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.

A fun little anectdote to kick off marathon training.

I start officially training for my marathon this week so to commemorate such a special occasion I thought you might like this story that happened this past Friday.

Fridays have always been notoriously difficult days to run because my motivation just disappears. After a long hard week the last thing you want to do is wake up early and run AGAIN.
This Friday was especially bad. My alarm went off at 6:45AM and I had no intent to get up. 6 miles in chilly weather had no appeal. I quickly rationalized that I could run later in the afternoon and got back to falling asleep again.

Than I heard a knock.
I ignored it, assuming it wasn't for me.
It knocked again and so I decided to get up and see who it was.
I got up, pulled back the curtain, opened the door and to my surprise it was none other than: JESUS.

Just kidding. That would of been cool though.

It was an intern, Shannon, who wanted to see if Marc was awake to go running. He was out cold and I told her so and than shut the door. And then as I walked back to my bed I made a surprising decision: I decided to go run. I was already up and felt OK so I put on my running gear and went out.

One thing to add is I listened to my Ipod during my run, specifically to worship music. I hate headphones but running by myself can be hard and I wanted some motivation for it. I had managed to turn sleeping in for an hour into a worship session. I felt really good after my run. And I have Shannon, my angel of motivation, to thank.

I’m a Christian, and I’m a runner

Running is a significant part of my life. It’s significant enough that in a blog that is mostly about Christian stuff and working for Jesus I will include this entry all about running and my life. Some people think running is boring. To me it’s a part of my life that won’t go away until my legs do. When you really like something you can talk about it for hours but I’ll try to keep this entry shorter than that. No promises.

I started running the winter of my freshmen year of high school. I was a soccer player who played year-round and wasn’t good at any other team sport. My friends who were in the same boat went out for indoor track and so I followed them. I fell into distance running because nothing else seemed to be like something I would be decent at. My dad ran a lot when he was younger and so getting into the sport appealed to me as well. My second race I got put into the varsity mile for some reason and ran 5:23. Not a great time but for a freshmen I was like wow this is kind of fun and I was hooked.

I didn’t get serious about track till junior year when I finally broke 5 minutes in the mile and my teammates said I should do cross-country(XC) instead of soccer my senior year. I told them if I got cut from varsity soccer I would do XC. I got cut that fall and went out for the team. I had no idea what XC was about but I got 3rd overall in my second race. I was in the top 3 or 4 on my team that season. The 3 captains were all seniors and good friends of mine. It was a blast. I destroyed myself in workouts and we got 3rd in the league. After doing pretty decent in track I decided to run in college.

People always ask how much I run and usually I’m loathe to answer because it’s not a set distance and people generally freak out when I tell them. But for the sake of freaking people out here are some fun stats.
Most miles I ever ran in a month: 322
Most miles I ever ran in a week: over 80
Longest measured run I ever done without stopping: 16.25 miles
Miles I ran in the 2006 calendar year: 2,736

While my stats don’t approach the obsession of Olympians (where 100 miles a week is the norm,) they are a bit crazy. People say “I could never do that!” or “how do you do that?” It’s pretty simple really. I’m an athlete. I like doing athletic things. I’m not blessed with great skill or even talent (I was never close to qualifying for nationals) but I have a work ethic and ability to not get injured (knock on wood) that rivals most. Running is something I'm decent at and it gives me joy when I do it, even when it hurts.

I’m over a year out of college now and I run considerably less. I write this entry because I am running a marathon in January to qualify for Boston next April. I’m doing a plan that is much easier than college, because running here can be hard but I should in good shape by the new year.

Most people hate running as a dreaded obligation to be done to avoid being fat or out of shape. For me it’s simply part of my life whether I do it a lot or a little. I hope that everyone finds something (after they find Jesus) that gives them as much joy as running has for me.

I told you no promises.

Growth Spurt

This week we had our second class of LaunchPad where we handed out curriculum books to the students and taught Lesson 1 about living in Jesus' Name. We had the students break into small groups at the end of the lesson to discuss what they had learned (its a new inititive we are doing semester and a pretty cool one at that). Fun times.

