i'm still here

sorry i haven't posted lately, this is the first time i have had internet access since last post. since then, Brian and I had a meeting with the pastor from the community that Zenzele is in. he told us about some of the things to be aware of as we begin to partner with them and he gave us some good ideas about how to go about it. I also spoke with the youth pastor at that church and we talked about the youth rally idea and he was really on board with that. he wants to do a community rally with many different churches in the community involved, which i think is a great idea. he and i really get along great and it's an answer to prayer that we are both on the same page like this. i'm continuing to work out what the rallies look like and how the leadership and Bible Study training fits in to the preparation for youth leaders prior to the rallies themselves.
on friday night we went with our neighbors to a rugby game. I learned that rugby is probably the most violent sport around because there is tackling like in football, but the only padding you are allowed to wear is an earguard so that your ears don't get smashed between your head and somebody else's. a guy broke his leg within one minute of the game starting. the final score was 62-5 with the home team getting slaughtered, but the game itself was a riot - and it was only like $1.50 after my student discount. i could get into going to rugby games more often...
i spent most of the day saturday working on my finances with receipts, filing, and organizing things. i hate doing stuff like that, which is why saturday was the first time i had done anything with all of that stuff, which made it that much worse. Then on saturday night, we had the World Hope South Africa representative and her family over for dinner. the representative's name is Elske and her husband's name is Yaku. we had a riot together. we ended up sitting and talking for probably around 4 1/2 hours and it didn't feel nearly that long because we had some much fun with them. i wish we could have them over more often, but they live over an hour away, so that probably won't happen too often.
on sunday, we went to Rhema South Family Church, a church of about 3-4 thousand each week. the service itself reminded me a lot of Ridgepoint with the seamless incorporation of drama and dance numbers into the service. also, this church has an opportunity every week for people to make a decision to follow Christ. this week, i would say that probably 35 people came forward - it was awesome! also, this was far and away the most culturally diverse and integrated church that i have ever attended. the fact that it's integrated is impressive because the country is still majorly feeling the strain from Apartheid. i realize that i haven't really posted much about that here because i've been here before, so i figure that everybody else already knows what's going on, too. sorry about that for those who are a bit in the dark. i'll make sure to spend some time in the near future giving some background information on the country and my experiences here.
this morning, Mike, Brian, Jason and I had a meeting to get updates on how everyone is doing and where all the projects are at the moment. I'll spend the rest of today reading through a great HIV prevention curriculum that Pastor Vessie loaned me when we met with him on Wednesday.

We Found a Car!

Brian and I spent all of today out car shopping again because we will be losing one of the cars we are renting when the missionary family returns in late August. This would have left us with one car for all 12 people who are trying to go in different directions. It was a long tedious day - especially because i know next to nothing about cars. well, I did know next to nothing, but you learn a lot after car shopping for 10 hours in one week. we found a dealer named Deon that we really liked at a VW place about 15 minutes from home. This was probably the second place we went, but after that, we went all over the place price matching and trying to find a better deal or a better car. we had our hearts set on a VW Citi, but bailed out because it's tiny and any accident above 45 mph would almost assuredly result in serious injury or worse. cars here are a lot like they are in Eurpoe - tiny with more focus on gas mileage than on safety - and we want both! we bailed on the Citi, but found another car there before we left. It was a Polo. It's a little more spacious with many more safety features and it actually gets better gas mileage, so it was the ideal car we were looking for. the problem is that we need to come up with $4,000 more in order to pay for it, so we're in the process of working on that. Please be in prayer for finances to come in so that we can fill this obvious need. tomorrow starts with meetings early, so I'm looking forward to getting going on stuff other than car shopping, which is now right up there with shoe shopping in my book...

Rhema South

Yesterday in the car hunt, Brian and I found a VW that we like, but we're working on getting the price down a bit (even though it's pretty good already). And then this morning Brian, Ethan, Jaden, and I headed out to Zenzelee for a bit before our meeting with one of the churches that they are working with. the church took us a little while to find, but it was well worth it. we met with two of the pastors for about an hour and a half and talked about what they are doing in the many communities surrounding them and how we could possibly join up with them and help with some of the things we are doing. the church was bigger than Central and Brian and I were both blown away by the level of organization. The church thrives by working with cell groups and they have 260 groups spread out all over the area surrounding the church. we're planning to attend there on Sunday morning to see the church in action and to reconnect with the pastors that we met today. they both blew us away with their kindness in spending so much time with us when we know they had to have other things that they could have been working on. We loved our time there and are looking forward to seeing how we can continue to connect with them over time.
Tonight, the education team is coming over and we're having a game night. I'm hoping for some Risk. I'll let you know...but only if i win...

