TIA (This is Africa)

One month down, 5 more to go!!!

What an experience! I sit here typing this with the sound of evening thunderstorms in the background and the smell of fresh rain wafting through my room. I had expected to spend the evening emailing people and calling home…hmmm…but the internet connection is so higgledy piggledy I couldn’t get a connection….I guess that wasn’t what I was supposed to do tonight.

I’ve been here 5 weeks and it seems like it has flown by, however I think back to the day I left and it seems so far away. So much has happened around me, within me and to me. I am forever grateful for this experience.

What a once in a lifetime experience. This is really the only time in my life where it’s just me, no husband (not yet anyways) no kids, no full time job….just me and God. My mom tells me I should take it all in because it will all change so drastically. I have to agree with her, she’s a wise woman.

I am taking it all in. I’ve leaned on God more through the last month then I think I have my whole life. You don’t realize how much you rely on other people until you don’t have those people in your life where you are. This has brought me closer to God.

I wish I had the money to fly you all over here to see this country, to experience these people. It’s amazing to me how you can learn so much about yourself, God, what it means to be a Christian by experiencing a different culture…a different way of life.

So what have I been doing lately?

At Restore we are currently in the process of organizing a study centre for students to come and study and get the help on their school work that they need. This includes refurbishing 6ft bookshelves (sanding, painting etc.) Collecting resources, we are in desperate need of teaching aids, chapter books, Bible story books etc. None of these kids own books but they all love to read.
One thing that many Americans wouldn’t necessarily think about is electricity. The kids that we work with in the squatter villages do not have electricity. How on earth can they do their homework without electricity?!

Let’s take Tsumi for example, Tsumi is in grade nine and he walks 11 Kilo’s ( 7 miles) to school each way, 22 kilo’s (14 miles) a day. He is a rather small teenager (due to a poor diet). He is the boy with a photographic memory and loves to show off his "Michael Jackson moves." He has been accepted into one of the best high school programs Thabong can offer. Tsumi gets up at 4:30 AM just to make it to class. Would I have done that at age 17...I DON'T THINK SO. School gets over at 3:00 and takes a couple hours to get home. It starts getting dark around 18:00 (6:00 pm) which doesn’t leave much time at all to do homework. Tsumi lives in Hani Park without electricity and still has homework to do. The study centre would be a huge help for these students to be able to come and use our resources to get their work done so they can stay on task for school.

Ministry goes further then meeting the spiritual needs of people. It starts by taking the needs of a given people finding a way to provide for those needs while sharing with them the dire need to have Christ in their life.

I have been teaching Sunday school which is always so much fun. We will be moving Sunday school out to the RESTORE site hopefully by the end of the month.

Teen ministry is my favourite day of the week. It’s every Friday at 4 we go pick up the boys from Hani Park…eventually we will have girls but the boys scare them off. These boys don’t get much positive attention and don’t want to share it with others…something we have to work on.
Basically it is like a youth group. We come together play games, worship, have a lesson eat dinner together and hang out for a bit afterwards. So much fun let me tell ya!!! This meal is so important, these kids only get one good meal a week and that is when they come to teen ministry. A lot of our boys are malnourished and skin and bones…we are trying to figure out the best way to get them the nutrition they need so they can be healthy. Pray for them! Pray for what ways God may be leading you to help!

What have I learned so far?

There are nearly fourteen million children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS. It is predicted that there will be more than twenty-five million of them by 2010.These children will grow up without the love and care of their parents, and most of them will be deprived of their basic rights- shelter, food, health, and education. Many will be subjected to abuse, violence, exploitation, discrimination, trafficking, and loss of inheritance.

Before a girl can get married she must prove that she is “fertile”. She is to prove that she is able to bear children for her future husband. This creates many problems as you can guess. Not only do these girls give birth to countless babies but these babies are not wanted…they are nothing more to these people then a way to get married. And so it goes. This is Africa.

One thing I’ve learned is that you can’t save them all. This is hard for me to admit because I wish I could say everyone has a fighting chance. The statistics are bleak for these children and unfortunately there aren’t enough missionary’s and ministries to accommodate all these children. (Matthew 9:37, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few”- referring to the spiritual harvest of souls for salvation) It is better to really invest in the lives of 20 children and dig deep into their spiritual life than to barely scratch the surface with 100 kids. Quality is better than quantity. We can change a generation if we get into the lives of the children affected by this darkness

Within a two year time span, six million people in South Africa have died as a result of HIV/AIDS. And, worst of all, that within the next twenty years seventy million people will die unless drastic action is taken. No one ever dies from AIDS, but because of what AIDS does to your immune system, your body becomes unable to fight the most common sicknesses that eventually will kill them.

There needs to be proper education to the people of South Africa about what AIDS is, and how it can be prevented. No one ever dies of AIDS but of sickness that cannot be fought due to the attack that AIDS has on the immune system. If only people knew how it is spread, and that it can’t be completely be cured. We need to put an end to these myths and these lies that are being spread throughout the villages and actually give these people truth. Truth and hope is what they need. And it can be met when we meet the spiritual and physical needs of these people

South Africa is a very poverty stricken country. Recently coming out of apartheid it has been hard for the blacks and colored to make a decent life for themselves. Under apartheid, the South African economy was characterized by severe state interventionism: Where blacks could live and work, and what type of jobs they could take, were all determined by the state. The main idea was to push the blacks, who accounted for more than 70 percent of the South African population, into ‘homelands’ or ‘Bantustans,’ which made up 13 percent of the land. ( I encourage you to do some research on apartheid- it’s horrific what happened to these people)

We must know that one of the greatest assaults to human dignity is poverty, where you wake up not knowing where you’re going to get your next meal, where you cannot have decent accommodations for yourself and for your children, where you cannot feed them, where you cannot send them to the high school. That is the greatest assault on human dignity, and that is why we should pay particular attention to the poor, who are ill, whose immune system is not capable of resisting these terminal diseases. This is a huge reality for the people that I am working with in Welkom.

Matthew 25: 35
“For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.”

Jesus no longer walks this earth which leaves us to be the evidence of saving faith. What fruit are you bearing? I encourage you to really look at this passage and study it for its true meaning. Deeds are not the basis for our entrance into the kingdom, but merely is the manifestation of God grace in our lives. Why wouldn’t we want to share that with other people?!