It is hard to believe we are in Africa right now. South Africa is so Westernizer. There are many things here that remind me of home: McDonald’s, KFC, legit shopping malls, Michelle size clothes (after Asia), and most of all the freedom to share about Jesus! After being in a closed country, Vietnam, last month, I’m so thankful to have experienced this on the Race. We have been in Africa now right over a week, and it continues to amaze me. Spending our first few days in Johannesburg was good, but a very hard city to be in due to the large amount of crime. Last Tuesday, the 1st, we boarded a bus to take a little ride down South to Cape Town, where I am spending the month.
After a 22 hour bus ride, and a few obstacles, we arrived to Cape Town on Wednesday evening. Then we proceeded on a 30-minute bus ride to the campground where we are staying for the month. As we drove up, it is not your typical campground, more of a hostel with rooms to host individual teams. Each room has beds, and bathrooms, but there is a separate bath house to shower in; we are so lucky that we have hot water when we shower. Hot water is so valued due to the fact that it is early spring in SA, which means we are freezing coming from Asia. Our warm clothes are limited, so we are layering up and trying to stay warm.
A few of us in the van on the way to the bus station in Joburg.
The night we arrived we met out contact Malcolm and briefly was introduced to him. Following the next morning we had a formal orientation where we heard about ministry for the month. Oh and I forgot, we are paired together this month with another team, which means there are 11 of you us living at the hostel. We are working with the same contact but doing two different ministries. Upon hearing about the ministry opportunities we all jumped on a bus to head to our first site for ministry, which is a Township, a local village, where one team works with an afterschool program with about 100 kids everyday from 2pm-6pm. These are local kids from the Township, which has about 5000 residents. The next place of ministry is Camp Joy. This is a 12-week rehab program for individuals (both men and women) to voluntarily enter to get their lives back on track. Camp Joy is right beside the hostel and within walking distance. After seeing both ministry sties, we were told which teams would be working at each ministry site.
Katie Stoddard, team we are spending the month with, and myself on our first off day by the Atlantic ocean.
My team is working at Camp Joy this month, and this basically means we go in Monday-Friday to live life with the residents. The mornings start with worship/devotions and group teaching, lunch, various activities in the afternoon, and evening worship/devotions. Our first day was Friday, but only spent the morning at the camp. Monday was our first full day, where we went in and sat in on all the morning devotion. In the afternoon, we led an activity to get to know the residents better, where we briefly shared our stories and opened the floor to hear why they are at Camp Joy. It was so good to hear their stories, and though the differences in our stories, we all understand the love of Jesus. Most grew up in Townships, where life was very hard and little to no opportunity to get out of the poverty cycle. These individuals are at Camp Joy to get recovered from drugs, which has overtaken their lives and many have lost everything. They also come from gang life and the harsh reality that many of them have experienced much hardship in their lives. They vary in age from 15 on up to 46 years old, all having many life experiences, but similar ones.
Tuesday afternoon we had the privilege of inviting the girls over from our hostel for a pool party. It was much too cold for us to swim, but they loved it! I put on my red “onesie”, lathered up in sunscreen due to the harsh African sun, and sunbathed for 2 hours with the ladies. There are 9 women at Camp Joy, and they are each so beautiful and full of so much love for us and Jesus. The afternoon was full of laughter, dancing, swimming, sunbathing, seeing our side of the fence, hearing their stories, coffee with LOTS of sugar, sweet time with Jesus and sharing life with them. I had such a great time with each of these women and so glad we are working with Camp Joy. I am super pumped to see what God has in store for us this month at Camp Joy, and I expect Him to move in hearts like never before! May you come alongside me this month in praying for Camp Joy and all that God is doing in this center. As always, thank you for your support and prayers, as they are felt daily. Stay tuned to hear more stories and hopefully their individual stories as well.
Sunrise from the hostel, Indian ocean ahead and mountains on both sides.
