Rachel and I went to the mall to day to go to a movie and I came around the corner and in the window of the record store I saw a glorious red poster showing Smashing Pumpkins new album. I smiled and my heart rejoiced a bit in my chest to think that the gangs back together. I hope I can find someone here who has it so I can give it a listen. The world always spins a little smoother when Billy Corgan is singing. Cheers.
Chris
Rachel and I are on holiday this week before heading to Richards Bay on Sunday and today was a wonderful day. Enjoyed a quite morning reading Harry Potter 7, then we went on a long walk with the dogs and we were talking about how we don't have a grill and then I found a bit of wire mesh on the ground and figured I could make a grill out of it. So I came home, dug a little whole in the ground where we tried to make a garden (which Guinness ate, including the palm tree) and folded the mesh to a platform. Well, it worked great, cost me nothing and we ate a great supper of lamb chops. Thats a great day. Cheers.
Chris
A few years ago I was convicted by a certain tv program to take better care of myself for my wife, she deserved better. So I started running and washing my face with special stuff and whatever. Now I am still trying to be the best I can for my lovely wife so while I was at the gym today (which I caught the 5 o'clock rush, I will never go then ever again, it was so horribly crowded), I thought of how I may up my sex appeal to my wife. So I thought I should give tanning a try.
So I sign up for the "Tan Can". Its a stand up tanning bed. So I finished my workout, purchased a protein shake and hit the can (Tan Can that is). So I stripped to my Fruit of the Looms, put on the funny little eye cover things, turned on the big machine, grabbed my protein shake and entered for my 10 minute session.
Well, 10 minutes later I exited, got dressed, drove home, washed the dogs, took a shower, checked some emails, ate dinner, took the dogs out, locked up the house and now I am SO SUNBURNED I THINK I MIGHT DIE. Its bad, really bad. I went from skim milk white to Folgers red in one 10 minute session. I hope all my skin doesn't melt off my body.
The things men do for love. Your welcome Rach, would you please rub some lotion on my back please? Thanks. Cheers.
Chris
While we were in Walvis Bay, Namibia we went riding on the desert dunes on quad bikes. It was awesome. We went up on huge sand dunes and saw some beautiful overlooks of the desert and the sea, it was a great time.
Well, while we were having a great time one of our team members, James Nteso, lost the trail of the person riding in front of him and went off the edge of a big dune. The dunes can be gradual on one side and then be straight down on the other, thats why we had a guide who knew the desert very well. So James went off the steep side with about a meter drop, then a long tumble to the base of the dune. Luckily he only broke his leg (a nasty brake I must say), but he could have been killed. He was rushed out of the desert in a 4x4 to the hospital (same one that Angelina Jolie had her baby), where the leg was stabilized, then driven back to SA for surgery.
We went to visit him at home yesterday and he is doing well. His whole right leg is in a cast, from foot to upper thigh. He will not be joining us for the next tour cycle, but perhaps the last tour to the Cape. We'll see.
Please pray that his leg heals well. Cheers.
Chris
This tour has been crazy to say the least. I will inform you later when we we get home and I have a chance to process what happened. We lost a ton of team members to different things; sickness, injury, father's wedding, sisters wedding and, and, and. We became a team of understudies. Even the band was used during the shows for different parts, even I had to dance last night.
This is our last day in Namibia, we head back tomorrow at 3AM. It will be sad, if you ever get a chance to visit Namibia do it. Its beautiful and the poeple are great. Cheers.
Chris
Hey Folks,
Sorry to not be in touch lately, we are in Namibia and haven't had a chance to get online. I will write about the tour when we get home. Cheers.
Chris
Gala Shows
We are in the midst of our Gala Show week at the Little Theater in downtown Pretoria. Our team performed Gijima tonight and tomorrow we are performing the same show with a cast made up of different members from each team. Our band will be performing the music. It's fun doing the shows in a nice theater, on tour we perform in school halls which are not always nice. The red team will be performing 2 different shows before heading back on the road Sunday morning.
Namibia
We will be heading off to Namibia early Saturday morning, like 2am. It's a long trip through Botswana, but I am excited. We are going to have a bit of a difficult tour due to the fact that we are missing several team members. 2 of our Management Committee members will be missing, one tech guy (which leaves our poor tech team at 2 people), and another girl will all be missing. Please pray that all the missing people doesn't bring the team's spirit down and that we can manage well without the normal personnel.
