Hello from Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa!!
Sooo it took 92 hours to get from Atlanta, GA to Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa BUT I’M HERE! We arrived on the night of Sept. 12th and had the weekend to rest because of jet lag. Then we started ministry days last week on September 16th. This is what ministry has looked like so far..
The first thing I did was a “soup kitchen” and let me tell you.. it’s NOTHING like a soup kitchen in the states. Basically, we cooked two big pots of ramen noodles and added some cut up meat. Then, we loaded the food and a bunch of plastic dishes into our host’s truck. We drove to the squatter camps, which is basically a very poor village here. When we got there, we set up our “kitchen” in a shipping container. Then, our host told us to go out and find children. So we walked through the village and when children saw us, they would RUN because they knew we were there for the soup kitchen. One man handed me his baby with no questions asked and I tried to explain that I will give her food and he immediately just said “I know, I know when she’s in your arms she’s safe.” MY HEART.. It was a surreal experience to see the poverty but at the same time, all the kids were extremely joyful. While I was there, my prayer was that the kids and people in the village might understand why we are there: out of the love of Jesus. I really really hope they don’t look at us as Americans and think that we are their savior, but rather that they can look at us and know that Jesus is their Savior and because of that we will serve them out of His love.
In the afternoons after the soup kitchen, I would return to our home (which is also on the same grounds as a High School) and helped scrape wallpaper off the walls of the school bathroom so that they could then be painted. There’s lots of school remodeling tasks to be done here.
I also got to paint scripture on the walls of a coffee shop, which was right up my alley! I really enjoyed it.
From the 19th-24th I volunteered at a Christian Camp called UCSA. I was a camp counselor for a bunch of 4th-6th graders. It felt like a week of never ending VBS: it was fun but also very draining. We taught the kids the church clap, got to answer all their questions about God and Jesus, and ultimately love on them. At camp, I got really sick one morning and had to sleep for the entire day, and when I didn’t get to be with my campers they wrote me the sweetest get well card! And they prayed for me and said they missed me. It was so sweet to see that we had actually built relationships to the point where they really cared about me, and I with them. I hated to miss a day of camp, but knew that I had to rest.
Once I got back from camp, I had a couple ministry days where my task was to patch holes then paint a couple walls for a classroom house.
But theres been other sweet moments outside of ministry assignments. Like, a couple days ago I was walking home from the grocery store with a group of racers and as we passed a security guard, he said, “Are you missionaries?” And we said, “yes.” He was like, “You’re Christian? Will you pray for me?” So of course we stopped right where we were and sat down our groceries to all join in prayer over this man. He said his family members are not believers, and he’s going to visit them this weekend so he hopes to share the Good News with them. We prayed and then went home. But something that struck me is that he recognized us as missionaries. Maybe it’s because of the way we dressed or the area we were walking to. But maybe it was because we gave off a “Christian vibe” and honestly I hope that’s right. It feels nice to not only give off the “American vibe” but also a sense that we love Jesus.
Soooo yeah, I’m really loving South Africa. I love where I live and I have loved my ministry and the people I’ve met so far. I also love being close to the beach 🙂
If you’ve read all the way through this, thanks! And I hope you can kind of understand a little more of what I’m actually doing here in Africa.
