two week mark

Yesterday marked two weeks until we leave Walk in the Light and Haniville. It honestly feels like just yesterday we arrived. The weather couldn't reflect my mood about leaving any better... its been cold and rainy the past two days. We have sat inside unable to work just reading, watching movies and keeping warm.

We have just started working on building a playground for the kids. There was one here previously, but it broke and was more of a hazard than anything so we took the remains apart and are now building from scratch a new one. I am hoping the weather will get better fast so that we can complete it before we leave. We have also been leveling out the soccer field here. It was very uneven and just bad, so we are trying to make it into a nice pitch. Especially since soccer is the favorite sport here, it will draw a lot of youth in.


As a team we went to the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, which was built for the World Cup last year, and a few of us swung from the top of it! It was so much fun it reminded me of bungee jumping the last time I was here. We also went zip lining recently, which was a blast.

We have also been going to the daycare a lot here. There are a few of them in Haniville, but we go to one on a regular basis. There are about 40-50 infants to toddlers and only two women working. Its pretty insane. The kids are so precious and we always have a good time just loving on them.





Here is the link to a video made about Walk in the Light ministries if you are interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmt7LF2Hf0k

three in one.

You give and take away

Three deaths in one week. All of them HIV/AIDS related deaths and all too young to die. A situation all too familiar here. The rule, not the exception. Today was the most recent death and in response to the news, the youth pastor’s words were, “You see. It never ends. We are doing this every weekend.”

Its true.

Since I’ve been here there have already been five deaths. That averages a death a week, and that’s only the people we directly help. Every day of the week Walk in the Light takes people from the township in to the local clinic and the hospital if they don’t have money for other transport or if they are too sick and need help getting in the car. Some of them get better with treatment and then we just watch some of them slowly deteriorate. After the news of Begamusi’s death today we went to his house to sing and pray with his family. His mother sat on the ground wrapped in a blanket weeping. This is the reality here and most people are numb to it. This week we took 2 children under the age of 5 to the ARV (Anti RetroViral) clinic for HIV treatment. The life expectancy of a child born with HIV is age 12. The week before we arrived, Walk in the Light was helping with a funeral when the funeral home lost the woman’s body. The funeral was cancelled and the family, consisting of her two young sons, was sent home with a refund of their money.

Its real life, it isn’t those infomercials with the sad music in the background and the cute starving kids. In the township of Haniville alone, children are born with HIV, orphaned by HIV/AIDS related deaths, and raped by HIV positive men on a daily basis. It’s right in front of me. I hear the first hand accounts and see the effects of it. There is no sugar coating. Its real life and whether or not you want to believe it it’s happening.

I don’t think that guilt is the proper response. I think sorrow is expected and empathy is called for. I know the problem is overwhelming. It is. It’s huge and it feels HOPELESS. But the God that I worship is bigger, stronger, and greater than any problem our broken world faces. And He has called us be his hands and feet, to show his love to the broken, the hungry, and the sick in this world. I know this isn’t the only big problem our humanity faces, but it’s the problem that keeps slapping me in the face and it’s the problem I wake up to everyday. So please pay attention to what is happening. Please pray.

prayer

Prayer has always been something that has been misunderstood in my life. It still is misunderstood and I only know that its misunderstood because I'm always wondering about it. Always feeling like I should pray more but never exactly sure how to. I've never had this innate desire to communicate with God and when I try to practice the discipline of prayer I wonder if I go outside and talk out loud, go somewhere alone and think to him, write prayers in a journal to him, or just sit in silence and hope for some communication. Or there is always the option of reading other peoples prayers to him like Psalms. Then I read things by Shauna Niequist in her book Bittersweet and I feel like although she isn't writing a letter to God, her thoughts and words are a prayer. Or how about my friend Ashton who just writes, sometimes spoken word, sometimes poems that are just real and raw and they strike something deep in me that official "bow your head and pray"ers do not. The times when I am overcome with grief, unknowing and confusion are the times that I have this gnawing inside of me and this big vacancy that is screaming at me that the only antidote is to pray. But I'm frustrated because I don't want it to always come to that point for me to pray. I want my life to be a prayer, I want my words to other people to be prayer, and the essence of my life to be worship. I want to communicate with God through everything, I want to hear him back and I hope that I don't always have to long for these things.


So I'm trying to figure out this prayer thing and the last thing I prayed for was that God would show me how to pray and preferably give me the desire to pray. It's all I've got.

overturned.