King's Hope

this morning, Brian and I had a meeting with King's Hope, an organization in a township called Oleivenhoutboush. we had a meeting with Magdel there last week and this was a follow up meeting with the director and a couple of other workers there. we talked about youth initiatives and the idea of the rallies and learned more about the open invitation from the schools for King's Hope to do some HIV prevention training there. We would have to do a health based training rather than a Christ based training, but we're investigating further into this idea.
we met a woman named Leoni, who was a part time youth worker at King's Hope and part time at a church in the area. we also met a guy who was doing ministry out in the community with a group of young people. during this meeting, the education team arrived and joined us in the meeting, so we switched gears and began talking about education and the school systems in the area. From there, Brian and I took off and are now preparing to go out car shopping. right now, we have one SUV that we're renting from Global Partners and another that we are renting until the end of August from the family that used to live in the house we're in. so, we need another car - two if possible. Please pray for this to happen because we cannot travel everywhere we need to go with 12 people and two cars.

sunday

to give a quick update about the rugby idea, it didn't happen. instead, we rented Anchorman, which was kind of hard for me because i own the movie and i always hate renting something that i already own, but i didn't bring it and we needed to watch it, so what can you do?
this morning we went to a church in the area (i never heard the name of the township) to visit Pastor Moses, a great guy that Mike had met when he was here before. i also found out that Penny, the district youth director that i met with on tuesday, goes there as well. It was a great service, with Pastor Moses talking about humility and reminding us exactly what that looks like and how the acheive it. Everyone was really friendly and excited to have us around. From the service, Brian, Mike, Jason, and I met and talked about the progress of all of our individual projects. The meeting was sort of impromptu thing because we won't be able to meet tomorrow because the team is divided up all over the place. Tonight, we're having a braai (which is the South African term for cookout) with the education team and the folks that live at the seminary. We're headed out now, which is why this post is short.

thursday-saturday

i promised to post more if it was possible, and this is the first time i have had internet access since last post, so i'm at least taking a step in the right direction. thursday was a really good day. we went back to zenzelee (the care center in the township of finetown) in the morning and spent time playing with the kids there until it was time to help prepare lunch. i was a part of helping to prepare the meal for the kids, which was a traditional meal that looked pretty good. i'm not a fan of mealy-meal, but the main dish was made of that mixed with kidney beans with some seasoning. i was mixing and stirring most of the time and the head chef told me that i would have to go home and cook for my mother because now i was so experienced. the hilarious part was that he thought that Lorie King was my mom because she was in there cooking too. we had a good laugh about that one later.
from zenzelee, we went to Uniting Reformed Church where we already had a relationship with the head pastor. Brian and i had the chance to meet the new youth pastor and it was a great meeting. we were really on the same page with most of our ideas and he has a real heart to reach the young people in the community. we mainly spent time getting to know each other during this time and we will be heading back for a meeting next thursday to do some planning and brainstorming together. while we were out at zenzelee, the education team from Central had their plans for the day fall through, so they weren't able to visit a school. because of this, they voted to spend friday in a school rather than making the drive with me down to my meeting 5 hours away with the regional youth director. since it didn't make much sense for me to get up and drive so long if i was only going by myself, i called and rescheduled this meeting for the next time we have a team around and i promised i wouldn't cancel next time. in retrospect, it was a good idea to spend friday sleeping in a bit and catching up on rest instead of getting up at 5 a.m. because we spend most every sunday making connections and working on building relationships and doing work, friday and saturday are our days off - i still usually wind up doing some planning and writing on those days, but not all day. so, my friday was a lot less packed then i thought it would be and i spent some time studying - i'm working on going through the book of John right now - and then Jason, Molly, and i watched the kids at night so that Brian, Lorie, Mike, and Carol could go out to a nice dinner with the team. I'm posting this at 11 on saturday and tonight the plan is to go catch a rugby game, so i'll let you know how that goes.