The main thing I want to get across in this entry is growth.

We doubled our class size, having nearly 60 come after having just 30 the previous week. We are expecting growth this term and we are acting in faith about it too.
This week we brought a lot of extra paperwork and supplies for all the extra kids. I expected more but not a growth rate of 100%. We barely had enough books and pencils for everyone. I want 90 kids next week. I have no idea how many will come, but I'll tell you one thing, we'll be ready for them.

My next entry will be about running. I can just see the excitement on your faces. Stay tuned and be blessed.

Starting to Launch...Again

So finally an entry about LaunchPad. Term 2 started this week but there is more to the story.

A goal this year for Thrive is to connect students from Leadership summit,our school AIDS prevention program, with LaunchPads, our after school Bible Discipleship classes.
To reach this end we moved almost all our LaunchPad classes from churches to LS schools if they weren't already in a school. Another thing we did was have LaunchPad assemblies in schools the week before this one.
An assembly was basically a 45 minute presentation that the interns and I prepared for multiple schools to plug LaunchPad. We would go to a school, and if the time and space was available, hundreds of kids would stream out of classrooms to hear us speak. We played some games, did a skit, gave a brief lesson, and told kids all about LaunchPad.
The goal is to see rapid and continued growth in our LaunchPads.
While we were not able to do the full presentation at every school we went too, they were tremendously fun and we saw fruit from our labor this week.

My intro class was on Tuesday at Clubview intermediate school. I'm teaching the curriculum, Ordinary Day with Jesus, with two other interns. It goes over how to experience Jesus in the moments of our ordinary lives.
We had 29 kids this week but it was very encouraging. They seemed to really enjoy it and for many it was their first time at a LaunchPad.One girl even asked if she could bring her mom (its geared toward high schoolers, but all ages are welcome.)

Great things are going to happen over the next 10 weeks in LaunchPad and I look forward to telling you about them.

Surprisingly, another entry about Leadership Summit

I'm going to keep this short because of time but here it is.

So remember those 5000+ books I bound with 4 other interns? The books that I dutifully cut for three weeks, and placed in a box never to see again? The books that I had to have faith would get in the hands of young Basothos and change the course of their lives?

On Monday I had the opportunity to hand out books to school kids in Qwa Qwa.


The smiles, the excitement at holding up a brand-new full color book AND getting their picture taken was incredible. It was such a blessing to get to do this, especially after all the work we had done.

The Leadership Summit term has begun. Get pumped!

Worshipping Jesu Kreste

So I know this entry should be about LaunchPad but great things are happening so bear with me as the blog catches up to my life this week.

This weekend we had the amazing opportunity to go to Passion Johannesburg. Passion is a conference series that Louie Giglio and his Christian movement 268 generation started that is currently on a 17-stop world tour. So basically this was a one-in-a lifetime opportunity. Very briefly, these guys are about doing conferences to get university students around the globe. Louie gave some some amazing talks and we worshiped with 6,000 others in a giant room with Chris Tomlin and the band Fee. Pretty intense.

I want to talk about worship briefly. As most of you know I am not uber-spiritual and that affects my worship. I am very laid-back compared to most people when I worship. I rarely lift my arms, I don't like jumping, and dancing is not much my style either. I like a fast paced song as much as anyone, but I really like just quietly standing and absorbing the words of a good hymn. Be thou my vision is a personal favorite.

As you can imagine this conference was not that kind of worship. It was 6,000 mostly young, mostly crazy, young South African people wigging out for Jesus. And at first it was hard to get into it. I often feel like I need to get into a super spiritual state to enjoy worship. I over think it and get distracted and suddenly I'm just standing there saying words.

Hardly worship.

But yesterday I managed to in some small way let that go. Louie said a verse from Corinthians about being out of your mind for Jesus and thats what I had to do. I had to stop thinking. I had to stop thinking about the people around me. I had to stop trying to get spiritual and just shut my eyes and sing the words as loud as I possibly could. And soon the tears flowed.
I can't tell you if the tears came from God or if I'm just a weepy emotional person when worship happens, but frankly I don't care. I had stopped thinking and had started worshiping God.


