Moving

The next adventure begins.  The new blog about my time in Russia can be found here

www.adventuresnrussia.blogspot.com

Back Home

After days of flying, debrief, and two cancelled flights I have finally made it home. I must admit that it really wasn’t until the morning we left Casablanca to catch our flight to the states that I was really excited to be going home. That’s not to say that I wasn’t looking forward to coming home before that point, I did miss family and friends but I wasn’t ready to leave yet.

The weeks leading up to debrief I wasn’t looking forward to going back to west Africa at all. It was only three days but I had no desire to go, but once I got there I realized just how important it was to go to debrief. Yes it was great to hear the stories of the other teams and hear how God worked in their lives and the lives of the villagers but it was important for me to have time alone. Having those three days being neither here nor there allowed us to process what all happened in those four months on our own without the distraction of home or our lives in our host countries. Even having that day in the Charlotte airport by myself was kinda nice (although my family was worrying about me getting home and it was a little stressful), it was the first time in months I had time by myself for a whole day. Yes that day was also hectic and frustrating and I had been up at 2 am from jet lag but it was also nice not having to rush around the airport or through security like some of the other airports we had been through. God knew what he was doing when my flights got cancelled and placed two very nice women in my path to help me at the airport and hotel. Also that was something else that I was reminded of. I can trust God with the big decisions of my life and yet when it comes to the small things I forget sometimes that He has it in control. He got me home safely just a day later. We really had no travel problems until we got to the states and I learned my flight was cancelled and even then I was glad people spoke English here and I knew where I was stuck.

So much had happened and we had all changed in some way and being able to take a few days and process a small part of that helped us brace for the transition back home. We had it a little better than others in terms of culture shock living in a country that was industrialized, but there was still culture shock for me. There is no way that you can live and work in a place for a time and not change. There are things about myself that I know have changed. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to have been able to go and work there, my experience there was so much better than anything I could have imagined.

It was hard to leave and say goodbye but at the same time it is so great to know that there are people that will continue to work at the orphanage and school. Sue the woman from church that went with us to the orphanage and is continuing to go and has already updated us on the kids. Sarah and Mandy are planning on working at Aurora still once they get back from the states from Christmas break and the kids were really excited when they told them they were coming back next year. We did learn from Sue that Comfort had died. She was a child at the orphanage who was about 14 months old and had down syndrome. She had gone to the hospital to get a hole in her heart fixed and ended up getting an infection and passed away, but we take comfort in knowing that she is now in heaven fully healed.

It’s been a week and a half since being home and it’s been hectic and fun and jammed packed. Now that Christmas is over it is now back to settling in to life and starting the next chapter in my life. While this new chapter is starting parts of the previous chapters will flow into it, just like they have in the past. Again I have no idea what the next few months hold but I rest in the fact that God knows and has it under control. So for now I will go and enjoy time with family and friends.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support over these amazing four months.

Continue to pray for the kids at Lambano Orphanage and at Aurora Primary School pray that they would ultimately come to know the Lord. Also pray that God would send teachers to Aurora Primary School, they are in need of teachers. Also pray for EBC and them as a church family that they would continue to glorify God and grow as a church. For the EBC youth leaders that they would come back from summer break with a renewed sense of purpose and passion for reaching these kids and that they were able to rest over this break. They work hard. For the youth that they would continue to come to Friday night activities and Sunday morning and that they would bring their friends and would ask questions and would come to know the Lord and would grow in their relationship with Him. There is so much potential with the kids in that youth group and just pray that they would be a generation that would reach the world in the name of Christ. Thanks for the prayers.

Closing Time

Our time here is quickly coming to an end. The past four months have flown by and have been filled up joy, frustration, change and lots of fun. Going into this I never could have guessed what was going to happen or expected to meet so many great people or learn so much. I came to South Africa not knowing what I would be doing; all I knew was we were working with a local church and that was about it. Over four months later and we have not only been able to work with the youth at EBC but also got to spend our weeks with the crazy and hilarious kids at the orphanage playing who knows how many games of uno (we lost count after a while) and helping with homework. I was even given the opportunity to counsel one girl a little bit. Our weeks were also spent working with grade 2 at aurora and just helping out teacher Emilia (who is incredible for teaching both grade 2 and grade 3) with class work and a lot of reading test.



