Thoughts of a Servant

We woke up today around 5:30 am so that we could make it to Robben island in time.  Traffic into Cape Town is heavy around 7AM as everyone commutes to that location for work.  We ended up getting to the boat launch about half an hour before, but the CHEs that we were taking came one minute too late.    This is the equivillent to a holocaust museum for them, and its a rather big event.

Robben Island is definately a neat place.  Its such an event to see where Nelson Mandella was held and how he taught his peers and what they thought of eachother.  If they were unable to communicate, they would take sand from the ground and pour it through their inmates’ hand in order to show that they were of the same land fighting for the same rights.  Almost like calling them brother.

We also did some touristy stuff like wandering around the mall downtown and viewing all of the trinkets. We also ate a little lunch and I had a traditional dish of fish that was pretty fresh and pretty good

On the way back home, I had the most amazing discussion with this man Peter.  We talked about our aspirations and whatnot.  He has been to Kenya, Iran, Sudan, Congo, etc.  He preaches to youngins, and goes wherever the Lord brings him.  He has been held hostage, driven across rivers, been pulled by oxen across rivers, etc.  His story is absolutely amazing– but even more impressive is his passion for God.  That is exactally how I want to be.  He was talking to me about what his needs were, and I wanted to fulfill the need for a web communication type of thing where he would be able to stay in touch with those who were mentoured and learned from him.  He loves to stay in touch with the churches he starts and with anyone in general, so this would be a great way for him to do this.He recommended a book on servatude that was written by the man who carried his Cross across the globe.

We came back home and I was definately in the heart of the servant– I couldn’t get enough of serving others.  I wanted to help dishes, serving food, cleaning, and however I could.  We eventually went back to the other building where we are sleeping and then some watched romeo and juliet while others slept.

What a better way to spend a birthday.  It is truely amazing here.  So many experiences and so many stories that I wish I could remember already.  I have been blessed to be on such a journey with some amazing friends.  At 12am we were still up from the night before and they sang happy birthday! How amazing.

We began the morning at 7am again.  Another awesome worship led by Emily.  Then we got ready for sweet home and we were off!  There were tons of kids running after the car as we drove into sweet home.  There were so many smiling faces and impatient feet and open hearts.  We spent the first hour just warming up to the kids and throwing them up in the air and other various strenuous activities .

I immediately connected to this one little girl– unfortunately her diaper had not been changed in quite a long time, diahrea had been seeping through her clothing.  As difficult as that was to bypass, there is a greater issue at hand.  It seemed as though her eyes had not seen a smile and her back had not had a welcoming hand in a long time.  Looking past the stench and filth of her clothes, she needed to be embraced.  For a long period of time she had been crying, so I embraced her and began to sing Blessed Redeemer.  After a little bit of the song had been seeping into her heart she began to stop crying– She eventually fell asleep in my arms feeling protected and never letting go.

Later on that day we were sitting by the tire of a car listening to Erika speak stories from the Bible.  I was pointing out parts on the car for her to touch as she was embracing new adventures into colors shapes and sizes.  All of this exploration while diligently chewing on a satisfying bright-red balloon which she had been chewing for hours on end.  She found some dried mud on the rim of the wheel and began to hand it to me.  Being polite, I made a happy face and accepted the gift of gratitude.  She looked at me and realized that this had made me quite happy, and hence tried to find some more dried mud for her to give me.  After several times of looking for mud and handing it to me, she couldn’t find any more– and she decided that she wanted to give me her balloon…..

Here I am, coming clear across the world to serve–  And here is this girl, pretty much has nothing but soaking, filthy clothes and this red balloon, and she is trying to give it to me.  This is the last piece of entertainment and possession that this little girl has, and she is giving this balloon to me.

What a display of Love……  She has absolutely no word in English, but she knows that I was happy when she served whatever she had to me– She gave her all, and in return just wanted a smile and a hug.

