Hey folks! It’s Alex, and I wanted to tell everyone how we’re doing in South Africa so far.
The first five days we spent in Cape Town, taking a short break together as a full squad after several months in Central America in our teams. We were given new teams while we were there, and got to spend some quality time with our new team members! Now our team of seven is in Middelburg, about 90 minutes from Johannesburg. It’s a relatively small town (compared to Cape Town or Jo-burg), and we’re staying in a quaint-looking hostel that’s on the property of one of the towns high-schools.
The weather here is beautiful! It gets pretty cold at night, but during the day in the sun it feels like Georgia fall. South Africa so far has really felt like “easy-mode” so far. 99% of people speak English (British English, specifically), and the dollar is strong against the South African rand right now (not just numerically, but in terms of real buying power). At a fast-food joint, for example, a medium combo of a burger/chips(french fries)/drink will be maybe $4. Our hosts are very excited to show us as much culture as they can and have prepared as many local dishes as they can think of, and have already planned a safari for us during our stay! We feel very loved and we can’t thank them enough for everything they’re doing for us.
This month we’re visiting a few different high schools in the area and helping with Christian clubs (I think FCA-ish things), as well as helping our hosts’ church “Kruis Generasie”, or “Cross Generation” start up a specifically English-speaking service for the city’s population of people who are more comfortable/fluent in English than Afrikaans. We’re excited to hang out with the high-schoolers, and so far they’ve loved it as well. Three of our teammates are from California, and telling the students that you’re from Cali always gets huge response.
Caroline and I also received revised support deadlines since the initial deadline has passed. What these new deadlines are are essentially what it’s actually costing AIM to keep us on the field, and they can’t be as flexible with these. We now have of a deadline of $25,000 by the end of this month (and we’re currently at 24,785 so that’s an easy one!), and $28,000 by the end of June. So what this mostly means is we have two months to raise the next $3,000! I have total confidence that we will hit this financial requirement with time to spare.
I love you all and thank you all so much for all the support we’ve already received. You are all amazing!
