4 months

Well, this is just plain weird. I literally feel like I JUST wrote about my 3 months being spent at Cape point. Each month has consistently gone faster than the previous one. I now only have a month and a half left here-crazy!

It's been much more "wintery" here, meaning rainy days and chilly nights. Last Thursday, I woke up to rainy morning and simply thought "Lord, thank you for this season in my life where I'm not too busy and can stay in bed on a rainy day and not feel bad about it!" This last Saturday, however, the sun came out, which was very convenient because everyone who works\volunteers at the clinic at Jubilee had planned to climb Table Mountain! There was about 13 of us, and it was a rocky incline. We did it though, and enjoyed a feast of a picnic at the top! It was quite chilly up there actually. Half the group took the cable-car down, but the more hardcore of us climbed back down, which proved to be much more intense than the way up. Our legs were all shaking by the time we got done! Afterwards we took our tired selves to the City Centre for coffee :)

This was one of those things that I had wanted to do while I was here, and tried to be patient for an opportunity to come up with friends. As I was hiking, I was so struck by the fact that it would have been absolutely miserable if I had climbed back in January and February, in the middle of summer. I was so thankful that we were doing this on a mild sunny day, with friends I had been with for awhile rather than a group of random students I didn't know. So much better than I originally thought; He knows what He's doing :)

Yesterday Stacey and I went to The Bay Church, about a half hour away, which is another NewFrontiers church. It was a plant from Jubilee in 1993, and is now about the same size, and multiracial as well. I really enjoyed it; thought about how crazy it was that I was connected to all these people and a church I didn't even know of because of NewFrontiers. There was an incredible span of young and old there, and they were really sensitive to where the Spirit was leading the message; the worship ended up being so long the pastor had to condense his message to the remaining 15 minutes, and didn't seem bothered by it at all! I thought that was really neat.

So today was 4 months. It was a gorgeous day, and I spent it at a beach along the Indian coast with 3 other girls. We got lunch there and just enjoyed the sun. I looked around, soaking it in, realizing it may be my last time getting over to that side, depending on how weather is my last bit here. I took many "mental" snapshots.

I have grown so much in these 4 months. I had made peace about the fact that most of how I'd grown I wouldn't see until I was back home, but I feel like in these last few weeks I am starting to see some fruit in my life a little bit. I'm really looking forward to enjoying this next month and a half, and I'm starting to get really excited about coming home as well! I feel like God is beginning to show me some things about my time here that is going to shape my future. I don't know what all it is yet, but it's exciting to me. That's another blog post though :)

Ok, well this is where I say "On to month 5"--my last full month here, ah!

South African Music Video

The World Cup is only a month away, and the fever is starting to rage throughout the city. It's pretty neat to watch. Below is a link to a music video shot here in Cape Town. I don't personally know the band,Hot Water, but they are friends of several students at Jubilee, who are in various shots in the video. It was made in anticipation of the World Cup. It does an excellent job of catching the excitement and emotions that people are feeling here.

There are a few things in the background that I wanted to point out for you to notice and get just a tinny insight into what it's like here:

-At the beginning with the guy at the bar, you can see on the sign how it's sold as "500 ml", not ounces...they use metric measurement here as well.

- The van the boy (Laduma) tries to get in is a minibus, a rather nice, safer-looking minibus than one I've ridden in, but one nonetheless!

--There's a brief shot inside a train. The carriage is first class, where most laborers don't ride, but I would. It cost about R11 for a ticket, about $1.50, so not a stretch for me to get to be a little safer. The third class doesn't have those cushioned seats, just a hard row lined on either side of the carriage.

--There is a shot of a man selling newspapers at a traffic light, or "robot" as they are called here. That's really common; so many times men will be selling fruit, random trinkets, newspapers as you are waiting for the light to change. It is very rare that anyone I've ridden with would buy anything, but sometimes there are just beggars, and several times I've given a few rand when they approach the car.

--When Laduma gets to Cape Town, the sign he sees is just a rectangular circle, symbolizing the stadium. That's really common for road signs to have symbols, sometimes with the names, sometimes without names.

--At the end you see two shots of the stadium at night. Those are taken from Signal Hill, the lower end of Lion's Head...it's even more beautiful than in the video :)

Here is the link, enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4V9s9xQwTw

My First Last

Today was my last day of classes at UWC. It was rather anti-climatic actually; I was thinking about the end of the semester in the States, and I totally don't have that same feeling. Now I wait around until the end of this month to take my exams!

There is a massive train strike that is going to happen on May 10. I am so thankful I am done now having to use the train, but my heart really goes out to all of the South Africans who will be stranded and have no way to get to their work. For my exams, the international advisor at UWC is picking me up, so I have another option...they don't have that :/

Although I am SO happy to not have to take the train or minibuses anymore, I am in a strange way thankful I got that opportunity. I didn't like feeling unsafe or not knowing whether a train would be on time or not show, but I really did get an insight into life of a lot of people here. Whether its the "clicks" of the Xhosa language or seeing the tired, lined faces of laborers, there is a little part of it that will stay with me.