sorry

i have not been doing a good job of updating this thing. i know how frustrating it is to check a blog routinely and be rewarded with no new posts, and i sincerely apologize to anybody who has had that experience here. i will work on doing better, but right now we don't have internet at home for the rest of the month, so updates will only come as i can get to the coffee shop. anyway, things have been moving along quite nicely. the team from Cornerstone left on the 11th and we had a good time with them (although working with teams isn't my area, so i wasn't with them that much). this past week has been filled with meetings with pastors who were very supportive of what we are trying to do and i even had a few people share their concerns, which is sort of rare because we have found that South Africans are more likely to let things go rather than stand up and say something isn't right. yesterday, i met with the district youth leader and that was an incredible time. Penny is a real go-getter and she and i already have a meeting planned with many youth leaders in the district, so i'm looking forward to that. and then, on Friday, i'm driving down to Dundee (which is about 5 hours south) with the team of educators that is here right now from Central Wesleyan. I will be meeting with the regional youth director and the team will be doing home visits to homes that are led by the children because the parents have died. i am anticipating this being a great day, but a long and tiring one too. i will be driving around 10 hours and we will be leaving here around 5 am. please pray for safety and God's blessing on this journey and the meetings and visits that will be taking place. i don't know when the next update will be because of the internet situation, but i will do my best to keep this updated as often as possible. thanks for those who keep reading in spite of my lack of posts. thanks for your prayers and your encouraging comments.

it's coming together

this morning, i had a meeting with Doctor Galela (the Regional Superintendent of the Wesleyan Church) and we talked about churches around the area that i should talk to about the vision of Vox's youth ministry. we made plans to visit a couple of pastors next tuesday. one is in the Wesleyan Church and one isn't. that's awesome because we don't want to limit our influence and i didn't really expect him to go out of his way like this to point me in the direction of some other pastors. these two meetings are in addition to the meeting i have tomorrow and the one i have on monday. it's great to be able to look forward to all of this planning and work being used for something, so i've got new motivation to keep working on the curriculum for Bible study and the training session for the discipleship group leaders. with my added motivation, that's what i will be spending the rest of the day working on. the closer i have to a final product by the time of these meetings, the better off i think we will be.
and by the way, i'm finding that blogging everyday isn't something that comes naturally to me because i'm not in the habit yet. right now, i am deciding whether i have a great amount of respect for people who update thier blogs multiple times daily or whether i have decided that they don't have much going on in thier lives, so they have tons of time to blog...something to think about.

monday (7-9)

today was a productive day. Jason, Brian, and Mike were all out with the Cornerstone team all day and I stayed back at the house to get some work done. I spent the whole day researching for the training sessions for the discipleship group leaders, writing the curriculum for Bible study, working to fine-tune here and there, and come up with a name for the rally. because i've not posted anything specific yet on what these rallies will look like or what the planning is leading up to, here's an outline in broad brushstrokes:
1. Identify churches that share and embrace the vision for youth.
2. Identify capable leaders
3. Educate and empower these leaders through a ½ day training session on leadership and Bible study. Also, work with them to fine-tune the rallies.
4. Advertise the rallies.
5. The Event (sadly, yet to be named. leave any suggestions in the comments, i struggle with creativity every now and then)
6. Small group assembly (still working on what this looks like)
7. One phone call from Vox to the church every three months as a follow-up on the Discipleship groups.

Obviously, there is a lot to be done to get to each of these steps, so that's where i find myself right now - working to make the plan work.

time to relax

today, we decided to take it easy and relax for a change of pace. I "slept in" until 10 (which for me is not even close to sleeping in...I think of 1 or 2 as sleeping in) and spent a couple of hours reading, which was something that I personally needed to spend some time doing. during that time, I was able to finish A.W. Tozer's "The Pursuit of God", which i would advise everybody that is able to get their hands on a copy to read it. It's a great book that is written in plain language (helpful for me) while digging deep into big spiritual issues. it really challenged me and I hope at least a few people read it after this endorsement...
Brian and I are planning to meet in a few minutes to look at my plan again for the day-to-day youth ministries stuff.
Also, our internet connection is reliable again...for now. I say that because our connection is dsl and we have to pay based on how much bandwith we use over the course of the month. we ordered 3 gigs worth of download and upload bandwith, but that's really a shot in the dark about how much we will use it, so if you don't read anything new from me toward the end of the month, you'll know we exceeded our bandwith limit.
*****if this bit about internet didn't make sense to you, just ignore everything after "our internet connection is reliable again...for now"

