Clare

I just stayed in a rural village called Clare for the last week and a half. I stayed with a woman named Minah and her husband and her two children Philile (18) and Siyabonga (8). I absolutely fell in love with these two girls. Philile spoke very good English and we spent a lot of time talking about her life and boys and faith.. it was incredible. She's absolutely beautiful inside and out and I just so wish for her to rise up out of the typical future for a young rural South African woman. She has a boyfriend in University who comes to visit once or twice a year ... this already raises huge flags. South African men are not the most faithul and trustworthy in relationships. Siyabonga on the other hand couldn't speak any English or even any Siswati, so we used a lot of hand gestures and pointing. She would try to talk to me in Tsonga anyway and would try to talk very slow for me to understand, but jibberish is jibberish no matter how slow it is. But we really connected. We slept together, her usually ON me. And she always woke very early to be in school by 7. I would wake up also and help her get ready: clasp her shoes, fold her collar, comb her hair... it was one of my favourite times of the day.

I stayed in Clare to really push forward with a feeding program we're starting up in the area, including 13 villages and 700 kids. As exciting as it is that these 700 kids will soon be receiving a meal a day, it is definitely frustrating work. I wanted to cry multiple times a day trying to get the details organized. There are a lot of challenges that come with South Africa: expectations, power hunger, lack of initiative, church politics (I guess this is everywhere) ... but when all these things arise when working together to care for the orphans in these communities, the frustration becomes large scale.

"And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday"
Isaiah 58:10

True fasting.

The Sky is Falling

I have a new roommate. His name is Sebastian. I’m so excited! He’s tall, dark, and handsome and we had a real connection when we first met….

Okay Sebastian is a lizard. And he lives in my room. How did he get there, you ask? He fell from the sky. Seriously. Well he fell from the roof. He has been living in my roof (him and his family, I’m sure) for a long time and usually goes to work around 5 am. It always sounds like he’s drilling through the roof, looking for gold or oil or something. Maybe he’s digging to China. I always awake, convinced he found China. But he never does, until the other morning. I heard him doing his usual digging and then he just fell out of the roof, scurried around a bit and then made himself a home in my armchair. There he stays, very well. I mean, it’s not uncommon for men in Africa to leave home to find work. We’ve worked out a deal, though. He can have free room and board if he eats all the mosquitoes and spiders. So far so good. I wonder when his family will come to join him.







Where's Sebastian? We often play this game. He's usually creeping on me from some part of the chair.

Can you spot him?

I'm too excited to sleep

I sit here after two incredible days feeling far too excited to sleep. I spent two days in Bushbuckridge (the area I'm mostly working in) with George, Levy, Vivienne, and Simon. We spent significant time in each area dreaming, praying, planning, walking, and talking.

I can see it. I can look at Cork and see the fields of maize that will feed all the kids. I can see that place healed of old wounds and divisions and finally coming together. I can see the trust regained. I can look at Clare and see the church feeding Lorraine, Clerence and Remember out of its doors, Gogo's working the garden and volunteers looking them in the eye and telling them they matter. I can see it. Seriously, I look over the land, I look at the church and I see it.

I can see Ellery smile again.

This month is what we call RED MONTH. We're pushing hard. We should be bleeding by the end.

I feel very encouraged by the people we have on the ground. Mina is a beautiful woman who deeply cares for her community. She will tear up just talking about it. Her heart goes out to a family: Lorraine, Clerence, and Remember. They are living all alone. Lorraine is the oldest. She's 14. She ensures this family is visited twice a day.

What I've really been feeling lately is that I want to live a life of sacrifice. My mother originally taught me what it means to sacrifice. Through her actions when I was just a babe she taught me that sacrifice is the noblest and most powerful act of love. In this season of my life, this looks like fighting for the millions of young kids (like Victoria and Elizabeth) that have NO parents NO food NO hope and who (like Victoria and Elizabeth) deserve much more. I want to make sure 12 year old girls don't have to sell their bodies to get something to eat. I want to make sure kids have the opportunity to go to school and learn. I want to make sure a family headed by an 11 year old child doesn't feel alone after their parents die. I want to make sure people like Gloria know that their kids will be taken care of when they die. I want to make sure girls like Ellery smile.

Gloria

On Monday I spent the day doing home-based care in Belfast. I visited a woman named Gloria. She's 34 years old, lives with her brother, and has two children (7 and 10). She was brutally thin and ill. She wasn't even lying in her bed, but rather on the floor. She was in incredible pain. She was shaking and breathing quick and shallow. She really really touched my heart. All I could do was sit on the ground next to her and hold her hand. I tried to speak to her but would choke mid-sentence. I prayed for her: for peace, for rest, and for protection and comfort for her children. As soon as I started praying for her children, she looked up at me with deeply deeply sorrowed eyes and I couldn't do anything but completely break. I promised her I would continue to pray for her and especially pray that she has rest that night.

I can't imagine what it would be like, as a child, to watch your mother slowly die.
I can't imagine what it would be like, as a mother, to know your children are watching you slowly die.

"How can I give you up [Africa]?
...
My heart is changed within me;
all my compassion is aroused."
Hosea 11:8

I found out Gloria died that night. As sad as it is, when I left her home, I truly felt like God would answer my prayer by taking her that night. Before I left the house, I felt the need to pray for her brother, as he was the one taking care of her and the kids. I prayed for strength and now he really needs it.

I think of Gloria's last night. She was touched, hugged, and loved. She was not alone.

She touched me deep and her situation hit me hard, and I can't seem to help but ask, "How many are left alone..?"

Dead friend, four eyes, TC, babies, and Rep.

I had an interesting experience, if you can call it that.

