Not just a preacher...

Apparently this is how my parents afforded our college education...a painting and waterproofing business here in South Africa. Who knew...

Happy Birthday Dad!

Well, its been a little while since I’ve written, but things here are going really well! This morning I had a meeting with the Director of the Silvermine Music Academy which is connected with one of the local primary schools. It was a great meeting and good way to get some ideas and feedback as well as some very helpful and useful contacts for the Mobile Music Academy to use. This Saturday is actually the big breakfast fundraiser for the MMA and we’ve been a little busy getting everything together for that. Hopefully that will go well and regardless of how much money it brings in, it will be a great way just to get our name out there and raise some awareness about what the academy is and what we are doing. Regardless, it should be fun!

This past Friday we started something new. From now on Fridays will be work project days for the volunteers. Friday is generally a half work day for most people in SA and so instead of just working half days, we’re going to use all of Friday to do work projects in the townships. So, this past Friday, I went with the other volunteers and the volunteer coordinators (Mike and Pam Talley from Brentwood Baptist) to rebuild a lady’s ceiling in Capricorn. We spent the day taking out her old ceiling, which is just sheetrock nailed to cross boards, all underneath a tin roof. We then added some more support boards and began putting up new “rhino board” ceiling panels. We also spent some time helping redo her herb garden and added some new plants for her to use. Its hard to go into these houses (shacks) and not feel incredibly humbled, guilty, and even ashamed. This lady’s house was a very small shack with two small rooms. Her bedroom was divided in two by an extra sheetrock panel, one side with her bed, the other was her bathroom. It makes you feel those emotions because of how much we take for granted and it throws into perspective how trivial many of our “needs” and problems really are. Maggie is fortunate to have a sink with running water, minimal electricity and a microwave, but many of the people living in these communities aren’t as fortunate. The inspiring part for me is always how high spirited the people are who live in these conditions. Most of us, I don’t think, would consider Maggie to be all that fortunate, but the reality is that she is. She has a roof over her head, a bed, running water, food and she is proud of these things and her house, her garden and her awesome little dog, Yupi. I’m always reminded of what “taking things for granted” really means when I spend time with the people in the townships and spend time visiting them in their homes. It’s such a great experience and I’ve met some very cool people. It keeps my in check with reality.

Last Monday we went into Cape Town to see Ryan Dalton, a Nashville guy, in concert. Ryan moved here 8 years ago and is musician who works with the kids on the streets around Cape Town. He’s started using rap music and hip-hop as both a form of outreach and to create awareness of the very real and very unfortunate things that are taking place in these kids lives. He’s signed a record deal and his concert was a lot of fun. He’s very talented and does a great job with the message in his songs. We had a lot of fun.

Tonight we are going to Pat Ball’s house, a US volunteer who now lives here, to have “taco night”. I’m looking forward to some really good American style tacos! Also, Thursday we are moving out of the place we are in now and into the Team House for a few months. The Crags, where we are now, was only temporary and the lease is up, so until we find our permanent location we will be living at the Team House. The Team House is pretty awesome and just on the other side of the peninsula on a really cool beach, so moving there is ok with us! But that just means we have to pack up again and move, but its no big deal. We’ll have to move again in a couple months, which, including my initial move-in when I got here will be our 4th move. Crazy! But we’re looking forward to living there, with two more volunteers and the team house manager who is a friend of ours.

That’s all for now! Feel free to give my dad a hard time for being so old (54)! I’m sure he’ll appreciate that. ;)

Miss you all!

A tough week in Masi

So its been a pretty good week. There was a group here from Virginia that I worked with some at Living Grace. They helped me lead music for the devotions there and helped prepare food and spend time with the homeless people that came in. So that was a nice change of pace. Also, Wednesday night the church showed the movie "God Grew Tired of Us", a documentary about the Lost Boys of Sudan. It was an incredible good movie and I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it already! The movie night is part of the church's missions week.
Tonight there is a missions banquet that Danielle and I are going to go to. It sounds like a pretty good event. Along with dinner, there is a speaker from Zimbabwe and several missions organizations in the are will be attending and have set up displays in the banquet room for people to see what each organization is all about. This morning there was a breakfast, also part of the missions week, and we, the MMA, were asked to attend and our kids performed for the group on their drums. It went really well and I was quite proud of the kids!