All I can imagine right now are overturned tables. I've never seen it in real life, but in movies and in stories when people are angry they overturn tables and I feel like someone did that to the table that is my time here. I'm not ready to say its a bad thing, but the table is definitely upside down and on the floor now. I can see that its harder to eat when the legs are sticking up, but I'm trying to find a way and I am sitting in patience waiting for God to show me how.

So many surprises in the one week that I have been here. The first three days were an overload of information and shock and emotion. I can't explain all of the events and news but its all been very unexpected. Its been hard that is for sure. A heavy week filled with sadness, confusion, insult and very much in need of patience, wisdom and discernment on my part. Every time I've prayed in this past week I have prayed for wisdom and discernment. Those two things sound like water in the desert right now. I'm thankful for the patience that I've had so far and peace that God has granted me. I have little to no idea of what the rest of my time here is going to look like, but I have a feeling it is going to be a lot of rebuilding, not literally. Rebuilding relationships, credibility, and consistency and I don't mean on a personal level.

Praying that God will show me the way. Just trying to follow him and let him reveal some purpose to me. I am clay to be molded.

Happy fathers day to all the absent, addicted, unfaithful fathers of Haniville.

new and old

Back in Haniville, Pietermartizburg, South Africa also known as my ikhaya (home). This place is so familiar it feels like I'm back in Spring 2010. The smells of the township, the hustle and bustle of cumbis (taxi's, more like vans) and the conversations in the Zulu language. It's been a joy being back here, and on most days it feels like the puzzle piece just fits again.

In just the 8 days I have been here though, I have had some very new experiences. First of all, being here with a different group of people is new. There are new people that come to the ministry, new children born and even a new addition to the church house that we live in. This week we went to a funeral for a man who was stabbed by his own brother. We drove the family to dress the body and then to the grave site, which was in the middle of nowhere in a field of other graves marked by cheap pieces of wood with paper names attached to them. The casket was cheap plywood and during the "ceremony" a tractor came and refilled the hole. It really added a nice touch to the ambiance of the situation... it was a sobering experience. I absolutely hate how routine death is here. Its the rule not the exception. While riding with a woman, Phindele, who works for the ministry my friend Elisa was asked "do you still have parents?" Elisa paused, almost with guilt, to say that yes she still had parents.

Things are different around here too. Last time I was here there were four boys that were always around to hang out or lend a hand and the dynamics have changed now so they don't come around as much. I also feel like I am seeing some different sides to the people working here. Not the founder or head of the ministry, but some others. Its like I have left the honeymoon phase and now see the reality of things here. It doesn't matter if you are in ministry or not you still struggle with sexual immorality and alcoholism. Its been a harsh reality to face but it gives me that much more purpose and makes me rely that much more on God and His plan for this place and for us.

Seeing familiar faces has been so much fun. People are so surprised that Alex and I actually came back... I think Americans say things like that a lot, but then never really follow through. This culture is such a hospitable one. So much us Americans can learn from native Africans.


"Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
Philippians 4:4-7

June 7, 2011

Leaving today for round 2 of South Africa.
SO EXCITED!

Finally this day is here.

lengthy lately.

So much has happened since I have last blogged on here. I apologize; I have not had the time or the Internet to do so. I will attempt to recap the recent events:

I will begin with Walk in the Light…there are not enough words, time or space to explain the way that Walk in the Light has impacted me. It has been the single, most influential time period of my life so far. It stretched me and grew me in ways I could not have imagined. While there, we build a mud house for a man named Mandla (which means power). Mandla is paralyzed from the waist down because his daughter’s boyfriend stabbed him in the back last year. He is HIV positive and also has tuberculosis. He leaves his tiny mud house (about the size of an American bathroom) 3 times a week to go to the local clinic for treatment. Sounds like a pretty rough life, yeah? You would never guess when you talk to him. Walk in the doorway and Mandla is smiling and laughing with you, always pointing out the positives rather than the negatives in his life. His attitude is amazing! He was always willing to pray with us and talk about God too. So we built him a brand new house and he is also getting a new bed that he can sit up in. God is good.



While at Walk in the Light we visited many homes and broken families who are sick with HIV and AIDS. We prayed over them and talked to them often. The township that Walk in the Light serves has a lot of AIDS and HIV from old to young ages. Many families are broken and torn apart because of it. It is not unusual to lose a close family member. It was very emotional and hard to leave on the last day of service sites. We had grown very close to the people at Walk in the Light and particularly four boys that we spent every day with. The four boys, Snash, Tash, Sihle and Njabulo are all around age 19 or 20 and living in Haniville. They are done with high school, but don’t have the money to go on to the university and don’t have the transportation to get to a job. They have made such an impact on my life and I hope to stay friends with them forever. I would love to return to Walk in the Light every summer if I am able to.