I worshiped God.





HOLLA!

Speaking Up

Preach the gospel at all times, if necessary use words.

Forget that, its crap.

The first quote above you've probably heard a lot if your a Christian. Its from St. Francis of Assisi and is very memorable in terms of its depth and simplicity. The second quote is a very loose paraphrase from Niel, the guy who co-founded the ministry Thrive Africa (i.e. the one I'm with) with his now wife 10 years ago.

If he sees this and doesn't like it I'll take it down but I write those quotes because I really liked what he said. You know when you hear something that totally changes the way you think about something and you love it? That was what happened when I heard Niel speak. (For the record he said the above at Mabula when we were on safari.)

Let me be honest. All appearances to the contrary I am not the nicest guy in the world. I'm cynical, sarcastic and often overly-logical for most people. I'm often too honest with people and I tend to offend people a lot. I like people but I often forget that I'm friends with them in the heat of a good debate or argument. When I say a compliment or when I am just genuinely nice to someone that isn't me, its Jesus working through me. I say this to make the point, no matter how hard I try my actions will never be sufficient enough, by themselves, to share the gospel with someone.

On the other hand I have had a interest in apologetics since middle school when I found out that not everyone grew up in church and that many people thought what I believed was crap. I love discussing religious and controversial things. I've read the Bible 2.3 times at the moment. I pride myself on having some sort of answer for every question a skeptic can think of. I say all this to make the point, speaking about God and Christianity is the way that I share the gospel best.

I think too often Christians get blinded by this false idea that Christianity is about being really, really nice. Now disregarding the fact that one doesn't get to heaven by being super good, Christians are obsessed with always being perfect. While Jesus was turning over the tables in the temple, we live so as not to offend anyone. We do a bunch of token actions like go to church, give some money, buy Christian music, do a short-term trip and then tell no one about Jesus. Ever.

Now I'm not saying stop doing good things. Strong relationships are the key to effective evangelism and I'm learning and I'm growing in being nicer and less offensive while I'm here. What I am saying is we have to stop worrying about making sure everyone is happy when we are around and start telling them about the truth that is in us.

Is the Bible really the Word of God?
Is Christianity really the best way to live?
Is Jesus really the only way to heaven?


If so we better start preaching it.

Fueling an economy

So today I returned to Qwa Qwa for the first time in over two months. I want to talk about the assemblies we are doing but I'll wait till the end of week so I can give a broader picture. Now I want to discuss something about Leadership Summit that came to mind.

One of the distinctive things in my mind about Leadership Summit is that we use native Basothos from Qwa Qwa to teach the classes. We call them coaches and we recruit them, train them and grow them to be strong Christian teachers for the students. One of the things that hit me today though is that we also pay them. This may not seem like a big deal but in an area with over 80% unemployment and chronic poverty, job creation is huge.

Today during lunch we went to a coaches' house (named Alfred) for lunch (we had our own lunch he just offered us his home to enjoy for the hour). His house was very impressive if not for its size but for its niceness. A kitchen, living room, and 3 bedrooms. A bathroom and a sink with clean, running water. A refrigerator, freezer, TV and stereo. Not American but everything one needs. He lives with his two cousins, one of which has an incredibly cute baby. You could see that while they weren't excessively rich, they were doing far more than just scrapping by.

By paying its coaches, Leadership Summit is creating strong, local, Christian leaders who are economically independent. That is, Thrive Africa is fulfilling its vision.

Pretty inspiring stuff, if you ask me.

I saw Animals.

So I finally did it. I went on safari in Africa. It is trendy for mission teams to have a day off to do touristy things and Thrive sets up a one night, 2 game drive trip to a game reserve north of Jo-berg that is pretty sweet. Thrive trip just went and we got to join them.

I saw rhinos (uber cool), elephants, (took a long time to find them but cool), lions (not so cool because they hid in grass far away), african buffalo (funny because of the way the baby got milk from its mom), giraffes (cool), and many other cool animals.

