Crossroads: GO Mamelodi Blog June 2007
Read about the 2007 GO Mamelodi experience.
Friday, June 29, 2007
In South Africa
We made it! Correction: most of us made it (more on that below). Though we’ve only been here for a couple of hours, we’ve already experienced the legendary South African hospitality and joy that we’ve been told about. Our greeting at the Johannesburg airport was our first of many overwhelming experiences, with over 20 Charity & Faith members singing, dancing, cheering, playing drums and blowing horns as we walked down the exit hallways. It was the energy boost we needed after over 18 hours on a plane (and worth the price of admission just to see the looks on faces of other travelers!).Due to some canceled flights, our team members who are traveling on Emirates Air have to hang out in the Dubai airport for somewhere between a couple of hours and a day or two. Thankfully these tired folks are also our two-weekers, who are seasoned travelers (mostly) and will be here longer than the rest of us (so they’re not missing much). If everything works out as we hope, they should arrive tomorrow. We’ll include updates on this situation on the blog. Don’t worry, they’re all ok and doing their best to enjoy Middle Eastern cuisine.
After our overwhelming airport welcoming, we headed over to the Kopanong Hotel in Johannesburg. Kopanong means “gathering place” in Sotho and that’s exactly what it is for us tonight, with hundreds of people in orange GO shirts eating dinner and moving bags around the lobby. It’s a beautiful African resort with the most inviting feature being the beds we so desperately need.
As for luggage, about 98% of our bags made it. We are continually amazed at our good fortune with these trips. Apparently we have some angels working the baggage lines for us! The missing ones are somewhere between Detroit, The Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa. But we’re confident they will arrive well before we start to run out of underwear. And if not, some people may need to share (hey, it’s a mission trip!).
Tomorrow we are off on an African safari to receive some of the blessings South Africa has to offer before we dig in on Sunday to be a blessing ourselves.
Blog Notes: Over the next couple of weeks, we plan to have multiple contributors for the team blog to provide observations that encompass our entire project. And it’s a BIG project, so there are a lot of things to blog about. Each author will sign his/her section with initials so you can begin to identify with your favorite author.
Until tomorrow evening...
Saturday, June 30, 2007
In Creation
First, our team is finally at full strength! Yes, all our two-weekers made it out of Dubai and arrived at the hotel this evening. We greeted them all with a rousing cheer as they dragged themselves into dinner before heading off to bed. So that’s ZERO people lost in transit and a couple of bags. Not a bad three days of travel.As for today: After a great night’s sleep, and a wonderful breakfast at Kopenong (thankfully the buffet had no baked fish heads like there were for dinner,) we loaded up on buses and ventured into the guts of South Africa. Pastor Titus insists that we receive the goodness that his country has to offer before we give back, so today is the day to do that with us first heading to an African market and then to Pilanesburg National Park for a safari. Here’s how some of our teammembers saw the day:
Africa has it own sunset, and its own moon. The sunset spreads a dusty rainbow from blue to pink to orange to purple when it hits the hills. The moon is not like yours or mine, it is Africa’s own – twice the size and glowing pink. This is one of many truths today I received, in love from the Creator about his creation.
Today we headed out to Sun City (a South African “Las Vegas” I’m told) for a game drive which is just like a safari except you don’t shoot the animals. We experienced a twenty-degree climate change taking the ritual of layering to a new level. Taking in the countryside today was sort of like Napa Valley…but not.
On our way to Sun City, we stopped at the African Market for some shopping. Not only was I excited to shop, but also to exercise my bartering muscles. Someone tell my husband – I talked one vender down from R200 to R120, and another from R250 to R160! I don’t know what that means because I don’t do math, but it felt good.
Back on the bus and we were off to the game drive. We saw giraffe, zebra, hippos, rhinos, and the like all in their natural habitat. The game reserve country was beautiful. Red rocks and yellow grass under a blue sky – unbelievable. As we drove through the park, we came upon a mother elephant and her 2 little elephants eating from the brush on the side of the dirt road. At one point we could have reached out and touched them.
Looking at the mother elephant, she looking back at me – I marveled at how my Creator created her, too. Knowing much about God in that moment, and knowing very little, all at the same time – incredible.