Unfortunately, there was a pretty tragic event earlier this week. A 3 year old girl in Masi (the black township that Living Hope works in) was killed. The 2 people responsible were a married couple living in Masi and were renting a house (a shack) from a woman named Faith, who teaches in Masi and works with some of the kids in the afternoons with the Living Hope kid's club there. The couple was arrested and basically their story is that they had been told by a witch doctor that to cure their infertility they needed organs from a young girl. So they killed this poor girl to take the organs for the witch doctor, which they did. When the girl was found and the people arrested, the story got out among the community, but someone spread the rumor that the couple was Zimbabwean, which isn't true. The Khosa communty in Masi doesn't particulary like the Zimbabweans anyway, and there are regularly reports of xenophobic attacks on the Zimbabweans in Masi, where several Zim families live. The rumor obviously then led to rioting and violence towards the Zimbabweans in Masi and destruction of some of their houses and shops. The police went in and blocked off the entrance to Masi, not letting anyone in or out, trying to control the situation. Eventually they did get it under control and re-opened the entrance the next day. Luckily, the truth was told about the nationality of the couple who happen to actually be from Mozambique. So a very sad and scary couple of days for the Masi community. Unfortunately, since the couple that killed the girl was living in a shack owned by Faith, several people in the community decided she was at fault, and not only burned down the shack the couple was renting, but also burned down Faith's house and all her posessions inside. Wednesday, the day after Masi was reopened, I went with Avril, Danielle, and Avril's assistant, Chantel, into Masi to visit the preschool at the Living Hope center in Masi to see Faith and the other Living Hope workers there and to see the damage in Masi. It was heartbreaking to see how devastated and scared Faith was. But the Living Hope workers were doing an incredible job supporting her and helping the kids deal with the situation! That was actually pretty inspiring to see!
As we drove around, there was definitely a decrease in the number of people walking around and the community seemed much more somber than usual, with reason. However, despite all that had happened and the damage we saw, it was good to see that the police had controlled the situation and things had calmed down! Apparently the weeks leading up to Halloween, celebrated here and all over the world by some apparently as Satan's Birthday, is a very scary and intense time among that community and in communities all over. It is a time of human sacrifices and devil worship...very dark stuff. So this is the time when, sadly, you hear about disappearances and murders and other disturbing things, mainly all in the townships...some townships.
Basically, I'd just like to ask you all to keep the people affected by this tragedy in your thoughts and prayers, as well as all the people here and in these communities. Especially the next couple weeks leading up to Halloween!

Sorry this is a rather sad and unpleasant post, but I thought it was important to let you know some of the very real, and very unfortunate, things that happen here at times. However, in the midst of such unpleasant things, there have been several things happening here to be happy about and thankful for! Lots of really good work is happening at Living Hope and at the church and especially in the kid's clubs. They have just added two more clubs, reaching an additional 125 kids. Also, the music academy is beginning to make some good progress and will begin our expansion into a second township, starting in November. So, there are good things happening too! Thanks for your thoughts and prayers for all these things!

PEACE

Cooking, Bike riding and German Shoes

Well, not much going on lately, except regular work things. But two sort of exciting happenings this week...I bought a bike and cooked for the first time here...

I finally bought a bike, which has been great, since I don't have a car. Its nice to be able to get around on my own now. Biking is actually quite a big thing here. There are always lots of people riding. My first bike trip was out to Noordhoek beach, where the ACTS Team House is. As I was walking around the beach, I came upon a group of people doing what looked like a photo shoot. I asked one of the people nearby what was going on, and apparenlty it was a German shoe company shooting and new shoe ad. Not as exciting as I hoped it might have been...a movie or tv show or something...but no. Definintely a first for me though, witnessing a German shoe photo shoot!

Also, after much searching at 3 different grocery stores, I found the ingredients (close enough) to make some chicken chili, which I made last night and turned out to be pretty good. Cooking here is a little interesting, since everything here is metric. So I had to do a bit of converting to make it work. But it worked out.