There were some amazing times on this day– Again, I couldn’t have had a better birthday.  It was actually nice waking up thinking that I am serving the Lord rather than,”its mybirthday!”  We were going on the prayer walk around sweet home to pray for the community.  Two little boys had joined me and were holding my hand.  About half way through they were getting somewhat bored, so we began to sing the Round song, “Bubblin..  Bu-bu-bu Bubblin” and they were just enthused.  Before you knew it, most of the kids were singing along with the lyrics:

Jesus’ love is-a bubblin-over,
Jesus’ love bubbles in my soul

While the other half sang:

Bu bu bu Bubblin
Bu bu bu Bubblin

These kids were singing at the top of their lungs in any which way that they could…  I jokingly had some of them sing at the top of their key range, and some of the guys wayyyy down low in their voice.  It was fuuuun.

Then that song got a little old so we began to sing the beloved song “Who let the Dogs Out?!”  And then pure chaos broke out.    Kids were doin the dog voices, were were trading off, it was raaaad!

A lady from Sweet Home that was HIV positive, had TB, and also had Menginitis.  She had wandered in looking for some sort of food.  Deb and I immediately tended to her as she had mentioned that she was HIV positive and started balling her eyes out.  We prayed for her, and she said she was doing better– but I spent the next half hour to hour trying to explain to her why we couldn’t take her to the clinic for treatment.

This is probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do– Pray over someone with an amazing word from God, and then tell them that we weren’t capable or didn’t have the means to help her get to the clinic to help her pain.

VBS went extremely well– Will did a great thing with the kids by teaching them without knowing english how to memorize Bible verses.  Kelsey did a fantastic time with the arts and crafts as we made backpacks for the kids.  Ended up making a bunch for CHE’s as they all wanted to see my maaad drawing skills.  Emily had some fun going outside with jump rope and a four-corner game that they made up on the spot.

Got back to the Academy in time for the talent show tryouts.  Then we went for some dinner at the kitchen and they happily sang the most amazing happy birthday song in English and in Xhosa.  I just received yet another beautiful card from Yanga, Azlle, Nathi, and Mimitha.

How blessed I am to be here on this day and with Jesus.  Jesus works in amazing ways, and up until this point I had some sort of curiosity as to why I am here as I cannot teach, I cannot do sports nearly as well as anyone here, but he has blessed me with and has used me to love others.  It is so amazing to see His hand at work.  I am so excited to see what is next.

The day before the bday!  We started out with awesome morning of worship.  Again, its an awesome way to start the day.  Then the women did their thang, and the men went into a group huddle back at the home.  This was exactally what we needed.  We found out where we stand as the men of the group on issues and topics that we can tend to.

I stayed the day at the academy.  Taught the 6th graders, and it was a class of little girls.  These girls were absolutely amazing, they are so full of life.  To think that they had a hard childhood is unbelievable.  They loved the animation lesson and they were drawing flowers, mountains, worms, etc. etc. (some of them wanted to draw skulls– wow).  I videotape their flipbooks, but then I turn around and Tahandile (the littlest girl), has written a 120 letter hangman puzzle for everyone to figure out. HAHA  I have that on video.

Then I taught the 12th graders and they were definatly not into the project.  So i finished a half hour early and then couldn’t continue so we went and played volleyball with Deb Cass and hte girls.

Had some dinner and homework with the kids.  Served them and then had a nice discussion with Nqaba and Julius– Julius is a fan of JP Morgan and is also a major poet himself.  I am looking fowrad to hearing about his work.  Nquaba is going to be a storyteller and a writer for sure… He said he has a hard time trusting people, but I want to be someone he can trust.

Had another great devotion time with the team and are ready for the birthday.

Started another day with the morning worship.  That is definately the way to start any day.  We spend 30 minutes of our day devoted to songs and worship.  Then we break up into our devotion groups.  Mitch was especially Jesus-spoken today.  He was on a roll.  I just had to sit back and listen.

