It's month 6 of the race!! I can't believe it! This month my teammates and I are near Cape Town, South Africa working alongside Zehandi Missions.
Fun facts about life here in South Africa:
- We are living on a 52 acre guava farm
- We are living and serving with another all-girls World Race team, Team Veracity
- All 14 of us are living in a room the size of my bedroom back home…sleeping on our sleeping pads and snug in our sleeping bags because it is typically freezing
- Our kitchen doubles as a dining room, living room and meeting room, and consists of a fridge and 1 burner 🙂
- The weather here is unpredictable- it is winter here so it is pretty chilly (40s-50s typically) and unfortunately winter is also their rainy season…It will downpour for 20 minutes, hail for 5 minutes, then 15 minutes later the sun is out and it’s warm
- This is the first country on the World Race that we have been able to flush toilet paper…can’t say I expected that
- Our contacts just moved back to South Africa 2 days before we got here (after doing missions work in Malawi for 4 years) so we are involved in a lot of foundational ministry projects…they are an amazing and powerful family
- They just purchased a house for their ministry base YESTERDAY!! So our last week here we will be able to help start some clean up/construction projects and start to get things set up!
- The primary national language here is Afrikaans, which sounds like a mixture of Dutch, German and English to me, and the secondary language is English…which has been SUCH a blessing to be able to communicate more easily with people because most people here are bilingual
- My favorite phrase in Afrikaans is 'baie dankie' which means 'thank you very much' and literally sounds like 'buy a donkey'
- This place is full of wonder and beauty- I’ve already seen penguins, fed a sea lion and gone cage diving with great white sharks! The scenery here is amazing…God blessed this place with an extra dose of beauty 🙂
- The people here are beautiful and passionate- they will easily share their stories with you and let you into their lives. They are hungry for love and relationship.
- We are doing all sorts of amazing ministry here including prostitution ministry, taking care of orphaned babies, outreach at the “squatter camps”, gardening/cleanup projects and ministry with the guava farm workers- leading bible study for them before work and going to pick guavas with them in the fields, etc.
- I’ve learned the African ministry mindset is “sleep when you’re dead”…a day of ministry could quite possibly begin at 4:30am (leaving early to get to the day shift at the baby house) and end at 2am the next morning (returning home after nighttime prostitution ministry)
- I’ll admit it can be physically exhausting, but I’ve never enjoyed ministry more or been more spiritually challenged…I couldn’t love it more 🙂
Lovely team Radiant at Boulder Beach seeing the little beach penguins! 🙂
Cage diving with great whites…no big deal.