One funny anecdote from the trip was there is a morning gamedrive at 630AM. We got up at 5:30 and since there was a coffee maker I had some coffee (Matt, the other intern with me had some tea) at 5:45 our game driver showed up with more hot water and tea so Matt and I had yet another hot beverage. We then hopped on a game drive landrover for the next 3 hours. For a while it was ok but by the last hour Matt and I were more than a bit uncomfortable. When we saw animals we didn't just get excited we almost let it go right in the car!

Needless to say, when we got back to the lodge we jumped out and booked it to the nearest urinal. I won't describe what happened in the bathroom but lets just say it was a nigh spiritual experience.

Oh did I mention the buffets? They are amazing. We had a dinner and a breakfast one and both were superb. If you have the means I highly recommend an African safari.

So now its back to work but it was a delightful 2 day mini-break. Peace

On Rest

So lately I being thinking about rest. Let's see if I can articulate my thoughts in a meaningful way.

The main question I have is where is the balance between doing the work you have and taking the time you need to rest?

Being here there is a lot to do. Generally Monday through Friday I am up by 8AM at the latest and I work or have things to do all day till dinner and sometimes after. I don't usually go to bed later than 11 or midnight but it is often a long day.

Obviously missions work is work and there are hard things and things that take a long time. But sometimes I feel like as Christians and missionaries we have to work that much harder. Isn't God calling us to more than the standard 9-5 job? But isn't also important to get the rest you need so burnout doesn't occur? I am here because many people have supported me with prayer and money. If I am lazy I am not just being stupid I am letting down my supporters in a way. Where's the line?

I'll be honest I sleep a lot. I was a distance runner in college and making sure I had enough energy for practice was paramount. I slept more than most of my classmates. I don't sleep as much as college but I'm always aware of how I'm feeling. If I need a nap I'll take it (time-permitting).

I bring this up because this weekend I get to go on safari for a couple days. Its going to be fun and given that over the last few weeks I have bound in the ballpark of about 6,000 curriculum for Thrive with 5 other interns I think I deserve it but thoughts do nag at times. Its almost like "I need to do more, before I can relax."

In conclusion I think God has me here to learn, grow and work. I have been doing all three. I can only do the work God has set before me no more, no less. If I don't get rest I will do the work in a sub-par way and everything here is based on excellence. May I encourage you to do the work set before you today. When you are done, take a nap, watch TV, chill with your family. Just do it all in the name of Jesus.

Peace and Blessings.

My Family

I feel like I have a lot of potential entries in my mind but this one came into my head this past weekend so here it is.

It's often the little things in life that are the most meaningful. I can't believe I just wrote something as cliched as that on my very own blog but I am pretty honest and it's true so there it is.
I say that because its a big deal when I get an email from my non-immediate family (that is anyone besides my parents and sisters). I love them all and even see many fairly often but e-mail just generally hasn't entered our line of communications much. The other thing is most of my non-immediate family is not christian or at least not as "dedicated" as we may look to them. The idea of possibly doing christian work/missions for my whole life is at the very least unusual to my family. After all I'm smart, I have a college degree and I work pretty hard, I should have a normal, well-paying, entry level job right now right?
Instead I am an intern in South Africa with a christian ministry not getting a steady paycheck.

But here is the thing. Even though my family may not understand what exactly I am doing (or even agree with it) they still love and support me. Getting an email from my grandma this weekend was fantastic. She informed me that she just read my blog and liked it. A email I got from my other grandma just a few months ago struck me because of the concern it portrayed. Was I eating enough? Was I healthy? Was I learning a lot?
I know that my grandmas don't agree with all or even most of my beliefs on Christianity and life. But they love me anyway. That is something I value so much because I see people here who don't have what I have always taken for granted.
My parents supported me fully in coming here. I know its hard for my mom to have me be on a continent away for a year but she did everything she always does in prepping me for anything: making sure I had all my paper work in, took me shopping and never flinched about it at all.
My parents are white, protestant and republican but I am 100 % sure that if I came home as a gay, muslim democrat they would still love me just the same.