We then got ready for sweet home.  The team was going to sweet home and they were going to drop me off at the Church in Philippi for some IT work.  They needed some virus repair and network resolution.  For lunch they fed me the ever-so-popular goat soup inclusive with goat head and intestine.  Wow, what a lunch.  The team had so many wonderful experiences, but was really shaken by the affects of Sweet Home.  It was difficult to take in what type of situation these kids were living in.  The kids had broken glass, condoms, human waste, mold, lice, ringworm, etc.  It was a sad situation, but there is Beauty in the Pain– Thanks Cass!  Great phrase.

We got back and it was a scheduled culture night.  We had some african beats with traditional dancing, as well as the beloved chicken feet dinner.  They had us fooled when they said we were trying ostrich-eye.  They fed us and some of us had the gag-reflexes, but it turned out to just be a fruit instead.  Haha.  They got them good.

We had a touching closing with the group as we went to talk about our daily travels and how we were experiencing the moment.

Woke up at 6A to get started.  We went to the other building to do morning worship and devotionals with the kids.  Our group has only 5 people in it   We talked about prodical son and how it shows us our view of Jesus to us.  Next we made some lunch and headed off to Sweet Home.  We get there and get setup inside.  We also had to pick up church members from the local church in Philipi.  These trips are pretty fun because you have a completely different driving experience as you have to drive on the left hand side of the road as well as a left handed manual.  But these rides are also very dangerous as you cannot show any type of value or challenge as people get robbed at gunpoint simply on the township streets in mid-day.

Arriving at sweet home is definately a humbling experience…  You drive through some of the most poverty-stricken townships as they are being held together by shack material and barbe wire.  Its interesting that most of the people will not leave the township  because generations of family have grown up there.  The government even tried creating low-income homes for them to live in, but people will just turn around and rent out the location and remain in the township.

Its amazing how everyone is so content (hungry, and poor, but unbelievably happy).  If you were to hug one child, that would be the end of your lonliness as children from down the street would come and cling to you to pick them up.  Not even 10 minuets into the trip, Kenny, Andrew and I had 3 children in our arms, had a dance off, did some top spinning, jump rope, london bridge Afrikan style.  The Chays are also very friendly.  They are an amazing group of women that are diligent to learning the works of the trade.

We did several activities with the chays including a describing & drawing game, a tower building game, and a card game– each of these items focused on concepts that they could use to build their sewing business.  Oh man, everyone had a BLAST doing these activities as they couldn’t describe in english so they used Xhosa or hand signals hahaha.  How awesome.

Then we did a prayer walk around the Sweet home township.  Jess had the awesom task of doing the walk in crutches.  Before the walk, we had, at most, 4 kids…  By the end of the walk, we were holding hands with almost 20 kids.  What an image of God that is.  These kids are going to be in our VBS activities tomorrow!!!

On our way back to Bridges of Hope, we got Jess’s and Mitch’s luggage as it came in from London.  Once again, more grace shown by our Awesome God.

Getting back, we had a Afrikan Idol where they could sing or dance!  The actvitiy was a MAJOR hit.  You should see the video!  Kids loved it.  Might have to join in next time. . .

Closed up in some food and prayer and off to bed!

- Monica came and picked up from home, brought to rock harbor.

- Went to LAX

- Video in the Airport

- French girl who played guitar

- Service dude who did the Jesus rap

- Got on plane and had some fun sittin next to Deb

- Got to London 11 hours later

- Left on next flight, still next to Deb haha.

- Had some cool discussions with Deb constantly visiting Jess and Em in 1st class awesomeness

- Around 7am local time, 10PM PST, we saw the most gorgeous sunrise ever as the blissful blistering red sun creeped over the spouting clouds

- Landing we got all of our luggage (except for Jess & Mitch — bags were lost), and the pills were confiscated.

­- Got to Bridges of Hope, saw the most beautiful scenery ever.  The home is amazing, very well upkeep and amazing views.  These views included table top, sleeping giant mtn., gorgeous views

- Greeted by all of the kids

- Ate some dinner

- Talked to Julius about his parents and why things happen to good people

- Led the church service at the academy with 8 songs and two devotionals by Will and Deb.

- Went to bed