Please Refer to the FB :)

the slow african internet won't let me post pictures here, even after walking 25 minutes to an internet cafe to do so. however, facebook did allow me to add a few recent snapshots, so please check there if you are dying to get a taste of my life! :)

From Here to There!

It has been quite a while since I have posted a blog, and I am sorry to keep you all in the dark about my life here! Truthfully, I feel so overwhelmed as I sit here trying to write this post because so much has happened since the last time I was able to blog on April 1^st. It has definitely been a crazy rollercoaster over the past few weeks, and there has been some drastic highs and lows, but overall it has still been wonderful and I am loving every second of it!

The day after Easter Sunday, our group set out for a week of cultural immersion in two places: a rural Zulu village, and a safari. Because the size of our group is so large, we had to split in half, and while one half went to live with the Zulus, the other half went on their safari, and then we switched halfway through the week. I was in the group that went to the Zulu village first where we stayed for 2 nights, and then we went to the area of the safari after that for 2 nights. The village was an absolutely incredible experience, and we were introduced to many new things about the culture. The way the people live out in the rural areas is much different than the shantytown neighborhoods in the city, so it was interesting to compare the two environments. I slept in a mud hut with 5 other girls, the toilets in the village were outhouses that were basically just a hole in the ground, and all water was fetched from the river. We experienced one of the most incredible thunder and lightning storms we’ve seen while we have been here, and the amazing amount of rain really helped make an amazing amount of mud. That night turned out to be a rather traumatic one in the sense that one by one, members of our group started to get sick, and the first 5 people that were very sick were driven to the hospital about an hour away in the middle of the night. I was not one of those people, but I became sick a few hours after they left, and it made for a rather unpleasant experience at the end of our stay in the village. Thankfully it only lasted about 24 hours for me, or at least the bad part of it did, but in the end I think there were only 3 people in our group of 25 that did not get sick. It put a bit of a damper on our week and many more people had to go to the hospital during the next few days, and the sickness in the group remained even through our safari and even once we got back to PMB. There are many guesses as to what caused the illness, and since it definitely was not a contagious disease, it could have come from harmful bacteria in the water from the river. We still are not completely sure, but we are thankful to finally be over that difficult period of the trip!

On a lighter note, the safari was SO MUCH FUN and I absolutely loved getting to see so many animals! My favorite was the giraffes, and we saw quite a few around the game reserve which was just wonderful. We also saw rhinos and hippos which are both part of the “Big Five,” and wildebeest, impala, and the tracks of many elephants! I am hoping that when mom comes in 2 weeks we will be able to see some elephants on our safari, hopefully we will get lucky!

We arrived back to PMB that Friday night, extremely tired and anxious to get on Skype. Sadly enough, that night and the next day consisted entirely of running errands and packing up our rooms in order to be able to move out on Sunday morning when we would depart to Cape Town. It was a hectic weekend and a sad one too as we said goodbye to the place we had called home here in South Africa for the whole of the semester. So it has been back to living out of a suitcase, and that Sunday was the start of our 6 day trip along the Garden Route, during which we stayed at hotels each night along the coast and I got to put my feet in the ocean again, finally! The views along the trip were absolutely gorgeous, and I just could not get enough of the beauty of every single part of this country! It truly is breathtaking no matter where you are, and I get frustrated with taking pictures because a camera just cannot capture the amazing beauty of it all. One of the days along the stretch we stopped at Bloukrans Bridge where the majority of us took part in bungee jumping off what is known as the “world’s highest bridge bungee jump,” and you know, it is just one of those things that you can’t pass up! It was too amazing for words, and as many of you probably know it was not my first time bungee jumping, but it was still SO much fun and I just can’t get enough of it! We also stopped at an ostrich farm and got a very in-depth tour of the farm, and I got to sit on an ostrich! Annie, I know you will be disappointed that I did not actually ride one, but I hope sitting on one is close enough :)

