Time to update the blog.
We remain happy here in Swaziland. The children are now in a routine and seem to be making advances with their schoolwork- one of our biggest difficulties when we were moving around a lot.
They are also continuing with their weekly horse riding lessons. Tim got to ride in a neighbour's helicopter this week- quite the experience for him.
Lynne has been helping Helen hand out bibles (Gideon's) at the hospital and continues to help at the local primary school with the food supply.
This last weekend we ran into some unexpected hassles with the rental car so had to travel to Nelspruit to sort it out. We then decided to make the most of the trip and went to the Kruger National Park for 2 nights. The Kruger is probably the most famous game reserve in South Africa and covers about 500km by 100km. It differs from the smaller parks in having a more "untouched" feel. We did not see as many animals as we expected, but were lucky to see the "Big Five" – lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo. Long days driving slowly in the car, but in the end a worthwhile experience (we had planned to go to the Masa Masri game park(?sp) in Kenya, but this will likely be in place of it).

Kenya is looking settled right now, so please keep it in your prayers. Our ticket is booked for the 21 April and we both feel anxious to get there because they likely have need of us, but we remain reluctant to go if it is obvious that we are going into a dangerous situation. So hopefully this time we will succeed!

Last week was an interesting week for me: a visiting retinal eye specialist from the UK came for the week and was teaching Jono how to do vitreoretinal surgery. He is quite well know (I think he has created a lot of the techniques that specialists use world wide) so he phoned the company that provides the fancy machines needed for the surgery and they sent out 2 reps from JHB with the machine and supplies for them to use here in Swaziland.
I think I have described how primitive medicine is out here- so to do vitreoretinal surgery is quite the opposite (in BC I think there are only a handful of such surgeons as it is very specialized). For me it was exciting as I got to watch and see how it was done!
I have been lucky to see a lot of ophthalmology out here.

My time on the wards and in outpatients is becoming easier as I am learning how things are done. As an outsider I am trying to provide feedback and suggestions to make things easier for everyone, but have to be careful not to offend. There is a great need for organization here but as a temporary worker it is difficult to make the necessary changes.
We will see how things go.

This weekend Dr John Patrick, a Canadian with a special interest in Christian medical ethics will be here and giving a talk to all the doctors of Swaziland. We met him 2 yrs ago in Kelowna when we went to the CMDS conference and decided we wanted to go on a medical mission. It is a small world.
He will be staying with Jono for the weekend and then heading on to South Africa to lecture there.

Otherwise it will soon be Easter and Judy and Allan and family (Lynne's sister) will be joining us for about a week. So in actual fact our time here is rapidly drawing to a close.

We have limited internet access so have not been able to update the blog as often as we would like. We also are not able to view any comments you may have left for us.
Many apologies!


David and Lynne, Robyn and Tim

Have tried to upload some images, but keep getting error notices.