Life on a Mission

African lady ;)

xtreme4jesuschristo — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 13:42:20 +0000

Just for you all to see, here is a picture of me in Kenya with one of the lovely children I met there……

debriefing

xtreme4jesuschristo — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 13:25:05 +0000

So we are over half way through our debriefing week, with our school graduation looming near in the future this Friday morning. Obviously, the realities of returning home are becoming very real indeed for most of us and I for one am very thankful for the wonderful job that our teacher this week, Dave Strout, is doing to prepare us for home. That sounds strange, but the reality is that we have all changed and grown more than most of us ever thought we would. I learned and grew more than I ever thought I would, and mostly in ways that I didn’t expect. One thing I can tell you for sure is that I loved my time spent in Kenya and South Africa and want deeply to return……. but don’t worry, I am looking forward to seeing you all!

back in South Africa

xtreme4jesuschristo — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 11:33:01 +0000

Hey everyone! So first of all, I must say pole pole (sorry sorry) for not keeping my blog up while I was in Kenya… my excuse is that the internet is so slow and out of the way to actually use. But now that I am back in South Africa I’ll be doing my best to put as many stories on as possible for you all to read, so enjoy! Oh, and I’m in the process, literally as I type, of uploading my pictures from Kenya! So enjoy those as well!

my injuries thus far….

xtreme4jesuschristo — Fri, 04 May 2007 17:59:49 +0000

So here is a list of my injuries since being in Africa:

skinned knee from a rough game of monkey in the middle in a pool (left a great scar)
blistered feet from walking barefoot 30minutes to Kalk bay
a bruised knee from rugby
a burn on my side from a cup of hot tea that was shaped like my initials
a bloody foot from stepping on a piece of broken glass in the shop at Joseph Project
a bruised elbow from slipping on water
a scraped knee from slipping during foursquare and doing the splits………

all this to ask if you could be praying for protection against injuries during outreach. I already have quite a track record going and as much as I like scars, I would rather not have any injuries while in Kenya. Thanks guys!!!!!

Happy Early Mother’s Day!

xtreme4jesuschristo — Fri, 04 May 2007 17:50:34 +0000

Hey Mamasita!
This is your early Mother’s Day greeting! I don’t know that I’ll be able to email or call on Mother’s Day, so if I can’t know that I am thinking of you! And thank you for being such a great mom and trusting me enough to let me go to Africa! Love you Mum!

Leaving for Kenya

xtreme4jesuschristo — Fri, 04 May 2007 17:48:00 +0000

Tomorrow morning we leave Jo’burg at 6:15am to catch the plane to Kenya. I can’t believe I am finally going to be leaving for Kenya! I was sad earlier this week when I started thinking about leaving South Africa, but now I am so excited to be going to Kenya finally! I’ll be at a YWAM base in Athi River for 5 weeks, which will be rather rural so it will be run to rough it abit more than we have. So just a warning, we will not have much internet access so I will do my best to keep everyone updated how I am going but I don’t know how much that will happen. After that we’ll be going to Nairobi on June 9th, so I’ll get to have my birthday in Kenya!

moonlight shower

xtreme4jesuschristo — Fri, 04 May 2007 17:43:30 +0000

One of the showers here where we are staying is an outdoor shower that is enclosed but lacks roof, which is nice for an afternoon shower. The other night I needed a shower so badly and didn’t want to have to wait until 11:30 or so after all the other girls had showered to have a turn. So I decided, what the heck, I’ll use the outside shower! So maybe it would be a little bit dark. I headed out with my flashlight in hand to the shower. It was rather nice actually! It wasn’t that dark because the moon was full, plus the light in the other shower was on. In the end I didn’t even need my flashlight. But what I forgot when I went to take my shower was that we had a “shower scare” earlier that night! One of the girls went to use the other shower and got freaked by the sound of the other shower running. It turned out that someone just forgot to turn it off all the way so it had been running all day and no body had actually jumped our fence to take a shower! Oh, and I was the only one brave enough to go check. So after all that, I forgot to tell poor Kate that I was going to use the outside shower so she almost lost it when she heard the water running on the other side of the wall! We got a laugh out of it, but she didn’t think it was the time! Anyways, it was a nice shower!

a little taste of Africa

xtreme4jesuschristo — Wed, 02 May 2007 20:02:52 +0000

So I was reading online and found that the Woodland Park Zoo is doing a special exhibit through September 30th about the Maasiland people and the Savanna, both of which are in Kenya. So if you’d like a little taste of my life for the next 8 weeks, this might be kinda cool! I think I will try to check it out when I get home, to bring back memories! So here ya go, a little taste of African in the beautiful NorthWest!

New exhibit explores African savanna

Woodland Park Zoo’s new African savanna exhibit, the Maasai Journey, opens today, offering visitors a glimpse of the wildlife and people of Africa’s Maasai region.