Getting to Cape Town was an extremely exciting day, one that we have been waiting for for months! The city is absolutely beautiful with ocean views wherever you are, the ocean is on all sides of you basically, and Table Mountain stands high behind. Our group is split in half again while we are here for the last 2 weeks, and we are taking turns doing homestays where we stay with a family in a poorer neighborhood in the suburbs of Cape Town, and staying at a Bible Institute college campus nearby. I am in the first group, and I have been living with a Colored family in the town of Ocean View, which is a dominantly Colored neighborhood (Colored meaning a lighter skin color than Black). Adrian and Francis Presence are my host parents, and they have 3 daughters, 2 of which are married, and the youngest one still lives at home. Her name is Samantha, she is 22, and Alyssa and I spend most of our time with her! They are the nicest, most welcoming family, and they also are very funny and very open with just about everything you can imagine! They keep things exciting, and we are having the time of our lives staying with them. Mrs. Presence is a GREAT cook and has been making some awesome dinners for us each night, and Mr. Presence LOVES to talk and keeps us up late with the great conversations we have with him, and we love every second of it! I have loved getting this opportunity to see from the inside how a family lives here, and having 9 days to discuss with them the struggles of their society and of their people, and getting to ask them our questions about their culture and about their country as a whole. This is a family who was displaced during the Apartheid era and was forcibly removed from their house and put into the tiny little home they have now among thousands of others who were placed just like them. The conversations that we are able to have with them are so eye-opening and really educational, and this experience is really something that I am valuing more and more, and I am trying to invest myself and my time into this homestay as much as I can this week before I will have to leave them!

The only time I have been able to get onto the internet at all is when I am at the Bible Institute for a few hours throughout the week, so that alone has really been a struggle for me. Nate and I have officially been together for one year as of Saturday, and not getting to talk to him has been difficult for me. I miss you Nathan!

Because the internet is not strong either, I can't really upload pictures due to the limit of bandwidth. I hope to find an internet cafe sometime next week and hopefully then i will be able to put some photos either on here or on facebook, because I want to show you a little bit of what has been going on, and I know you probably want to see it also. I will get those on just as soon as I possibly can, just be patient! :)

I love you all, thank you for keeping me in your prayers, and please continue to pray! God is so good and He is doing wonderful things in me and in this country, and all I can do is give Him the glory and the praise!

There Are Hardly Words.

Yesterday was my last day at Walk In The Light, and needless to say it was heartbreaking for me to say goodbye. These past 4 weeks were so transforming and impacting for me and for all of us, and I am coming away from it with different perspectives and countless relationships that I was able to form with people of all ages at both Walk In The Light and in the township of Haniville as well. Having gone through this experience that has really been a big part of this semester and of my life, I wanted to just post a brief overview of just a few different parts of my overall experience in hopes that you all will be able to possibly get a glimpse of why I have been so overwhelmed, exhausted, and joyful these past few weeks!

