Greetings from South Africa! We are so glad to finally be here after quite a few days of travel. We left on the 11th on an overnight 12-hour train from Oradea to Bucharest. As usual, sleep was hard to get in the seated and upright position. Some teammates resorted to sleeping on the floor, but that usually ends up with some sort of consequence. This time the culprit was: Gum, or “chappy” as they call it here in Africa. We arrived in Bucharest, Romania on December 12 around 8:30am, grabbed some coffee at the train station and headed via bus to the airport. Once we got settled at the airport with our entire squad (50 of us) meeting up again after being spread across Romania, we settled in to conversations and some much needed naps.
At 2:30pm we were finally allowed to check in for our 5:30 flight, which is when we could check our bags and travel much lighter! We had a great flight from Bucharest to Doha, Qatar, which is the first Middle Eastern country I have ever been in. Our entire squad was blessed by Qatar airlines because they put us up in a hotel for the night. Of course, we got in at 11pm and had to be out the door on the way to the airport at 3:55am, but at midnight, we found ourselves eating an amazing buffet dinner in the hotel dinning room.
By 4am, we were driving down the deserted streets of Doha headed for the airport where we had a 7am flight to Johannesburg, South Africa! With a few delays at the airport, we were seated on the plane and most of us were asleep! By 3:00pm on the 13th we landed in South Africa. We gathered our luggage, which ALL arrived (Praise God!), and we met our ride from the airport to our ministry site. We are in Pretoria, which is the capital of South Africa, about 30km from Johannesburg.
We are working with an organization here called, BEAM Africa. The directors of this ministry are Louis and Erika, both of which are amazing people! We are blessed to get to work with them this month. BEAM Africa works in the poorest South African neighborhoods feeding kids and training people in those communities basic job skills to be things like: Nail Technicians and Computers as well as small business training.
Because of the holidays, most things in South Africa shut down for Christmas/New Years, including BEAM Africa. We were able to head to their building and help clean out the kitchen and the offices to get ready for the holiday break. While we are disappointed to know that our ministry with BEAM Africa would have been so fun, we are excited because we are still able to serve!
We are living in the BEAM House, which is right down the dirt path from our contacts home. The BEAM House is for the volunteers who come to work with the organization. Currently, there is another family living here with 3 kids. There are also kittens in the back yard, which is fun for me, since I love cats. Around the Beam House, there are a lot of beautiful gardens! Part of our ministry here is to serve around the Beam House with gardening (today we pulled weeds, moved rocks, made a cactus garden, etc.,) and the construction of a missionary home that is almost finished here on the property. I am happy to report it was almost 100 degree’s here today! The African sun is HOT!
The other night, we were sitting in our house having some team time and we get a knock at our door. It is our contacts son, who has a huge basket of food for us! Now, if you have any exposure to our lives at all, you may know we eat on a very strict food budget ($2 USD per day). Most of the time it involves a lot of pasta and rice. This gets quite old after 5 months! So, the basket he gives us is FULL of fruits and veggies!! BEAM Africa gets a weekly shipment from the local grocery stores of all their expired foods. The food is still good, just the sell by date has passed. Normally this food would be delivered to the center, but since the center is closed, we could be blessed. We are jumping up and down, SO excited to get wonderful things to eat that our bodies want so badly! We sat down and just felt this blessing from the Lord! Team Lion Heart had a refrigerator that was full and it was an amazing site to see! Just another praise in our lives on this trip! God always provides. ALWAYS. He loves his kids.
This month we do not have access to Internet, so our blogs and other communications will be limited this month. Please don’t let that stop you from writing to us or commenting on our blog!
We sure do miss home this Christmas Season. We love all of our friends and families and miss you a lot, but are SO thankful that we are here in South Africa, serving in this community. Merry Christmas! We love you!
