So I know I haven't written a blog in a long time and for that I am sorry. We have been really busy here with different things and I are reading a book called Exiles that pretty much takes up all my free time. Well tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we will have a big Thanksgiving meal together and then we have Friday through Monday off to explore South Africa a bit more. Myself and four other girls are going to a place called Plettenberg Bay for the weekend. It is about three or four hours away from Jeffrey's Bay. Before we go to Plett on Friday we are going bungee jumping with about half of our team! I'm soooo excited! ALSO, on Sunday my friend Alyssa and I are going SHARK CAGE DIVING!!! I'm soooo stinkin excited! So yeah I'm excited for this weekend!

          Soooo in January, I will be going to Swaziland until May! I am pretty excited about this! A few weeks ago we had a week of fasting and prayer and God gave me some pretty neat confirmation about going to Swazi! God is already breaking my teams hearts for Swazi and I am so anxious to see what He is going to do there, but I will miss Jbay and the people here so so much!

          Our house visit ministry here is going great! We are building some neat relationships but we leave in about three weeks which is going to be really sad. One girl from my house visit team is staying in Jbay until May so she will be able to continue in the relationships we have been building, which will be awesome! We have been praying for our friend Theodora to get a job for awhile and she got one! This is extremely exciting because jobs are really hard for the people in the townships to get. Another one of our friends, Sweetness, is still looking for a job so please pray for her. Apparently she got one and worked for a week and the guy didn't pay her so she quit but there is really nothing she can do about it which sucks! We have a friends Davidson who is 25 and just moved to Jbay. He is addicted to smoking and alcohol. He told us he wants to stop and he said he knows God wants him to stop but I guess it is easier said than done. He has started going to church with us though so that is cool! Please pray for Davidson! You can also pray for Marta, Regina, Gladis, and all of Ocean View and Tokyo Sexwhale! Please pray that God would use my house visit team, Blair, La, Alexis and myself, in insane ways during our last 10 days of ministry! That is all we have left is 10 ministry days! It is crazy! Time is flying by!

          God is doing so many others things and it is all so overwhelming but at the same time extremely exciting! He is teaching me how to trust Him like I've never trusted Him before! He is teaching me what it is truly like to be a Christ follower! Our team of 55 people, including our leaders, is more unified now than ever before! We are all learning, growing, and being stretched together! It's a beautiful but extremely exhausting thing haha!

          I miss each and every one of you back home so so SO much! You are on my heart often! Please know that you are in my prayers and I know God is working back home just as He is here in Jbay! Continue to pursue God and just be real! Being real is what He wants from us I think!

P.S. If you ever want to call me I would love to hear from anyone and everyone! You can call me using skype which costs like $0.02 a minute or you can get a calling card and call me that way! My number is 27792550247. Love you guys!

I know it has been awhile since I have written a blog and for that I am extremely sorry! I wish I could write more but because of busyness and limited internet access I am not able to.

My team and I were out of town all last week (Oct 10-18). We were in Somerset East, which is about 3 hours Northwest of Jeffreys Bay. We were involved in a biblically based HIV/AIDS awareness program called Beat the Drum. There is a move called Beat the Drum about a young boy, Musa, who lives in a small village. At the beginning of the movie Musa's father dies from a "curse" that is on Musa family which is actually AIDS. Everyone in the village shuns Musa and his family because they think his family is cursed. In actuality, the people of the village are just ignorant because they have never been taught about HIV/AIDS. So to make a long story short Musa goes to Johannesburg to search for his uncle and in doing so finds an awareness of HIV/AIDS. Musa and a friend he meets in Johannesburg take courage and start telling people the truth about HIV/AIDS.  

If you don't already know, HIV/AIDS is extremely prevalent in South Africa. We had about 120 Beat the Drum volunteers and amongst those volunteers we were split into five different school teams. Aeroville (which was my team), Cookhouse (has the highest HIV/AIDS count in South Africa), Gill, Pearston, Johnson, and there was also a community team who spoke to prisons and farmers. Our focus was to bust the myths about AIDS such as: you will be cured in you sleep with a virgin, condoms give you AIDS, if I have sex while holding hands I am still a virgin, if I deny I have HIV/AIDS it will go away, and if I have sex with a fat person I will not get HIV/AIDS because their fat absorbs the AIDS. Now all these myths seem relatively dumb to you and I, but these people have never been educated about HIV/AIDS and these are things they actually believe.

