I'm Home

Sorry I didn't get to posting this right away. I made it back safely and I'm pretty worn out. I slept late today and was basically tired from when I woke up until now. I think this jet lag may take longer to get over than I'd hoped. Anyway, if you see me and get a chance, come say hi...I'd love to talk.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow at 8:15 PM, my plane will be heading out from Johannesburg. I'll have a five and a half layover in London before departing for Chicago. I'll be back in the US at 2 on Monday afternoon. I'm going to the church in Soweto that's become my home church to say all of my goodbyes there and it's a really strange feeling. It hasn't hit me yet that I'm really leaving. I'm guessing it won't until I'm sitting on the plane. At any rate, I'll post sometime on Monday night to let you know I made it safely. Beyond that, if you're looking for new updates, come talk to me or give me a call or shoot me an email because I doubt I'll have much else to blog about that will be reasonably interesting.

Goodbyes

I'm spending time this week packing my stuff up, picking up the last-minute purchases and saying good-bye to all of my friends here. It's great getting around and seeing my friends, but it definitely is difficult to say goodbye. I'm hoping to be back as soon as possible even if it's just for a week or so, but leaving is still difficult. These are people that I've grown close to and it's really weird to think that it's quite possible that I may never see some of them again. I know that part of that is the nature of the work I'm doing, but it's not something I'm particularly happy about. I love the idea that's so prevalent here that you build a friendship with people that you work with.

Have You Ever...

Have you ever driven by a large, angry mob of people? I had that experience today. The municipal workers in our town and a few of the surrounding areas are on strike right now, so there are some roads that have garbage strewn all over the place and the towns just look bad in general. Well, today, for a change of pace, a groups of probably 150-200 of the striking workers gathered in front of a building (which I assume was a city office building) in the town of Benoni. But, they weren't content to just stand around and hold their signs. They instead opted to block off three lanes of a four lane one way road through town. Then, they threw garbage into the one lane they weren't totally blocking in order to get their point across. Because I needed to get through to where I was going, I decided to drive through the "garbage lane". This did not please these workers.
When I say these folks were upset, I think I'm probably understating things. Some people were holding signs...others were holding ten foot long two by fours which they waved menacingly at any car stupid enough to try to drive through their barricade. Like I said, I needed to get through this little gathering, so I slowed down a little and headed to the far right to try to maneuver through the people and the garbage. As I passed the group, I got a few threatening gestures and too many threatening looks to count, but I made it without incident. Here's hoping they get what they want before too long...

Vacation

I realized that I forgot to post about the fact that I'd be gone for most of this week. I'm haven't posted, but it isn't laziness, I was just away from my computer since Tuesday night. I went with the Kings to a place on the coast called Durban. It was sort of like Miami. A nice, warm city on the beach - and the architecture even looked similar. We spent a few days there before heading in the mountains for Ethan's soccer tournament. He had games yesterday and today and we arrived home around 5 this afternoon. It was a great vacation and I'm grateful that I got to see those parts of South Africa before I leave. By the way, I'm flying home next Sunday night. See you soon.

Training, Part 2

Yesterday afternoon, I went back to Hope of Glory, the church in Wattville that is helping out with some of the follow-up from our event in a nearby school. We spent time working on preparing a Bible Study lesson for a small group setting. We focused primarily on observing the passage and we broke up into small groups to dissect the words in the passage and to pick out the key phrases. Then, we got back together in a big group and shared our observations. After we had done this, I challenged them to come up with some practical applications. I pointed out that studying for the sake of studying wasn't doing us a whole lot of good if we didn't apply what we learned.
At this point, I looked down at my phone and realized that I was already 15 minutes late to help get things set up for a going away party for myself and the Kehrers. We had some friends over to the seminary that's down the road from us and had a great time hanging out and having good food with good friends. As much as I'm looking forward to being home with my family and friends, it's definitely going to be hard to leave my close friends here.