Back At It

Well, not everybody around here is back in the swing of things again since Christmas, but we are. We have a team coming in on Friday morning, so we're working to finalize the itinerary and make sure all of the little details are covered. I will be a bit more involved with this team and I'm really excited about that. They will be joining us in preparing for a couple of different Youth United events. We'll be going door-to-door with invitations in Pimville and we'll be doing a prayer walk through Wattville. I'm pumped to see how God uses the team and how He speaks into their lives like He spoke into mine while I was here last year on a short-term trip. Please join us in prayer for the team's safety and spiritual development as they join us in ministry here. Also, please pray for these upcoming events. Pray that God would bless our advertising and planning efforts and that people would meet Him at these events.

Christmas Day

I know this is a day late, but Merry Christmas! For Christmas day, Paul and I went to an Aids Hospice and spent the morning with the patients there. A pastor friend of ours is a counselor there, so we went around with her and handed out little gift packages she had put together. They were really simple (a couple of bananas, an apple, a few cookies, candy, and juice), but people were really appreciative and just getting something for Christmas seemed to make their day. We didn't see any family members that were there visiting, witch was really hard on us. However, some of the patients had gone home for the holidays to spend time with their families. From there, we headed home and had brunch with Jason, Molly, Bridget (Molly's sister) and Cheryl (her friend) to celebrate for the day. It was a different Christmas than any that I have had before, but it was incredible!

Pre-Rally Prep

Yesterday and today have been spent working to make the upcoming rallies really sweet. I'm not good with details, so I'm usually not a good production person, but Brian and Laura are good at that stuff, so we're working together. Yesterday we laid out a general overview of the events and we brainstormed ideas that would fit well into the event. We're also going to be working to identify local businesses that we will approach to ask about donations to use as giveaways for the events. We've got a list of possible games to play for prizes and they will all lead up to The Dating Game, which will be played right before the message. It fits in nicely with the topic of HIV prevention through right choices, so it's really exciting. I'm also carving out time during the day to work on a message. I'm doing tons of research on HIV to be 100% sure that all of my facts are right and up to date. I'm also researching how other people present similar ideas in different parts of the world. I've been reading a ton of material relating to HIV and abstinence and I'll keep on reading as long as I keep on coming across new stuff. Now I'm glad that we have a few weeks that are quiet for the Holidays so that I can devote most (if not all) of my time to working through all of this material.

Coming to America

Today the Takas family left to head back home. If you know them, make sure to say hi. If you don't know them, you'll probably have a chance to meet them sooner or later. Mike will be touring around to different churches with a table set up to explain what exactly Vox is doing and how people can get involved. If you see that booth or table set up at your church, make sure to stop by and meet him. This time is strange for those of us staying here. The house has two empty rooms. The car just sits in the backyard. The warmth the Takas family brought to the house is missing. But at the same time, what they're doing back in the States continues to enable to projects here to keep on going. So, it's a bit of a bittersweet feeling.

Working on a Message

I spent all of today working on the message that I will be giving on abstinence in February. I know it's a long way away still, but it was good for me to get a start now because I had some free time today. I mainly did research and was looking at what other people had shared in their abstinence messages. At dinnertime, our whole team grilled out and spent some time celebrating the Takas family. They're returning to the States on Saturday and will be working on things from that side. So, we had a meal and then went around and read Scripture over them and encouraged and prayed for them. It's disappointing that they won't be here with us anymore, the work they will be doing in the States is vital if the projects here are to continue.

The Search for a Sound System

A good portion of yesterday and today has been spent in search of a P.A. System to use at our Youth United events. Because Laura and I didn't feel great about our knowledge of that stuff, Brian came along with us. We've had a good time driving all over the place in search of the best deal. Now we've visited three places and gotten quotes of four or five systems, so it's getting close to time to pull the trigger. The thing that makes it tough is that we're working with a pretty limited budget and we're looking to get good quality equipment...and we all know how that shuffle goes. I think we have a pretty good idea of where to go from here, but we'll see what happens - I think we'll buy something in the next couple of weeks.

Let Down

This morning was a major disappointment. After Laura and I spent all day Wednesday and Thursday advertising for the event today, nobody showed up. We hung 100 posters and talked to many people who said they were going to come...and then nobody came at all. I don't know what the deal is, but it's really disappointing. I think part of the issue is that unless Laura and I were there with the people hosting the event, they didn't do anything in preparation for it. They didn't think of how to make the event the best it could be, they didn't advertise and they didn't even get stuff set up for our visit in order to get things prepared for what we had planned on doing that day. This event was their baby and it was really something that I viewed as us doing "on the side" as a way to help them, and then it flops like this with little effort put in by them. I'm having a hard time with that, but after I sleep on it, I'm sure I'll be just fine...

Advertising

Today Laura and I went and hung some posters with the organizers of the event on Saturday. We had numerous other plans to implement for the marketing today, but the hand-out flyers hadn't been printed, the posters hadn't been hung, we couldn't get access to the megaphone (which is a surprisingly effective way to communicate in townships) and the dance team that was going to walk with us and perform didn't show up. Overall, it's a little disappointing, but it was honestly like I expected things to go. Despite the fact that so many things fell through, it was a great day. We hung a ton of posters and we're also heading back that way tomorrow to hopefully follow up on the things that didn't happen today. I'll let you know how that goes.

Internet Outage

Well, it was about a week back when we had the twenty four hour power outage. Today was the end of our twenty four hour internet outage. Turns out that our whole city was without access, so we (the Kings, Paul, Laura and I) drove out of town to a coffee shop to get things done. While this was obviously not an ideal situation, we were able to get the necessary things taken care of. And when we got home, our internet connection was back up and running. It's amazing how much I've always taken stuff like power and internet access for granted. When I woke up on the day without power and this morning and realized that we didn't have power/internet access, I hardly knew what to do with myself. That's a sad place to be, but that's where I find myself right now.

A Team Comes to Town

Late Thursday night, a three member team arrived to spend a week with us. The team is made up on two people from Watermark Church in Grand Haven (Steve Deur and Sherri Tamburello - a Vox board member) as well as Dave Deur (a pastor from Central). On Friday, they all went with the Takas family, Laura and I to an event in Katlehong organized by the Student Christian Organization in that community. It was set up to be an end of the school year/calendar year with music, drama, speakers and other forms of entertainment. It was a fundraiser and a chance for the youth to celebrate and relax after the semester. Unfortunately, the attendance was not quite what they were hoping for. They were hoping for 200 or more and there were probably around 50 at the time we left. I'm sure more people showed up as the night wore on, but it was too bad that more people didn't show up to hang out and celebrate while the money went to a good cause. Then on Saturday, the Kings, the Kehrers, Laura, Paul and I went to a concert in Joburg put on by the Nelson Mandela Foundation. 46664 (the name of the event) featured 10-12 South African artists as well as 8-10 international artists. It was fun to just relax for a while and enjoy ourselves. The strange name comes from Nelson Mandela's time in prison. He was prisoner #466 in '64, so the event was named after that. Some of the international artists were: Corrine Baily Rae, Live, Ludacris, The Goo Goo Dolls, Annie Lennox. Also, Mandel showed up and gave a five or ten minute speech (which was 5 minutes of speaking with 5 minutes of applause). Overall, it was an awesome event. On a slightly different note, I got my phone back from a pickpocket who snatched it. I just called him out on it and said I wanted it back and he gave it to me, so that was a good thing...