I went
with Experience Missions through their Immersion program along with 11 other
people from all over the states and Canada. While in South Africa we spent our
time in two different communities. Pomfret was the first community and it was
very remote town on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Pomfret was a mining town
but they were mining epitasis so that stopped. Then the government gave the
town to the 32 battalion (Angolans that fought for South Africa in the Angolan
Bush War) then about 7 years ago the government decide they didn’t want those
people there anymore and tool away their police, mail services and hospital.
When the people still didn’t leave they start to tare down the people’s houses.
So that’s the history we were walking into. There was red sand everywhere and
beautiful trees and cactuses. Our team all lived together in one of the houses
owned by ECO the organization we were working through while in Pomfret. ECO
runs a children’s home (basically an orphanage) and also runs feeding houses
and Gotata (to be explained later) in the community. Our team was spilt into
three groups, the works team, ministry team and children’s team. I was the
leader of the works team. We would work in the vegetable gardens in the
mornings and find odd jobs whether that was picking up garbage, gardening or
chasing donkeys out of our trash pile. For the first week in the afternoons we
would go to the computer room that was donated to ECO and help kids with their
English. You see school is taught in English but for most of the kids English
is there forth or fifth language so doing well in school can be difficult. We would work with either math or
English programs on the computers. Sadly we couldn’t continue this because
after our first week there we lost electricity which also stopping the water pump. In my time of a little over a month in
Pomfret I showered four times. In the evenings we would play soccer, Frisbee or
other games with the kids from the neighborhood and the children’s home. On
Saturdays we would have Gotata, which is basically like a VBS program. We would
go around in a truck with a trailer load up all the kids in town and take them
to an empty lot. Then we would sing songs with them and perform a bible story
for the kids. Then we would play games with them until the sun started to set.
Then we would send them home with a snack to eat. On the odd day I also got to
help the kids in the child home get ready for school and play with the kids in
the crèche (which is a preschool). That was always super fun J
The second community we spent time in was a squatter camp
called Olievenhoutbosch. While working in Olieven our team was spilt up and
living with host families in a city 15 minutes away from Olieven. Every morning
we would meet at the church and drive into the squatter camp. On Monday mornings
I would go to the community center to spend time with the grannies there that
met each week to do crafts and have a time of community. We would always start
with pray and singing and I’ve never seen so many elderly people dancing in my
life. Friday afternoons we would go to the old age home and bring cupcakes to
the people and staff there. We would sit and talk with them and sing to them.
For the rest of the week for the first few weeks we worked in the disability
centre. We would play with the kids and make bracelets and other crafts for the
disability centre to sell for their income. At the disability centre I met Dee,
the most beautiful girl ever! She’s 11 years old, blind and has both physical
and mental disabilities. Because she’s blind she grabs for what she hears and
holds on with a death grip. So when the other kids would go by her and get
grabbed so they would get upset at Dee. Therefore most of the time Dee would
just sit in the corner by herself.
One day I went up to her and just held her hands and started to move her
arms and make sounds with the movements and she just lit up. By the end of the
week I could walk up to her and say “hi Dee.” And she would start bouncing and
reaching for me. In the lasts
weeks I worked at the school in the morning I would work with one of the
teachers and help her in the classroom sometimes teaching the class by myself.
In the afternoons we would help the afterschool care personal with feeding the
kids lunch and playing games with them. Because it’s summer in South Africa
right now school was let out in early December so when the school closed we
worked with Mama Asie. She ran a crèche and an orphanage and we worked in her
garden planting fruit trees, weeding, mowing the lawn and such. Mama Asie would
use her produce from the garden for the crèche and also sell it for income. In
one of those last days working in the community I got to go back to the
disability centre and I went up to Dee and said “hi Dee.” Once again and she
still remembered me. I never say her so excited. She taught me that the
littlest interaction could cause me to give my heart away. It didn’t matter
that I all I was doing was shaking her hand for hours on end I was giving her
attention and love and that’s all that mattered, not the activity but what the
activity meant.
I loved my time in South Africa. I heard from God so many
times. Some of the most important lessons I learn from Him are that because of
Christ we are working from perfection not to perfection and Christianity is not
about striving for perfection because we already have it. I learned that we
have to be rooted in Christ but rooting in a way that when we are turned
upside-down our roots will not give way.
I learned that God is a sympatric crier. Their was one night when my
teammates was crying and me, being a sympatric crier was crying right alone
with her and I was just praying over her when I heard so clear in my head
“break my heart for what breaks yours.”