If you were waiting to read about the shanties and the poverty, rest assured it’s coming. We saw plenty today just on the side of the road. But today we were asked to receive. Receive the welcome and the beauty that South Africa has to give, as we will be giving in the days ahead. So that’s what I did. I received the truth that God is a mysterious, awesome creator and he loves Africa very much. She has her very own moon, after all.
Here's another account:
We started today by hearing Tim read Pslam 8. It describes all people (even a specific shout out to children) giving God praise for all he has created. Today, at Pilanesburg National Park, I was fortunate enough to be in the open air jeep with two children. Street, a nine year old, took a front and center seat right next to our guide. With wonder and excitement he asked the guide continuous questions for the next three hours (you moms out there can feel the pain). Patiently, and carefully our guide, Bernard answered every question. I wanted to know when the wart hogs were going to sing hakuna matata. Street wanted to know why God gave the zebra stripes.
Listening to Street humbly seek more information reminded me of why we were driving around on the African plains. We have questions – lots of them. We want to know if we can get hairdryers in the hotel, and how it will feel to walk into informal settlements for the first time. We want to know if our families are okay and if our lost luggage will come tomorrow. Today, God showed us that he is bigger than all of those questions, and that he is here with us as we find the answers to them.
Our work doesn’t start right away as tomorrow morning we are off to the week’s main event, Sunday worship at Charity & Faith. Please know that the blog may not happen until Monday night as we will all be staying with Mamelodi families tomorrow evening – and we hear they have been preparing a big surprise for us!
Finally, please keep the comments coming. We are doing our best to print them out for the group to see. It’s not a foolproof system, but we’ll continue to try. Your prayers and support mean a ton.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
In Worship
Sunday is church day on the trip so for the first time this week we ventured into Mamelodi to celebrate with Charity & Faith. We spent the morning at the main church and then had the rare chance to visit some of Charity’s smaller branch churches that are scattered throughout the impoverished township Here’s how one of our people saw the day:Today was a special day. Today we worshipped a God that was bigger than our American minds could wrap around. A God who knows the names of African children too numerous to count, children who dispense love and joy in equal parts. A God who speaks Sotho and Zulu and other fun languages we heard swirling about the church.
Today broke early with breakfast at the Manhattan and a chilly bus ride to Charity. As we crossed the bridge into Mamelodi, the bus sobered up as the informal settlements stretched out to the right as far as we could see. I glanced back the bus. I saw weeping. That’s a good thing. We pulled into Charity to a very warm (and very African) welcome. Many handshakes and hugs later we took our place in their community to worship together.
There was a marked difference in the Crossroads folks this year. It seems as a community we’ve started to embrace our African roots. We danced with abandon, waffed with our Bibles (an interesting twist where one takes one’s Bible, opens it, walks to the stage and fans the open Bible towards the speaker, thus delivering ???), and generally allowed ourselves to experience God with a freedom unfamiliar in Cincinnati.
When service was over, we headed out to taxis that were waiting to take us to one of Charity’s NINE (yes, nine…) satellite locations around Mamelodi. For many of us it was our first dive into the informal settlements. We sang and danced in a tent (yea, a tent). At one point, as I was shaking my booty with an elderly South African woman, I had the literal thought, “How in the world did I end up here?” I’m not sure, but I know it’s a good place to be.
After the service we spent some time with the folks at the branch campus (Nelmapius). It was there I had my first Mamelodi Moment. I met a guy named Phillum (Phil), who was as engaging a man as you’d ever want to meet. We had a great conversation about our trip over, our thoughts on Mamelodi, and his life right now. He then asked if he could help with the medical team, as he had completed some coursework in basic lifesaving techniques. As an aside, he mentioned he wasn’t currently working, so he’d be able to work all week with the team. As he walked away, I pulled my sunglasses closer to my face to hide the tears streaming down. That was it. A simple interaction. But it struck me how much I liked Phillum, and how he, like 70% of Mamelodi, wasn’t working not because of something he did wrong, but because of a world that’s not right.
So I’ll look forward to seeing Phil tomorrow morning. I like him. Mamelodi is waiting….so good night.