This is the Walk In The Light building where Phindile (one of the women who runs WITL) has her little office, and where church services and youth groups are all held inside. The walls and floor of the building are cement with a simple tin roof, and before services each week the pastor cleans the sanctuary by spraying out the room with a hose to get the dirt out. To the left of this picture, right on the other side of the grass is a small playground that a previous APU semester group had built, and each day when the kids in Haniville got out of school, they would come play on the playground and run around on the soccer field, and some days we had time to join them and be their own personal jungle gyms!
These are a few of the women from the community who work at WITL in the fields, and in this picture they are on their lunch break, but they are some of the sweetest, most joyful, and hardest working women I have ever met. We had group meetings with these women and some of the gogos (grannies) from the community every Tuesday and Thursday as part of our Community Engagement section of our time there, and in those meetings we sang songs with them (zulu songs, of course), danced, played games, laughed, and really got to know them better and hear their stories and the things they have been through. These women are so full of life and such a joy to be around, and after one of our meetings with them I cried tears of joy for just how present God is and how at work He is in this community and in the lives of
these beautiful women. This is a part of the field that we took weeds and grass out of in order for the women workers to be able to use it for more gardening space. With the big group that we had, we were able to do this whole field in a few days, where it would have taken the gogos and the women a much longer time to complete. We also dug a trench through this area and through the rest of the field and up the hill, and the trench was so that an irrigation system can be installed to water the gardens instead of having to be watered by hand by the women each day. They were so appreciative of the work we did in the field in the hot sun, and we had so much fun doing it since we did it along side them and each other, singing songs in both zulu and in english.
This is a picture of what the inside of the building looks like, and where they hold community church services every Sunday, junior youth group every Wednesday, and senior youth group every Friday. At the beginning of every day when we arrived, we met as a group in these chairs and one of us would lead a devotion and share a few verses to encourage us, we would sing songs together with help from Phindile on the zulu songs, and then pray for our day. It was an awesome way to start each day, to regroup and get back on the same page, and to daily prepare our hearts for selfless service and to invite the Lord to be in all parts of our work.
Each morning we carried all the building supplies from the Walk In The Light building through Haniville to the place where Mandla lived, the man we were building a new house for. Mandla lives in a mud hut like many of the other residents in Haniville, but after doing countless home visits to HIV and TB infected people of the town, it is obvious to me that Mandla's living situation is the worst I have seen. Mandla is also positive for both of these diseases in addition to being paralyzed after being stabbed in the back last year by his daughter's boyfriend. He is an amazing man with an undying faith for the Lord, and the joy he brought us is just indescribable. A few times when we were at his house, his daughter was there with him, and it was such a strong symbol of grace to all of us that he still talks to his daughter and loves her so much, despite what happened. One more thing (of many) that really stood out to me throughout our time of talking with him and getting to know him was that the only picture he had of his wife who had passed away was her passport ID. Just subtle things like that really make me recognize my wealth and the things I take for granted every single day.
Stage 1: we dug out the earth where we would build the new one-room house. (Mandla's current house is seen in the back)
Stage 2: after measuring, digging, and picking through rock, we installed the poles (all with Michael, our zulu-speaking instructor for the building process).
Stage 3: beams for the roof and wire netting for the walls. (32 degrees celcius on these days)
Stage 4: long green branches were nailed across the wiring on both sides, and we filled the empty wire cages with rocks and other rubble that the children helped us collect from along the sides of the road.
I have a hundred pictures of the kids that swarmed our work site each day, eager to play with us and help us build the house. Having them come to be with us each day made it nearly impossible not to form relationships with these children who are desperately thirsty for love and attention. They are the definition of unconditional love, and I was truly blessed to learn the true meaning of joy from them.
A precious girl named Andizwa. I will be praying for her every day.

Siyahamba ekukhanyen kwenkhos!

(translation: we are walking in the light of god)

I apologize for letting a whole week go by without an update for all of you who I love so much! About halfway into the week I realized I had not even updated my own mother on the things that I had been doing, and after I sent her a brief message as I rushed back out the door to go to yet another group meeting, she told me I should simply copy what I told her and put it in my blog. Sometimes I think I need to make my blogs into an elaborate and grammatically correct masterpiece of a compilation of all my thoughts, but I think especially now, my entries are going to have to be slightly more brief and I am going to have to learn how to be ok with that! Here are the words I sent my mama, forgive me for not being able to give as many details as I have in the past... believe me I want to! There just is not any time.

"Working at Walk In The Light everyday has been so great and so wonderful. This section of the semester is definitely a drastic change from the others though, our days are full and exhausting but full of growth and learning too! Our days are like get up, rush out the door, eat and load up the vans, work all day, then come back and eat dinner fast to have time for meetings, and then go to bed! Whenever I can, I try to say hi to Nate on Skype for a few minutes or quickly email him, but I never have time to even tell him everything that I've been doing, let alone time to talk to friends here and hear about other people's days, journal, blog, or even shower! Haha I go to bed exhausted every night and wake up feeling just as exhausted, but I say many prayers for strength throughout the day and that is what gets me through! I am happy as can be, serving the poverty-stricken community of Haniville with every ounce of energy I have, digging ditches, pulling weeds and grass for hours (my back and hamstrings have never ached as bad as they do now), cutting down trees in the pouring rain, and then taking breaks after lunch to play games with kids, sing and dance with the gogo's (grannies), organize youth groups for the kids and young adults of the community multiple days a week (of which we are fully in charge, like games, worship, message, everything!) I am so tired physically and mentally but I really couldn't be happier, on Tuesday I cried tears of joy, I just can’t even begin to describe how incredible it has been! After this week we only have like 1.5 weeks of service and it breaks my heart to think about that! I want to stay and serve and help and do all their work for them and play with the kids who smell like pee and get covered in dirt from head to toe by noon every day!"

