Aug 2019 - Change!

Change! Sometime good, sometimes not so good, it just keeps coming.  Thankfully, for the last few months the changes have been good.  One of my goals for the year was to change up the way we run our practical exams at the end of the term. Previously, each student had four 10-minute stations to complete, which also meant each examiner had 10 minutes with each student.  It worked OK when we had 50 or so students (8+ hours), but this year we are at 81!  My hope was to change to a practical with 20 stations and 3 minutes per station.  We ran 4 groups of students though and were finished by lunch!

Most of the stations allowed the student to work on their own doing drug calculations, identifying parasites, writing prescription labels, etc.  The others had staff members to evaluate the students making blood smears, preparing fecal exams, taking owner histories, and restraining stuffed animals.  Although it took more time to set up, all the work was worth it.  All the staff and the external examiner seemed to think it went  really well and allowed for a fair and accurate evaluation of the students skills.  Even the students seemed happy :)

Secondly, after several years of figuring out logistics, we are getting a few horses and a donkey for our program.  I’m very excited to be around horses again and hope they are ridable!  Initially it was organized to get horses from a research facility associated with the vet school, but I was getting sketchy answers to my questions about these horses, so I decided to go see them.  So glad I did!  They were completely wild!  There only human contact was being run through a shoot and groomed a few times a year.  They were also only 2-3 years old.  What a disaster that would have been for teaching horses!  Thankfully we are now working with a large horse rescue who has several mild mannered and well-trained horses available.

Quite a bit of work was needed on the stable block at the university farm, but we are nearing completion and hope to have the horses arrive by the time you get my next letter.

We are also changing the name of our witnessing group to better represent the goal of the program.  We were Acts 1:8, but are now Acts 29. Focused on making disciples who make disciples rather than on just sharing the gospel.  We even have the T-shirts to prove it!

A final fun change has been the addition of 4 chickens to my family here in Mafikeng.  A friend at church built me a small coop and, just as it was delivered, other friends were moving and getting rid of their chickens, so the timing was perfect.  Interestingly, due to the difference in light here during the winter, the chickens keep laying even without a light in the coop so I’m getting 3 eggs a day. I foresee lots of omelets and quiches in my future.

Signing off here in chilly Mafikeng!  Enjoy your warm summer weather!