Hello Everyone!
I'm sitting in a McDonald's in Pretoria, South Africa where Wifi is very hard to come by. The home we are staying at has no internet access so I'm sorry for the lack of updates lately. But we are all alive and well!
Our time in South Africa has been an important time for our team but it is nothing of what we expected. The ministry we have partnered with, BEAM Africa, is known to use their teams to help teach life skill classes to the youth, spend time with the children, and contribute to the mentoring program that they have in place in the townships of Pretoria. But BEAM Africa is currently in a very hard transitional season, and many of their ministry sites are no longer what they used to be. Long story short, we aren't ministering to the kids that we thought we would be ministering to. Instead we have been helping our hosts, Erika and Louis Lingenfelder (two amazing people), with anything and everything they need. We have also been helping at the church in Mamelodi with changes in their external structure. The church is looking to impact their community more and more, so they have been taking the steps needed to do exactly that. I've been learning that the South Africans my age in the church work very hard. And as I was talking to the Pastor of the church he told me that this generation, his younger men, are picking up lazy tendencies. "They don't want to put in the work anymore, they rather just hang out." It made me wonder what his thoughts would be on my generation back home.
We're currently setting the foundation for two large structures we are adding to the church property. Over here in Africa there aren't many machines that do the field work for you. It is all done by hand. All the digging, plowing, cement making, it's done by hand. Yesterday I had to flatten the ground with a stamper to make the ground nice and hard in preparation for the new additions. "You never want a flimsy foundation. Make sure you pound the ground until it is as solid as rock" Pastor Ezekiel told me. So I did. In the scorching sun, with my blistered hands, I pounded the ground over and over, knowing that the hard work would eventually create a strong foundation. After hours of hard work, we had the ground strong enough to lay the structure on.
It has sort of been like this with the six of us World Racers. We've been setting the foundation as a team knowing that we can't afford to have one that is flimsy these next 10 months. Due to the lack of Instagram and Facebook distractions, we've had great team discussions. There is something profoundly valuable when like minded people gather around a table, share a meal, and talk about important things. No phones, no emails, no Netflix, just each other. The six of us have been sharing our lives, our fears, our motives (good and bad), our desires, our passions, our hesitancies and our joys. We've been having many hard talks that we know we need to have in order to make that ground nice and hard. We don't do that very much today though. It's hard. It's tiring. It's uncomfortable at times. If we have an issue or a differing opinion with someone, we just choose other people to hang out with that are more like us. But I'm learning that this trip is not just about learning to love the people I serve cross culturally, but also learning to love the people I serve with. Even more, serving the very people I serve with. Now imagine a church who was determined to love the people they served AND the people they served with no matter what (it so often seems to be one or the other). A church whose foundation was set on the strong love of Christ and the promises of our Father. I believe that a church and a people like that can surely shake the flimsy foundation that the empty promises of this world currently standing on.
Eight more days in South Africa, then we head out to Swaziland. Thank you for all of your prayers so far. Times ahead will surely be rough, so please keep them coming. I know it will be the power of your prayers that will refresh my soul when the temptation to complain and quit comes. Love you all!