Learning to serve, serving to learn.

In Christ alone my hope is found

He is my light, my strength, my song

This Cornerstone, this solid ground

Firm through the fiercest drought and storm

What heights of love, what depths of peace

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease

My Comforter, my All in All

Here in the love of Christ I stand

All classes but two are either finished or on a break until we reach Cape Town in April, and this week will be the beginning of an entirely new chapter here. On Thursday, we will disperse to different places around the city that we have been assigned to, and for 4 weeks we will go to the same place, 4 days a week, and we will be servants for the organizations in the area that are in need of help. The place I will be serving at is called Walk In The Light, and it is a place that works to rebuild the communities around it and give tools to the residents in the townships so that they can receive an income that they earn themselves and can take steps closer to achieving a better quality of living. They assist people with HIV and AIDS who are too weak to work, and they do regular home visits as well as driving them to the clinics for appointments and medication. It is a place for children to come after school to play with friends and the staff while their parents are still working, and Walk In The Light puts on a youth group each week to spread a Christ-following faith to the youth in the communities. As my service site experience begins and progresses I will have many more details for you all, I’m sure :)

I am excited about finally getting to spend time with the people of this country and provide the little help that I can, I am honestly feeling slightly nervous. For the whole time we have been in this country so far, we have been in the classroom or on tours learning about the poverty, brokenness, and hardships of the people, and yet we sleep in our comfortable beds on a beautiful hillside campus that provides 3 meals a day and does my laundry for me (which has been quite expensive actually). This week, however, we will finally get to spend our days interacting and learning from the wonderful South African people and coming along side of them as they struggle to put food on their dinner table each night and have become used to their loved ones dying from HIV very regularly. I look forward to playing with the children and talking to the women, hearing their stories and learning from them.

Quite honestly, I have been nervous about this period of our semester. Because of my empathetic heart, I have been afraid to let myself fall completely in love with this country in fear of taking the pain of the people I meet onto myself, and carrying their burdens on my shoulders. I think I have subconsciously been guarding my heart up until this point, but I am beginning to find comfort through prayer and discovering once again that God has blessed me with empathy for others so that I can be a vessel in taking the burdens from others and giving them to God, and that because I am simply a vessel, these sorrows are not for me to carry but that God will free me of that heaviness and fill me with even more joy and love for me to in-turn pour back out. This is something that I know I could easily loose sight of, so if you all could be in persistent in prayer over this I would appreciate it so much.

Other prayer requests:

- -a large number of Christians in Nigeria, about 500, were killed on Sunday for simply being Christian.

- -The government in South Africa has passed a law to legalize prostitution in this country for the 2010 World Cup. Young children will be sold into prostitution in order to make money for their families, the damage this will cause to this country will take decades to repair, and HIV and AIDS will get a grip on many more lives all over the world.

My 2 Day Visit to the Country of Lesotho (leh-soo-too)

Background:

My Psychology professor takes his class each semester on a trip to Lesotho, which is the small country located in the middle of South Africa to ride horses through the land and learn about the people. About 2 months ago, our professor, Doug, was in a bad accident on his motorbike and broke his leg and pelvis, so this blew his chances of riding horses this semester. Being the wonderful and kind man that he is, Doug still organized the trip for our class of 11 students, and had two of his friends, Dave and Tish, take us instead. When we asked him why he couldn’t just come along with us and skip the horseback riding, he told us we would understand once we saw the intensity of the road going up the mountain, and he was very right, we quickly discovered that he would have been in a lot of pain.

