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/

"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.

Impulse Buying - Oops

So last week I was sick (no surprise there) and stuck at home inside most of the week. As any self-respecting twenty something year old in this day and age, I spent a considerable amount of that time on the computer and on the internet.

I'm telling you, pinterest is great entertainment when you're bored.

But like the rabbit hole in the fairytale, sometimes the internet is like a hole that sucks you into its own world and lost there for a while. And occasionally you do things you otherwise wouldnt.

Me, well I'm really not much of a shopping type of person. Rather I am a "saver", I tend to save all of my money for a big purchase and then unfortunately end up blowing it all in one foul swoop, of course after almost endlessly researching the item I want to buy. How do you think I managed to earn myself a car?

 

But last week, unfortunately I decided to head on over to bidorbuy. Seriously, bad idea. You see, I had been bored at home with brain fog of note for over a week. And now there was finally something interesting!

So there I went, through all of those exciting R1 auctions, of course every R1 auction has a high shipping price that is non-negotiable.

"Ooh" I think to myself "a R1 starting price for a pretty swarovski crystal necklace, and its so dainty. The shipping charge is high, but if I bid on a few other items from the same seller, it drops the shipping price." I reason with myself, and quickly bid on it.

"And oh look here, fairy lights. Those are always useful for my business with the proposals, I'll bid on that"

"Ahhh, how cool is that, a nice pretty pink tazer" click there went another bid. 

Now the thing about BidorBuy is that once you have made a bid, there is no undoing it. The next day when I realized what all I had bid on, I cringed. But, said I to myself, I kept all my bids really low. And in times past I have always found that things I really wanted were outbid fairly soon. So I sat, in nail biting anxiety for a couple of days, a wave of relief flowing over me each time I got an email ping saying "You have been outbid."

Unfortunately for me I was not outbid on about 10 items. UGH!!! 

And so a day or two later I began getting the "exciting" emails that said "Congratulations, you have won the auction on ....! Please pay" or that affect.

As each email pinged on my phone I cringed. What on earth had I just done.

So there I sat, wondering if I could possibly get away with contacting the buyers and saying "My unruly daughter hacked my account and bid on all sorts of things, please cancel my orders". But my conscience wouldn't allow me to do that, darn, I wish I wasn't so honest!

Well, I have paid all the prices now, and hey, at least I'll be getting some fun stuff arriving in the post soon. Hopefully, if the South African Post Office has finished their +-8 week long strike and actually delivers my stuff.

Thing is, I know I'll use it all. Its just that a "bargain is only a bargain if you actually need it". If you dont need it, then its not a bargain anymore, its rather a wasteful price. Which is the price I'm paying for flu-ishly impulse buying.

Lesson learnt, no more going onto bidorbuy unless I'm actually selling something or REALLY need something.

WHY? Here's Why....

Fact: I do not celebrate birthdays or Christmas or Easter or valentines.

The main reason for this being that I choose to serve God and try to make him happy as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. The history surrounding these pagan celebrations is horrific. But I wont say that "I dont celebrate these holidays because I'm a witness", my decision to not celebrate these holiday is my own well informed choice.

Birthdays

The customs of celebrating, congratulation, offering gifts and even cakes complete with candles in ancient times were there to protect the birthday celebrant from demons and ensure his security in the coming year.

It was also to celebrate people as important, almost a form of worship.

I worship no human, and I dont want people worshiping me. If you want to tell me you care about me, frankly it offends me that you reserve it only for one day a year.

As for clients who tell, beg and plead with me to help them on my closed days because "its a birthday", it makes me want to help them less, not more!

Christmas

How about Christmas? Santa Claus who is actually another rendition of St. Nicolas which is actually satan. And of course 25 December is NOT when Jesus was born, think about it, really, the shepherds were out in the fields tending to their flocks in the middle of the night. Late December in the northern hemisphere is midwinter, and no shepherd or sheep would be found outdoors at that time of the year. Xmas was actually really a ploy of the Romans around 100 or more years after Jesus died in order to convert the pagans to Christianity, so they brought the pagan rituals across and  called them christian.

Easter

Now there's one, easter is supposed to be the celebration of Jesus' death. This is one that they at least have at the right time of the year, yes He did die around about mid March- mid April. However everything else about easter is false and pagan! It yet again boils down to loads of PAGAN religious practices, practices that God explicitly told the Israelites and later the Christians not to do.

The easter bunny and the eggs all symbolize the gods of fertility (breeding like rabbits...) because at that time of the year in the northern hemisphere spring has sprung and the bunnies (and all manner of other creatures) are making babies. Yup, and you send your kids to go chasing after gods of fertility. Hmmmm, I wonder why they're sexually active at 12 years old?

I'm not going to go down the line of Valentines, Halloween, St Patrick's Day, and the plethora of other holidays and celebrations that you and I know are actually not so great.

The biggest argument most people use nowadays is "But that was 1500 - 2000 years ago, we don't do this because we're celebrating that, we're doing it because its fun, its family time, its nice for the kids."

Yes, maybe so, but here's the thing. Do YOU love God?

Think about the bigger picture, God was in existence and has watched the comings and goings of thousands of generations, he has watched the start of these practices. Imagine, he was watching when some of these practices included the sacrificing of live babies in fire to pagan gods and he was disgusted. If you had witnessed those atrocious acts, every single time you heard a christmas carol, or saw an easter bunny, even if they are not used for such disgusting practices right now, what would run through your mind? Undoubtedly the awful memory of screaming babies as they burnt to death while their parents sacrificed them. The picture etched in your mind as people self mutilated in honor of their false gods. Or perhaps the thought that all suffering those people put themselves through was for nothing!

God has a perfect memory, he too remembers that, every single time!

When I consider that, I am not enticed by the green and red of christmas, I am not excited by a valentines card, or happy when I see an easter bunny, I am disgusted, repulsed. I also want to do the things pleasing to God, and these celebrations are obviously not.

That is why I choose NOT to celebrate these things.

But that's not to say I don't believe in having fun, in sharing good times with family and friends, or even in giving gifts.

I love giving and receiving gifts. Time spent with my loved ones is the time I cherish the most. And I love to have fun. So here's a thought, why wait for a birthday to give a loved one a present? Why wait for christmas to spend time with your family? Do it NOW, Today or tomorrow. You don't need an excuse to show your family and friends that you care.