The last week in Pietermaritzburg we went on a safari and stayed a couple of days in a primitive, rural Zulu area. While in the Zulu tribe, we went to a marriage ceremony and participated in their many traditions. Going in to it I think that we were all under the impression that this would be just another touristy thing, but it was not touristy at all. We were with a real tribe and with people who truly believed in their ancestors as all-powerful rulers over their lives. It was really creepy actually. I don’t think any of us were prepared for the spiritual warfare that we experienced there. The second night was a horrible night. I woke up in the middle of the night with really bad stomach pain so I went outside and for some reason the nurses and one of the leaders were still awake. Right away they ran up to me and asked what was wrong so I told them I wasn’t feeling well and they informed me that they had already taken 3 different people to the nearest hospital…an hour away. Within 10 minutes I was throwing up and going to the bathroom non-stop if you know what I mean. It was progressively getting worse and the 3 people that they had already taken to the hospital were so dehydrated by the time they left that they were going in and out of consciousness and couldn’t even walk to the car. It was scary though, because there was no vehicle to take me to the hospital because both cars were already at the hospital. They had to call the Zulu man to drive an hour back and get me to drive an hour again to the hospital. It had stormed that night so the dirt roads were slippery mud and the drive was pretty dangerous to say the least. I made it to the hospital with my dear friends lying in the beds across from me. The hospital was government funded so to be honest it was pretty sketchy and kind of scary. I got hooked up to an IV like the other 3 but once my first drip or bag was done, the lady didn’t close the valve so it started taking up my blood! It was gross, but she just flushed it back into me with another drip. It was really interesting at one point we were all asleep and we woke up to all of the nurses and doctors in a half circle in front of us singing Zulu worship songs. It was so beautiful and it was good to feel God’s presence in our weakest, sickest and scariest time. Things didn’t get better after our time in the hospital though, we were all still pretty sick and we learned that the rest of our group was getting sick as well. Not as severe as we were, but the group was dropping like flies. Let’s just say the safari after that was not at all the joyous time we were expecting it to be. We were sick and weak the entire time. The only positive thing I can think of that came from that week was the unity that arose in our group and the close family that we became. If you were feeling well one hour you were taking care of someone else while they threw up had a fever. It was really touching to see the way that the group came together to care for one another.



After service sites and the Zulu/safari/hell week, we left African Enterprise for our trek down the East coast of South Africa towards Cape Town. On the trip we had many stops at interesting tourist places such as the Cango Caves, an ostrich farm, and the most fun…bungy jumping from the highest bridge in the world!

It was amazing and so much fun! I am so glad that I did it. We stayed almost every night along the water which was so nice especially after being so sick it was nice and relaxing to walk along the beach and smell the fresh, salty air. It was a nice week of travel and arriving in Cape Town we spent two days in the downtown area before splitting up into two groups, one group staying at a university called Bible Institute and the other group staying with families in a township called Oceanview. Oceanview is a community of coloured people (half black half white) who were displaced during Apartheid from their neighborhoods and forced to move to this region that was not developed at all, with no electricity or running water. They were forced to completely build a community from nothing. By the way, in South Africa the term coloured is not a bad term, it is an official class of people and they are proud to be coloured.

I am at home stays this week and am staying with a family of four in a two-bedroom house that is about the size of my living room at home. There is a bathtub only and no sink, a very tiny kitchen with a mini-fridge and no table to eat at. The family doesn’t have enough silverware for us to all eat a meal at the same time and only the “master” bedroom has a door. The family consists of Naomi and Reagan with their kids Uriel and Tiffany. They have so graciously given up their bedroom to us and they are now sleeping all four of them on two twin beds. They are a strong Christian family, just trying to get by. They have a small building behind their house that they let a Rastafarian man live in. One day Naomi told me that she is working at a ministry in the neighborhood where she doesn’t usually get paid, but she doesn’t care about the money she does it purely to serve God and to serve people.




It has been a very interesting week so far and I am getting ready to go home in only two weeks! It is going to be a very hard adjustment going back to the USA, but I am really starting to get excited to go home. I miss my family, friends and healthy food! I really miss Tara and can’t wait to see her and celebrate she and Luke’s recent engagement!:) Thank you all for your prayers and support. This semester has surely been life changing and has been the best time of my life so far. There is no doubt in my mind that this is where God wanted me to be and I am so thankful to have had this opportunity. Two weeks and I am homeward bound! :)