Aaron Facer family update

Time for an update and pictures! Here are some highlights over the past couple of months:
-Aaron had a 6 week business trip to Djibouti (a small east African country), so Tica and I went to the US for 4 weeks. It was so fun to get to play with the family!
-Tica and I got to meet Aaron in Djibouti for the last bit of his trip. It was really fun, but it is by far the poorest, dirtiest country I have ever visited. Every day I counted my blessings and resolved to use them to serve others. Tica mastered sitting on her own while we were there. She's a cutie! The daytime temperature averaged 125 degrees with 80-90% humidity (perfect weather, in my opinion), so we spent most of our time in the pool or the ocean.
-Over Labor Day weekend we went camping in Mpumalanga province here in South Africa. It was spectacular! South Africa is such a beautiful country. The only bummer of the trip was when we were surrounded by a troop of angry baboons--we think we accidentally separated the adults from their young while on a hike. The dominant male charged us multiple times with his fangs bared, but fortunately we were able to escape without any injury. It was by far the most terrifying experience we've had living in South Africa...but kind of a cool story to tell after the fact!

-Aaron is still serving as the institute teacher for the YSA and loves his calling! I was recently called as 2nd counselor in Young Women's. There are 25 YW on our roster and fewer than 10 attend regularly--we have our work cut out for us!
-We have less than a year here in South Africa. Aaron applied for jobs in July and we expect to hear any day where we will be going next. Our first choice was Tel Aviv, Israel, second choice was staying here another year, and last choice was going back to Reston, VA. We're fortunate that we're really excited about all 3 options, so we'll be happy no matter what we find out.

That's it for us!

As young mens president I got to go with the teachers ( Steve is a new teacher) and priests on a high adventure trip to the Beaver high adventure base where we did climbing rapelling and a high COPE course which involved high wire climbing and walking. We then went to Brian Head for some mountain biking and then finished by going to St. George for some climbing and repelling down some narrow and DEEP slot canyons. Steve was the smallest but did great. He is a fearless climber and repeller. we did repells of over 100 feet. I got a little too confident, got going to fast on a repell and burned my hands trying to stop. OCCH!







.

them

Repelling at the high adventure base got us ready for the slot canyons

The first night I read scriptures to the boys but after that, we had devotionals each night led by

OUCH

Steve and I getting ready to walk the high wires. Steve was WAY better at it than I.

Getting Steve after his 1 hour solo time on Sunday. We had a great testimony meeting afterwards.

The crew with the Bishop who joined us half way through.

Congratulations to Meg and Aaron on their new and beautiful baby Little Nita

Clare and Steve in lights

Clare and Steve where in the ward road show. Clare did great and a number of people told Mindy and I that Steve stole the show. The show was about a Pharoh who had to find a cheaper alternative to a pyramid burial monument because the queen gave all his money to the poor and set the slaves free.