So here we go, I will tell you what we thought God's plan for the week was going to be and then I'll tell you how stinkin clever God is and what actually happened. The plan was to show the movie to the grade 8 and 9 at AerovilleHigh School on Monday and come back Tuesday to start teaching from the Beat the Drum curriculum. The curriculum shows us what to teach from day to day and in our school team we split into smaller teams of 3 people and each 3 person team was given either a grade 8 or grade 9 class to teach.

We showed the movie to grads 8 and 9 on Monday and everything ran smoothly, praise Jesus! Afterwards we did a lot of praying and preparing in order to teach the curriculum on the next day, but when we arrived at the school on Tuesday there were no students at the school. Apparently Aeroville has a new principal and the teachers don't like him so they decided to go on a small strike and send all the students home. At this point I was a bit discouraged but knew that God was in control. We found out that about 400 of the students live in a hostile on campus so we had 40 minutes to go over and meet some of the students. I was ready to get into some deep conversations with these students, but God had other plans for the day. I ended up just playing games with some girls the whole time. It was really fun and just gave us a chance to get to know them a little and allow them to be comfortable around us and trust us more. We left the school and I was still a bit discouraged. Honestly I was not trusting God completely. I felt like we didn't have much time with these students and I was worrying but God is capable of immeasurably more than I can ask or imagine. He is capable of using 5 minutes or 50 minutes. God rocks!   

The next day the students were still on strike, so we went back to the hostile to talk with them. I and two of my teammates walked up to a group of students and started talking with them. I started talking with an extremely interesting girl names Babalwa. She is in grade 11 and is really talkative and just a sweet girl. She stood out to me amongst all the other students for some reason. She was telling me how she didn't understand why 18 year old girls were sleeping with men old enough to be her grandpa. We started talking about Christianity and she told me her parents were Christians but she wasn't. She said she needed to be a teenager first and Christianity is for when she gets older. I talked with her some more and then in was time to leave. We invited all the students to the youth rally we were having at the youth center the next night.

The next night at the youth rally (Wednesday night) I was looking for Babalwa and I couldn't find her. I ended up meeting some other students that night and sitting with them. I was an extremely powerful night and God did incredible things in the hearts of those students. They were given an opportunity to accept Jesus and challenged to abstain from sex until marriage. We went back to Aeroville Thursday and we actually got to teach in the classroom. We had 45 minutes and it took us 15 minutes to find our classroom. Once we found our classroom only 3 students had actually seen the movie. We talked to them about values and just some general stuff from the movie that they could understand without having seen the movie. They also had a chance to write letters to us about something in their lives that they need advice on or have never told anyone. The bell rang and all the students left. I left the room a little discouraged. A few of my teammates and I decided to go over to the hostile to visit the students we met earlier in the week. I saw Babalwa and was anxious to ask her if she was at the youth rally. She said she would meet me at the hostile in a few minutes. So I went on over and started playing a game called Oh Lele with some girls. The game just finished as Babalwa walked up so I went up to her and asked her if she was at the youth rally. She said yes and she said she accepted Jesus into her heart at the youth rally!!!!! I was so excited! I gave her a huge hug! She said the youth rally was extremely powerful and when she and her friends got back to the hostile afterwards they were praying and reading the bible together. I asked her if she had a bible of her own and she didn't so I told her I would buy her one! So I did and I gave it to her the next day! She was so excited to receive it! Please pray that Babalwa continues to fall more and more in love with God every day! God gave me a huge heart for her since the first day I met her and I know He has incredible plans for her life!