a team comes to town (7-6)

today, a team from Cornerstone University arrived at the airport. These are business students in the graduate program. Their plane got in at 4:45 PM, but we didn't get them back to the seminary (a twenty minute drive) until around 8. The airport was hectic with a fair amount of construction and remodeling taking place in preparation for the World Cup in 2010. Also, the leader of the team was scheduled to arrive yesterday with his wife, but they didn't have enough pages in their passports to get into South Africa, so they are now going to be arriving tomorrow. So the arrival was a bit crazy, but everyone other than the two leaders was all situated tonight and Mike, Jason, Molly, and I learned a lot about navigating around the airport (which will be useful when the remaining 11 teams show up...)

zenzelee again (7-5)

today, we headed back to the orphanage in Finetown to do home visits with some of the staff there. The staff told us that they walk to either end of the community daily, which to me looked like it would be probably about 7-10 miles accross, so our cars were a huge help to them today. We started off by walking a little way to visit a woman who had been so weakened by AIDS that she had been struck by Tuberculosis. she was constantly cold, fighting diarrhea, and unable to care for her children. We talked with her as the caregivers gave her water and medicine and then we prayed over her. From there, we headed back to the orphanage and some other groups went out in the vehicles. Because of limited room in the cars, I stayed back and played with the kids for a few hours while others were out doing home visits. it was a lot of fun despite the cold, which kept many of the regular kids at home. Brian and I had a meeting scheduled with a local pastor, but he had gone to the doctor that morning and they sent him to the hopsital, so we obviously had to cancel. He's okay, nothing serious, but we're going to have to reschedule.
When the kids settled down for lunch, we took off and went to the Lion Park. This is a zoo with lots of exotic animals at arms length. We got to play with baby lion cubs, feed giraffes, and drive through cages of lions (some of the lions got within a couple feet of our car!). That was a fun experience, even thought i had already done it before last time i was here.

more planning and refining

i have a feeling that a whole lot of time is going to be spent doing this type of work. to me, it feels a little like i'm not doing anything, but when i think about it, i really do know how necessary planning is. this morning, Brian and i met at nine and spent a good amount of time refining the vision for the youth program, which was really helpful to me. i'm planning on spending some more time in prayer, reading, and planning this afternoon and your prayers for God's direction are very much appreciated.

meeting & planning (7-3)

This morning, Mike, Jason, Brian, and I had a meeting with a pastor from the township of Soweto. Soweto is one of the largest township in the country with over 4 million people living there. The pastor’s name is Mpho and he is an incredibly wise, gifted, and driven man. His knowledge of politics is extensive and he is a man of vision who has many ideas that he would love to implement, but he is so busy working on the other things that he has started, it would be simply impossible for him to do all that he imagines. He is an inspiring man because he is constantly working to make this world a better place for the people around him.
Our talk this morning was about how Vox could come alongside of him and partner with him in a variety of his endeavors. He was excited about the idea of a youth rally coming to his area and he invited me to come to his church’s youth camp for three days in August. This is an exciting opportunity that I am really looking forward to. The more youth camps that I can attend, the better of I will be. This way, I can gain a greater understanding of what works with youth and what does not work.
This afternoon, I devoted much more time working on planning out the baby steps that I need to take in order to make the rallies happen. I spent time seeking God’s wisdom and direction as I worked to see where He is leading me. I holed up in my room from 12 to around 4 spending time praying, planning, and reading as i waited to hear from God and get His direction for this mission. this was a very fruitful time as i got a lot planned out and i really think that it is less of my plan and more of God's, so that's incredibly encouraging.

update to previous post

A few minutes after typing up my previous post, I talked with Brian and Mike about these feelings of inadequacy. Brian and I had a great conversation about vision planning and what it looks like to plan to reach a specific goal. I spent most of the remainder of the day holed up in my room working on a plan of attack to break things down into manageable sized pieces. I found our talk really helpful and it was incredibly encouraging to me because he was able to answer exactly my question. After I get done planning out the steps, he is going to help me fine tune things so that we can catch everything that I missed and expand on the things I didn’t go in depth enough on.

