Music Academy and More Weddings

It's been a very good and busy week! Most of this week for me was spent working to finish the curriculum for this 2009 year for the Music Academy and meeting with people from some of the local schools to talk to them about getting the MMA involved in their schools. The idea was very well received at the Masi Primary School. Monday I'm meeting with the music teacher and possibly headmaster of Christian David, a school near Capricorn. The idea is to start doing some fun, large group music things with the kids at the schools during their long breaks during the school day. From those large groups we could find smaller groups to do the more concentrated lessons like we are doing with the 4 kids in Capricorn. It's definitely exciting to have some of these things come together for the MMA.

This was another weeding weekend for us. Mike and Pam Talley, the Living Hope volunteer coordinators (from Nashville), befriended a couple from Masi and decided to help put a wedding together for them. I was asked to do the music for the wedding and Jeremy and Danielle helped out as well; Jeremy doing video and Danielle helping with several things. It was fun to not only be the musician for the wedding but actually be the "music coordinator" for their wedding. I met with Brian and Blessing earlier in the week to plan out the music and then spent the week getting all that together. The wedding ended up being very nice and it was amazing to find out how so much for the wedding had been donated or given as a gift, including the cake, the rings, the flowers, etc. Its funny how in less than 5 months I've helped in 2 South African weddings and still have one more that I'm doing music for in May. It's been quite fun!

Jeremy has been busy this past week working with the team here from Delaware on the new property that Living Hope acquired, the old False Bay College campus. The plan for that campus is to house the classrooms and offices for Living Way, the economic empowerment branch of LH as well as the volunteer housing and some of ACTS offices. Unfortunately, we (the volunteers) have to move out of the Team House the 1st of February, but the new property won't be ready for us to move into yet, so we'll have to move somewhere else temporarily until it's ready. One more move for us! The new property is coming together well and it will be so exciting once it's all finished.

That's about all for now. My family comes in less than 3 weeks, which is very exciting! Unfortunately, because of the pregnancy, Jennifer and Christian won't be able to come. But that just gives me more reason to come back here and bring them with me next time! It will be fun to share some of what I'm doing here with family.

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Have a wonderful week!

Photos

New photos are up...finally. The new ones start with the pictures of the snake, which I finally have.

Holiday Club

This week was the last week before school starts back for the kids here in Cape Town. Their school year follows the calendar year, so they are beginning a new school year starting Wednesday. Because this week was the last week of "summer holiday" we held holiday clubs in each of the Living Hope areas. As usual, I worked in Red Hill this week helping out with the club there. It was such a great week! Jeremy also spent those five days working in Red Hill, during which we each had the opportunity one day to lead the bible story of that day. So, Wednesday I told the story the prodigal's son (and acted it out with the help of one of the Red Hill kids). Jeremy told the story of David and Goliath, which he and I acted out. As I'm sure you can imagine there was some serious acting skills being showcased on those days...award-winning for sure. ;)

For this week of holiday club the life-skill educators for Red Hill, Stanton and Mzo, decided to try something different. Instead of doing club in the same location in Red Hill each day, we held club each day in a different area of Red Hill. It was such a fun way to not only see and experience more of the Red Hill community, but to include more kids and be visible to more of the families and community of Red Hill for them to witness what we are doing each day. Each day we had anywhere from 50 to 75 kids, many of whom came each day to all 5 locations, but some who only came and were only able to come to the club in their area. It really was a great week of fun and games, stories and songs as well as outreach to new kids and families.

Friday, our last day of holiday club, ended up being a day with a quite a few special moments. The day started with our sighting of almost 1 dozen baboons on the road to Red Hill, one of which was sitting a top the sign reading "feeding of the baboons prohibited" while the ones beneath it sat eating food that people had thrown out of the car to them...a great photo opportunity, unfortunately the only camera we had was Mzo's camera on his cell phone. We also saw a few ostriches and a mongoose on our journey to Red Hill. Once at Red Hill, we started an intense game of soccer with the kids, which unfortunately ended for me with a rather unfortunate collision with one of the teenage boys. We both went for the same ball in the air with our heads and unfortunately neither of us ever got to the ball, rather I connected with the back of his head instead of the ball. I ended up with quite a good cut on my forehead just above my eyebrow which of course bled quite a bit, which most of the kids thought was "so cool" but some were a bit confused and concerned. However, my newly acquired head wound provided for a much more realistic enactment of David vs Goliath, me being Goliath and now having a real head wound to show as a result of the pretend stone David(Jeremy) threw at me to defeat me.

It's been a great week. January is flying by! Its hard to believe we're already half-way through the month. Next week is back to the regular schedule for us, and the Music Academy will start back the end of next week, which is very exciting.It will be great to be back with those kids.

Hope everyone is doing and enduring the crazy cold front moving across the States that we keep reading about. Stay warm!

PEACE

Christmas in Cape Town

It's weird to remember that it was Christmas here just a couple of weeks ago, since it is summer here and the weather is nice and warm and there are only a few remaining signs of Christmas in the form of the occasional Christmas lights on a house. This Christmas was certainly a new and different Christmas experience for me, having it be not only my first Christmas away from home but also my first in another culture. Needless to say, it was really nice and we did our best to make it actually feel like Christmas.

