I’m currently sitting down on a mattress that’s resting just on top of the creamy tile floor of the shoebox of a brick walled room I was given to share with my dear friend Taylor Kimbrough for our stay in South Africa. Across the hall from our little room is the boys bathroom and a hall lined with brick walled shoe boxes of rooms identical to ours. What I’m describing is a flat of dorms; I know, I know, “so college” of the fourteen of us gap year participants. I’m sure all of our parents are thrilled that we’re staying at a (currently innactive) bible college!! Really getting the college experience!!! Mom and dad, I hope you’re happy!
We are currently partnering with one of the most sustainably impactful ministries I have personally had the opportunity to walk alongside so far on my race- actually though, this is not just the most impactful ministry I’ve gotten to be a small part of on the world race, it’s straight up the most impactful ministry I’ve ever gotten the opportunity to be a part of in my entire life.
From January 12th til March 6th, the fourteen of us will be helping Popup.
Popup began as a soup kitchen in Pretoria.
A group of people saw the homelessness in Pretoria and decided to do something about it. They began serving soup and bread after church on Sundays for as many men, women, and children as their portions would feed. As time went on, they began to reach out to local grocery stores and bakeries throughout the town and asked to partner with them. Because there are so many food regulations on expiration and sell dates, bakeries and grocery stores waste pounds and pounds of food on the weekly after closing time. Often times when the date of expiration passes, products are not ruined or molded. Expiration dates are for the buyer to be promised optimal freshness rather than a magical date that instantaneously turns food into inedible garbage at the clock’s stroke of 12. With this in mind, the stores decided to give the church loaves of bread that had reached or exceeded their expiration as well as vegetables and cans of broth for soup. The Sunday soup kitchen turned into an every day soup kitchen, serving unemployed and/or homeless men, women, and children of Pretoria at half past 12 o’clock afternoon after afternoon. As the relationship with the community around them began to grow and deepen, the men and women that began the soup stand started to dream bigger dreams. They wanted to offer more than just food every afternoon, they wanted to offer lasting relief and help that could catapult their community into economic success. So, they began to pray and eventually contacted a railroad company that owned buildings lining the railroad that ran through their town, Silvacop, Pretoria, that happened to be rundown from years of standing still, empty and of no use. The company miraculously answered with a donation of several four story buildings right by the railroad. They then renovated the buildings with the dream of making a homeless shelter. As time passed, the homeless shelter was up and active, inhabited by dozens of men and women, still offering lunch to as many people as they could with their pot of soup and bagged loaves of bread supplied every afternoon by local grocers of Pretoria. They were feeding and housing hundreds! All of this seemed to be a success until the starters and fulfillers of all of this began feeling convicted. The question “if we are feeding and offering shelter to the homeless and unemployed around us, then why would anyone seek out further education or job opportunities?” rose in their minds and hearts.
They began to understand that they were giving them all that they needed, free of charge. All that they were doing was putting a bandaid on socioeconomic stagnation and generations worth of poverty while what really needed to happen was offering skills and training that are capable of leading this community into lasting life change. Sustainable impact, sustainable help. The whole idea that it’s nearly useless to offer a hungry man a fish one time when you could teach him how to fish once, then leaving him capable of using that knowledge to provide for himself and others for a lifetime, with the potential of sharing his skill with others, leading to generations worth of food on the table rather than one fish handed to him one time was their understanding within their convictions. With this mindset/heartset/soulset, the homeless shelter was shut down and the buildings were then made into a skills and training center by the name of PopUp.
PopUp now offers a wide variety of classes from “Gardening God’s Way” to plumbing to electrical engineering to office and admin to basic literature or numeracy classes to welding, and so on and so on. Each class is 150 rands. One US dollar is equal to 13 rand, so 150 rand is about 11 dollars and 54 cents. Extremely affordable, plus they get tea time and lunch every day as well- no added cost. The classes range from 3 weeks to 2 years depending on how difficult the skill is that the student is choosing to pursue (welding is the only two year class that I know of). They also have an excellent day-care center for children who’s parents are taking courses or for locally employed men and women who can’t afford to have someone watch after their babies and work every day. Not to mention there are eye clinics offering free eye exams and glasses to those who are unable to afford treatments as well as a male circumcision clinic (HA this is one of the strangest things I’ve seen within a ministry– you don’t even want to know about all of the screams we hear and limping men and children coming out of that place, it’s hilarious).
