It's the beginning of the end! The final countdown! Month 11!
I can hardly believe it!! Where has this year gone?!
This final month of ministry, my team has the privilege of serving in the southernmost city on the continent of Africa: Port Elizabeth. And yes, it's winter here in South Africa… The first day here, I had to take a trip to Mr. Price (very similar to Old Navy, but super cheap) to buy more warm clothes.
Port Elizabeth from Fort Frederick
This month, we are working with two ministries, in a sense. We are serving at Lighthouse Family Church [the home church of our main contacts, Andrew and Cora], by helping at Firehouse (HS youth group) and attending both the morning and evening church services. Most of our time will be spent working at the Human Dignity Center. We are staying in the staff house for the HDC. It's very homey, two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. And it's just the six of us! Our first few days here overlapped with the last few days of N Squad being here in South Africa, so we got to meet them before they left and they left us balloons and a welcome sign at the house.
Firehouse
So back to the HDC…
The Human Dignity Center is a school (preschool thru 3rd grade) and after care center. They also have a program called "Moms on Call" that go out into the township/slums and help empower the people to get what they need. The center is all about partnering, not handouts. So, if they are helping a family improve their living conditions, they have to do something in return for it. That could be coming to clean the center every so often, coming to sew or make crafts at the center to sell, learn how to garden and care for a small farm so they can take that knowledge back to their homes, etc. The same is true for some of the children that come to school there. If their parents cannot afford tuition, the parents do some work in exchange for schooling.
All of the kids at the school come from the township. They are fed two meals a day at school before being sent home. Once school is back in session (all the schools are on winter holiday right now), we will be helping in the class rooms, especially with the special needs kids. Until then, we get to spend this week at camp with our church's youth group and then next week, we will be helping with some construction, painting, cleaning, and possibly doing some house visits at the HDC before the kids come back for school.
This is going to be an amazing last month of the Race! And it's great to start the transition back to "the real world" while I'm still with my team. It feels like we are very much back in America when we are in the Suburban and touristy parts of town.
But we aren't quite back in America yet…. 😉