upcoming week

This morning, Brian, Mike, Jason, and I had a meeting to discuss what we need to get done this week and to graph out our long-term plan for where we need to go, what we need to do, who we need to connect with, and how all of that looks. Right now, I feel in over my head as all of these guys are so much more experienced than I am and sometimes I struggle to know what the next step is. I feel confident that I understand how to get the rallies going, but I’m not entirely sure how to handle the little day-to-day stuff, but I’m praying for wisdom and guidance as I learn what that looks like. Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement – they mean so much.
Still haven't figured out the internet situation, so I have no clue when the next update will be, they may keep coming in bunches like this.

youth camp (7-1)

Sunday, I had the opportunity to visit a youth camp that had been going on since Friday. Doctor Galela picked me up at 8:30 in the morning and we drove an hour and a half north to the camp. When we arrived, we walked into the worship service that had already started. Singing and dancing were already in full swing and it was definitely a little different that what I was used to in a service, but it was awesome. Some of the songs were in Zulu, but I found that just being in the presence of so many worshipping God created a worshipful atmosphere for me despite the language barrier. At 12, we took a half hour break then it was back to the service. We sang and there was a message and a recap of what had been covered at the camp. This finished up at around 3:30 and then it was lunchtime. We had a wonderful meal and then the kids packed up to go. I spent this time meeting the youth leaders and talking to them about the rallies. I found this time to be helpful because everybody I talked to was very supportive of what we wanted to do and a few of the pastors really wanted to talk more about partnering with us to bring a rally to their area, so that was very encouraging.

Enthomjeni (6-30)

Today, we visited Enthomjeni – a care center in another township / shantytown – for their fifth birthday party. This setting was fairly similar to yesterday’s orphanage, but none of the kids lived there all of the time. Also, this place had a computer-training center to educate people in Word, Excel, and other skills required for an office job. There were probably around 200 kids here again today and I spent a few hours playing with them on jungle gyms, watching them play football (soccer), and watching them dance. After a few hours of playing with the kids, the actual birthday celebration began. We had a wonderful lunch for all of the supporters and friends of Enthomjeni and then the kids launched into the program. They sang a few songs, danced for us, a couple of kids rapped, a youth group on a mission trip did a hilarious skit that the kids loved, and then the leadership of Enthomjeni was passed over from Jeanetta, a wonderful lady who moved from America and founded the care center, to Jane, a local young lady who exhibited the leadership ability and spiritual maturity to run the ministry. That was an awesome sight to see, and in a way, our team was reminded that passing over leadership was something that we are working toward by the end of this year. We spent altogether around four or so hours at Enthomjeni and we all walked away encouraged that God had used a grassroots movement in such a way. Our prayer is that He will continue to raise up Jeanetta’s and Enthomjeni’s all over the place to meet the needs of communities and the people living in them who are hurting.

orphanage visit (6-29)

Today, we went to visit an orphanage in a township called Finetown. For those unfamiliar with what a township is, the more appropriate word would be shantytown. People are living in shacks made of wood, scrap metal, used bricks – anything they can find. In these townships, people don’t have much access to electricity, food, water, or jobs.
This orphanage in Finetown is home to twenty-four children and many more children come to eat and play during the day. Most of these kids are orphans and today there were probably around 200 kids (I’m bad at guessing numbers of people, so this may be off…). This is the second time I have visited this orphanage, and there have been some drastic changes. They are working to become certified by the government, so in the last year, they fixed up the house and built a wall around the entire property. They installed locker-room type showers and are working on clearing space for a garden.
When we arrived, I helped to loosen up the soil with a pickaxe and threw away the remnants of an old cement wall that was only six inches below the surface. After working there for a bit, I went to play with some kids. Most of the children living at or visiting this orphanage were orphaned by AIDS and I was told last time I visited that as many as 75% of the children there were probably HIV positive. This information alone just never ceases to tear me up emotionally. I cannot and will not ever understand how something like this can happen to innocent children, but today was not about philosophizing about what had gone wrong, today was about loving these kids no matter what.
So, I played football (soccer) poorly and I let kids hang all over me. For about 45 minutes, there were two little boys who spoke no English that absolutely refused to let go of my hands and followed me everywhere I went. Then I got my hair combed by a little girl wielding a toothbrush. These children just wanted a chance to be kids and to be loved and that’s what we provided for them today. Going into this setting, I stopped and realized just how much what we were going to do was like what Jesus would have done. The kids needed love and we spent some serious time loving them. Sure it was exhausting, but it was an incredible time.