STANLEYS IN SOUTH AFRICA - JUNE 2019

My apologies! I completely missed sending an email in May.

Rebecca, our granddaughter, and Ruahn Beattie were married on the 4th of May. We had severe rain storms in April. Their wedding was supposed to be at River Valley Farm in a tent by the river. The storms destroyed the road to the river so less than 2 weeks before the wedding they were informed that they had to find another venue for the wedding! After looking at a few different places they were able to hold the wedding in the tent at a campground. In the end the wedding was beautiful and everything went well on the day.

While we were in the US last year Michael’s brother, Duane, said that he and Kathy were planning to go to Normandy about the time of the 75th anniversary of D-Day. He said they also wanted to go to Northern Ireland to see a place where some ancestors came from. For many years we have wanted to go to Northern Ireland so we decided to meet them there and then go to Normandy with them. When their brother, Larry, heard about the trip, he and his wife also decided to go. Then they contacted their sister, Debbie, and invited her to join the group. Later their cousin, Craig, and his wife also decided to join the group. So nine of us met in St. Mere Eglise and spent four days seeing the monuments, museums, beaches and other attractions of Normandy. It was especially noteworthy as Craig’s dad, Uncle Dean Stanley, was a pilot during the Normandy invasion. It was a very special time of honoring him and the hundreds of other soldiers who fought for freedom 75 years ago.

The Magog Senior Citizens’ Club continues to meet twice each week. Recently they were practicing so they could compete against other clubs in the region in physical games. Despite their age, many of them are very agile and active. Those who excelled will go on to compete against other clubs on a provincial level.

The day care center is doing well. We have 20 children registered, but they don’t all come every day. We have recently hired a cook who prepares meals for the children.

Michael has recently been experiencing some short-term memory problems. We decided it would be advisable to have him see the doctor and determine the seriousness of the situation. So last week we met with our GP and he decided to have Michael admitted to hospital for a battery of tests. He was only in hospital overnight and the tests revealed that there is no reason to be concerned. We praise the Lord for that! The doctor said it could be stress-related so we are trying to scale down even more on his work.

The youth camp for our province takes place this week. Michael was asked to teach, but that required a long trip which is what we are trying to avoid so we decided that he should not go. Pray that the camp will provide meaningful fellowship and valuable teaching.

On June 7th we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. Our children organized an afternoon tea for us at a hotel. Our family and some close friends joined us for eats,  cake and a lovely social afternoon. The next weekend we went to a nearby game farm and stayed in a beautiful chalet. We were able to see zebra, eland, wildebeest, impala, warthog and giraffe. A highlight was seeing a very young baby giraffe! We also enjoyed a delicious Sunday dinner of warthog-on-the-spit with all the trimmings!

Pray for us as we are in the process of making some decisions about the future. We are doing some down-sizing in preparation for putting our house on the market. We want to move into a more secure place. We are also making plans to hand over the Umzumbe Bible Institute property where the church, day care center and seniors’ club now meet.