Nicole Keen, a May 2007 CU grad and former CW Program Staffer, is spending the better part of the academic year serving as a missionary in Africa.  Following is her latest entry from Swaziland, where she will be serving through the spring.  Please keep Nicole and others serving in Africa in your prayers...along with the people of that beautiful yet so often broken land.  CLG

Hey everyone!

I am writing this email from the Royal Swazi, which has wireless, so I am able to mass email!  This past week has been very interesting...we have been without water and power for 6 days.  Luckily, Allison and I were on patrol yesterday waiting for the trucks to come and both of them came within the same hour!  So we were able to take the first showers.

This week we have just been hanging out, getting adjusted, and finding our internships.  The other day Allison, Michael, Chelsea, and I went to visit a couple of schools and a church. We found the school where Allison will be teaching English, and it seems very nice. The head teacher was really excited for her help.  She and I might also be tutoring afterschool for the children that need some extra help.  We then went to the International Church that also has a theology school and got to meet the pastor (He is American!) and the youth pastor (who is from Zambia).  They were so excited to have us come on Sundays, and I think a few of us are going to help out with the youth group.  The pastor also told me of a literacy school that is located across the street from the church.  Allison and I visited there after we talked with the pastors and it was really cool.  The secretary, whose name is Nicoline (sounding like Nicole Lyn), absolutely loved us!  I got to talk with the principal, and he said that I can probably teach a class during the week and that they would love my help.  I am supposed to meet with him this week to figure out more details.  When we came out of the principal's office, Nicoline says, "How are my girls?!"  It was really funny.

Our team has the opportunity to go to Mozambique next weekend for about 1.5 weeks to feed refugees in a camp.  We have asked permission to go, but have not received an answer as to whether or not we have the money to go yet.  I will keep you updated.  We get up early in the mornings here and only stay up until about 10 pm.  Actually, the only time you can get any alone time is in the mornings, so it has become my favorite!  This morning Allison and I got up at 5:30 to go running.  We are in a place with higher altitude, so it was kinda hard to breathe while running haha.  When we got back, Allison was going to take the first shower and I was going to do some crunches.  She gets in and a few seconds later I hear, "NICOLE!"  Of course everyone in our room wakes up and Allison comes out in her towel....water everywhere on the floor and continuing to shoot against the shower door.  When she turned on the hot water, the knob shot off and water went everywhere.  We had to go wake up Micheal to come in and try to fix it...Allison is hiding in the closet in her towel in the meantime.  This was all happening at around 6:30 in the morning...needless to say, everyone was pretty much up after that.  And our shower did get fixed!

I cannot begin to describe how beautiful it is here...we are surrounded by mountains and the countryside is gorgeous.  It has rained every day we have been here, but today is beautiful and sunny right now.  Luckily it has not been too hot for us.  I am looking forward to starting our ministry, school does not start until Tuesday so we are pretty much just exploring until then.  The mall is about a 15 minute bus ride, so it is convenient to go there and we have plenty of shops and markets to visit in the area that we can walk to.

I hope everything at home is going well...keep me updated!  I don't know when I can use the internet again, but hopefully I will be able to send word of whether we are going to Mozambique or not.  I do have my address now, so you can send me MAIL!  Here it is:

c/o Julie Anderson
Nicole Keen team K
PO Box 5526
Mbabane, Swaziland   (there is no postal code, so I did not forget it!)

Hope to hear from you soon!
Nicole
nicolelkeen@gmail.com