Also, I was thinking over these last 3 months with the minibuses and trains, and how I had gotten so many warnings about being so careful, being a white female. I stuck out like a sore thumb, being the only white person (although that didn't bother me really), but God was incredibly faithful in how I've never got mugged or approached once while doing the public transport thing. That really is a small miracle, given the crime rate in this country, and I'm just so thankful!

This morning as I was getting ready to go, I said to Holly, "This is my first 'last' here. I still have exams, but this is my last day of classes, and in about a month's time, alot of things I do will be my 'last' things." I'm glad my first last is something I didn't really care for; it's still a bit of a weird thing to think about though!

So I have a final on the 12th, then not one until the 24th, then the 25th, then my last on the 31st. Talk about dragging it on...! 59 days left of 169 days here..wow.

3 months

I've been in South Africa for 3 months now, thus it's time for me to do my monthly review. Saturday was actually my 3-month mark, but the day was so crazy I couldn't write in here. A group of us went to Cape Point, which is the absolute tip, where the Atlantic meets the Indian. Our small group quickly turned into a group of about 13, so we piled into 3 cars and off we went. At stoplights there was alot of jumping out and switching cars. At one point, Holly was in the backseat with 5 guys crammed back there (thankfully, I was in the passenger seat and had locked my door)! We stopped for some really tasty fish n chips for lunch at FishHoek, then headed to the Cape. It was incredibly beautiful, no surprise there. We hiked to this lighthouse to look out over everything, then went surfing. We rolled up our windows as a big herd of baboons decided to lay around on the road and not let us through!

When we got back, it was about dinnertime, so we headed downtown to the most amazing restaurant ever, Eastern Food Bazaar. I've been there before, and it's a conglomeration of Indian and Chinese restaurants, and other eastern kind of foods that I don't know how to spell. It's crazy cheap and delicious. I love love indian food, and I could get a Chicken Tikka Masala w/ naan bread for R30, which is about 4 dollars...that meal would be at least 11 dollars in the States.

While we were finishing up there, we got a call from some other yearteamers who are at a church about a half hour away. They had been invited to go Afrikaans dancing, but didn't know anyone and wanted us to go with. So off we went, way out of Cape town to some town. When we got there, we were paying to get in, when they told Lenny he couldn't come in because he was wearing shorts! We were really confused; apparently a man showing leg is considered disrespectful in Afrikaans culture! They gave him a random pair of pants to try on, but he said they were much too big. We pleaded with them since we had driven so far, but to no avail. At this point it was about 10 at night. We got our money back and decided to go to someplace fun in Cape Town...so back to downtown we went. When we got there everything was packed, so we ended up just going to another friend in Cape Town's flat and hanging out. It was just one of those days where one thing lead to another.

I'm over halfway of time here now, and I am closer to hugging my family and friends hello than I am to have said goodbye to them. While I'm so thankful for this experience, I am getting excited that in just over 2 months I'll be home again. I'm learning a lot and taking so much in, and I'm curious to see how that is going to play out in Jubilee and St. Louis in general. I know as the last 2 months go on, I'll have more and more mixed feelings I'm sure. On to Month 4!

Urban Force Downloads Available

This is a little behind the game, but I said when the messages from the Urban Force conference with Mark Driscoll and PJ Smyth were out, I'd put up the link. So here it is:

http://www.jubilee.org.za/urbanforce.html

I'd highly recommend it for anyone who is trying to get a better idea of how to view culture how God views it, the right attitudes toward their city, or just to get a refreshing in that area. Enjoy!

Love Ablaze

This past weekend was the LoveAblaze Jubilee students/20s camp. It was in Simonstown, about 45 minutes away from Cape Town. About 150 of so young adults were there, and the main speaker was Sibs Sibanda, one of the leaders with PJ Smyth at Godfirst Church in JoBurg. It was a beautiful campsite right on the Indian, nestled on the base of the mountain..but then again ,everywhere is beautiful here, so that kind of goes without saying!

The whole theme "LoveAblaze", was really well done. Friday night at the first session, Sibs came up to talk and basically said he was going to scratch his message because God had given him a phrophetic word during the worship. One of the songs we had sung was to "know how high, how deep, how wide is love love love", and he felt like he needed to unpack what love was. Love is actually de-throning oneself, and throning God..God was speaking saying He was up for it, but were we really aware of what we were asking in that. He read out of Luke where Jesus sweats blood, and said: that is love. He then challenged us about being willing to ask God to show us what His love is, even if that lead us to the Gethesmane in our life. That last part really struck out to me.

