Before we even were dubbed “World Racers”, they warned us to leave our expectations behind because whether they were positive or negative, they probably weren't going to be met. Let me tell you, that has absolutely been the case just in this first month! First we were scheduled at the last minute to go to a soccer ministry in Johannesburg that runs soccer camps for kids. We arrived to Joburg to realize that they were not running camps for kids, and that they really didn’t even have much for us to do there. We were going to look for other projects to work on in the Joburg area, but then the issue of transportation really reared its ugly head because we were out at a community center about 15 minutes or so from the outskirts of Joburg and even further to any ministry sites. After having a conference with the director and main contact in Joburg, Kelsey talked to the person that had given us this contact and he gave us another gentleman who lives in Pretoria and does ministry up there. So in a matter of just a couple days we went from no contacts in Zimbabwe or Botswana, to a new contact in Johannesburg, to picking up everything and moving again to Pretoria, the capital city of South Africa. We weren’t even sure what kind of ministry they did, or where we were going to stay or anything!
The four teams boarded the bus to Pretoria unsure of what we were going to encounter there, and let me tell you, just a couple days in, I am SO GLAD that God brought us here. We are at a ministry called Pop Up (check out www.popup.co.za if you want to learn more about what they do!) and we have made an awesome new friend and brother in Christ who’s name is Russell Fagan. Please pray for him as he may be accepting a new role in this organization after having us here for a short time. He has such huge visions but he is fully believing in Christ and His direction for his life and all of Christ’s plans for his life. He has an awesome testimony and we were able to pray blessing over his life, which was so cool. He will be our new main contact for these next two weeks or so while we are here, which is a new role for him, but he is so stoked to see what Christ is going to do and how He is going to show up!! We are going to be helping with the ministries around PopUp for the first week or so and then the second week we will probably be doing more outreach stuff specifically music on street corners (in the daylight of course) and going to children’s hospitals and schools to pray for the kids and build relationships with them! I know my team and the rest of the teams that are here are really itching to get to do some Jesus work. Pray for us that we continue to spread the love of Christ to everyone we meet, that when people see Team Degel rolls up, they see Jesus.
