Week One -The 1st full week

HOT week…it’s hot!! South African Summer. I am very glad that we are near the ocean, so we get an ocean breeze most of the time. I look at myself today, and I have defiantly put on some weight. We really do eat good here…
And the crickets here are so nice, they chirp so loud it is so beautiful to listen to at night.

So this is what an average day here would look like here on the Jeffreys Bay YWAM Base:
Get up at 5:55AM. Go for a run.
Breakfast at 6:30-7AM.
First Lecture starts at 8:30
We have a few stretching and ‘processing’ breaks,
Then lunch at 1:00PM.
Then we have work duties which ranges from working in the garden or maintenance, cleaning toilets, prepping for lunch or dinner or clean up, whatever. I have maintenance, so I start at 2PM till about 330 or 4.
Dinner at 5:30.
For this week we had evenings off but soon we are going to have to start practicing dramas, or doing homework, or outreach prep which we do not know what that is yet.
So then its lights out at 10:30PM, but I have been going to bed as early as I can. :P

Today (the 22nd) we were all eating in the eating area and some kids were looking over the edge of the wall, just watching. I felt so sad, my heart just was breaking for them, I felt bad that I had food and he didn’t, I hate that feeling. The one kid I recognize; he is around the base often, and he wears the same clothes everyday that I have seen him. He looks about 6 or 7, he keeps a very stern and angry face, and I have never seen him smile. The kids that hang around here are from the poor area of town, because we are located pretty much in the middle, but nearer the poor area. I don’t know if I explained before about the town here; it is split poor and rich – the poor area the blacks, and the rich area mostly whites. We are located near the poor area with close access to town; the town kind of separates the poor and rich areas. Anyways, the kids that live in this poor area come from usually broken families, and it’s just so sad because they are so rough with eachother. They also usually get beaten and neglected, so we all love to hug them.
We do this KIDZONE thing once a week where we go out as a team and play the guitar as we walk all over the community picking up kids who will follow us to come to this building and we sing songs and play games and then we memorize a memory verse. They are aged from as young as 2 to 13 I’d say. It’s really fun because its different kids everytime, and they love to play with us, and they are all so cute.
On Thursday a group of us went to a community church where they speak Afrikaans, but this time they spoke mostly in English so that was nice. I’m not sure if it was because we were there or what, but it was such a fun church, it was a black Pentecostal church; so we sing so loud and sway and dance and the preacher was just so fun to listen to.
Friday we did another kind of kid thing, there was adult worship or meeting thing at a church, and we played with the kids. We did a drama for them about the Walls of Jericho coming down, and we sang songs. The kids are just so fun, they run up and hug you, hang off you and they fight to hold your hand. I love to dance with the girls, and they love it too, just grab their hand and start dancing, it’s so fun. They also love to play with my hair, and one girl was putting my hair on her head to see what it would look like, and when I looked at her she was embarrassed, it was so cute! They are precious.

Romans 12:2:
No longer conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.