Team Blondetourage and Tribe of Judah made it to Jeffery’s Bay, South Africa! Touchdown was a little over a week ago after 75 hours of travel since we left the States.
Our time here has been so enjoyable and I kept on finding excuses to not blog, just so I could soak in all that we’ve been doing and seeing. Unfortunately/fortunately (po-tay-to/po-tah-to), I had zero excuses from writing one afternoon…
There were these cute, stray, rabies lookin’ horses roaming around our ministry site. I asked my teammates who wanted to go pet them with me and all of their super-smart responses were a ‘no.’ One teammate kindly said if I went over to them, I was going to be drop-kicked by one of the horses. The next thing you know, I found myself crashing into a fence because the super cute horse had kicked me in the leg. I had to leave ministry for the day to ice and elevate my leg, so I had lots of alone time at home to update y’all on all the other exciting things that have been happening.
Aside from the horse mishap, the past week has been incredible. We’re staying in a log cabin on the grounds of Global Leadership Academy and the infrastructure and seclusion remind me of good Midwest cabin time.
We rested for a day after our long travels and got right into the swing of things with the Trans Baviaans mountain biking race. The race is 230k and has to be completed in 24hrs or less.. it’s nuts and looks extremely difficult. We loaded up many trucks (bakkies) and headed towards the top of a mountain and camped there where the stargazing and campfires also reminded me of home.
Volunteering at the race was such a privilege and the endurance the riders have is pretty inspiring. I worked at the check-in and check-out station, correlating the team number and amount with the data we had provided. We were fortunate to help with this event for the past two weekends, and the chaos of it all gave me flashbacks of how I felt during my waitressing days.
During the weekdays, our ministry is involved with an after-school program called Beats and Books. They focus on helping with homework, literacy, numeracy, and giving instrumental lessons.
Our team has helped during the before-hours with administration and organizational tasks and loved on the kids during the program hours. When the kids got there, it was such a gift to be instantly connected. We played Boggle (a game I used to play with my Grandma Marge), helped with homework and English spelling, followed along to a dance, and worshiped. The best part about worshipping with these kids grade 1 to 11 was the unity and instrumental involvement. All of the kids learning to play instruments like the drums, violin, piano, and guitar, were practicing during that time. It was one of the ‘you had to be there’ moments and it was so special.
The Lord is doing amazing things and this is only the beginning.
I miss you all tremendously.
Love,
Ailie