So now it is Thursday afternoon, and we decided for our second and last day of teaching on Friday we would split the guys and the girls up. I've been reading a book called Messy Spirituality (which I totally recommend reading btw) and there is one part where the author tells the story of the Samaritan woman and Jesus at the well and I've never heard the story told in such a way. Here is a lady who has made all kinds of bad choices. Everyone thinks she is unsalvageable, unteachable, and unredeemable, but Jesus comes and tells her everything she has every done. He tells her who she really is when she doesn't even know who she is. He redeems her! So I had been thinking all week how perfect that story would be to tell to a group of teenage girls who really have no clue why they are on earth or what they are doing here. So I presented the idea to my teaching partner and she was down with it.

Friday comes and we go to teach the girls we had the day before, but once again, God had a totally different plan for us. I ended up teaching with three other girls I wasn't prepared to teach and we were in a classroom with about 30 girls whom we didn't know if we had the day before or not. We had about three minutes to put our plans together. I told them I had to tell the Samaritan woman at the well story from John 4 and they were fine with that. So we went in the classroom to find out from the teacher that we only had 35 minutes when we thought we were going to have an hour. We started teaching and trying to have discussions with them about things such as dreams, love, and lust. They seemed to be listening but they didn't participate much in the discussions. All of a sudden the bell rang and they we all about to leave. I asked them if they would be interested in staying and listening to a story and they all said yes. So I told them to picture themselves as the woman at the well and I started reading the story out of Messy Spirituality. I finished and told the girls that if any of them wanted Jesus to do this for them He would and I told them they could stay after and talk with any of us if they wanted to. They all left the classroom but not a minute later five girls walked back in. One girl said, "My friends want to accept Jesus!" So two of my teammates and myself led four girls to Christ on Friday! God is so big! He can do immeasurably more than we can ever ask or imagine!

Africa is so overwhelming! I do not even know where to begin. God is doing so much in Jeffreys Bay, yet so so much in my own heart as well. My ministry team and I are beginning to build relationship with some families in the townships and it is really neat! I'm excited for what God has in store for us and for what He wants to show these people through us! There are no limits to how we can show God's love in the township. For example, yesterday we went to see our friend Sweetness and she was not home, she was at the clinic, but her mother Joyce was there. Joyce was sitting on the couch and we could tell that her back was bothering her and she wasn't feeling well so we asked if there was anything we could help her with around the house and she said yes. So Blair, Alexis, and I stood in the kitchen washing Joyce's dishes. It was so funny because it was nothing like washing dishes in America. It was interesting to say the least.

One day last week it was raining and very cold so our amazing ministry leader Kristen drove us to the townships and through out the townships while we visited people. At one point we were sitting in the van in Ocean View (one of the townships), praying, asking God to show us where to go and God said turn left and so we did and then He gave us something about bananas so we stopped at this small grocery shop in Ocean View and Alexis and I got out of the van and walked inside. Alexis went straight to the Vaseline and picked some up. I was so confused as to why but I didn't question her on it. She then picked up bananas and took both the Vaseline and the bananas to the counter to pay. We introduced ourselves to the shop owner and he told us his name was Mohammed. We asked him where he was from and he said Somalia. We talked to him some more about his family and he asked us a lot of questions too. I saw the Karan sitting beside him so I asked him about it. We had a really neat conversation with him about Christianity and Muslims for about an hour. We finally left to find the rest of our team but later ended up back at Mohammed's shop with the whole team. We talked to him and his friend more about who Jesus is and about the bible. It was neat! Mohammed is such a nice guy. He gave us a huge bottle of coke before leaving and the next time we visited him he gave us each a banana.

God is truly starting to break my heart for the people in the townships. We were visiting our friend Theodora and she told us about a four year old girl who was raped by a Somalian man. So because of this one Somalian mans actions all the Somalian's were pretty much kicked out of the townships. As soon as we left Theodora's house we went to check on Mohammed. The shop was still there but there was nothing left in the shop at all. Everything was gone and so was he. I have no idea where Mohammed is now. I pray that he is safe though! This is really hard for me to process and I am still trying to process it all. It's hard to fathom but I know God is using this situation for good. It wasn't a mistake that God led us to Mohammed, to know him only for a short week.