For $5 each, visitors can feed giraffes or get an up-close view of the savanna from a watchtower platform. New to the exhibit are ostriches, African birds, goats, guinea fowl and reptiles.

Cultural interpreters and storytellers from rural Maasailand in Kenya will share personal experiences about life on the savanna, interactions with wildlife, and their attempt to keep their cultural heritage alive.

From May 1 to Sept. 30, daily zoo hours are 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.; admission for adults (13-64) is $15, children (3-12) $10, toddlers (0-2) free. Seniors, people with disabilities and zoo members receive discounted or free admission. A schedule of giraffe feeding times and public programs is online at www.zoo.org; click on “Activities and Exhibits.”

a cold Johannasburg morning

xtreme4jesuschristo — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:09:53 +0000

This morning was another cold Johannasburg morning. I woke up and climbed out of my nice warm sleeping bag, and let me tell you it is times like this I am thankful that my lovely parents bought me a nice sleeping bag all those years ago! I wanted to start the morning with a nice warm shower, but alas, it aluded me once again and I had my third cold shower since I have been here. This time I only had the nerve to wet my hair while keeping the rest of my already cold body as far away from the stream of coldness that was suppose to be water. I am sure I brought some sort of showering time recorded this morning, and mostly likely I didn’t get all of the shampoo out, but atleast I felt a little cleaner than when I woke up. Yet my toes didn’t soon forgive me for such aweful treatment of them this morning. I bundled myself back up for breakfast and decided to treat my hands to a hot cup of coco…. my lips didnt’ mind either! But fortunately they fixed what was wrong and we now have the luxury of a hot shower again…. which I make good use of this evening! Though I think my hands might be calling out for another cup of coco, and my toes will soon be needing a second pair of socks…… but don’t worry guys, it does warm up for a few hours in the afternoon! Well, sometimes.

history lesson

xtreme4jesuschristo — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 19:25:37 +0000

Today for our assignment we got to go on a tour of Jo’burg! We got picked up at 9am by the dad of a girl who volunteers here at Joseph’s Project. His name is Ted, he is very nice. This is what we did:

Soweto

He took us first to Soweto, which is probably the most famous townships in Jo’burg. Its name is a shortened verison of the SOuth WEstern TOwnship (the first two letters of each word spells Soweto). It played a big part in the fight against Apartheid. It is where the Soweto Uprising of 1976 was where kids and youth marched from the schools in a peaceful protest against the forced change in their schools to Arfikaans, the police opened fire on them and many were killed. So we drove through Soweto, it is huge (it has about 3 million inhabitants) and has many different income levels to it- there are the very very rich (there a few millionaires living in those areas) all the way to the very very poor (who live in shanty houses). Like other townships it is inhabited primary by blacks- there is an estimated 8 whites out of the 3 million in Soweto. In Soweto we saw where Desmond Tutu lives and where Nelson Mendela once lived in Soweto. We got to go on a short tour through Mendela’s house. We also saw a church in which school children fled into during the uprising and were shot by the police- there are still bullet holes Ted told us. We didn’t get to see the church because there was a funeral. An interesting thing we found out is that it is only on Saturdays that there are funerals in Soweto because many family members and friends live in rural areas so they are on Saturdays so that they can come. There are about 300 funerals every Saturday! Alot of traffic because of that!

Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum

Anyways, after the drive through Soweto we were taken to a memorial museum for a boy that was shot and killed during the Soweto uprising, 13 year old Hector Pieterson. It was powerful to walk through there and see the pictures of the uprising and shooting, to see some of the actual signs the kids were carrying in the march that expressed their anger about being forced to learn in Afrikaans in their schools, and to read and listen to some of their testimonies of what happened that day.

Apartheid Museum

Later we were taken to the Apartheid Museum. Oh man! That really gets you to see and hear and really discover what happened during Apartheid! There was a hall of pictures that where taken by an African photographer during the Apartheid years that where unbelievable! One area that really got me was an area about the exacutions of leaders that were fighting against the Apartheid. There were 113 exacuted. In the room there where 113 nuses hanging from the ceiling, the names of all 113 on the wall, and pictures of three of them. One of the pictures was of Steve Biko. There was also alot of video footage of the violence. It was horrible what happened. But the amazing thing to discover from being in South Africa is the forgiveness of the blacks for what happened.

Ghandi’s House

One the way back home, Ted took us to the place where Ghandi lived while he was in Jo’burg. It is literally 5 minutes from where we are staying! I can’t believe how many places and things I saw and learned today!

Today really made me wish I had learned more about South Africa before I came here, but it has also made me so excited to learn even more about Africa! I have an even greater now passion for South Africa, and for the whole of Africa, than I did when I got here…. even since this morning!