south of somewhere

Hi, our names are Sarah and Nathan Cooper. We are based in Sheffield in England, but are preparing to move to South Africa in September '06 to join a church planting team in the Western Cape. We hope that this blog will keep you up to date with our progress as we embark on this new adventure. Watch this space... www.thepeopleschurch.info

Monday, September 25, 2006

The Coopers have landed!



Hope you like the pics... leaving from Gatwick on Wedneday evening, and arriving into Cape Town on Friday morning (we had a stop over in Namibia for 24 hours).

We are now settled into our room at YWAM. The team did a great job of preparing it for us, with some food ready, flowers, and even the bed made up! There are no ants either, which is certainly a bonus. We saw our first Rainman spider at the weekend - a big pale brown thing, body about the length of my thumb and legs like twigs. Just as long as they stay out of our room!

We are beginning the process of settling in, and will start looking for a house and car this week. Worcester has had a lot of rain over their winter, so now the mountains are covered in green, and spring flowers are everywhere. It's a beautiful place to be able to call Home!

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Well, after travelling the length and breadth of England seeing friends and relatives (900 miles of driving for all you factophiles!) we are back in London and flying out this evening. Nerves are beginning to kick in a bit but also the sense of excitement is rising. We have a day in Namibia as a stop over, so should be arriving in South Africa on Friday lunch time. From there it's over to the YWAM base to get settled in our new room. I wonder what will await us!

Monday, September 11, 2006

On the road

We have waved farewell to Sheffield and all our precious friends there, and are now on the road! We're doing a super-sized round of good-byes to all our relatives, before flying out on Wednesday.

We were very relieved to get our visas back at the weekend, having only sent them in the previous Tuesday. We had had some setbacks and were hanging on for our police checks, which meant we sent them in with only 10 working days to spare (the time we had been told it takes to process the application). We also had a nice suprise in that our deposits (£600 each) and our application fees (£35 each) were all returned to us! Praise God, and thank you to everyone who was praying on our behalf.