There are so many stories much like Mohammed's and much like the four year old child who was raped. There is Theodora who didn't get her grant from the government to feed her son this month but God is providing! There is Regina whose house is partially burnt and has a hole in the roof from an electrical fire but it hasn't rained yet and God is providing the means to fix her house. There is sickness and pain and hardship but GOD is in the center of it all. He is crying with His people. My prayer is that they know that! My prayer is that even though their bodies are sick, their houses are falling apart, and they really don't have much; I pray that they would cling to the cross of Christ! I pray they know how temporary this life is and this is just the waiting room for eternity.

God is teaching me so much and it is overwhelming to think about it all. He's teaching me to reply completely on Him FOR EVERYTHING!. For strength, for nourishment, for rest, for words, for actions. He is teaching me how to live in community and how to call upon my teammates when I need something. He is teaching me to discern when the Holy Spirit is speaking to me and most importantly He is teaching me how to obey the Holy Spirit, which is such a hard thing to do sometimes. He is teaching me about prayer and the power of prayer. He is just teaching me!

Thank you all so much for your prayers! I miss each and every one of you more and more each day! I hope all is well! Please let me know if there is anything I can be praying for you guys about. Please pray about all the situations that I have written about, please pray that my head won't explode and that I can process everything God is doing here. A lot of my teammates and leaders are sick right now so please pray against the sickness here! One of my teammates, Erin, had to leave yesterday for good so please pray for her situation.

Also, Friday we are leaving for Beat the Drum which is an AIDS awareness program in Somerset East (which is like three hours away) and it is going to be OFF THE CHAIN! God is going to do some incredible things! So PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be in prayer for it next week. My whole team is leading plus about 50 other South Africans will be helping as well. We will be speaking to farmers, prisons, schools etc. about AIDS/HIV!

So I have been in South Africa for about two weeks now and so much has already happened. I'm not even sure where to begin. My mind is spinning like crazy and the only One I can point to is God. It's just God. Without God I wouldn't be here and without God nothing that I am about to write would ever have taken place.

The first couple of days we arrived in JBay we had a lot of free time to just explore the town and rest. The second day we did a scavenger hunt that took us around town and to some of the different ministries AIM partners with. It was just a chance to familiarize ourselves with the town of JBay a little more and a chance to meet some of the people.

We are living at this place called UCSA and it's like a camp/compound sort of thing and even though we live here there are other camps going on sometimes so we never know when we will have to pack up and go somewhere else for a couple of days. Last weekend there was a camp going on so we went camping at this place called The Bush. It is about an hour away from Jeffreys Bay and it is an extremely primitive camp in the beautiful mountains of South Africa. We stayed in cabins with no electricity and we cooked all our food over a camp fire. (It is FREEEEEZING in Africa by the way) I must say it was really neat cooking over a camp fire. We made bread and sausage and stew and hamburgers etc. It was fun! We also went absailing and played paintball! (Absailing is the same thing as repelling in America)

Saturday night we sat down to do an activity and they told us to blind fold ourselves and wait until someone tapped you on the shoulder. So I blindfolded myself and just waited. Eventually someone came and put my hands on their shoulders for me to follow them so I did but I wasn't sure where I was going. We walked a ways, which seemed to be down a road, and then they took my hands and put them on a rope and told me to wait. Finally someone told us to start walking and try to find the end of the rope. So I went right not really knowing why and the people beside me were doing the same thing. I could feel someone on the rope in front of me and behind me. Eventually they said, "If you need help finding the end just raise your hand." I didn't raise my hand at first because I still had someone in front of me and behind me, then I started to fill as though I was going in circles and I came to a huge tree that the rope was tied around and I was just confused pretty much. So again they said, "If you need help finding the end just raise your hand." So I did and one of my leaders came and got me and took me to the fire which was the end. When I got to the fire there were about five other people there and the rest of our team was still walking around the rope, which was a big circle by the way. Finally they said, "The ONLY way to find the end is to ask for help." Eventually everyone raised there hand and asked for help. It was a neat exercise. It showed me that it is so much better to just let God lead the way. When I was holding on to that persons shoulders I wasn't worrying about where I was going or what bumps I was going to hit in the road along the way. I think that is how God wants us to be with Him. We must forfeit our own eyes and have His eyes instead.

