South Africa

Conrad and Jennifer Tycholaz

Serving God in Johannesburg, South Africa

We are serving as interns for a year under Grace Christian Church in Johannesburg. Conrad is building a church for Mercy Bible Church, a Zulu-speaking church plant in Germiston South. Once he is finished the church, then he will move on to completing an AIDS hospice on the same property. Both the church and the hospice will be used to reach out to the three surrounding squatter camps in the area. Jennifer is teaching preschool at Lambano Sanctuary, a home for abandoned/orphaned HIV+ babies. After Christmas, she will also start working in Lambano's office in the afternoons.

Please pray for us. Johannesburg has incredibly high crime rates, so pray daily for our safety. Pray for our health, for strength and that the building project at Mercy Bible Church will go smoothly.

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Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Random Shots

Here's a few random pictures from daily life in Jo'burg.

My students made a "Thankfulness Tree" in school. Here are some of the things they are thankful for.

Just lazing around enjoying the sun!

A typical newspaper headline.

The crime here is unbelievable - please continue to pray for our safety.

Look like prison? This is the view out of the church office window. Note the black burglar bars, round razor wire and 9 strand electric fence!

A beautiful sunset the other evening.

Planting flowers as a class. They are doing well, although I keep forgetting to water them. (oops!)

More flowers, although these seeds have tragically died as a result of being stepped on, kicked over, pushed around, etc. They actually didn't stand much of a chance with 20 kids running around the place.

Thanksgiving dinner at Beth's house (we were housesitting for her). There was 9 of us there for dinner.

More of Thanksgiving dinner!

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OCTOBER 13, 2006

Happy Thanksgiving to each of you! Hopefully everyone has had their fill of turkey and pumpkin pie, at least until Christmas rolls around. You will be glad to know that we, good Canadians that we are, had our own Thanksgiving celebration here in Jo'burg complete with turkey! (Although let me tell you, that turkey was really hard to find.) We invited several friends over for dinner and had a good time. And, seeing as how neither Conrad or I had ever cooked a turkey before, the 14 pound bird turned out pretty good.

We are doing pretty good. Currently we are house-sitting for a friend of ours who is in the States for 5 weeks. This has been a real blessing for us as she has a 3 bedroom house complete with a shower and a pool (not that it's warm enough to go swimming yet......getting close though!). She is also letting us use her car while she is gone which has been completely wonderful. Jen feels set free with an automatic car at her disposal anytime she feels like going anywhere.

Conrad's been keeping pretty busy. He is now a seasoned avocado picker! He has also been keeping busy with side jobs for people. He's also becoming a master Mr. Fix-It. Things at the job site are moving along. There are now 2 guys from Malawi helping Conrad out. They are planning to attend seminary in the new year and are working with Conrad in the meantime. He's loving the help and the company. Two of the church walls are halfway done and we started the third wall today. Conrad has discovered that most of what he learned in Canada about bricklaying does NOT apply here in South Africa. He has adjusted to their style of building quite quickly, although it has had its frustrating moments. Jennifer was there helping today and even laid a few bricks! There will be new pictures on the blog soon. (We forgot to bring our camera with us tonight). Jen's continuing to enjoy teaching at Lambano. She's gotten involved somewhat with a Christmas concert with the Lambano kids. We're practicing 3 times a week and will hopefully be ready for the beginning of December. None of these kids have ever been in a concert before, so it should be interesting to see how it all goes down at the actual concert.

We've learned that a letter takes about 2 weeks to get to us - give or take a few days. It's pretty exciting to get mail. If anyone wants to send a package, we've got some instructions for you: NEVER put the actual value of the package on the slip. Lower is always better. Always say it is a gift. Be as VAGUE as possible when describing the contents. The mail system is as corrupt as everything else around here, so packages that appear to be valuable have a way of disappearing.

Please continue to pray for us, for our safety (so far, so good) and for our health. We're very thankful that God has been watching over us so far. However we are reminded daily that our safety is not something to take for granted. We are also finding it hard when we hear news from home - good or bad - and we realize how much we miss being home. It's hard when things are happening, such as babies being born, and we can't be there.

Well, that's the news from Jo'burg. Thanks for your prayers and your emails. We really appreciate it. We love you, miss you and think of all of you often. We update our blog more often than we email, so check every now and then if you'd like to see what we are up to.

Love and prayers,

Conrad and Jennifer

Happy Thanksgiving

Everyone Well an early Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone, We are sorry that it has been so long since we have updated our site but we have been keeping busy around here with teams coming and going, birthdays, the pastor leaving for the States, etc. We will be sending out an email soon to give details about what has been going on for the past month. These pictures only show a little bit of what has been happening here.

Conrad & Jennifer

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For More information

please visit

www.cjtych.blogspot.com