Happy Birthday Adam...

You don't usually get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity more than a couple times.
Well, we got invited to be special guests of the Xhosa royal family at a cultural dinner this last weekend.
It was interesting, we had dinner and listened to a crazy preacher.

This preacher started the Twelve Apostles Church in Christ and claims that he is from a line of Apostles that has been passed down (secretly until the 1800s) since Peter. So he claims to be the Chief Apostle and has some pretty radical views- along with 3.1 million followers in Africa.

Anyway, one of his beliefs is that there were two different kinds of people.
He started by saying that Adam's birthday was October 26th, 4004 BC. But he said that science proves that people existed millions of years before that, so that there must have been people before that.
His biblical proof was this:
In John, there was Light and there was the one before the Light, Right?
He said that the other meaning of this besides being Jesus and John the baptist is that it also dealt with creation in that there was Light when God made the sun, but there was light before that, so he related that to humans and said that the Light was Adam and those before the light were the people who existed millions of years before.

He was hard to follow, but that's what he said.

He also had some other really weird points.

I don't understand why people listen to him.

Anyway, the next day we got to see the Xhosa king, which was pretty cool. He had his police escort and his entourage. Neat stuff.

Overall, it was actually pretty disappointing. I was expecting ornate ceremonies and tribal coolness. It was pretty "western" and lame.

But who gets to say that they were guests of a royal family?

Anyway, thought I'd share that.

Brittney's parents will be here for Christmas and they're bringing a bunch of things from the States, so It'll be fun.

Merry Christmas, everyone.
Love ya.

Finally...

Well, I'm finally updating this thing.
I've been wanting to, but I didn't know what to write about; so I'll start with last week.

Liz and I, through a series of events, ended up at a catholic care center right next to where we do our soup kitchen (which I haven't helped with in a while). At first I had other things on my mind and I kind of wanted to do what I came for and leave, but we ended up on a tour of the facilities and I have to say that I was very impressed.

Background:
A catholic nun from Ireland, Sister Ethel, was sent here about 20 years ago to an informal settlement inside Port Elizabeth called Missionvale. It has around 100,000 people living there and about 90 percent of them are unemployed and 70 percent are living with AIDS. Sister Ethel came here and she was offered a tree to use, and started teaching and checking the kids there.

Um, Foreground?:
Now they give families a certain amount of soup ingredients and bread per week and give them clothing once a year out of an enormous clothing warehouse that they have. They have a clinic that treat about 200 people a day and a small school.
Every day they run a day care kind-of-thing from ages 1 to 18ish, which started at 30 kids at the beginning of this year and now they have about 600 kids there everyday. They feed them lunch and just give them a safe place to play and have fun because these kids, for various reasons, aren't in school (obviously 1yr olds aren't in school anyway).

So hopefully I'll be going back there to help out. I made some friends and got some numbers. Oh, and I found out that Mother Teresa and the queen of England have both visited the care center. Pretty cool, maybe I'll meet both of them.

It amazes me what some people can eat, and others can't.
And it annoys me when practically everyone can eat something, but I can't.

Last night we were invited to eat at Uncle Ivan's (who reminds me of a mob boss leader and I want to make a movie with him) house and while I was walking up to his front door I knew I was in trouble.

I smelled fish.
Ivan had made fish curry.

Now, I hear some fish are nice to eat, but I hate the smell, texture, and taste of fish. And these fish, which I found out later were "just sardines," were not the "nice to eat" fish. I can usually deal with the smell of fish, unless I'm full.
I managed to only dish out the potatoes from the curry into my rice and I was pretty proud of myself, so I ate that and kept a low profile at the table. I decided to eat some bread and I mistakenly grabbed a fish cake, which surprised me but I wasn't full, yet, so I managed to choke down the bite and set it aside. I finally got normal bread and filled up on that and I was quite content.

Then Joey, remembering that I hate fish, waved a plate of fish patties in front of my nose.
I was in the middle of a sentence with him and I had to stop talking and try to breathe through my mouth. Joey just started laughing quietly; that laughter where you're not supposed to laugh, so it's a lot of short breaths and low moans.
I just had to wait it out and drink some juice and then laugh it off.

Anyway, thought I'd share that with you. Nothing significant, just a story.
Love you guys.

I promise...

I will update this thing; hopefully tonight.
For some reason, I've been avoiding doing it and I don't know why.
Anyways, today is the 11th, we'll see if it actually happens.