Wilmien
Wilmien has been my Admin girl this year on team. She is amazing at her job and always keeps me at the right place at the right time with all the paper work that I would not be able to keep up with. Well, she will be leaving our team for the rest of the year to move to Europe and help with the new office there. Its so sad to have her leave us, but I know looking at the big picture its a great move for the ministry. Pauli will be taking her spot as Admin girl. I know she will also do a wonderful job. I am just amazed that there are people that actually enjoy admin work, but I am so glad there are.
New MC
We have a new Management Committee member, Phindile Ralarala. She is a wonderful 3rd year who is only 19 and has so much wisdom and potential. She will be a great addition to the MC for the rest of the year. Congrats Phindi.
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To learn more about any of our team members go here.
Cheers.
Chris
Tonight marked the end of our holiday so we went out to see a movie. We saw Die Hard 4.0 and it was full of ridiculous action, unrealistic stunts, cheesy one liners and it was FREAKING GREAT. I had such a great time watching this movie. Oh, I was so happy. If you have seen it and thought it was lame, then shame on you. I think there was like 7 or 8 minutes where there wasn't bullets flying around, a chase or something being blown up. Get your mind right (at about 14 years old) and enjoy. Back to work tomorrow. Cheers.
Chris
Here are our upcoming tour dates. We are heading to Namibia for a few weeks, then back to SA to finish out the cycle before our next team weeks. I believe its going to be a good tour.
July 18-21 PRETORIA UNISA LITTLE THEATER
July 22-29 OTJIWARONGO, NAMIBIA TBA
July 29-Aug 5 WALVISBAAI, NAMIBIA GEMEENSKAPSKERK
AUG 5-12 WINDHOEK, NAMIBIA EROS GEMEENTE
AUG 13-18 OFF
AUG 19-26 RICHARDS BAY, SA COMMUNITY CHURCH
AUG 26-SEP 2 PRETORIA, SA ECHO YOUTH DEVELOPOMENT
SEP 2-SEP 9 WARM BATH, SA NG MOEDERGEMEENTE
Gonna be an awesome couple of months. Cheers.
Chris
We are on the annual Leadership Retreat this weekend. Its where leaders from the hub spend the weekend with leadership on the touring teams. Kind of a chance to get to hang out without dealing with work. We are at a camp facility almost an hour from Pretoria. Its been nice. We have just hung out, played Texas Hold'em till early in the morning, watched rugby and watched the entire first season of Lost projected on the wall. Its been nice.
Rachel and I have to leave early tomorrow to get back to Pretoria because I am speaking at Re:Verb in the morning with my friend Warren (the other team's tour leader).
Thats all from here. Cheers.
Chris
Rachel's mom is in town and tomorrow is her birthday!!! However, we are going out of town tomorrow so we are going to celebrate her birthday today. It started with breakfast in bed, Second we are going to see Harry Potter and then end the day with supper at one of our favorite seafood places called Ocean Basket. Happy Birthday Jana.
Cheers.
Chris
Rachel and I are on holiday this week. I have had a lot of work to do so tomorrow is really my only day off, but whatever. So I wanted a project to do around the house on my holiday. It could have been hanging curtains (which we started last week and never completed) or a bit of gardening or painting the office, but none of these seemed that great to me so I chose to work on the dogs walking on a leash. Sounds easy huh, well its not. Especially when you have a hundred pound beast trying to rip your arm out of socket to get to the Yorkshire Terrier that it wants to devour.
Something that has helped are the special dog collars that we purchased in America. They have spike type things on the inside that pinch if the dog pulls. Its sounds mean, but its better than them suffocating themselves on the choke collar as they pull in hopes of eating the guy riding the. Well, the collars work. Guinness and Damar have been out on several walks this week and I am so proud. Damar is doing better than Guinness though, we actually went for a jog today.
So now I am one step closer to having real dogs. Its so nice. Cheers.
Chris
We are back from the Soutpan, a township about a hour away from PTA. We, the blue team, spent and week hanging out with people in the village. We had games for kids and showed a series of movies at night and spoke to teenagers about their lives and about how God is there no matter where you live.
I haven't posted since returning because I am still processing my own thoughts on the week. It was good, but I think that the exposure for the team of daily life in a township was the most rewarding. I hope that our team members learned a little more about their country and can share their knowledge with people who are ignorant of how many black people live in SA.
We were met with great hospitality from the people in the town. Some team members were blessed with meals with families and a good chance to hear others stories and learn about a new culture.
I was pleased with how the week went. It was physically difficult because it was cold and we slept in tents. It even rained, which is rare for the winter. We weren't eating well, we were given R7 ($.99) a day to eat on. We had no bathing facilities. However through all this the team was tough and I was proud of them.