The Saturday night meeting was incredible. All the sessions were really flexible and open for the Holy Spirit to move as He wanted to, which meant some things (like group time) were scratched because it became clear God wanted to heal people, and we all prayed as a collective group and saw healings. The worship was longer than planned, I'm sure, because God's presence just fell. There were lots of phrophetic words and songs given, and lots of celebration. Going into the meeting I had just started feeling a little homesick and down, but I couldn't stay in that state as it went on, because He was so unbelievably there!

Sunday morning Sibs talked about motivation, and how motivation cannot be correlated to feelings. Life is more than feelings, and we will never get anywhere in the Kingdom of God if we are motivated only when we are feeling happy. He again pointed to Jesus before He was arrested and He was NOT happy, but He was fully motivated. Our motivation must be rooted in the Cross, in what Christ did and who God is, regardless of it we are feeling pain or sadness. That was really challenging and encouraging to me, as I've noticed when I'm feeling really happy to be here, I am motivated and ok with the thought that I still have 2 1/2 months before I see my friends and family again, but when I'm feeling stressed out with school or trying to get rides to places, I can get really unmovitated about seeking God in this season He has me in.

There was also a room that was open 24/7 for prayer, worship, and ministry time, which was really incredible. In the afternoon, people could go into Simonstown for "treasure hunting" and praying for people..the seminar I went to ran late, so I couldn't do that. There was plenty of time for swimming, hiking, exploring Simonstown, or just vegging out, but it was a full day with us getting up and out at 7 am to pray together before breakfast. All in all, God showed up tremendously in terms of worship, phrophetic words, tongues and interpretations, healings, and people being set free from lots of things.

I think something I enjoyed the most was the non-rigidity of the schedule. As the Spirit moved, so did the schedule. I feel like when I was a kid, things were more like that in our Church, but in recent years, it's been more rigid in terms of how long worship is, or what the schedule should be like, etc. I'd love to see more openness again to just going with how He is leading, regardless of schedule. All in all it was a really great weekend of young adults coming to understand more of God's incredible love!

Hiking in the Berg

Last Monday was our big hiking day. We were starting to climb by 8 in the morning. These mountains are serious mountains, nothing like the ones I’ve been up in Cape Town and nothing like any I’ve ever seen in the states. Climbing up was incredibly steep at points, tall grass, and no paths. It was very hot too! We were almost to the top, and as we scaled some rocks I saw an incredible view of a vast plain before the summit, with the tops of countless mountains you couldn’t see below, as well as gorges, cliffs, and massive dropoffs.

I also saw what I thought were dogs in the distance, but considering we hadn’t seen other souls in days, I called behind to Sarah to ask what they were. She went, “Those are BABOONS!!" I’d been warned to stay far away the ones in Cape Town, as they’d learned they could terrorize the tourists, but Sarah said these were wild and would be fine, so we took off running across this plain to try to see them closer. They kept their distance pretty well, but barked at us a lot. We climbed up into these caves and looked at some paintings bushmen had marked on the walls. It was SO cool, because it wasn’t like I was in a museum or some tourist spot, it was just Sarah’s property. The world had no idea about this history within these remote caves. The paintings were of the British coming in and hunting\killing\chasing the bushmen. We could tell they were on horses, and the bushmen on foot running. It was fascinating. We also saw fossilized dinosaur prints; we had to lie flat on the cave floors and look up and see the prints that had been made in mud, then lava covering the mud and hardening the prints into the stone.

We heard thunder, and saw lightening and clouds over mountains in another gorge. We thought about waiting it out in the caves, but also wanted to get back in time for a braii at 2, so we started headed down. I was in the lead, and stopped to wait for the others, when I heard a “haaah haaah” close to me. I called out to Sarah asking what that could be, and she said “Um, it Sounds like a spitting cobra…” She had barely finished before I bolted, running like a mad woman across this plain. Every aching muscle and my tiredness were forgotten! I never saw it, but it was very close, and we were pretty far away from any medical help! Later on this week we discovered it was a "Puff Adder" snakes, hence the puffing it was doing because it was threatened. While if I had gotten medical attention within 7 hours (the nearest hospital would've taken us about 3 if you count the time getting down from the mountain), it wouldn't have been fatal, but the bite is about one of the most painful snake bites you can get! I was glad I didn't know all this beforehand...

As we continued across the plain, we did get caught in rain. It felt really good, cooling us down. It was incredible: we were 4 specks crossing this tall, windy, swooshy grass with massive mountains, gorges and cliffs surrounding us, baboons watching us, rain pouring down. I felt like I was very much in “Africa” during that time. We made it down 6 1\2 hours later, aching, tired, and very hungry. We downed Boerwoers (kind of like a hot dog\sausage meat here that is very popular with braiis), showered, and slept for a very long time! The next day, feeling more rested and recovered, I was amazed at the nature and what all I experienced on that mountain.