In these past four months we have been able to see a little boy (kektzo) at the orphanage go from being close to death and skin and bones when we first met him to becoming healthier and he has put on weight and see him smile and his personality and just see him act like a kid. We were also able to watch as Thebule progressed developmentally and see her able to crawl and walk with the help of someone holding her hand and just her smile back at you and imitate your facial expressions and clap. It’s the small things. Thebule and a few other smaller kids have developmental delays so it has been great to see her progress.


Living here and being able to work with these kids has been amazing and my experience here is more then I could have imagined. The past two weeks have been sad as we have had to say good-bye to the kids at aurora and the orphanage as well as to the friends that we've made. Last week we did have the oppurtunity to have a Christmas party with Aurora School. Thanks to the donations from people that Sarah, Mandy, and Lisa (they are americans and Canadians that live in our complex and have been going with us to Aurora) knew they were able to provide these kids with a pizza party and each a christmas gift and a lunch box with fruit and toothbrush/paste. It was so incredible to be a part of that that day and to just see how excited these kids were to open up their gift and find a baby doll or marbles. It really was amazing and we were all just as excited as the kids were. There even was a santa clause thanks to one of the men that works with Sarah and Mandy's husbands. It was a great way to end our time with them.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support during this entire time. I have greatly apprieciated them and so have my teamates. I will update again once I am back in the states for one or two final posts.

Soup Kitchen

One Wednesday we had the opportunity as a cell group to go to the CBC of Jo’burg and help a local church feed some of the homeless people in the city. In all honesty the thought of going to downtown jo’burg at night made me a little uneasy, but once we were down there I didn’t feel uneasy. Up to this point the only part of the city I had seen was the touristy section when we went back in September. As we drove over there we quickly left the area of upper economic status and started to drive through the areas that would be considered lower income areas.

The church that feeds the people on the streets provides them with soup and bread and I think they go more than once a week. We had three stops that night, the first stop being the biggest followed by two smaller ones. We had about eighteen volunteers and our jobs were to hand out bread and pour soup and talk to the people. At our first stop we were driving down the road and then the truck pulled over to the side of one of the roads and that’s where the first stop was. There was a good amount of people waiting to get food, and the age group of this stop ranged from about teenage to forty.

Some of these men are from neighboring countries who had come here looking for jobs and/or other reasons while others are from different parts of South Africa, each with their own story and own families. It is so easy at times to judge and wonder why don’t they just get a job, but I learned that some of these men are the workers you see in the parking lots (the parking lot attendants) while others may be the ones standing on the street corner at the robot collecting trash or recycling or selling things. Then there are some who have no job at all. Some hoping to find work and for others a way provide a better life for them and their families.
One problem that these men and women face is the police. The police will come at times and take the men’s blankets and belongings and go burn them or throw them in a dumping site, and in the process taking their passports and other forms of identification. As a result of the destruction of these documents they are then considered an illegal. There is some corruption amongst the police here.

The handing out of food proceeded and we were able to talk to some of the people, not everyone is open for talking. Even though some of these men are on the streets they still have a hope that things will get better. That didn’t go for everyone but some had a better outlook on life. The first stop was also located about a block from a mosque which was lite up against the night sky and as we were out there it was time for the call of prayer. That to me is such an eerie sound. It was a reminder that it isn’t only these men that need praying for but for the rest of the people in the city as well. Spiritual warfare is alive and well here, just like it is in places all over the world.

The next two stops were smaller than the first one, but still where on the side of the road. The second stop was more of a gathering where people lived. Across the road was what looked like an abandoned construction site and a group of people had made small shelters and they had a fire going. I noticed at this stop that some of the other volunteers in the group knew some of the people at the stop. They had developed relationships with the people there. The night concluded with the third stop that was located in more of a business area of downtown. We were near a bus station and across the road were these abandoned apartment buildings. This was the last stop and for the men that came they were fortunate in the fact that they received the extra bread that was left over from the previous two stops. Unlike the first two stops were most people stayed near the site the men here seemed to stay within a block or two of the site and not just across the street.

Overall it was a good experience and I was grateful to be able to see a different side to the city. It is also a humbling experience at the same time and you become more apprieciative of your living situation just knowing that once you leave there you are going back to an apartment were a warm bed is waiting for you while these men are going to sleep on the streets with only a blanket.

