The first week.

Mr Lee looking rather dashing on the beach...

Stefanie (left, American) Michal (right, German)

Lauren (left, South African) and Anna-Elisa (right, Finnish)

Ester (left, Dutch) Mar (middle, Spanish) Sarah (right, American)

These pictures show what we do in our free time. The top one is on the beach which is about a two minute walk from our front door; it's beautiful. The rest of the pictures are from a trip to the coffee shop on the beach front with some of our new friends, as you can see we are with many different nationalities! The topic of conversation somehow got to Eurovision in which Anna-Elisa reminded us all about Lordi (Hard Rock Hallelujah?). Takes me back.

This week has been mostly about sharing each others' life stories which has taken quite a long time as there are about 50 of us including staff. It's been a really interesting few days, learning about people and what has happened up to the point where they became Christians. God is good!

Here's Sam:

Hi. It's been a great week of meeting new people, being challenged in our faith and having lots of fun. We start our classes properly tomorrow (so far it's been mostly orientation), but already we've seen God speaking to people and making significant changes in our lives. There's a really good atmosphere of learning and trying new things - it's a place where it's fine to say "I think God might be saying this, but it's more likely that I've just made it up." I've done that a couple of times, and more often than not it's turned out to be something actually quite prophetic. What fun.

Next week we have all of our classes in the centre of Cape Town, and I think there's going to be quite a lot of practical stuff to do - going out into the city and telling people about Jesus - which frightens the life out of me. It'll probably be brilliant, though.

If you're the praying kind, here are some things to direct your prayers:

- Please pray for relationships with other people: As we get to know everybody some beautiful friendships are forming. Pray that our being married wouldn't stop us striking out and both making great friends with the other students and staff.

- Please pray for our outreach: In the next few weeks we'll start to decide where to go for our outreach phase. Please pray that God would speak clearly about where we should go.

- Please pray for us: We have a busy schedule and there's always something going on, but it's important that we get time together too to process what God is doing in our marriage (and to enjoy the beach).

Thanks! We love you all.

Sam and Heather