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.