Pics from the shanty town

Here are some pics sarah took when we went to the shanty town. Hopefully this will give you a better understanding of where some of the kids live.

Shanty towns

Time to break the radio silence. God's goodness continues. I must say that up to this point I feel that when writing the blog that I tend to lean more towards the happier side of things, and that we as humans tend to want to hear more about the happy things then the sad things. So today I am going to break from that mold.

The other week courtney and I were able to go with veronica and see where some of the kids from aurora school live. Most of these children live in what is called a shanty town (or squater camps). We went to visit one that was about five minutes from the school. Basically what a shanty town or squatter camp is is when someone comes and sets up residence on a piece of land and others follow. By law if the owner of the property doesn't get that person to leave within 24 hours then that squatter has a legal right to stay there and the owner of that property can no longer do anything about it. So usually once someone has set up "residence" then other people come and a squatter or shanty town is made.

There is usually no running water, trash disposal, and no electricity. The camp we went to had a water tower where a local farmer would bring water in once a week to fill up the water tower. As there is no running water people have outhouses, but because of the world cup the governemnt had put up porta potties in these camps. The government still comes in and once a week removes the waste from them but there is no way of knowing how much longer the government will continue to do this. So while the younger generations may have gotten rid of their outhouses, the older generations have not. Just like there is no running water they also don't have a way of getting trash removed, so they take their trash and dump it on the outskirts of the camp. So as we drove in there was a field of trash.

The houses that people live in are made up of playwood, sheet metal,and anything that they can find. Most houses had one or two rooms and the house we went into had a gas stove, that was run on what smelled like lighter fluid and they had a candle in the bedroom for at night. Basically if a fire were to start it would spread quickly from house to house as the houses are built right beside each other. We learned that the witch doctor had come back to the camp. They had gotten rid of him about a year ago but he returned. There is definitly spiritual warfare within these areas.

Petty thieft is big in these areas. The things that these kids at the school witness and deal with is insane. At the ages of five and six some kids know more about sex then people know about at the age of twenty. The abuse that happens in some of these areas ranges from drug and alcohol abuse to sexual, physical and verbal abuse. That is what some of these kids have to go back home to on the weekends. They don't all come from nice home lives, but go back to homes where they are going to be abused.

Visting that camp and seeing where some of these kids live and learning about the area and what happens there at times allowed us to see why some kids behave as they do. Life isn't easy for some of these kids. Even in those darkest places God is still there and for some of these kids they may be the only believer in their house or area. Its equiping those kids to be the light in the dark and to not be afraid to shine the light of God in those places.

It wasn't only the fact that we learned about these camps and saw the poverty that people lived in but we also learned about what is called a kangaroo court. This still goes on in some of the shantty towns around the area. After hearing this it also brought into perspective why some of the people here and children are so cold and shut off. In these areas there is a neighborhood council that basically is the judge and jury. When somone committs a crime they find them and bring them to the center of the town and everyone in that shantty town from babies to old people come and gather around for this "court". Here they find if the person convicted of the crime is innocent or guilty. If found guilty they will usually kill them on the spot and make everyone watch. Veronica was telling us how sometimes they force them to drink gasoline and then light them on fire. Hearing this disgusted me but allowed me to understand why some people are so numb and cold. I can't imagine growing up having to watch that, its no wonder people aren't trusting and why they build up walls. Yes, this may be the most industrialized country in africa but you don't have to go far to see that it is still africa and see the poverty and how the way of life is still rooted in village and tribal traditions.

We may not be working in a village in the dessert but it is still so evident just how much people here need the gospel. John 13:34 tells us to "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." Just loving others as Christ has loved us. At times it can be so easy to judge and make assumptions of others when they aren't like us or from a different culture or area. But Christ loves us despite our imperfections and loves us unconditionally and He commands us to love others as He has loved us. At times it is so evident how some of these kids just need love and so we show them love and try to encourage them. Christ never said this life would be easy, and he uses suffering to grow us and bring us closer to him and uses us to turn us into the people he wants us to be.