Cheers.
Chris
We are going on our week of outreach starting tomorrow afternoon. There are a couple of reasons we are doing this particular outreach this year. 1
1.For the community- We will be hanging out with the kids and teens in the township, We will play a series of hour long movies in the evening and speaking on social issues here in SA and we will perform a stripped down version on our show Gajima on Friday night.
2.For the team- This week is a chance of our students to live among some less fortunate people that live in the same country as them. We will be camping at a church in the township which will be uncomfortable because its winter and will be really cold each night, but thats what it feels like for many people who live in small tin shacks. We will be walking everywhere, many people in this country don't have cars or money for buses so they walk very far everyday for food or water. And we will be given R7 ($.99)a day to eat on, which is average for where we will be staying.
We will also get to go help with an AIDs hospice that visits sick and dying people in their homes each day.
Please pray for the team for safety and that minds and hearts are opened for people who are not as blessed as many of us. Please pray for the community that lives can be impacted and changed by something that happens this week. Cheers.
Chris
Once a month our "church" meets at my boss' house for a night of cheese, wine and hanging out. We are a small group of people, but its nice. Tonight a couple in our group blessed us all with a ton of sushi. It was great. Being on tour we don't get to go to Re:Verb often, but it was really nice having some sushi with friends and the Flaps gave a message. You can download it at www.reverberate.co.za
Cheers.
Chris
When I moved to SA I started working out. While traveling with Traveling Mercies I got sickly large. I didn't notice, but it was time to get fit. Well, this year started crazy. We just got back from Europe, I was music producer and tour leader, I was exhausted. So I didn't get back in the Gym.
So this training I lost any muscle gained last year and put back on some weight I had lost. Then we come to America for 3 weeks and lived in up on fast food and sugary drinks and it was wonderful. It was so wonderful I put on extra weight, like 7 pounds of good old processed americana.
Now, its back to the gym. Hittin' it hard, early, when its dark and cold. Its been nice feeling active. I think I have already dropped my holiday from my belly, now its time to work on the rest of 2007 that has been hanging on for dear life. Hopefully if I work really hard I can look like one of the characters on American Gladiators, like Laser or Nitro. Dream a little dream. Cheers.
Chris
PS
I always dreamed of being on American Gladiators and after I won every competition by kicking the guy off the climbing wall or getting all my balls in the little containers that wobbled buy never fell down or the joust, I would show how gladiator-like I really was by kicking butt in the shooter game where the gladiator, maybe Turbo, would shoot tennis balls at me, but always missed because I rolled just at the right time, then I would shoot the bull's eye with my dart from the cross bow or bazooka (or sometimes for extra drama I didn't hit the target until the last station, the tennis ball grenades). It was so cool when I won....in my dream.
Rachel and I are in the process of trying to plan for the future. The road must end someday I suppose. We love working with 13thFLOOR and don't plan on leaving, but I was just looking at some other ministry possibilities today.
Well, I really like the west coast and was checking on some ministries in California when I got a craving for fish taco. Obviously there are no great little fish taco stands here so I decided to make up my own recipe.
I made homemade wholewheat tortillas, wild rice, and a fish/veggie mix. They turned out great. I don't really experiment with cooking too often so I was pleased.
If you want the recipe feel free to email me and I'll try to remember. Cheers.
Chris
It was bath day in the Holohan home today. We gave the dogs their baths and that is always a mission. Guinness isn't too bad, but Damar gives us a little trouble. We get them in the bath tub and use the hand sprayer to get them rinsed. Then I keep spraying them with warm water as Rach scrubs with soap(side note:we are both in our beach attire). Then I give them a steady stream of treats to persuade them to stay in the bath and not run around the house. Guinness goes first, then Damar. Its a taxing job, but well worth the effort to have nice clean dogs. Cheers.
Chris
During the tour year we come back to the campus in Pretoria for Team Weeks. Well, this team week we had a time called "Conversations". Its where every member of the team spends 10 minutes speaking with every other person on team, all 40. Its a time for people to get things off there chest and say good things and things that bothers them about the other person. It is such a great time for the teams. I really appreciate the openness that is encouraged from the ministry. It's hard at times, but over all helps to build the team stronger. Cheers.
Chris
Ray and I spent last night with the Kitts. They are old friends of ours and it was great seeing them. The McGuires also came over and it was just a blast hanging out with all our peeps that we haven't seen in a while. We had Wendy's famous pesto pasta with cookies and milk for desert. Fantastic. The night was ended with a little reality tv. Sometimes I really miss the suburbs. Cheers.
Chris
