Robben Island

Hello, my friends!

A couple weekends ago a group of us went to tour Robben Island. Its right off the coast of Cape Town and has been used for many things, at one time it was a leper colony and most recently it had been used as a maximum security prison for black political prisoners. Nelson Mandela was in prison here for 18 years. Now it is a museum and former prisoners are the ones who give the tours. The most interesting thing is that former prisoners and former guards now live side by side on the island and get along fine. It is amazing to me after the atrocities I hear about from the apartheid era, that people here are able to forgive and move on. Not that it is without racial strife, but for the most part it is not violent. Most crime arises more from poverty and hopelessness ....anyway, here are some pictures - Nelson Mandela's cell and there is also a penguin colony on the island, so I had to include a pic of this!!!

SOS Kindergarten, school holidays, Namibia!!

Hey, y'all!

Its been a week since I've updated so I figured I'd better update you before I am gone for a couple weeks. Things have been going well....I start volunteering at the SOS Children's Village Kindergarten on April 16th. I will go there on Monday and Wednesday mornings from 9am - noon. I will be assisting the teachers in whatever ways they need. I am not sure what skills I bring to this, as I have never done it before, but I am trusting that God has opened this door for a reason and He will equip me!!

I don't start until the 16th because the schools are on holiday here from April 2nd - 13th. So we did not want to waste this time, so 6 of us from the volunteer house are going to Namibia from the 1st - 12th. I am so excited to see another part of Africa! Cape Town is so westernized that I sometimes feel I'm just in Florida or something! In Namibia we will spend a few days in the capitol, Wind Hoek, then we are going to Etosha National Park for 2 days and finally to the coast to check out the sand dunes. The town we are staying in on the coast is Swakopmund. The sand dunes in Namibia are the highest in the world! We might go quad-biking or sand boarding at the dunes......such wild experiences I've had in my first 6 weeks!!

Last weekend we went to Robben Island. This is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in prison. We toured the island and the prison. It was very interesting...I will do a specific post with pics when I get back from Namibia.

On Wednesday I went to Stellenbosch with Sara (vol from US) and her dad, who is visiting her right now, and went to a few wine tastings, went to an awesome African restaurant (Moyo), and I saw CHEETAHS!! That's right, Nicole, I saw CHEETAH's! Only a two feet away from me!! I'll post more about this and pics when I get back as well! It was really awesome!!

I hope you are all doing well back in the States! Please keep in touch!!

Especially for Nicole and Chaise!

Hi, my sweet nieces!!

I miss you!! I heard from your grandma that you were bummed that I didn't mention you in my blog like I did Dalton, so this post is all for you!! I think about you often, especially when I see animals, as I know you both love animals...especially horses, so I will try to upload some pictures of animals I have taken so far, sometimes it doesn't work very well! I haven't been on a safari yet to take pictures of wild animals, but hopefully soon I will and I will share those pictures with you! Sometimes it is hard to be somewhere far away from all the people you know, but God is here with me and he has given me many new friends and experiences! The place I live is very beautiful but there are also many poor people that need help. That is why I came here, to help kids who don't have parents to feel loved and feel important and to tell them about Jesus. Will you pray for me and for them? There are many things here that are the same as back in Iowa, like they have malls here and when I went shopping the other day I saw backpacks and tshirts with Bratz and Powerpuff girls on them!! Of course I thought of both of you!! I hope you are having lots of fun back in Iowa and I hope I can see you around Christmas to share with you all that's been happening here in South Africa! Take care and tell your mom and dad and Dalton "Hi!" for me!! Lots of love from South Africa!!

More Porterville Pics!

Hi, Friends,

Here are a couple other pics from Porterville, a picture of the valley taken from the mountain and a picture of some of us at the campsite. Enjoy!

Porterville Pics

Porterville - Team Building

The whole team went to an area outside the town of Porterville, about 2 hrs north of Cape Town for 5 days of camping and team building. There are 22 waterfalls along the trail up the mountain, so awesome! Check out the pics. I felt like this weeks hiking was easier than the weekend in Stellenbosch, but Denzel said this hike was actually harder, so maybe I just learned from the first hike to be more positive and less hard on myself. Also God showed me the following verse before the hike and I recited it over and over in my head when things were difficult…..

Energize the limp hands, strengthen the rubbery knees.
Tell fearful souls, “Courage! Take heart! God is here, right here,
On his way to put things right….He’ll save you! Isaiah 35: 3-4

It was a good time, we were able to do what we wanted most of the time; we hiked, swam in the dam, went into town the one day and ate at a café, did some star-gazing, the one night the stars were SO BRIGHT, I had never seen so many stars, it was beautiful! It all reminded me of the verse right before the one above… God’s resplendent glory, fully on display. God awesome, God majesetic…

We also had many team building exercises, dealing with teamwork, trust, facing our fears, with opportunities to share more about ourselves, our thoughts about the future, what makes us special, what we struggle most with, what others can do to encourage us…. It was good to learn more about my team members, it showed how different we are yet at the same time have many things in common. I think we will be stronger as we go out again to the different ministries this week….

