Falling in Love with Rapscallions
So, as you know, Team Haven is in the outskirts of Cape Town
in a place called Nordhoek Beach. We have been here for just over a week, and
have had the amazing opportunity to work with “Living Hope Ministries”.
Our job
here has been with a group that works with young kids. We have been working on
something called “Holiday Camp”. It is a weeklong camp that has us working with
lots of rapscallions here. There are some amazing people running the camp and
the kids are breathtaking. They are not white, but they are not black, they are
what the African culture calls “Colored People”. Their roots go back to
Madagascar, Ethiopia, Napal, and other places. They are some amazing kids. You
would probably call them underprivileged, and that would probably be what they
are classified as, but they are such great kids.
One boy
told us a story of his little brother William. William is maybe 9 years old,
his mother died of HIV, his sister is under arrest in a south American prison
for smuggling drugs, a charge that is claimed to have been a plant and that she
was not actually carrying them, and his dad is not around. To top it off,
little William himself is HIV positive. He doesn’t have much going for him, but
he is one crazy happy kid. He plays games, and runs around just like you or I,
and you would never know had his brother not told us. All the same though, my
heart breaks for that boy.
I fell
in love with a young girl round age 10. Her name is Brittany, and she is dark
skinned but has cute little lighter marks on her face. What I would call
sunspots. The first time we met was because she was in Carrie and I’s group.
She was a bit shy the first day, and kind of ran from me if I approached, but
now.. Now she runs up to me in hopes to sit next to me. She pushes other kids
out of the way so that she can hold my hand, and I cannot help but just love
her! She is a good girl and just wants to smile. She is beautiful and smart.
She is probably one of my favorite kids at that camp, and I wish you all could
meet her!
As many
of you all know from the Dominican, I am not the “biggest” fan of little kids,
but occasionally fall in love with them. I still like the idea of being able to
give them back to their parents for now, but somewhere in the last week I seem
to have fallen in love with a couple of little rapscallions!
We are
preparing to move on today.. We had to
say goodbye, and I got one of the best hugs I have ever had as about 100
colored kids charged forth to hug me and say goodbye.
We will be heading somewhere that I cannot spell nor
pronounce, so if we have internet there I am sure I will write a little
something about that as well. From what I know we will be kayaking with blind
people and teaching them archery??? Not
sure what that is all about, but God is there and will show up in their lives
and mine… Take care all!