A few prayer request: As we have entered the second half of our term I ask that you would continue to pray that we would be able to reach out to the people we work with and that God would continue to open doors that could lead to more conversation about Him and the love He has for them. Pray for the kids at the school, that they would come to know them. Pray for the teachers there and that they would continue to show them Christ in their words and actions, and pray that God would send more teachers to work with aurora school. They need more teachers and people to come and help. I also ask that you would pray not only for the continued physical protection of the students when they go home but also for spiritual protection from attacks from satan and that they wouldn't be afraid to be a light in the darkness and that God would just raise up leaders in these camps that wouldn't be afraid to proclaim His name and it would lead to more and more people in these camps coming to know the Lord.

I just want to add that the whole country is not like that, that is just one part of it. This is a very industrialized and is a well developed country and what was written was about one part of it, so please don't assume the whole country is like that, because it is not.

Thank you for your continued support and prayers.

Tigers, Braais, and all nighters, Oh my!

Oh my! How time is flying by! Sorry for the lack of update last week. We were introduced to the world of cricket last tuesday. It was a day of fun spent with friends who were trying to teach us the sport which we picked up on kinda quickly. The past two weeks have been great. So much has happened. God is continuing to do amazing things and continues to teach me new things everyday. As a group we are still doing great, I couldn't have asked for two better girls to be partnered with! Our house is full of fun and craziness. Courtney and Ashley have been so fun to work with and are so encouraging.

This past week has been a hectic one, I would say one of the busier weeks we have had in awhile. On our day off monday we went to go play with tigers. We got to spend the day with stacie, which is always fun, and we were able to see a different part of south africa as we had to drive out of the city some. We were all for getting away from the city for the day. But we had a blast walking and petting tigers. Definitly a once in a lifetime exerience. It is so easy to forget that we are in africa at times living in edenvale. We live next to a mall and have gone to about three in one week and are surrounded by aparments and businesses and the urban life that it doesn't feel like africa. Driving on monday took us out of the city and to a rural part of the area. That was when I was reminded that I am still in africa. Working at the school, usually reminds me that I am still in africa, but
just driving through different towns and seeing a different way of life then that of the city was good to see. We definitly drove through areas of lower income, but there were some beautiful scenary. Once it becomes the rainy season and everything becomes green it is going to be so beautiful. It is still dry, although it should start raining soon.

Wednesday was our day at the orphanage and I spent more time at the other house visting with kids. We mainly work at the hospice house, but wednesday I hung out more with the kids at the other house. An oppurtunity has opened up for me to work with a child at the orphanage and I am looking forward to see how God is going to use that and work in that situation but I am also a little nervous as well. This has been something that I had been praying about before I even left the states, so we will see what the Lord does. But the three main kids we work with are doing well. There was a new boy this week. One of the other boys there was having a bad week, he had been doing well the past two weeks but this was a rough day for him. Depending on how he is feeling we soemtimes see him on wednesdays.

That night I went to a stay awake at aurora school. They were raising money for the school by getting people to sponser the kids as they stayed awake all night. I'm not going to lie I wasn't really looking forward to going and staying up all night. It turned out to be so much fun and a good time. I was able to get to know some of the students better and just talk with them. We had fun playing games, dancing and jumping on a trampoline. The middle of the night hours were spent watching movies and standing by a fire (it was feezing that night). While there I got to talk with the owners daughter and the owner and able to get to know them a little bit, which was nice, because when we are there during the week we don't get to talk with the owner because we are all working. I must say some of those kids have so much energy and had no problem staying up all night, I on the other hand had to drink some coffee (and slept most of the day thursday). A few fell asleep around 3 or 4 in the
morning. It was a fun time and the kids will now go home for about 10 days for a break as they are switching terms. For some of these kids they are going home to bad situations and home lives and are faced with difficult decisions so just pray that they would make the right choices and that God would protect them.

Friday was a national holiday and was braai day (which is the south african word for grill, so everyone cooked out). We went to the office and had a big braai with the missionaries there and got to meet new people and learn about the different things they did and where they came from. We also spent part of saturday with some of the women from the office as well and then that night with some other missionaries watching football so we have gotten to know more of them this weekend, which has been great and we are able to recognize them at church. It really is a good group of people that work there and are all very friendly.

This past week has been amazing. Thank you for your continued prayers and I ask that you continue to pray for the children that we work with that they would come to know Christ and that they would all have a safe vacation at home. Also that we would be able to reach the people in our apartment complex as well.