The weeks leading up to Christmas things began to slow down here significantly. Most things seem to just get put on hold until the new year arrives and people mostly check out during the second half of December. We did have 2 weeks of Holiday Club with the kids. I spent my time in Red Hill as usual with the kids there. We had a lot of fun playing Christmas games, and acting out and telling the Christmas story, eating food and having water gun fights. Our last day of club for the year, we gave each of the kids a small gift bag, each of which contained a water gun. So as you can imagine we arrived back from Red Hill that day pretty much soaking wet. It was so much fun!

It is a different experience talking to these kids about Christmas really being about Jesus and not about presents and gifts, when a lot of these kids don't even get presents at Christmas. They still, like any other kid, love getting toys and things, but it's hard to realize as you talk about "Christmas is about Jesus not Santa" that a lot of these kids have never experienced Santa. We did have a fun week celebrating Christmas in the hot summer weather and it was good to be able to give out some gifts to each of them for Christmas. Actually, most of what the kids do get if anything at Christmas is new shoes or new clothes, and man are they proud of their new stuff! I remember getting clothes when I was 8 and having to pretend to be excited, when really I was secretly hoping that my new shirt was really a magic shirt that when you press the sleeve it turned into one of the ninja turtles. But for them, they're all about some shoes! Several times on Christmas day as we were driving around I saw people stop in front of a window of a house or store and check themselves out with their new shoes on. It was quite cool to see them so excited.

We spent Christmas eve with another US volunteer who is here for a few years, Pat Ball, at her house. Without meaning to we gave Christmas eve and nice Mexican theme. While the day after Christmas is Boxing Day, the day before Christmas, for us, became Tortilla Day. We started the day with some breakfast enchiladas that I decided to make after we discovered the recipe in a Southern Living that someone had brought with them from the States (well done Southern Living on that one). At Pat's we enjoyed some tortilla chips and dip followed by a dinner of tacos accompanied by some classic Christmas movies. I don't think any of us have had any form of tortilla since that day. It was a great day though.

Christmas day we went to the Christmas service at Capricorn church (here they do Christmas day services rather than a Christmas Eve service) where they kids put on a wonderful Christmas play. They had a big lunch there for the community but we had been invited to Christmas lunch at Jakes' house (Jakes is the Team House manager) so we couldn't stay for that. Instead we spent the afternoon at Jakes' aunt's house with her family, which was wonderful. We ate outside and had a huge feast and just enjoyed spending time with a family, even if it wasn't our own. We finished off the day at home by opening the Christmas presents we had from each other and from our families who had mailed us some wonderful things to open on Christmas day, which was great. It really turned out to a be a nice, yet rather different, Christmas. Luckily, it being summer and all here, it didn't ever really feel like Christmas, which helped us to not be too sad about missing Christmas at home.

The day after Christmas we (Simba, Danielle, Lynn and myself) drove out to Stellenbosch, the second oldest city in South Africa (second only to Cape Town). We explored Stellenbosch and had a great lunch there and then drove out into the country and drove part of the wine route there. We stopped at the Rustenberg Estate and explored what might be one of the prettiest places I've ever been. The estate was gorgeous with an amazing garden and some incredible views. We also stopped at a goat farm that produces cheese and got to participate in a cheese tasting, which was delicious. They had a 'goat tower' out front which is essentially a climbing tower for goats... who knew.

New Year's Eve was a bit uneventful but intentionally so. Lynn had left to go back to the States, and Simba was gone for the day, so it was just Danielle and myself. We decided to just stay in and watch a South African movie and enjoy some new year's apple pie and ice cream. As I said, not very eventful, but it was a nice and relaxing way to bring in the new year.

Now things are back into almost full swing. A team of 13 college students arrived last night from University of Delaware and will be staying until February 1st. Jeremy McClure is coming today and will be here for 3 months which will be great! For those of you who don't know Jeremy, he is a friend of mine from Dalton, also from FBC Dalton. It will be a lot of fun to have him here! So there will be lots of people around for the next month, which is great! The group from Univ of Delaware will be working with the kids at Holiday Clubs next week and then working on the new Living Hope property, doing a lot of clearing out and fixing up to get it ready for people to move onto. That property is where the volunteer housing will eventually be and where a lot of the Living Hope offices and classrooms will be moving to as well as some of the ACTS offices. So it will be exciting to see that transition happen.

It's been a fun holiday and an exciting new year already. It's still hard to believe that its 2009 already, which I'm sure many of you feel the same way. Right now, I'm working to finish putting the curriculum together for the Music Academy for this year. We will be starting back with the kids on January 16th and I'm pretty excited to start hanging out with them again. There's a lot of positive momentum for the academy going into this new school year (their school year follows the calendar year, so January is the beginning of the school year) and some good things happening. I'll update you more on that as we get further into it.

Well, I hope everyone is doing very well and that you all had a wonderful holiday! Pray for Jeremy as he travels today and for him and the new college team as they transition into things here in SA and for their ministry while they are here. They are going to do some really cool things! I have lots of new pictures but need to finish going through them and will post them as soon as I can get to an internet cafe to do that, so sometime in the next couple of days I'll have new pictures up, including ones of the snake which I finally have!

PEACE

First post of 2009

Happy New Year everyone and welcome to the Year of the Ox!

Its been way too long since I've posted anything, and now that the new year is here and things are back into a normal routine I will be back on a regular posting schedule.

I had a fantastic holiday, but will share that in my next post tomorrow. For now I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Or as they say here: "Compliments of the Season" to all of you!

For now I'm off to bed, but tomorrow I'll update you all on my holiday season and add some new pictures. Happy 2009!

God Bless!