Thursday and Friday:

We left our campus at 6am Thursday morning, and were driven 2 hours away from PMB where we got breakfast and then piled into the bed of a 4x4 pickup truck that would be taking us the rest of the way up to Lesotho. Our overnight bags were loaded into a separate car that transported Dave and Tish as well, and followed our truck up the mountain for the next hour and a half. We were all so excited to be sitting on crates in the back of an oldschool off-roading pickup that when our driver/sani pass guide, Greg, asked us if we wanted to get wet by way of the large puddle in the dirt road, we were all for it! Sure enough, a nice spray of water came up over the truck and cooled us off quite a bit, and once we finally stopped screaming and laughing, Greg asked us the same question again, except this time regarding mud. After a few seconds of hesitation, we agreed to go for it… “Why not, we are already wet!” and… “This is Africa!” So after driving for a few more minutes up the dirt road, he hit a HUGE mud puddle just right, and a wave of mud came from all sides of the truck and we were quite brown after that, to say the least.

The drive up the mountain was about 1.5 hours, and the dirt road could much better be called a rocky road. It was the roughest, most uneven road I have ever seen, and a broken pelvis would not have felt great on that. Good thing you didn’t come Doug, even though we missed you! Also, the view was absolutely incredible, and pictures couldn’t even do it justice, but I couldn’t stop taking shots of the landscapes we were driving through! The whole weekend I took a total of 300 photos because everything was just so so so beautiful that I couldn’t help myself!

Once we got to the top, we dropped off our bags at the chalet we would be sleeping at, and got our horses. The horse they gave me happened to only have one eye, so that was pretty funny, and within 3 minutes of our ride, the horses took off into a full gallop before we had even gotten situated, and two girls fell off their horses. They were ok, but a little more bruised than the rest of us at the end of the day.

We rode from 12 to about 6:30pm, and walked/trotted between the tiny little town (which consisted of about 15 mud huts, the guest chalets, and the pub- the tourist attraction since it is the “highest pub in Africa!”) and traveled through the hills and plains where the Lesotho people live and herd livestock all year long. It was mind-blowing and utterly confusing at times to see how they live, what they use for survival, and how “wild” they seem compared to the civilization we are used to. Trees do not grow in their region, only grass, so instead of burning wood for fires they burn cattle dung, and this goes for warmth and also for cooking their food. In the church we always hear about people-groups who are without a bible translation in their language, and the people who speak the Lesotho language, Sotho (pronounced soo-too), are one of these groups. Most of the people we met only spoke the Sotho language, and did not know how to read and write because of the lack of education among the livestock farming communities. But anyways, so the horses were pretty well-behaved for the rest of the ride, very cooperative for the most part and we were very impressed. My horse kindof tripped a lot, but I guess that is to be expected from a half-blind horse. I liked her a lot, and I named her Lala (the zulu word for sleep) because of her “sleepy eye” :) Also, we galloped a few times on our way back, and I am pretty sure that’s the first time I have even galloped on a horse before! That was really exciting, and I liked it a lot!

Once we got back to the camp, or town, it was almost dark with thick rain clouds in the sky, and even though all we wanted to do was sleep and rest our aching bodies, we found a little bit of energy to get dinner at the pub and sit by the fireplace to warm up (I forgot the mention how high of an altitude it was, and since I don’t know the exact number, I’ll just tell you it was WAY up there, high enough to snow any time of the year, and to get winds up to 120 mph in the hills!) I ended up falling fast asleep next to the furnace in the pub cuddled up next to becca and alyssa while a man played guitar in the corner somewhere and softly sang along. When it was time to go to our chalet, they woke us up and we walked back in the thick fog, and luckily I had my headlamp (nate, it was worth the trip to walmart to get that, I use it all the time!) It also came in handy when we quickly realized our chalet did not have electricity, so my headlamp and a few candles were our only light source. It was great! We cuddled up in our sleeping bags on our comfy bunk beds and slept SO good that night!

When we woke up in the morning, the fog seemed even heavier than the night before and made it seem like we were in a movie as we could see the people and horses moving about as we walked to the pub for breakfast. We could hardly walk because of how sore our bodies were, and we could hardly sit because of the bruises from the saddles. We drank lots of coffee and were fed a delicious breakfast of yogurt, granola, fruit salad, fried eggs, bacon, and toast. We met up with a guide who took us around the town and was able to show us the inside of the mud huts, tell us more about the lifestyle of the Lesotho people in this community, and answer the many questions we had! Some women invited us into their hut because they wanted to dance for us, so we all squeezed into the little room as they sang and danced for us for a long time. That was a wonderful experience.