Monday we found out and started our ministries! I am on the house visits team. There are two house visit teams made up of four people each. I'm not sure what comes to mind for you when I say "house visits" but being from America myself I'm thinking you should throw that out the window and just let me tell you what we will be doing. House visits is a very broad ministry and it is completely different from the other eight ministries the AIM team is involved in. We go into the townships every day and well obviously visit people but every day can look different. The first day one of our leaders took us around to meet some people that past AIM teams visited on a regular basis. The first lady we met was Noma and she is a beautiful lady. She has HIV but is extremely healthy right now. When the AIM team met her last year she was skin and bones. God is using Noma in incredible ways. With the help of the house visit team last year Noma was able to buy a container/small building and she cooks food for about 12 of the township kids who don't eat unless Noma feeds them. She feeds them every morning before school. We met some other really amazing ladies named Hester and Marta.

The second day we went to see Noma again and she said she wanted us to go pray for her friend Evelyn who had a stroke. So she took us next door to pray for Evelyn. Evelyn was in bed and she couldn't really move, she was just lying there. We talked to her a bit and we prayed over her. She started crying and talking to us but the only word we could really understand was thank you. It was extremely hard for us. I'm still kind of speechless about it but one of the teams went back to see her today and they said she was feeling a little better and they could actually understand her today. God is good! After visiting Evelyn we went to another township called Ocean View and it is the worst one. It is literally just shacks. We started walking through and these kids started following us so naturally we started playing with them and they walked with us for an hour or two and we just played with them. We went to a creshe (day care). It's a new one that has only been up and running for five months. There are two ladies taking care of twenty kids and they have no government grants. They have no toys and only two mattresses on the floor. We played with the kids and asked the ladies how we could help. They said they needed toys. We went back today and the lady said the only time she rests is when she is sleeping. We are going to go back to that Creshe later this week and just watch the kids for a couple of hours so the ladies can rest and maybe take a nap of something. We are also going to get them some toys.

Yesterday as we were about to leave Ocean View I saw a lady sitting on a bucket outside of a house and I just knew God wanted me to talk to her so I mentioned it to another girl and she felt the same way. So we went up to the house and met a lady named Julia and a lady named Joanna. Julia has something wrong with her stomach and has already had two operations and is supposed to have a third one. Joanna has bad asthma and high blood pressure. We talked to them for a bit and prayed over both ladies. Today when we went back to see them Joanna said she felt really well and wasn't having any problems today and Julia's stomach felt ten times better. God is so powerful!

It is so humbling that God is letting my team and I be a small part of what He is doing in JBay. He is already at work so so much and He doesn't need us but He has invited us here to come along side Him and just be His hands and feet. Ultimately, it is not us doing anything. It is Him doing it all through us!

My team and I were wrestling a bit, wondering why we have what we have and why these people have what they have when we are all equal in God's eyes and I didn't come up with an answer or anything. I have no clue why but I do know that this life is temporary! I believe God has sent us here to share His hope with these people and to tell them that this life is temporary and there is so much more in store for us who know and fear the Lord. It's unfathomable what God is doing and I'm just so thankful to be a part of it.

Please continue to pray for my team and I. We need it so much. Please pray that we would let God give us His heart for the people of JBay and we would just see through His eyes. Pray that it would be Him and not us. I am praying for you all and miss you all very very much!

p.s. I have a phone! My phone number is 27792550247. You can call me with a calling card or with Skype! Skype is really cheap and phone cards probably aren't that much! I would love to hear from you all so feel free to call whenever! If you want to mail anything to JBay you totally can! I would love to get mail! The address is on my blog page and just make sure that if you are mailing a package you don't put a value on it, just say it is worth nothing because they will tax me big time for however much it is worth.