A full day in Johannesburg

We left before 9 this morning for our day in Johannesburg. We headed off on the Krugersdorp Highway and were surprised at the lack of traffic. We were expecting a slow trip but it was pleasantly quick. We drove past Dipsloot – a township / squatter camp on that side of Johannesburg. A good reminder for the girls that there are so many areas like this in SA – where people have such a different live to what we are so used to and blessed with.

First stop – the Hawkins family. I have been friends with Mary for years now but have never met in person. She had met Ruth though as she had visited her at the baby home (Tsholofelo) in her first month. Brad and Mary also adopted a baby from the Tsholofelo and so it was nice for Ruth to meet Mia too and see another family that is very similar to ours.

The girls had a wonderful time dressing up and playing together. Mary gave us a lovely lunch and then we headed over to Tsholofelo. I will leave all those photos for another post.

After visiting at Tsholofelo we headed to our next stop for me to meet another face book friend face to face for the first time. I have been friends with Jeanie since Mark was just a baby and he is 3 already! It was wonderful to spend some time with them. I had heard often from Craig about how wonderfully warm their pool was. My family decided it really was wonderful and enjoyed that while Mark had his nap.

By the time Mark was awake they were out the pool so they got to play together for a bit. It took Mark a little bit of time to get used to the girls but when it was time to go he was so upset about them leaving.

Off to our last stop. We sure had enough traffic between the last two stops. We could not believe how full the road was in front of us coming in the opposite direction. The girls have gotten used to people selling things at the traffic lights (robots) in SA and so when we saw some lovely 3D place mats we decided to buy them. A special reminder of our trip and something so typical in SA (the selling on the street that is – not to mention the animals on the placemats).

The story about how this evening got organized is quite funny. I had hoped we would be able to get together with two families but did not know how to go about organizing our evening (having already organized the previous 3 visits – it was turning into a very busy day). Talitha kindly offered to have us and “the other family” over for dinner – only to find out afterwards that she actually knew “the other family”. We had a lovely evening together – thank you Talitha for your wonderful hospitality. What a lovely ending to a great – friend filled day.

I did not do very well on getting photos of all the adults today. I will have to rely on a couple of the friends sending me updated family photos for our prayer cards. At least 2 of the 5 have new prayer cards and I got a family photo for a 3rd. It is so nice to have the memories from time spent together.