If you're wondering what happened to our August newsletter, we've decided to combine it with September's, since the July one went out so late.

Well, after 3 ultrasounds, we were able to see clearly that we're having a girl. That was weird. We're very excited though! Start sending pink!!!! :)

Did I mention that I finished War & Peace? Apart from being the longest book I've ever read, it's also one of the best. I highly recommend it to those that are interested in history, philosophy, and good literature.

It's almost time for a new newsletter! That means, new pics, a new DYK?, a new WWYD? and everything that you love. Perhaps tomorrow?

Welcome to our new look website. This home page now has a blog format, so that you can read and leave comments. It gives you a way of interacting. We'll probably set up an actual blog page soon, where you can read more often about our exciting lives, e.g., today, part of the glass cover on one of my spotlights fell out, and I don't know where I'm going to be able to replace it! Not everything will be that exciting though. Enjoy.

Heading to Mwanza again tomorrow. This time to get Luke immunized, buy some stuff, and, very exciting... find out the baby's gender!! We'll post here when we know. Also, some changes coming to the website. Stay tuned.

Seriously... it was April Fools. We're not leaving. We never were. Not sure how to make it any clearer.  Although we'll be back in Australia in August, then the US in January, but we'll be back in Tanzania in February 2009.

It's that time again. Go get it!!

Hope you enjoy our February Newsletter. That's right, we're coming back to Aus to have a baby (or 2?! 3?!!). I'm off to Mwanza again tomorrow to get a stove, and then we'll be spending the rest of the week baking oatmeal-raisin cookies.

We're due 13 October.

Just finished 3 weeks of Orthography. Check our Newsletter section for all the latest. We're heading to Mwanza on Thursday for a 3 day trip to buy appliances and supplies.

After about 2 years of preparation, we've started our jobs on the field. Kelly's managing operations in Musoma, and I am preparing for an orthography workshop in 2 weeks (testing new writing systems for 5 languages). We're still setting up our house, and it's an insanely busy time. Forgive us if we're lax in responding to emails etc for a while, but we'll get there.

We made it to Musoma! It took us a week, although we spent a few days in Morogoro and a day in Arusha. We got to see the Serengeti which was beautiful (more pics will come). We had a BBQ yesterday for Christmas with some other missionaries, and now we're setting up our new home - we need to clean, paint, and furnish in the next 3 days (that's how long we have till we have to move out of where we're staying in the meantime). Pray that we can get everything we need and for health - we've all been a bit sick, including Luke.

We had our graduation for language school yesterday. On Saturday we will leave Iringa, drive 4 hours to Morogoro where we'll stay with friends for 2 nights, then drive 8 hours to Arusha, where we'll spend another 2 nights with friends. After that, we're going to spend a night in the Serengeti (our Christmas present to each other), and then finish the trip to Musoma, where we hear that they have a house waiting for us! Unfortuantely, there is absolutely no furniture, so we might be sleeping on the floor for a while.

We got a car last weekend! Finally... it's a '94 Land Rover Discovery, 2.5L diesel, 4cyl Turbo with a really good engine and recent paint, plus a nice stereo . This will make our trip to Musoma next month possible, since it's 3 days, and not all of the roads are paved. We're very grateful to those of you who helped.

And a cute little video of Luke learning the joy of giving and taking.

I put up some new pics of Luke in the Luke photo album.

There are lots of new pics in the Media Gallery. Check out Tanzania!!

We started language training yesterday. It's been an intense time, as Kelly came down with some bug on her birthday (Aug 15) and is only just up and about today. Small things like being sick get magnified when you can't do basic things like easily get hot water or normal food. We'll report more on all that in our upcoming newsletter.

We're still having a hard time getting pictures uploaded, but feel free to send us news/pics (just not too big).

Thanks to those of you who have responded to our emails. We love hearing any kind of news.

This is the town 15 mins from where we're staying: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iringa

We have to drive into town once or twice a week to use the internet.

We're finally here in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Africa! For now, it's beauty sleep time, but check back soon for some pictures.

Click here to watch the video of us in the SMCC service (6MB video file).

This Saturday and Sunday (July 21/22) we are the Missionary of the Week at Shadow Mountain Community Church. They will be praying for us in all 3 services. Maybe we'll even get a spot on their website: http://shadowmountain.org/missions