Speaking of ministries, we are still working on what ministries I will be serving in. We had a meeting with director of the SOS Children’s Village to let him know I am here and willing to serve them in whatever opportunities they might have. He said he would take the info back to their management team and see what they might need and then he would talk to the principal of the preschool/kindergarten they have at the Village and see if they need any help. He is to get back to us early this week, so I am hopeful we will hear from him soon with good news and I can start serving the orphans there soon, maybe 3 times a week. I have been praying for God to give me patience as I wait for additional opportunities to serve. I know that God has brought me here for a purpose and in HIS time it will be revealed, I hope you also will be praying with me my friends. I sometimes feel I should just start serving at the schools with the others, but I feel like God keeps reminding me that he called me to serve orphans and that the opportunities are out there…I am just impatient!

I have enjoyed getting involved in the office, I hope to split my time each week evenly between programs and admin in the office. They have plenty for me to do, so I am glad to have that to keep me occupied as I wait to hear from SOS. We are thinking about revamping our lifeskills and Bible study program at SOS, as it seems there are time conflicts and kids aren’t able to come. The last week we were there not may kids came to the actual program. We go an hour early and just hang out with whatever kids are out and about and they LOVE us coming! But we feel we need to look at the actual program and see how we can make it more affective, maybe look at one on one mentoring instead of the group activities…please pray also for this program…in closing God gave me another verse this week…

Form your purpose by asking for counsel, then carry it out using all the help you can get.
Proverbs 20:18

That last bit encourages me that I am not alone in this and that I should seek all the help I can get and you can help by praying! I hope all is well back home!

Blessings!

Consider it a gift....

Hello, My friends!
Here's a Bible verse for the week:
Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when test and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. James 1: 2-4 (the Message)

Another week is coming to an end and the above verse has challenged me in terms of how I dealt with the hike last weekend and dealing with the uncertainty of what my schedule will look like here in Cape Town…I have to keep reminding myself to continue trusting in God and that He is in control…..I’m starting to do some admin work in the office and this afternoon, Denzel and I have a meeting with the Director at the SOS Children’s Village to find out if there are other ways I can serve them there. Hopefully we will be able to come up with a schedule for my work. I’ve also been talking with Rolf, the YFC Cape Town Director and he feels I should not stay at the volunteer house until Rita gets here around June 1st. He thinks the age difference and just living with so many people will have negative affects on my experience, so he is looking to see if we can find a furnished efficiency apt I can live in for a few months….so a move might be in the near future. However, next week the whole team is going on a team building trip. We are going to an area about an hour north of Cape Town that is supposed to be beautiful. There are 22 waterfalls in the area that we can walk to as well as many other activities. My only reservation is we are camping out for the 4 nights and I’m thinking that may be a little much for me!! I was trying to push to stay 2 nights in cottages there and camping 2 nights, but the others didn’t buy it!! So, yet another step outside my comfort zone! I’m told the area is so awesome that I’m sure the benefits will outshine the sleeping arrangements! I’m told it’s a great place to walk by yourself and just be with God and nature, so I’m really looking forward to some God Walks!! Since we will be gone all week I won’t be able to update until the following week, but hopefully I can upload a couple pictures from the week….anyway, take care my friends, stay warm and safe, I hear more storms are heading your way!!

My first fulll week!!

Hi, All,

Here are highlights from my first full week:

* Went to SOS Children's Village twice this week. We lead a club that in which we teach lifeskills and a Bible study, attendance ranges from 10 - 20 kids ages 13-16.

* One of the SOS Moms fixes us a meal on Wednesdays sometimes, so we went did that this Wednesday and it was great to sit down and talk with Trudi, the mom, and get to know the kids a little better. I had fun reading to her younger son, Hendrick, and taking pictures of him, he loved checking out the picture and then he kept posing for more - it reminded me of my nephew, Dalton, he did the same thing with me over Christmas!! Below is one of the pics!

* Going to Maitland Childrens Hospital, its an orthopedic hospital and the services are free of charge, so the children there all come from disadvantaged backgrounds. There are no individual rooms, its one big room for the boys and one for the girls. We go in with books, games, puzzles to play with them and some do puppet shows or we take in a guitar and sing songs. It's so rewarding to bring them a little joy. Most of the kids are confined to their beds for long periods of a time, so when they see us coming they start calling for us, "Auntie, Auntie". We go there twice a week.

* I also got to visit the two schools we have programs in. They are both elementary schools. One is in town and a couple of the volunteers go in and serve as teachers aides. Then the other school is a rural farm school, where some of the kids come from a nearby township. The volunteers teach lifeskills for an hour three times a week. When we arrived there the kids all flocked to us, holding our hands, wanting to be picked up and held, wanting to play or just get our attention. They are all so precious, such warm welcomes everywhere we go!