God cry’s when we cry and he collects each teardrop. I also learned that
God doesn’t need us to do His work. He chose’s to include us and let it change
us. On the day that Nelson Mandela died we didn’t go into Olieven but rather
went out of the city until we knew how the country would react to this news. We
went to a community called Vastfontein and got to see a few different
ministries. One we went to was called “House of the Good News of Jesus Christ.”
It was a half way house for women would have come out of prostitution. So we
were listening to Wenzel (the man who started the organization with his wife) introducing
us to the ministry and after about 15 minutes of talking about how the
organization got started and such he was like “so you want to go to a brothel?”
and away we went. We went to talk and pray with the girls and as we were doing
that one of my team mates was approached by one of the ladies and she said “I
need to talk to you, can you get me out?” and my team mate was able to help
this lady meet Wenzel and she was able to get her one year old baby and get out
after only a week of being at the brothel. We were even supposed to go to Vastfontein
that day yet we got to see God change a woman’s life forever. It reminds me how
we are sinner stuck in sin and God comes into our life and changes it forever
and then His lets us be part of His plan to bring the kingdom. Another cool
thing was that usually when I’m put in situations were I have to approach
people and talk to them about God I get nervous and think “what if I say the
wrong thing, say too much or not enough?” but when we were driving to the
brothel I felt complete peace. No matter if I say the ‘wrong’ thing or not God
can use what I’ve said to plant some sends. The weight of saying the ‘right’
thing to bring someone to Christ isn’t on my shoulders. He is in control.
A theme of the trip was that you can count the seeds in a
mango but you can’t count the mangos in a seed. A lot of the time it what we
were doing could seem pointless. Why are we picking up garbage when people will
throw more on the ground the next day? How is sitting with this child that
doesn’t respond to anything I do furthering the Kingdom? But something’s you’re
the planter of seeds and you may never see the harvest. You may be watering the
seed or digging the hole for the seed but you will never see the harvest. So it
can seem hard when you can’t see the point. But I know my time in South Africa
was not pointless. Every hour I spent making bracelets out of buttons or
trimming trees or simply sitting and waiting for an opportunity to serve were
not wasted hours and moments because though I may never see the harvest I
planted seeds.
So there’s the overview. The highlight of my trip was
probably just letting God lead my life. For the first time in my life I waited
to hear what God wanted for my life and didn’t give a deadline of when He had
to get back to me. I really got to
know God better and find out what my relationship with Him was and how it
needed to change. My lowdark (the
opposite of highlight ;)) was probably coming home and having the struggle of
trying to retain the same relationship I had with God as I did in Africa. I
know that’s kind of cheating because it’s not really part of the South Africa
adventure but all my struggles and challenges on the trip that seemed like
lowdarks really taught me things about God and myself. One of my lowest moments
of the trip brought on one of my most awestruck moments of the trip where God
personally intervened in a church service to give me a message. Five people
that I met that impacted my life the most were Mama Asie, Zelda, Dina, Mallory
and Dee. Mama Asie just had such drive for life. She took charge of things and had
such a wealth of knowledge that she was always willing to share. She didn’t
just put us in the place she wanted us when we came to help, she asked us what
we wanted to do and made sure we were serving in a place that we enjoyed. She
is an exceptional businesswoman and truly cares for people. For her people are
always top priorities. Zelda is the person in charge of ECO. She put her whole
life into serving God. She relayed on God for everything and was such a role
model. Dina started the disability centre after losing her own disabled son.
She has such big dreams that seem almost impossible but that doesn’t stop her
from dreaming and turning those dreams into something real. Mallory was a girl
on my team who was never afraid to call me out on things. She struggled but
didn’t hide it she shared her hurts and let herself be venerable. She would
tell me “you’re being dumb.” When
I needed it and would hold me when I needed it. And Dee well she stole my
heart. I saw Jesus in her and experience a bit of how God must feel loving us.
Yes she does bad things some times and it hurts you but that never changes how
much you love her. She lived with hopeless abandon. Dee pulled on my heart
strings more then any other child in my life and I still can’t quite figure out
why. I’ve learned so much from these five people and many many other people
that I got to know in South Africa. I want to be like each of these people when
I grow up. I want to care for people more that my time or schedule, I want to
rely on God for everything, I want to dream big and believe that anything in
possible through God, I want to be someone that will give it to you straight and
but the type of person that people are drawn to and comfortable to open up to
and I want to live with hopeless abandon holding nothing back.So as the tan lines fade I have many lessons to hold on to and memories to cherish.
