for my neighbour.

Recently however I got the privilege to work along with many of my friends on a local kingdom hall, in Adams Mission, which is just around the corner. The unusual part for me and many of my friends is that we got to work on this particular hall from the day they broke ground all the way until it was handed over and ready to use! You see, normally we each have our teams that we work with and only do one weekend of the whole build, some are there for the roofing weekend, others for the bricking, some for the day they throw the concrete slab, and still others for the painting.

In all it took about 12 weeks to complete. I first arrived on site about a week after they cleared the brush and leveled the ground in the last week of September, and I was honored to be there in the first week of December when all the chairs where in and we were just doing the last bit of painting touch ups.


Because I have been on many builds, I have taken many of the regular types of photos of the build. But with Adams Mission, my goal was to take "time lapse" style photos and to take unusual photos. So, Here's a link to my Photo blog of the build:

 http://tomboyamelia.wordpress.com/2014/12/19/adams-mission-…dom-hall-build/


09 December 2014

"And I called her Charlie,
she fell out of the sky as the winds of July were blowing,
Oh Charlie,
All alone in the city,
Town without pity,
She was fragile yet so pretty,
Like a lonely sparrow,
Broken heart,
Broken fears,
broken dreams,
Broken wings
I'll call her Charlie,
She was ready to give and unforgiven,
Only grateful to be living....."


The day Charlie arrived
in our lives



A couple of years ago we came home in the mid afternoon from errands and just inside our front gate, we noticed in the long grass a pair of black and white ears.
Now for those of you who dont know this, we live in a very hidden away spot, which is a schlep of note to get to if you dont have good reason for getting here. You drive down a deserted road for 2km, and then further down a 500 meter long bush/dirt driveway before reaching our from gate.
Back to my story, we looked at the grass, with those two ears sticking out and my mom said "is that a kitten?" Me, bleeding heart that I am and love of all things feline, I jump out the car and carefully go over to the kitten, who was the tiniest stray I have ever seen. Looks up at me with big blue eyes and the most hilarious Hitler/Chaplin moustache across the top lip. So I carefully pick the kitten up, and rather than wriggling, hissing or scratching, like most strays would, the poor little thing purrs its lungs out. 
Granny loves her too
So young that we cant tell if its a boy or a girl, so small that the entire kitten (head to tip of tail) fits n the palm of my hand, malnourished to a painful point.
We bring it home and I jokingly suggest we call it "Hitler", of course the thought instantly is thrown out the door, and rather the name Charlie immediately sticks. Just as well, because Charlie is a bisexual name and it turned out about 3 weeks later that it was a girl kitty.
We gave her some milk and a little chunks, and bathed her. Yup, you read that right, we bathed her, because she was full of fleas and downright grubby. So out with a bottle of baby shampoo (dont ask why we actually had that on hand! I dont even know....) and a tub of warm water, and we bathed the kitten in the kitchen sink, but hey its ok, we dried her with a hair dryer afterwards. For the next 3 weeks we bathed her every 3 or 4 days because she got fleas so quickly. And in that time she grew so fast!

Her first winter, she would sneak into
my gown sleeve to sleep.
The other cats (we had two at the time, Zoe and Lil Kitty) and the dogs took well to the kitten. Ok, Zoe not so much, she kinda hates all other animals, but she tolerates Charlie. Charlie and Gajima (our dog who's name means RUN in zulu) are best of friends and often play in the garden. Charlie even rubs against the legs of the horses.
She doesnt like cuddles, I miss old Prince, my big fat ginger cat who used to love being hugged and cuddled. But Charlie is great for playing and loves chasing a laser light.

She's a hit with clients, and still has that altogether adorable moustache that would put even the best Movember Mo to shame.
Getting along well with Gajima


And that is the story of how Charlie came to us.



Charlie goes a little crazy for banana boxes
















P.S. Sorry for missing the mark with my regular Friday updates, I was actually so busy last week that I just didnt get a chance to write. I'll try get back to having a post up as usual on Friday at 4pm South African time :-) Thanks for following.