The Daily Blog of Helga van Niekerk

7-42am

Today is a busy day. The blessing of it all is that it is Stacey’s 26th birthday! What a gift she has been to Mike & I. Born at 5-30pm at Paarl Hospital, she arrived on the day she was due, weighing in at 3.9kg. She was big and healthy and got on with the job of growing up immediately! Stacey is a deep thinker…like her Dad. She has a quiet nature… like her Dad. It’s just so easy to make Stacey laugh… like her Dad. She is sensitive and loving and kind…like her Dad. She is technical…like her Dad! She is her Daddy’s little girl and they have a unique and special relationship. Is there anything Stacey gets from me? Absolutely! She has wonderful people skills and she looks like me as well!  God has gifted Stacey with a servant heart & we her closest family members are the blessed recipients. She’s clever and quirky and practical and altogether lovely. She does amazing things like make android apps, design computer programmes for cross-stitch patterns, changes knitting patterns, writes firmware and she has long technical creative discussions with Mike.  She gets on well with David and does stuff for him that he knows are not my strength… like fixing pants! She and her husband Adrian are best friends and we are continually blessed by having them here in Cape Town for this season!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STACEY!

That’s the happy part of the day.

In a short while, I leave with my dear friend Riana and her best friend Karin and Riana’s mom in law to have a farewell ‘funeral’ tea for R’s father who passed away last week. Oom Daan took a turn for the worst  and after a number of difficult days, he slipped away into the presence of the Lord. Riana was wonderful with Granny and I will always appreciate her support. We both had a lot in common with frail, elderly parents. No more suffering for them.

The last verse of Romans 12. Verse 21:

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Keep at it!

God bless you!

In His Grip,

Helga xx

8-52am (Cape Town AND Ship time!)

Yesterday’s blog attempt was as a big a disaster as I’ve had in a long time! I think there were a lot of people online at that time and although it started off well enough, it ground to a halt. The system the ship uses is one that you need to log out of to stop the internet running. As I’d already been online for 20 minutes or so, I decided to scrap putting any more photos up, press ‘publish’ and get done. I gently pulled my netbook closer to myself and in doing that, the battery disconnected and it turned off. Even if the computer is off, the internet carries on counting down! :O I went through
the whole boot up process and tried to finish as quickly as I could. I have to remind myself to appreciate the fact that I can blog at all from sea. My intention is to find free wifi in Walvis Bay and complete yesterday’s blog on Thursday, just for my records!

We are almost in the waters off Namibia so making steady progress. We have had a spectacularly smooth crossing so far. Yesterday morning, Mike & I were running on the treadmill when we were entertained by a school of dolphins. We have seen them from time to time, along with a couple of mottled looking porpoises, but what we’ve seen tonnes of are flying fish. They are amazing to watch and impossible to catch on film. They are so fast. They almost look like insects,
leaping out of the sea and flying across the surface of the water before splashing back into the inky black water.

Human nature is very interesting. We have been at sea for 6 continual days with no stopping at ports and passengers are getting irritable. Complaining is increasing. They complain about a lot of things…the food, the sound at the entertainment, the slowness of service at dinner. For us, it’s all good. If I don’t have to cook it and I don’t have to wash it up, it’s a joy to eat it. The sound at the entertainment had a lot to do with the fact that it was the Talent competition and each nervous participant needed their levels set uniquely which could only be done after they’ve started singing. That
took a few seconds and then it was fine. As for the slow service at dinner, it is a bit slow, but what’s the rush anyway? It’s not as if we’ve got be somewhere else!

Mike & I are pretending again. On Sunday, we worked up a great deal of enthusiasm in imagining that on Monday (yesterday) we were joining a cruise ship for a 5 night trip to Cape Town. If you’d put that in our path, any day of our life, we would have grabbed it with both hands. So the joy of cruising towards our destination continues.

I have learnt a lot about eating while on the cruise. I have the self control of a slug. When it comes to LCHF, one of the big answers to how to manage getting off carbs, is that if you are to remove them from your diet, you need to remove them from your house! Almost everyday, I have thought, “I will stop the carbs from tomorrow!” Tomorrow comes and I fall at the first croissant! This morning the downfall was Mike who went and got coffee & came back with a sachet of this to be added to it…

Sugar-laden Italian hot chocolate. Have I gained weight on this trip? If you evaluate me on the increase of food, then yes. If you evaluate me on the increase of exercise, then no! My clothes are not any tighter, but with the carbs, I feel I’ve gained… it sort of feels like about 3kg. So it’s going to be very interesting….Sunday’s blog, when I get on the scale Sunday morning and weigh in! By the time we disembark on Saturday morning, I definitely will have achieved the goal of 19 hours of exercise over the 19 night cruise. I missed gym on the day I was sickish and we rested on Sunday. But there have been a couple of days we’ve done two sessions. Yesterday Mike ran 9km altogether. That was not an expected outcome of our cruising experience!

The wise advice of Romans 12 continues in verse 13:

“Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”

God bless you.

In His Grip,

Helga xx