I made a new friend outside of Hands from White River named Latitia. She's a physiotherapist at a nearby hospital.
I went to church a couple Sundays ago. They did announcements. They announced the death of a man named Louie who lives on a farm up the road, a lady named Anne, and then he said, "Do you remember Latitia, the physiotherapist? She drowned in a canoeing accident on Thursday." I instantly exploded into tears and couldn't think of anything else for the rest of the service. After it was finished, I texted one of her friends, Mark, expressing my condolences and letting him know I'm here if he needs anything. He texts back and says he has heard nothing about Latitia and wonders what happened. I called him and told him. It was the saddest and hardest conversations I've ever had. About a half hour later he texts back and says Latitia's fine and that another girl had passed, but not Latitia. I didn't know how to feel or react in that moment. I couldn't produce words. I was so confused. I called Vivienne, since she is actively involved in the church, and asked her to look into the situation and call the guy who made the announcement. I wasn't sure if Latitia was in an accident and it was someone else who had died and the church mixed it up or if it was someone else. Well, it turns out another woman from White River died in a canoeing accident with the exact same name and the exact same profession. Latitia called me later on that day. It was great to hear from her. I hung out with her last week to celebrate her aliveness and we're continuing that celebration tonight, as she is coming over for supper.

On a different note, my eyes have been feeling strange for the last couple months. They feel like there's a lot of pressure behind them. Vivienne told me a story of a boy who had the same thing and ended up with a tumour. So, I acted out in urgency and got an eye appointment. Apparently I'm getting glasses, just for reading and computer. I can still read the bottom row and have excellent vision, but I guess it'll help my headaches.

I saw Tony Campolo speak this past weekend in Pretoria at Missions Fest and he is the bomb-diggity. I thought he would just confirm and encourage my philosophies on Social Justice and he did do that but he deeply challenged me in other areas I refused to dig into. So that was good.

This next week I'm hosting a missions team from the UK who will be helping out the community of Belfast. It's actually has the potential to be quite stressful for a number of reasons. The main reason being the fact that they have invested money into the community and not a lot of it has gotten done, which is largely due to the fact that Africa likes to take its sweet time doing things and everything really has to be done in the right way (community-owned and initiated). They arrive tonight and I have to do orientation with them, discussing what's culturally appropriate and discussing what they'll be doing while they're here. Funny that I've never been on a mission trip before this Africa experience and now I'm orientating teams. Strange.

I'm going to be a Gogo. I won't go too far into that, but yes, my baby's having a baby.

This new role can be quite stressful at times, but I'm actually enjoying the challenge. I'm not teaching at all anymore. I was doing the after school program, but now Lacey has taken control of that AND we're getting a woman, Ncobile, from the community involved. We're hoping she'll eventually take over the program. It has to be that way, community-owned. She's a beautiful woman and so very excited to do this. Her husband is a teacher, too, so that really helps. I'm going to be doing some teacher training with her to build in her skills to be effective. I'm mostly just administering the programs though (after school and university). You know, transferring funds, constructing budgets, and balancing the accounts. What my primary job now is acting as the country rep for South Africa. Each country we work in has a rep who supports and coordinates the activities and projects that happen in the country: Pastor's trainings, home-based care trainings, building multi-care centres, gardens, communicating with donors, arranging international teams, food security, health, .... blah blah blah. I don't actually do the work on the ground; that job is for the people in the community. I don't even actually make up the budgets or proposals or track projects; that job is for Simon. It's a complicated structure that I can't explain right now, so I guess the point is, I'm definitely in a different line of work. But it's challenging (extremely challenging) and exciting! My strongest spiritual gifts are leadership and administration, so I guess this fits perfectly.

I hope to update often. I realized I'm awful and since there are some of you who are living out your Africa dreams through me (Katie) I'll have to keep you happy.

Love you all.

7 people, 6 hours, 1 fridge, 1 bakkie, and a partridge in a pear tree

On Monday I felt like a mother. I was saying good-bye to my children on the first day of school. The day started at 6:00 am. I'll spare you the details of the classic disorganized African start. Two hours later, Jayme, Elvis, Fortunate, Gugu, Stanford, Regina, me, a fridge, and the students' belongings loaded into the single cab bakkie and headed off to begin a journey I'm sure no one would ever think is possible. I'm not talking about the six hours of cramped and crammed travel but rather the fact that 4 Masoyi orphans were beginning University.

It's been four days and I still want to cry.

Incredibly resilient people with a strength I could never understand. People who have gone to ridiculous measures just to survive. People who have had to endure a grief far beyond anything I could understand. People who are destined to fail. People ignored, overlooked, left-behind, pushed to the side.

These are the ones that said "I'm going to make it." These are the ones that held onto a promise from God and a promise to themselves that they will bring change to those with the same story.

This is God's style.

Before I came to Africa, all I wanted to do was change the world. Many people told me I was going to change the world. But that's not God's style.

These are the beautiful faces of the ones who are going to change the world:

A First of Firsts

Today marks a special day. A day of all days! The day I've been waiting for, if you will.

Today, I saw my first Black Mamba.

I've talked a lot about this creature that is also known as The Shadow of Death, but to remind you of it's incredible talents to KILL, here are a list of facts:

- It is the largest venomous snake in Africa, growing between 2 and 4.5 meters long
- They are one of the fastest snakes in the world and can travel up to 20 km/h
- It can lift 2/3 of it's body off the ground and usually attacks the head and neck
- They are one of few snakes with the ability to strike up to 12 times in a row
- Their venom is so strong, a single bite can inject enough venom to kill between 15-35 grown men.
- Without immediate anti-venom, death has been known to occur in 30 to 180 minutes.

This blog is, of course, to encourage you all that I am well and the dangers in South Africa are minimal and nothing to fear.