* On Friday evening we headed to Stellenbosch, where Denzel is from, to go on a hike up the mountain. I had my reservations going in, and for good reason! I thought I was going to die on that mountain! It was not a nice cleared trail like back home. It was just a narrow trampled down trail with branches and vegetaion growing into it, scratching and catching on our clothes and lots of rocks to navigate, climb up. We had big ole backpacks on our back because we camped out over night on the mountain. I really can't believe I made it up to the campsite. Everyone was very supportive to me, but I was holding us up immensely! Then on Saturday I thought I was doing better until I turned my ankle, my mood took a nosedive and the rest of the day was not good! I didn't get to climb up to the waterfall and my ankle throbbed everytime I stepped wrong! I'm still trying to get over the negative effects to my psyche, so please pray for me. It all seemed so easy for everyone else!! Needless to say, I will not be hiking any mountains any time soon!! I need to start a training regimine or something!

* Sunday night we were invited to a Baptist church to give a presentation. So some of the volunteers did their drama. Team Khanya came as well, they are another program YFC does here that does ministry through drama and dance. Members are on the team for a year at a time. They got up and spoke and then I had to get up and give my testimony! I was nervous but it went well. It was fun to be with the Khanya (pronounced like Kenya, but its a Khosa word) again, they are a lot of fun!

Thats about it for this week....please pray for my continued adaptation to living with 10 people, to find my place on the team, that I would continue to see God leading and guiding me through all of this, to increase my dependence on Him!! To share His love with the kids here who are so desperate for it!

Love and blessings to you!!

Email frustrations!!

Hi, my friends!

I just wanted to let you know I've been having lots of troubles with sending emails from my yahoo account. Most of the time I will have typed a whole email, then I hit send and it just goes to a blank compose page! Sometimes I can hit the back button and it will go back to my typed message and I hit send again and then it works, but today that even is not working! It's making me crazy!! If anyone has any suggestions, let me know! I receive emails and can read them fine...its the sending that's not working so well...so please check back here often, I'll try to keep it better updated and maybe not use email much for awhile...please keep the emails coming, I LOVE hearing from home!! =:)

Greetings from South Africa!

Hello from South Africa!!

I arrived at 10pm on Wednesday, Feb 14th (2pm Iowa time!) after flying for about 24 hours, 36 hours with the time change! I had only short layovers in Detroit and Amsterdam. My luggage, however, did not arrive. Apparently the plane was too full coming from Amsterdam so they had to leave some for the next flight, so about 12 of us did not get our luggage. I finally received it Friday morning and it made me soooo happy! I immediately opened them and changed clothes! It was so comforting to get all my stuff!! =:)

It is so beautiful here! The first morning when I woke up I looked out the window and the volunteer house is only a block from the ocean!! We are in a suburb of Cape Town called Bloubergstrand and has awesome views looking back at Cape Town and Table Mountain. If you get on the internet and see pictures that look like they are taken from a boat looking at the city and Table Mountain, they are not, they are taken from Bloubergstrand and thats the exact view we have from our living room window!!

Yesterday Denzel, the International Volunteer Program Manager, took me and Sarah and Jen (from Canada) on a short tour of some of Cape Town's sights. We drove through a little bit of a township, it was pretty sad the conditions they live in. Denzel said crime is very high there so we didn't stay long, but he wanted us to see how many of the children we serve live. We then went up Signal Hill and snapped some pics. Then went to downtown Cape Town and took in a couple of markets with hundreds of people selling all kinds of hand-made goods; African masks, beautiful wooden carvings, paintings, gorgeous stuff! We were just looking this time, but I can't wait to go back and buy some items, though I don't know how to decide what to buy, it was all so beautiful! We had a fish and chips gatsby at a fast food place downtown. A gatsby is basically like a hoagie sandwich, but they put the chips (fries) right on the sandwich. It was very good! We also checked out a library, the train station and a taxi rank, where the taxis (vans) are lined up by areas of town they will take you to.

Last night we went to a rugby match, my first! The match was between the Cape Town team of the Vodacom Stormers vs. the Chiefs (Denzel wasn't sure where they were from, "up country" in South Africa was all he knew). It was pretty fun, though I didn't understand some of what was going on. Denzel and Johnny tried to explain some of it, but I think it will take watching it many more times to get a better grasp of it.

The team I'm working and living with is great! There are 7 other women and 1 man; Denzel also stays at the guest house during the week, so there are 10 of us in the 5 bedroom house! Here is the breakdown:
Sarah, Jodi and Jen from Canada
Tina and Hanna from Germany
Kate and Johnny from England
Sarah from the US (Indiana)

They are all short term volunteers, with terms varying from 3 months to a year. Most of them will be leaving in the next few months. I think by July only Johnny will remain, but I believe there are others scheduled to arrive in the meantime. They are all either on break from college or just finished, so sometimes I feel rather old, but they are a lot of fun! I'll try to get some pics posted that I've taken already so you have some visuals of what I'm writing about....hope all is well with everyone back in the States....I don't miss the snow!!

Later, Bobbi