Thabang and Hope House

So finally on my birthday my Hope House entry.

Thabang is the baby I have sort of developed a relationship with this year at the orphanage I visit every week. While we do a lot of stuff each week with teaching a lesson, reading stories, and leading crafts and games, we also do a lot of just loving the kids.
Out of 40 kids there are 4 babies including Thabang. With the babies, we hold them, play with them, and even a few times we got to feed them via a bottle which is fun. For whatever reason Thabang, a chubby, overactive, semi-asian baby took a liking to me. He is generally the one I gravitate to each week and he is always looking for me in order to be picked up.
That is the best part of being here for a year. You build a relationship with the people you meet. Every week I can say to the Hope House kids, "You be good, I'll see you next week." And I can expect Thabang to crawl across the room to come see me when I arrive at the orphanage.
But the best benefit is seeing Thabang literally grow up. He turned one this past spring and at that point he got around mainly through a ridiculous crawl motion that was part Rambo, and part I don't know how to crawl. About 2 months ago Thabang started to walk. A few weeks ago I pick him up and waved at him and he responds by saying bye bye. Pretty cool stuff.

At the end of the day isn't he just the cutest little baby you ever saw?

Been sick

So another roadblock came up that prevented me from blogging.
I got sick.

Last Tuesday I woke up with a random but fairly painful thing in my throat. The rest of my body felt fine for the next few days but my throat worsened and by Friday I had a crazy fever and headache. I'm not used to being sick for more than a couple days so I figured it would just go away on its own. After a miserable weekend I finally conceded I needed a doctor and off I went on Monday morning.

After waiting 30+ minutes for the doctor to see me he lay me down and determined that yes, in fact, my throat was very sore (don't you just love doctors?). In fact I had strep throat. Never had strep throat in my life but South Africa is a good place to get it I guess.

In any case he gave me 3 kinds of pills including penicillin and a mouth gargle to ease my throat. After popping pills all week I'm not completely back but feeling much better.

The worse part is I had to skip basically a whole week of training but not all is lost. There is still a lot of time till January.

OK seriously the next entry will be about Thabang. I'm finding it is hard to keep blog promises but we'll see what happens. Stay tuned...

A bit about some verses I like

The past week has been different because ideas for blogs have been lacking. I wrote 8 entries in August but only one so far in September. I'm not less busy and lots of cool stuff is happening, I just haven't had the inspiration. This one will be about a verse I like.

Being here and impacting the people through teaching and evangelism it's easy to forget that a huge part of this year is my own spiritual growth. Let me assure you; I have grown A LOT this year spiritually, emotionally and relationally. Recently I was led to some really amazing verses in Romans that I want to share. I hope they bless you like they have for me.

Romans 1:1-4

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.


It's really easy to skip the greeting part of the epistles in the New Testament. I glance at them and forget them all the time. But I looked at these a few days ago and was blown away.
For my money there is probably no better passage in the Bible that summarizes Christianity besides John 3:16 than this one. It simply covers everything.

Paul was called for the gospel. What is the gospel? It's what the the prophets (ie the Old Testament) promised. What did they promises? They promised a messiah, that is, God's Son. Who was God's son? His son was Jesus Christ. What was Jesus' nature? He was a descendant of David, that is, he was human. He was also the Son of God through the spirit of Holiness (I believe that means the Holy Spirit). How did he prove he was both God and man? He conquered death through the resurrection.
What is the result?

Jesus Christ is the Lord, the one true God who deserves nothing less than our unending love, devotion and adoration.

Christianity spelled out in 4 verses. Its not complicated or even hard. It's the ultimate truth that is at the center of our existence.

My prayer is that you, Christian or not, would embrace this truth today.

Hand-in-Hand

This past Thursday and Friday we got to do something for the first time in our internship. We got to help out with Hand-in-Hand, Thrive Africa's pastor training program. It generally manifests itself as conferences or seminars for African Pastors and their wives. We helped out by setting up and tearing down as well as helping hand out lunch (KFC!)and facilitating tea breaks. A few observations:

1:The conference was at Charles Mopeli Stadium, the major soccer stadium in Qwa Qwa (in one of the meeting rooms). It was fantastic to be in the stadium and see the field. Even better there was a full 8-lane track around the field. Very cool.

2:African Pastors know how to pray. When they got started it didn't matter I only know a few sentences in sesotho, I felt spiritual.

3: The conference as a whole went very well. The pastors were excited and were totally into the material. A pastor from Michigan and her friend came to speak about the importance of working as a team. It was really good. They even had gifts from America for all the pastors.

It was a nice change of pace and a very cool experience. Till my next entry.