Hello all,

I haven't posted in a while, I know. Muchos apologios.

You are very impressed with my Spanish.

I spent a week in Texas, helping pack up the house in Shiloh for our new leasers. We had a nice Christmas with my grandparents, aunt, uncle, their family. I got many wondrous gifts: clothes, Star Bucks gift certificate, even a NEW Santa hat WITH a light-up whirligig on the top.

I spent the next few weeks just chilling, really. Reading a lot, playing some Dungeon Siege. Several days ago, the sun came out and I aired up the bike tires; rode around Kokomo like the good old summer days.

Candace and I just arrived back from the Covenanters' Young Adult winter conference. Nearly 100 students from all over Indiana, Kansas and Pennsylvania came for a weekend of seminars on sex & marriage. It's a topic I've heard lots at LeTourneau, in chapel and elsewhere, but it was good to hear them preached in the context of Song of Songs.

I played tackle football with twenty other guys, and I am so sore it hurts to get up and walk. Good times. I also played guitar with the illustrious Porter, Harrison and Olivetti, all of whom I immensely enjoyed watching and playing with. Always learn more guitar in an hour with those fellows than in a week of my own playing.

It was good to see faces from Covfamikoi, the Reformed Presbyterian summer family conference. To all of you at CYA, it was a pleasure and I regret not being able to spend more time with you.

So 48 hours from now, God willing, I'll just have come to the Atlantic towards London. I explained this little trip a few posts back, but now, for pictures, because that's all you wanted anyway.


So here's my flight on a world map. Dad just sent me an email from a couple he knows in London, who had recommendations for my layover. I'll be there for 9 hours, so I thought why not go see stuff. I'm thinking British Museum (a little bit!) and Trafalgar Square.


I'll fly into Johannesburg, and bus up into the mountains in the north of the country. Again, my famed squiggly mouse tracing capabilities pictured above. Click for a closer look.

I'll be with the organization represented here on the InTeRwEb. Click on the Research page to see my mansion, affectionately known as The Barn, because, well, it is one. Two days ago, they asked me to bring them a pelton wheel. Apparently, the students living in the Barn get their electricity from a small hydroelectric dam in a nearby waterfall. Last week, a key wheel disintegrated and they need me to bring one from the States. Hopefully this one lasts longer.

I'll be doing survey and site preservation work, partially in the western Soutpansberg mountains (rugged and dry), partly in the Limpopo valley (wetter, mosquitoes) with perhaps some weekend trips to nearby parks or previously excavated sites.

I will have access to email once a week; I would very much welcome mail to

and that first I looking letter is actually a J.