This past Sunday I went to Atteridgeville (a township about five minutes away) for church…and it was so good! I think the most encouraging thing I get out of the Christians here is to just see their faith in God when they have practically nothing. I mean, they totally get what it means to have faith in the Lord that He will provide for them. As Americans, I believe, one of our biggest problems with fully surrendering everything to Him is that we usually have everything already there, tangibly in front of us. We have food in our pantries, electricity in our homes (including internet!), running water, clean clothes, money, well paying jobs…and we don’t have to pray and ask for them because they are readily available. The people here don’t always have these things available to them, therefore they must truly trust in Him. And it’s also really encouraging to be in fellowship with the people of Africa and seeing that they have the same faith in the same God that I do and they live on the other side of the world (I know that may seem petty…) but it’s a really awesome experience.
Last night the leaders and some of the students planned a HUGE Halloween party for us! We all dressed up as people or things from the bible. My friend Ashley and I dressed up as “In the beginning God created day and night” I was day and she was night… it was so fun! There were lots of great costumes. But the best part was we really had no idea of how huge it was going to be, we were just told to dress up and come down to the barn (our common meeting place) at 6:30, but it was nothing I ever expected. It was decorated so crazy and there were all kind of corny little games… but it was so fun! And lots of good food! It was really just a great night.
This morning we found out who are on each of the teams, Swazi or Kenya. I am on the Swaziland team! And Wednesday morning our Swaziland team will leave for Swazi for two weeks. The Kenya team will stay at Alabanza… they won’t be going to Kenya until after Christmas break. We will all come together at Alabanza for Thanksgiving and a couple days after that we will drive to Jefferey’s Bay! We will stay there for two weeks before it’s just about time to come home for Christmas break! The time here has been seeming to fly by… I can’t believe it’s already November first!
Today was our last day of ministry and I’ve been going to Mamelodi everyday. I’ve just made such a connection with all of the kids and especially the ladies who work there – I’ve really enjoyed getting to know them, learning about their past and families…and just building good friendships with them. Those ladies are so sweet and a couple days ago they bought some coke and biscuits for us…so cute! And this is for my best friend Molly- on our last day today I was able to bring all those lollipops and gum that you gave me and hand them out to the kids… and they loved it!!! They were so excited to get sweeties, as they call it! So thanks so much for buying them because it really made a difference to those kids.
And to Courtney- I just wanted to let you know (hopefully you haven’t sent that package yet…) but if you’re still planning on sending it you should probably just send it to the address here in South Africa, not Swaziland because from what I heard because Swazi is run by a king…packages barely EVER make it there and we will be back at Alabanza by the end of November and our leader will be traveling in between South Afria and Swaziland the entire time we are there. So I really hope you haven’t sent it yet!
My love goes out to you all and you know how much I miss you!
P.S. One of my teammates, Joie, is extremely low on her funds…due to specific reasons like her church back home refused to support her trip… she is short a lot of money. And I’ve really just felt like God was telling me to let everyone who reads my blogs know of her situation. I know most if not everyone who reads this has already donated a lot to my own trip but maybe you could take the time to pray about it and see if you should make a donation to her account. Her name is Joie _______ and you can donate directly to her by visiting her blog page and selecting the link of the left hand side of the screen that says ‘Support Me’ … thank you all for your support!
* I’ve posted two blogs at once so check out the blog before this one as well…