All of this started from the ground up at Silvacop, but in 2008 Popup went onward with their ministry and bought some land about 45 minutes away to build another campus in Soshanguve, Pretoria. I along with the fourteen others are staying at the Soshanguve site because it is in need of more development and attention than Silvacop does currently.
Every week day (with exceptions of holidays), men and women from the ages of 16 til so elderly they are incapable of work can walk into the reception office and register for an aptitude test. My first week here I was asked to help proctor one of these tests for a classroom of people and I absolutely loved what Stephen (one of the incredible PopUp staff members here at the Soshanguve site) said to the class. He explained that the test was in no way to exclude anyone from getting into programs offered at Popup, instead, the test was simply to see in what ways does Popup need to come alongside them and offer specific education in order for them to succeed in their desired area of work. No one would be left behind, some would just have to take basic literary or math courses before jumping straight into the skill they chose. The entire process, from walking up to the receptionist’s desk to finishing their courses, is saturated in encouragement and God given hope. Before anyone can begin their training, they are required to take a three week life-skills class followed by a one week course on finding your passions and developing your God given skills. This month of teaching is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen any sort of school environment offer their students. The difference between Popup and the world of colleges or universities or educational campuses of any kind is that they invest in the person before their eyes; they understand that people who don’t have money don’t live with options for employment, rather they’ll grab at anything in front of them, typically leaving people living miserable lives with little to no understanding of self or their unique skill set. The people working here want each and every student to pursue things that they are passionate about so that they can live fulfilling lives opposed to working paycheck to paycheck, barely surviving. This ministry firmly believes in uplifting each and every human being who walks through their doors in a way that will leave them re-entering into their families, neighborhoods, and communities as men and women who walk in awareness of who they are capable of being, exuding Christ and His love for the rest of their lives. Walking testimonies of life change making their ways through these halls!! Incredible stuff, truly.
Last Friday the fourteen of us world-racers were invited in on the staff meeting held at the original campus in Silvacop. The way that they run every single thing within their business is in the deepest way admirable. Every decision is wrapped in prayer, every motivation or movement is inspired by scripture, every meeting is closed with worship. A beautifully functioning ministry. It was an honor to see behind their vision for growth in the future and sit in the presence of men and women who are in constant God-given creative inspirations for the communities their living in and investing in. Us racers walked out of that meeting on Friday afternoon with “hallelujah” on our lips- it’s just nice to know that there are Christian businesses out there who devote themselves in every way possible to good and holy things.
If you’re wondering what our role here looks like, here’s a little summary of what we’re up to: every morning all of the staff and every single class have individual devotions at eight o’clock before facing anything else in their day, so we split up amongst leading the welders, the staff, or life-skills in their bible study. After devos, some of us help in the garden as they are currently planting three thousand seeds in the soil right past the flat of dorms we’re calling home while others do other forms of property work. If there is office work to be done, we help Theli at the front desk or Fortunate and Stephen with scanning and printing documents. If all of this is being taken care of, we help Amazing Grace, our incredible and loving South African mama who happens to be the cook for the entire Soshanguve campus, with cooking and cleaning and serving and doing dishes. In the afternoons we either walk around the community and offer prayer or scripture to anyone that wants to have a conversation or are in any way interested about who God is or we are asked to head over to one of two after school care centers within Pretoria who house and help hundreds of vulnerable children around these streets. We do all of these things if we are not sitting in on the life skills class from 8 to 3 where we help the students and teacher in any way we can. I could write a whole blog about each and every one of these things we’ve been given the great privilege of being the hands and feet of over these first three weeks here. I could tell you about Esther and her legs or Martha and her family or Moses and his friends under the tree or the sea of yellow uniformed kids that Paige, Ben, Daven and I played with and told stories of Jesus to on a dirt patch right at the edge of the street last week or the way I’m changing and growing while prayers for healing are being answered and people are getting saved from our favorite fruit stand down the block to the students sitting in the life-skills class just a minute’s walk from my little room.
In short, I like it here and God is evidently orchestrating life change of all shapes and sizes.
To be continued!
