3 Churches and Brady Blade

So, I have been without internet for the past 3 days, so haven't been able to post anything about this week. So I'll give you a brief update of my week so far.

Sunday was our day of 3 church services. Myself and two of the other volunteers spent the day with the mission team here from Knoxville. (By the way, the Calfee's nephew, Brad and his wife Caroline, were a part of that team, which was fun to meet them!) We started the morning at Fish Hoek Baptist Church for their regular morning service at 9am. After the FHBC service we all headed to Masiphumelele (or 'Masi') Baptist Church. Masiphumelele is one of the black communities that was originally setup by the gov't when apartheid ended. The community was designed for 750 families, with that many houses constructed by they gov't. Now, however, there are over 5 times that many living there, most in shacks built around each of the actual houses. The church building also serves the Living Hope Community Center site for Masi. The church service was such a fun experience. They speak Xhosa, so since we were there and don't understand Xhosa, they had someone translating into English for us, which was so helpful! But the music was amazing. They start singing and all know these songs, and start dancing and doing incredible harmonies and have a small organ playing with another guy playing drum sounds on a small keyboard. It was amazing! The music was incredible! This is actually the church that I may start working in, to help restart their choir, but after experiencing that, I'm not sure how much help they need! If nothing else, I'll certainly learn a ton!

We left Masi and headed to downtown Cape Town for lunch. We ate a place downtown called the 'Spur', which is very similar to a TGIFridays, but with a more South African menu obviously. The have your basic hamburgers, sandwiches, ribs, chicken, etc. but also serve snails as an appetizer, a chocolate chili burger, and have a monkey gland sauce for meats. We quickly asked and were told that monkey gland sauce isn't actually made from monkeys, its just a name. We were a bit relieved! From lunch we headed to the big open-air market which is in the parking lot of the future FIFA World Cup stadium, which is currently being constructed for the 2010 World Cup. But we spent some time at the market, which may have been the windiest day I've ever experienced. It was hard to even walk forwards against the wind and most of the vendors were struggling to keep their items from blowing away. However, because of the weather, all the vendors were offering "windy day" prices. So everyone was able to get some things for much less than they normally would have. We left the market and headed to Hillsong Church, our 3rd and final service of the day. Hillsong is a megachurch started in Australia, that has locations in London, St Petersburg, and now Cape Town. It's a very contemporary service with a big praise band and they do a lot of music, which Hillsong writes. The pastor is one of the founders from Australia and was really good!

Monday night was my first field trip with the Mobile Music Academy kids. We took them downtown Cape Town to a drum clinic that was performed by Brady Blade, a pretty famous studio drummer that has recorded with everyone from Dave Matthews to the Indigo Girls. It was a lot of fun and after the show we took the kids down to the stage to meet him. He was so nice and very interested in the kids and the Academy and spent about 10 minutes with them taking pictures with them, signing a poster for them and all their hands, and even gave them a couple of his drum sticks! As we were leaving he gave me his email address and said that when he come back here in a couple months he would love to come see what we are doing in the academy and maybe do a drumming workshop with the kids, which would be amazing!!

But other than those things, Monday through today I've been at the Living Hope offices in Muizenberg (the town over from Fish Hoek) where the homeless ministry, Living Grace, is located. I've been doing music in the mornings as part of the Living Grace morning devotions for the homeless community, and doing some work and personal research for the Music Academy. I'm trying to redo and upgrade the current curriculum for the academy and also putting together songs to do in the mornings at Living Grace and to do with the kids at their afternoon Kid's Clubs!

Sorry this one is a bit long, but just wanted to catch everyone up on the last 4 days. Hope everyone is great!

PEACE