Other than that, not much else happening. Although, I did drive a car for the first time since I've been here. Yesterday I borrowed my housemates car to run a couple errands, and can I just say how weird it is to drive not only on the other side of the road, but be driving/steering from the other side of the car! Very weird and took me about 10 minutes to adjust. Fortunately I didn't make any wrong way turns or switch back over to the "normal" side of the rode! It definitely will take some more getting used to though...

Fotografias

New pictures are up...

Ostriches don't play fetch

This past week really was a lot of fun, but was surprisingly exhausting. It was fun to hang out with my aunt and my grandmother! It was a chance to get to know them better, which was great! But it was cool getting to spend time with the rest of the group too and get to know them and get to do some of the tourist things with them. There are so many really cool things to do here! In face I had made a list the week after I got here of things that I wanted to do or see while I was here and I’ve already crossed of quite a few. Things like go to the top of Table Mountain, see the penguins, go to the aquarium, to the botanical gardens, Cape Point/Cape of Good Hope, etc.When we were at Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope, the southwestern-most tip of Africa, we saw a ton of baboons on our way out and a zebra! It was too cool! I'll definitely be posting some pictures of those soon! We also saw some wild ostriches on the side of the road. So of course we got out to take pictures and one of the members of the Brentwood group, who I'll leave nameless, decided to throw sticks at the ostriches to try and flush out the babies. However it didn't work, and I don't think it made mom and dad ostrich very happy, and they had no interest in playing fetch! Fortunately they decided not to run us down and peck us to death for disturbing them so much! On the way back we did get to see the babies though, which were so funny and we also witnessed a baboon jump into a car behind us! Good times...

Since I was with the Brentwood group all week, I went to VBS in Capricorn, the township where I do music, and helped out with that instead of going to work, which was a nice change of pace! It was fun to get to know those kids better. Its amazing how desperate for love they are! They are always looking for hugs or some kind of positive attention since honestly most of them don’t get ANY of that at home. I’ve been several places where I’ve experienced extreme poverty and living conditions like the ones I see and work in here, but even still, its hard to accept or believe how so many people live the way they do! It’s heartbreaking especially the more you build relationships with those same people! During evening devotions with the group several of the team members from Brentwood shared some of their experiences and ways that they were affected by what they saw and experienced and how they saw God working this week. It was really cool to hear about their personal experiences!

This week I’m helping out at Living Grace, the homeless ministry, because one of directors is an older man named John, who has cancer, and has gotten pretty sick recently. So he and his wife, Joan, aren’t there this week so I’m helping out in whatever way they need me to. Its fun to spend some time with the homeless community, more than I normally do in just the morning devotion time where I d songs with them. It’ll be a good chance to meet some really interesting and amazing people! Hope everyone back home is doing really well! I’ll be posting a bunch of new pictures soon so check back for those in the next day or two…

Been a while...

So, for all of you who are following my blog, I apologize for the lack of posts recently. This is about the first time I've had internet in almost a week! But I'll give you a quick recap of the last week. Last Friday my grandmother (Dad's mom) and my aunt (Dad's sister, Melanie) arrived with the missions team from Brentwood Baptist Church in Nashville. Its been great having them all here! They are here this week working in each of the townships that Living Hope works in doing construction and landscaping work as well as some pretty great Vacation Bible Schools! I've been able to spend pretty much all of my time working with them this week, taking a break from my regular work, except Saturdays with the Mobile Music Academy. We spent their first couple days doing some tourist things, like exploring the top of Table Mountain and visiting the V&A Waterfront. This weekend we are going down to Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope, the end of the Cape Peninsula, the south western most tip of Africa. We will also get a chance to see the penguins at Boulder Beach and my grandmother, aunt and myself (and a few others) will go to Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens on Saturday. So fun things coming up this weekend. This week though I've been going to VBS in Capricorn, the coloured township where I work with the music kids. Brentwood also lead a retreat for the health care center workers and I lead music for that which was great! It was so much fun singing with them, and hearing them sing some of their songs for us! I'll share more about that later.

Well, I just wanted to let you know what I've been up to lately and once the BBC team leaves (on Saturday) I'll be back to my normal schedule and will have regular internet access again and will share more! Hope everyone is doing extremely well!

God Bless!