I am not sure if that many people read this blog besides my family but I just wanted to say thank you for all you do for me and have done for me. All the Birthday cards, christmas presents, holidays together, college tuition payments, rides home from school. I wouldn't be here today without you.

I love you and miss you all and am thinking and praying for you.

Be Blessed.

Bonding During Binding

So I have been binding books 4-7 hours a day for the past week and a half. We have over 3500 books bound with a goal of 5000 by next friday. We are making good pace.

Anyway sitting in the same room doing the same thing for hours a day can make someone a little weird. With that in mind I hope you enjoy the following jokes/ tidbits of funniness that I've come up with while binding (note: we are binding save sex curriculum).

"Why did sex cross the street? To save itself for marriage."

"What's that lassie? Sex fell down the old well? Let's go save it!"

"What are we exactly saving sex from? Has it been accosted?"

So ya this is what happens when you work for Jesus. Fun times. Be blessed.

What is it that makes Christianity so special?

A few weeks ago we had a staff meeting that led to my earlier blog about feeling spiritually refreshed. It also raised some important questions about Christianity and the nature of salvation. It forced me to think about my faith and why I am a Christian. I am pretty big on apologetics so it was a fairly fun exercise.
Here are some reasons why I think Christianity is so special and why I think it is the one true religion available on this planet.

1) Salvation Cannot be obtained.

Every other religion, every other single one promises some form of heaven if the follower does enough good things. In Islam you mush follow the 5 pillars, in Judaism you must follow the Torah, in Hinduism you must make sure your karma is in order.
With Christianity I can do nothing to earn my spot in heaven. My sin is too great for me to overcome. Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice, our bridge to God that forgave our sins and made us clean. Apart from God's grace and mercy I am destined to hell. Period.

2)Freedom from fear.

Knowing that you are locked into heaven the moment you are saved frees you from the fear that you might be going to hell. The Muslim and Jew and Hindu never know until the day they die if they were good enough to reach heaven. They may do good things out of love and obedience to God but they also must, at least some of the time, do things out of fear of hell. The things I do are never out of fear of hell but because I love the God who loved me so much to die for me even though I was sinner when he did so. I am free to live my life in relationship with God with confidence that I will be in heaven one day.

3) The Bible is compelling.

I respect the other books of the other major religions of the world, they are full of significance and value. But for my money there is no book on this planet that is more compelling than the Bible. Written over 1500 years in different places by different people it is remarkable how well it ties together from beginning to end. Christians generally believe it is the infallible word of God in the original autographs. I am not saying I never question anything in the text, but I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt because of how powerfully it does work together. No other story on earth is as important, significant, or amazing as the one in the Bible.

So thats a few reasons why Christianity is my thing and I believe it is valid for everyone on this planet to consider and make a decision on.

Hope this helps and enthuses.

Behind-the-scenes or on the frontlines?

This morning I started binding thousands of curricula with 5 other interns. At first glance this is obvious behind-the-scenes work for the ministry. I see no people, I talk to nobody except the other interns and I'm in the office close to 8 hours a day sitting in a chair. But I refuse to accept the premise that the work I'm doing for the next three weeks is behind-the-scenes. Here's why.

The books we are binding are Leadership Summit curricula, specifically the Save Sex book. This curriculum teaches young people in Qwa qwa about Love, Sex and Relationships. It tells them how to save sex for marriage and Biblical perspectives on the issues. It is full-color, interactive, and effective in effecting the lives of youth. In America how to teach young people about sex can be controversial, but here it is a bit simpler. Leadership Summit is already teaching in 6 or 7 schools in Qwa qwa and is making an impact. Teen pregnancy rates have dropped drastically in many of the schools where Leadership Summit has been taught for the past few years.

Every time I bind a book I'm giving a high school student a chance to learn how to make choices that will change their life. Every time I bind a book I'm helping a young person avoid AIDS. Every time I bind a book I am not behind-the-scenes, I am on the front lines of the battle to help change the continent for the better. God has priviledged me with this work. Far be it from me to say that God was wrong in putting this task before me.

