Hey everyone! I know I have made several updates on Facebook, but I wanted to update here as well. I will be trying to post recaps of the year so far when I’m able to get wifi. For now, we are in Nicaragua and head to Honduras on Friday! Please be praying for my team and how I can be leading them towards the Lord.
South Africa Ministry:
In South Africa we taught at the Human Dignity Center (HDC) and worked with the Lighthouse Family Church. Every day we would arrive at HDC, help feed the children their porridge, and then head to our individual classes. I helped and taught in the Grade RR and Grade R, which are the preschool classes. After lunch when my kids went home, I would jump into Lené’s first grade class and help there. After school was the best part! We would hang out with the guys who worked there from the White Lodge (A rehabilitation center) and play games with the kids. And then throughout the week we would go to Lighthouse, the youth group, and hang out with the youth leaders.
The school we taught at was in the middle of a township which is the poorest of the poor. Often children come to school with open sores, most of them have HIV, and most if not all the food they get is at school. Townships are very dangerous, and though we had the opportunity to walk through the Walmer Township with GuGu (a staff member at the school who lives there), I would never walk through it without someone from Walmer.
About a week into our time at HDC, a group of college kids from the US came for their psych class. And this very event is what has changed my perception about how I have gone through my race. Without even seeing the children through their own eyes, they began looking at them through their phones and cameras. No stories, no names, no relationship, no connection.
If you have seen any of my pictures on any social media sites, this is the reason why you won’t see many ‘ministry’ pictures. Some months, most of my time is spent in ministry. Sometimes most of my time is spent in my Bible. Sometimes most of it is spent with my team. Most of the pictures taken or posted are not of ministry because it hurt me to watch these kids that I had come to love, be the subject of snapchats and hashtags and not realized as real people. To walk with a little boy through his home that is made out of mud and plastic and to ask him to pose so that people across the world can see that what I am doing is heroic, is actually not what Jesus asks us to do. I want to make sure that my heart posture is at its purest before pulling out a phone or posting a picture. When I do post a picture, the intimacy is pure and real.
My heart in South Africa:
January centered around the story of Hosea for me. On our 17 hour bus ride from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth, Lené and I started talking about the story of Hosea and Gomer. I read it our first week there, and soon after read Redeeming Love. I very much identified with Gomer. In preparation for the Race, I lost sight of why I was coming. I got so busy in packing and buying all of my gear and taking care of finances, that I neglected the Father. In Hosea, the Lord tells him to go and buy his wife back even in her prostitution. I was making the Lord pay for me over and over, re-romancing me when we could be going deeper in our relationship instead.
My heart in ZA was very much that I would stop making Him reignite our relationship, that even in the valleys I would hold tight to Him. Abraham Lincoln once said “I may walk slow, but I never walk backward” and that’s what I wanted. And through my next blogs, you’ll see that is exactly what I got when I chose it.
I also connected with the people in Walmer so deeply. I had a motherless child call me Mama for our last two weeks, and I was forever his. We were allowed to go visit two of our students homes, and I cannot describe the heartbreaking scenes that began in that township that have yet to cease on the race. I was exhausted every single day when I got home, but it was beautiful because I know that I gave everything I had and relied on the Lord more.
My team in ZA:
I absolutely adored my team “SoZo”. From the very beginning we fought for each other, we were honest, we called each other out in love and truth. I don’t think I have ever laughed so much and so consistently in my life. It was the start of friendships built on the Lord.
