11 days until debrief and today I’m thinking about South Africa! Check out my blog from yesterday that explains why I’m thinking back over the last 11 months and what Zimbabwe was like.
Country: South Africa
City: Pretoria
Ministry: Month 2 we worked and lived at POP Up. POP Up is a holistic people upliftment program. POP UP’s main function is providing skills to underprivileged members of the surrounding communities. Everyone on our teams was placed in areas around POP Up that best fit their passions and skills. I worked spent most of my time in POP Kids, a daycare for the children of the learners. We had several other opportunities this month to serve around Pretoria including praying for children at the hospital, evangelism in the park, and helping the university with a mapping project. Check out Raychel's blog for more details.
Contact: Russell Fagan was our contact this month. He has such an incredible testimony and loves the Lord so much. My favorite part of this month was spending time with him and his family. I learned so much from him.
Living Arrangements: We lived in the conference room of POP up. Every morning we had to pack up or stuff so that classes could take place. I ended up sleeping on chairs pushed together most of the month. It was nice to use the big industrial style kitchen and have the property to ourselves at night. I had a great porch that I spent lots of time with God and saw beautiful sunsets on. Raychel gave great detail in this blog about our SA living.
Teams We Served With: Team Redeeming DUST served with Team P31, one of our all girls teams in South Africa. I loved leading with Emily that month.
Money & Exchange Rate: South Africa’s currency is the Rand. 8 Rand equaled 1 US Dollar. Pricing was pretty comparable to the US.
Language: South Africa has 11 different languages. Most people speak English though. Afrikaans and Zulu are also common languages.
Off Day Fun: We loved spending off days at a little café we found in the heart of Pretoria. I would go and spend as much free time there with delicious food, coffee, and time with God. We also had a Braai at Russell’s house one day and went to a mall for a day off.
Sayings From the Month: “Howz it?”, “Huddle”, “Baie dankie” (Afrikaans for ‘thank you very much’)
Great Things From the Month:
-I feel like I grew even closer to my team this month. Parts of month two were really hard for me and they supported me and loved me so well for it.
-Every morning we met together with Russell and some of the POP Up interns to do devotional. I loved that time together.
-I loved learning more and more about God this month, my identity in him, and recognizing his voice.
Hard Parts of the Month:
-Obeying God is tough sometimes, but always worth it and always what is best for us.
-Team conflict sucks. But in the end, it brought us closer together.
Lessons Learned:
-I learned so much about who I am this month. I learned to love myself for who God created me to be.
-I learned more about being a daughter of the King and learned to see God as my husband this month.
-God spoke in huge and new ways this month. I was falling more and more in love with him and loved spending as much time as I could with him.
-I learned to stand more confidently in my leadership abilities because of what God says about me.
-Obedience to God’s voice was HUGE this month too.
-I learned to abandon everything and depend only on God this month.
Memories:
-Movie Nights on the projector.
-South African Braai at Russell's house
-Porch time with Emily
-Breaking my toe while having a dance party with Alexandra, Emily, and Stef.
-I loved spending lots of time with our squad leaders in South Africa. We had so much fun with Alexandra and Ben.
-I will never forget praying over the sick children at the hospital including one little boy who was possessed by a Demon.
-We had some great nights of worship this month.
-The day we went to the big mall we got a flat tire before even leaving the property. We had so much fun with it though. Nothing we did could get the tire off. So instead, we took funny pictures, made up funny songs, and ate chocolate. We weren’t going to let a little flat tire spoil our day.
-We made SO many trips to the Pick ‘N Pay and ate so much popcorn and chocolate. We had fun cooking too.
-I mentioned this in my last post by Passion: Pretoria was incredible!
-At the end of the month, we all came together for month 2 debrief in Nelspruit. It was so fun to spend time together as a squad. We went on a safari and saw some really awesome animals.
Random Thought of the Month:
-God brought my cousin Patrick to memory for the first time on the race this month while praying for kids at the hospital. If you have follow along at all you know that God has continually brought Patrick to mind since then and is showing me what that means for my future!
South Africa was another great month. What ways does God speak to you?
Today I’m heading to San Jose with my teammate Ben to visit a group from his church including his parents who are here on a week -long mission trip. I’ll do my best to post about Swaziland tomorrow but if not watch for it on Tuesday.