Here's to an Africa that is not just a stereotype, an Africa where people are strong, healthy, Godly and completely sold out to Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Pray for Zimbabwe

I have a bunch of things I could blog about but I have been meaning to write this for weeks so here it is.

Please pray for Zimbabwe. If you have never heard of it, Zim is a country in Southern Africa that is currently in a crisis of sorts. It has been ruled for 28 years by the same man, Robert Mugabe, since independence in 1980. Mugabe is 84. You may be surprised to learn that he was just reelected to another 6 year term. Unsurprisingly the election was largely seen as a sham by most of the world.

Under his rule Zim has descended into chaos with a spiraling economy, a dwindling life expectancy and the worst inflation rate in the world. While he likes to blame the western world for his country's problems it is largely understood that his corrupt and violent policies have ruined a once prosperous and hopeful nation.

The victims in all this are the Zimbabwean people who, unless they are supporters of Mugabe, live in constant fear of beatings and retribution by the president's cronies and gangs.

Check out cnn.com or nytimes.com for background and stories on Zimbabwe and then please pray for peace for the people of Zimbabwe. While I am safe from the trouble there it is burdensome to think that only hours away from me such trouble is happening.

Thank you.

Spiritually Refreshed

I am spiritually refreshed today.

I should make it very clear how unusual a statement that is for me. A earlier entry on this very same blog, written mere months ago, says how I describe myself as more religious than spiritual and how I am OK with that.

But there can be no doubt. I am refreshed in a way that goes far beyond the physical. Let's see if I can explain it in some way that makes sense to you, the reader.

People talk about the spirit a lot here. I have generally listened, pondered and than tried to knock down the idea that I can have any meaningful contact with the spirit within me, let alone the Holy Spirit. It just simply has not been a part of my experience so why go to the trouble of trying if I am already a Christian?

But God has a way of putting things before you in a way you can't ignore. We are doing a unit in our ISOM (Christianity) Class called being Led in the Spirit. A recent lesson in the unit had tons of scriptures talking about the spirit and its role in our lives. If Scripture says it, I can't ignore it so it entered my head. Around this time too I was feeling just a bit sad too. Almost imperceptibly slow I felt like I was becoming more disconnected with the people around me. I felt like I wasn't measuring up, that I couldn't and therefore I was losing interest in trying.
It was a bit disconcerting.

Then last night I played a card game. I never play cards. It was really fun. I felt a lot better. I felt close to the people I played with. It was pretty heady stuff.

Then this morning we had a staff meeting. We have been watching a series by John Bevere mostly about why its so important to forgive rather than be offended. We got into some complicated heady stuff involving salvation which would be impossible to explain here but here's the thing. Rather than walking out confused or frustrated because I couldn't understand something I walked out refreshed. I was confident in my salvation but I knew I needed to pray.

So that's what I did. It was only a few minutes but I just sat down alone on the porch and talked to God for a few minutes. I can't properly retype here what I said but basically I realized I had been in the wrong in many ways and that I needed to let God's salvation refresh me. I hadn't lost salvation but I had disregarded its importance for a while. I had completely ignored any possibility of a spirit-filled life and I was being drained because of it.

I'm not sure what's next. I haven't started praying in tongues or doing mass-healings. But I do know that God is with me and I am willing to hear from him whether that be in a mental way or a spiritual way. Here's to the future.

Random

It's been a while so here's some fun random updates.

Money

My money for my tuition is almost completely in! A couple pledges I received during and after my trip to America will give me less than 200 dollars to raise. Depending on the gifts it could be even less. I've had to be patient and wait on God and pray but he has and is providing. It will be great to officially finish support raising for my internship. To everyone who has prayed and given support thank you.

Painting Hope House.