When it was time for us to go, we piled into Greg’s truck once again and bundled up, preparing for a very cold ride down the mountain. We made it probably about 15 minutes before it started raining on us, and since we are so smart, we took out about 4 sleeping bags and used them to make a fort over us as we all huddled together underneath them and tried to stay dry. It worked great, and in the process we got very cozy and close with each other to say the least! Haha but we had so much fun on the ride down, riding in the truck with bruised butts and aching bodies was definitely something to laugh about, and many more pictures were taken :) We made it down safely, and back to campus exhausted but so filled with excitement and joy. I have so many thoughts to process and journal about, so many experiences and lessons to apply to my own life, and I have yet to find a free minute to even begin to do any of that! What an adventure though, it is something I will never forget, and I wanted to share the stories with all of you who I know would want to hear :)

Nearly no time to blog anymore!

Hello again, after a long time without an update!

Classes have obviously come into full swing, and I am busy busy busy! After only 2 weeks of school it is time for midterms already, since our entire semester of classes here is condensed into 6 weeks! Term papers will be due next, and before I know it I will be in the middle of finals!

Although the condensed time makes for VERY little free time and much more stress, I will be so thankful for the intensive study period once it is over, because that means more opportunity to invest attention into our service projects and fun excursions in the weeks afterwards. For now, however, it is tiring, but we will make it!

I am really enjoying all my classes, my South African professors are incredibly nice and so fun to learn from, so despite the work load and number of assignments they give us, I like learning here!

This past weekend we took a trip to Durban on saturday and went to the beach! It was such a relief to escape the crazy heat and finally be in the ocean again... the water in Durban wasn't quite as warm as in Umzinto the previous weekend, but much more refreshing in the heat and just felt to nice... obviously i was VERY happy :) I'm getting tan again, which is fun because everybody in the states are in the middle of winter, and I couldnt be happier being as far away from the cold as I can be ;) We got to shop in a GREAT market downtown, and i began my purchasing of souvenirs and gifts to bring back to my loved ones, everything is SO cheap, and it was not rare to see earrings or figurines for 5 rand, which is equivalent to about 70cents in US dollars! I was able to control myself though, and had to constantly remind myself that that shopping time would not be my only opportunity to shop while I am here! (mom, when you come, keep in mind wall decorations and kitchen utensils... i love them).

The weather is beautiful here, very hot but with an occasional thunder storm in the evenings, and today I layed on a towel next to the bottom of a waterfall up the hill from my chalet, and I studied for my midterm as the mist from the falls kept me cool in the heat! It was WONDERFUL!

I want to also briefly express my EXCITEMENT for starting service projects after classes end. For 4 weeks, each person in our group will be assigned to a location in the outskirts of town, usually in small group of about 5-7 people at each site, and we will be giving our time and help to these places for the remainder of our time in Pietermaritzburg. I really cant wait for this opportunity to serve, and to be one more set of helping hands in a place that is constantly short handed!

This week... to begin with, valentines day on Sunday was lots of fun, and our activities committee here put on a fun, romantic, beautiful dinner in the Jabulani room on campus, complete with flowers and candles and michael buble background music :) The committee even gave the kitchen staff a recipe for chicken alfredo pasta and garlic bread... tasted like home for all of us :) I finally got to open the letter I got in the mail from nate, and it was so encouraging and uplifting, and really made the day easier to get through while missing him.

Natalie turned 13 yesterday on the other side of the world, and getting to talk to her on skype this morning helped me get through that, I miss her and my family so much, and a birthday makes the distance much more apparent to me. The combination of both of those events back-to-back was honestly very emotionally draining, and paired with midterms and minimal sleep, these have been some of the toughest days I have had since I have been here. I am incredibly thankful for the wonderful friends that I am surrounded with here though, and they have really been so supportive of me and comforting too!

Until the next time I find an opening in my schedule! Comment so I can hear from you all as well, i miss you all!