I’m in AFRICA! Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa to be exact. I absolutely adore this beautiful country, windy beach town, and the friendly people that live here. This month, my team and the team 1010 Fierce have been serving with a ministry called Global Leadership Academy: an education movement similar to Christian private schools. We are living in a hostel above an elementary school classroom. Crazy! Right outside my window you can see the gorgeously constructed high school next door, cows grazing peacefully in the field, and windmills on the horizon.
Global Leadership Academy runs a program called Global Challenge that is basically like the World Race: where Christ followers travel around the world for a year on mission to spread the love of Jesus. We’ve befriended a few GLA interns who are Global Challenge alumni. It’s awesome hearing about their experiences and stories from the mission field, especially since the Global Challenge is super similar to the World Race. The interns are awesome – they take us out for milkshakes, drive us to ministry every day, have worship nights and dinners with us, etc. I’m definitely not ready to say my goodbyes to them when we leave Jeffrey’s Bay!
There is a cute coffee shop at the high school where the Global Leadership Academy staff and teachers meet every other weekday for an hour of prayer and Bible study. We always join in on this special time with them, before then heading out to ministry. OH MY GOODNESS we have been extremely busy this month in South Africa! I apologize for not blogging or posting any videos the past few weeks; it’s honestly hard to find free time and when I do, all I want to do is sleep or Facetime people back home! But I promise that I’ll be sharing stories and videos soon, when I get the chance. I’ll explain the various ministries that my team and the 1010 Fierce team have been helping out with:
–Ithemba School: A Christian school for underprivileged children where we serve in the mornings. It’s basically a time of loving on the students who are so desperate for attention! We assist teachers in their classrooms, get our hair pulled out at recess, play a ton of hand clapping games, etc. It’s fun, wild, and exhausting but the children’s joyful smiles make it all worth it.
–Beats and Books: A Christ-centered after school program that I absolutely LOVE! In the afternoons, a few of us serve in a house that runs this program for students, in the same area that Ithemba School is located. We help teach the kids how to pray and worship, perform skits for them explaining Biblical truths, assist them in homework and literacy help, play games, help organize the library, aid them in learning how to play instruments, etc. Really cool things are happening through this after school program!
–UCSA Leadership Camp: The past week, my team and I were camp counselors for 2 middle school overnight leadership camps. It was the most challenging week that I’ve had on the Race so far, but man oh man, am I glad that I got to experience it! I’ll write a separate blog post just about that crazy week at camp and the incredibly dramatic preteens we led.
–Log Home: A log home for missionaries to stay in is currently being built on GLA’s property, right next door to the elementary school classroom/hostel that we’re living in. The sad story behind this particular log home makes it so much more than just a construction project. This log home is dedicated to Austin and Rebekah Wesson. Austin participated in Global Challenge (which I mentioned in the beginning of this blog post) and Rebekah participated in a Gap Year mission trip with Adventures in Missions (like a shorter version of the World Race) at the same time. While they were both in Jeffrey’s Bay, they met, fell in love, and later got married. Tragically, they passed away in a car accident the day after the wedding. Now, about a year and a half later, Austin’s parents are keeping his legacy alive by dedicating the log home to him and his passion for missions and Jesus. Future missionaries will dwell in this house and I think it’s a beautiful way that Austin and Rebekah will continue to bring Kingdom here on earth.
–Timion Camp: I didn’t participate in this ministry, but from what I heard, it was an amazing camp for 6 children with cerebral palsy and their mothers.
–Choir: Uncle Ian, a sweet, elderly Scottish carpenter and choir director in the UK, stays in Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa a few months out of the year. He’s currently here aiding in the building of the log home and was ecstatic when he found out that 13 American ladies were here as well. He asked us to form a choir so that we could sing at church. So, in the evenings before dinner, we all huddled together upstairs in the half-finished log home singing while men hammered in the background. After about a week and a half of practicing, we finally got to perform our song at church! And we didn’t sound half bad! Uncle Ian was GLOWING and apparently the “American girls choir” is all that he’s been talking about this month.
That’s a basic rundown of what we’ve been up to this past month in Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa! I feel completely at home here and honestly keep weeping that we have to leave so soon. South Africa, we’ll be seeing each other again one day.