This will be in my upcoming newsletter (to be sent out in the next week or so, stay tuned) but I wanted to share it with you all on here. A sponsor recently donated paint to the orphanage we visit weekly and this Saturday, instead of chilling on the game reserve and watching DVDs, we went in to paint! We only had one day so it was a bit rushed but we got the entire girl's wing of the building painted. It looks pretty awesome. Hope House is a very nice orphanage though by American standards it perhaps does not quite measure up. In any case it was great to improve the kids living space in a small way and it was cool to get off base and do some more service.

Outreach Staff

Last week we had 16 new Americans arrive for almost 2 months. They are our Outreach staff interns and will be a great help to us as we host many mission teams the next 2 months. Winter(summer for you Americans) is our busiest time so it should get interesting. It's been great getting to know new people and I look forward to working with them in ministry.


So all is well here and South Africa is very awesome, if a bit chillier. I'll let you know exactly how much I have left to raise once I receive my checks. It won't be very much!

Peace and Blessings.

Testimonies From LaunchPad

My trip to America came at a perfect time because the first term of LaunchPad ended right before I left. At the graduation we gave out feedback forms to find out what the students learned and liked in the class. Here are excerpts from what a few students said in the class that my fellow intern, Kaylen, and I taught:

I learned that if I want to live a good life I must follow Jesus. I learned that to live a proper life I must change my mind and my attitude. I have learned about putting aside and being done with my old self. I have seen the Lord Jesus Live through me!

I didn't actually believe in God but this class has made me realize how important Gos is to me. It has taught me to believe in God, have faith and even convince people about God. I now know how to talk to people who are yet to believe that God is there for us and he will stand firm with us to the end.

I have learned about how I can go to God for comfort when I am in need. I have learned how to transform my mind and how not to think badly about others and class has been more like a friend to me because every time I come here I would forget about all the problems I have and all the bad things I come across everyday. Class has taught me that no matter how many times I have wronged God he will still forgive me and that we will always love me. I have taught myself not to think of myself more than others because God loves us equally. God has done good things in my life because without him I would not have learned how to love others and I just LOVE HIM!!

These are just a few students from my class which is one of 7 classes that was taught this past term. God is doing good things in Qwa Qwa and I want to thank you for letting me be a part. Your prayer, financial support, and interest got me here. Thank you so much. Be blessed.

My crazy trip to America.

So here I sit quite exhausted with my sister's wedding over and I hopping on a plane back to Africa in about 16 hours.
It's been quite a whirlwind of a trip. I arrived in NYC, made my way down to Lynchburg VA for my good friend's wedding, spent a night at the summer camp I have worked at in the past, then went back up to Massachusetts, hung out, and was part of my sister's wedding today.
All in all it was a great time. I drove a car, watched American TV, saw many family and friends and even relaxed a bit. Right now I'm feeling just a bit torn however. I really can't wait to get back to my interns, they are great but also they are who I know. I know they are over there plugging away and I know that I should be over there with them. I know I have about 6 months left in this internship and I look forward to experiencing and finishing them but being back in America is a bit tough.
It is tremendously comfortable here and not just because of mere material things. America is my home, my culture, everything I know is here. Being back made me realize how abroad I really am. It can be disconcerting thinking about the distance. In any case, I should be clear and say again I cannot wait to see my fellow interns. They are fantastic, I feel comfortable around them and I do look forward to getting into my routine again with them.

One last thing is that this week was important because I was going to get my laptop finally fixed. Well, after multiple trips to Circuit City, a fed-ex delivery, and far too much maneuvering with automated phone-lines, here I sit typing on my home desktop, not my still-broken laptop. It is a bit depressing.
All is not lost though. New (hopefully good) discs will arrive on Monday and be sent by my parents to me in South Africa. Receiving them in a week or so I should be able to properly recover my computer. Here is to hoping.

I want to welcome any new readers to my blog that I may have talked to during my visit. I hope you enjoy my entries and feel connected with what I'm doing in Africa.

Finally I must say that my brief trip back showed I have a lovely family (and sister CONGRATS), lovely friends, a lovely God, and even a pretty lovely life. Thanks to all who make it great.

Here's to Peace, Blessings, and Africa!