The Groeneveld Long Leave Adventure begins...
This is a quick intro to some of the facets of our Long Leave Adventure.
What is Long Leave?
Presbyterian Ministers accrue long leave of 12 days per annum and every couple of years they are expected to go on long leave for a minimum of 42 days, although 60 is recommended. The idea is that this is a bit like a University Sabbatical - a time to grow and refill the tank after a long spell of teaching and preaching.
Theo has taken 60 days. The first 30 are going to be family holiday time and then in the second 30, Theo will read, think and reflect.
What are you planning to do?
We are fortunate enough to have persuaded Glen and Jeanette Craig to come and house-sit and congregation-sit for us. Glen and Jeanette were the ministry couple that Theo trained under and we believe that they will add a lot of value to the congregation. Glen will take the lion's share of the preaching and pastoral care, ably assisted by Craig, Susan and Lenti.
We're taking Caleb out of school and doing some "travel and see things" education. We'll be going to Mpumalanga with Theo's folks (Theo and his Dad plan to do quite a lot of cycling) and then take a slow journey toward Cape Town, camping wherever we can and then hiring a camper van in Cape Town.
We hear you had a setback...
The prep had gone well, we've booked what needed to be booked, and re-stocked our camping stuff. But we had a major setback in that Theo had a very bad bike accident 10 days ago and is nursing (with some brave help from Brenda) some very deep wounds on his elbow, knee and ankle. Theo is determined to still do the cycling and geocaching, but his fitness has taken a knock. We'll see how it goes...
What's this geocaching thing you talk about?
George Wells probably said it best in his blog...
Crudely put, geocaching is the sport of high-tech treasure hunting. The geocaching website lists the coordinates of caches hidden at spots all over the world. You enter the coords into a GPS (Global Positioning System - satellite navigation) receiver and go off to find the hidden treasure. The treasure works on a trust-based exchange system: you can take some treasure from the cache, and replace it with some of your own treasure (usually small knick-knacks or children's toys). Or, as someone else described it: "Yep, I use multibillion-dollar satellite technology to find Tupperware hidden in the woods"!
It's something we as a family have come to really enjoy as it often highlights some the beautiful, interesting and historic sites in an area. You can learn more at http://www.geocaching.com
Today was spent getting Glen and Jeanette up to speed (they arrived yesterday) and packing for the trip. We will leave at lunch time tomorrow...
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