July 10, 2013
Hello Everyone ,
A new month has begun, like always it is hard to believe time is going by so fast. It is now month 7 and we are officially over half way done with the race. Only 5 more months to go, and I know time will just fly by like it has done thus far.
Last month as you know we stayed in Capetown, South Africa. We stayed in a town just south of Capetown, on False Bay called Stranfontein. We were actually able to go out into our backyard and overlook the beach which was a short (10 minute) walk away. It was pretty cool because we were almost directly across from what is known as Seal Island, which is famous for being the breading grounds for Cape Seals, and a huge hot spot for Great White Sharks. (This is the island filmed commonly for Nat Geo and things like Shark Week). It was really fun being in a location with so many amazing natural wonders and sites all around us. We were able to work into our schedule trips to see Cape Point & Cape of Good Hope, the most south-western point of the continent, see the African penguins, go Cage Diving with the Great Whites and take the cable car up Cable Mountain. Overall Capetown is a BEAUTIFUL city.
Our ministry changed slightly from when I last wrote you. Instead of working with the afterschool program like I thought we were doing my team ended up doing a variety of things with the pastor we stayed with. Our ministry included
- 7 de Lann – We spent a large portion of our time at the township just across the street from us. The time here was spent mainly with the children, including doing a kids program a few times, playing soccer, and taking the kids to the beach. We also spent time talking to the older community members, and holding a church meeting on Sunday evenings.
- Local Churches – We worked with a few local churches throughout the month, including the newest Hillsong campus, where we helped to paint the library and a classroom. We attended a bi-weekly meeting for local senior citizens and laid carpet squares at another local church.
- Camp – We helped out at the camp we stayed at. Including cleaning the pool (which we didn’t use Capetown was COLD!), yard work and other random tasks around the property in preparation for other guest visits.
- Phumlani – Phumlani is a community about twenty minutes away from where we stayed and the home for the afterschool program, we ended up helping out 4 or so times here, when the other team needed extra help. This time was largely spent playing with kids,(monitoring the playground), and helping to prepare soup for Friday evening, where they are in the beginning stages of serving soup to the children every week. We also attended a funeral for a member of the community who died right before we arrived.
When I write out what we did this month like this it seems like we did a lot more than we really did. In all honesty the month was really hard for me because we had so much downtime, a lot of our activities were dependent on the weather, and because it is winter here in Southern Africa we had rain at least four times a week, and it was in the low 40s-60s all month. If felt like being home, expect most places don’t have heat unlike in the states so we were usually quite cold.
After leaving Capetown we spent the week in Nelspruit, for our month 6 debrief, where were able to spend some time processing what had happened in the last two months with our teams, and thinking about how we want to grow in the next two months. We also got some much needed fun time in the middle of having meetings with the entire Squad and celebrating the 4th of July. I was blessed with the opportunity to go and visit the Jane Goodall Insitute, or Chimp Eden, which is a sanctuary for Chimpanzees who have been rescued. It was really cool to experience this as I remember studying all about Jane Goodall when I was in 5th grade. I was also able to go on a day long Safari in Krouger National Park, with some of my teammates and other close friends on the squad. Overall the month was great.
Team Sozo is now the largest team on the squad with eight members instead of seven. We were blessed to add our Squadmate Chelsea Ellis to our team the Friday before we left debrief. She will be a great addition to our team and is one of my favorite people on the squad. She and her previous team actually worked with us in Ecuador and Romania. I think this change will help our team grow in new ways. I am pretty excited about it.
We left Nelspruit for Mozambique on Saturday and encountered our first real travel day crazyness (Other than the landslide in Bolivia that made our 8 hour bus ride 18 hours). We took a bus from Nelspruit to Maputo, Mozambique (6ish hours) where we had to find transportation to the town of Biera on the Coast, we ended up chartering a private bus that wouldn’t leave until 4 am the next day. With no place to go we ended up sleeping in the Greyhound bus station on one of their empty buses for night before hoping on our next bus for Biera. We got about two hours into our journey where there was an accident up the road from us, and we ended up sitting in place for 3 ½ hours. We then discovered that we had to make a certain check point down the road before it closed for the day. We got to the check point at 7:07pm only to learn that it closed at 7:00 (Turns out it actually closed at 3 for no apparent reason Sunday) So we ended up having to spend the night on the bus and wait for the check point to open. Our driver told us it would open at five, but when that rolled around we still stat there, turns out they didn’t open the checkpoint till all most 9:45am on Monday. However we made it to Biera about 4:00pm Monday afternoon. It was a pretty crazy few days but overall we were really blessed in how things turned out, we had food, our own bus and a relatively safe place to sleep.
This month our team is working with one other team (Blessed Longing) who we haven’t really worked with before. We are all staying and working with a boys orphanage called Kedesh. (http://www.kedeshmozambique.com) There are 24 boys here ranging in age from 10 to late teens. Each Racer is paired up with a boy for the month, we will spend our time with our child and basically just live life with them, helping them with their chores, playing games etc. The boy I am working with is named Manuelinho, he is 13 and the newest boy at Kedesh. He speaks very little English and more Portuguese and one of the local languages. I was paired with him specifically because of my Spanish knowledge, seeing as Portuguese is very similar to Spanish. I look forward to getting to know him and spending time with him over the next few weeks.
I see that this update is getting long so I will end it now with a few prayer requests for the month. First please keep my team in your prayers as we are continually growing and challenging one another. But lately we have gotten to a place of comfort or maybe complacency would be a better term, and need to work on not settling for less and be willing to go deeper with one another. Also please be praying for the boys here at Kedesh, and the staff. And lastly for health for both teams here, Mozambique is our first country with a risk for Malaria, and other significant health problems. And we all want to stay healthy.
Thank you for all your prayers and support over the last 6 months. I really appreciate them. I look forward to seeing what this month has in store for my team and I look forward to sharing our experiences with you, both in my next letter and when I get home in December.
Katrina