This evening, most of our group is staying with host families in the township. This is one of the most powerful experiences of the trip – for both us and our hosts. And tomorrow morning our work begins at 8 am. More tomorrow night…
Monday, July 02, 2007
In Homes
When you agree to spend your vacation in a South African township plagued by extreme poverty, extreme anticipation is soon replaced by extreme fear. What are the people like? What is the food like? What are the bathrooms like? Will they hate (like?) me? And the most nagging question, “How does God fit in to all of this?”Answers to those questions don’t come by watching a movie or driving through town on a tour bus. They come by entering the homes of the people of Mamelodi. Sharing meals with them. Sharing conversations with them. Working alongside them. And sharing life with them, if only for one night or one afternoon. That’s what we started doing last night and today.
Last night we stayed in the homes of Charity church members where we were treated like dignitaries. We did it so we could truly learn what their lives are like. They blessed us in every way they could and we hope we blessed them by showing we care about who they are.
Then today we started our work. Regardless of what a team is doing (it could be planting food, building a home, playing soccer with kids, or one of about a dozen other projects) they spent time with both adults and children in Mamelodi, oftentimes in their homes. Regardless of the project and the result, one thing was universal: this is different.
Some more about today:
Today I saw our work teams operate in perfect harmony. As a construction team worked on the roof of a house in Ward 7, our kids team kicked soccer balls and threw Frisbees with children from the neighborhood. It was a beautiful sight. Two teams with different tasks, but one heart. One more team was about to join in. A girl named Witness took a kids team member to a little boy was very sick. It was obvious that he needed more than a bottle of bubbles or a soccer ball. He needed someone to help him.
We just happen to have a medical SWAT team for the first time this year. It just happens to have a doctor and a nurse from one of the best children’s hospitals in the nation on it. Within half an hour they were at the house checking out the boy. With a little convincing Witness agreed to take the boy to the hospital. We offered her a ride. I got into the taxi with the doctor, the nurse, and two other kids team members. We had medical care and we had loving care. At the Mamelodi hospital we walked a teenager who had been thrown into an adult world though a medical system that forgets most patients. In the waiting area we gave out granola bars and smiles to the sick South Africans who waited with us. Three hours in a dim waiting room later, the child started to get the medical care that he would not have gotten any other way. We got a new friend named Witness.
It was a side of Mamelodi that we didn’t plan on seeing, but in the midst of it we saw a side of God that I didn’t plan on seeing. We saw the God that is the great healer and the one who answers a seventeen year-old’s prayer. He just happened to send us to answer it.
Today I was struck by what can happen when one person gets passionate about righting a wrong in the world. But the story didn’t start today. Rewind a year ago to GO Mamelodi 06.
Tiffany Clayton visited South Africa in April 2006 with our group of 300 people. While here, her heart broke when she realized that the children at Charity’s elementary school didn’t have any books to read. So what did she do? She didn’t just complain about it, or tell stories about it to her friends and then forget about it; she lived her faith out loud by resolving to fix this problem. Through her network of friends, family and co-workers, Tiffany collected over 6,000 children’s books – all stored in her garage for months! These books, along with tons of shelves, were sent on a shipping container that arrived on Wednesday, and a group of GO Mama volunteers (including her husband, Jeff) today set up a kick-butt library at Charity’s school.
As I walked into the library, I almost broke down. As I looked around the room, I saw shelf after shelf of crisp, bright, perfectly organized books, complete with the Dewey Decimal system (OK, I made up that part because I just think “Dewey Decimal” sounds funny … but they do have an impressive organizational system). Then in a display of the quality and depth of the library, Jeff Clayton competitively asks me – no, taunts me, “What was your favorite book as a kid?” Without pause I answer, “That’s easy. Corduroy.” Jeff smiles, reaches down, and picks out a brand new copy of Corduroy. Incredible.
Now these South African children, who have so little, will have a library of the same caliber that my two girls have at their school in Cincinnati. And it’s all because Tiffany Clayton got ticked about an injustice and did something about it. I don’t know about you, but that seems like the Kingdom of God in action to me.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
In Stories
Put 300 people in a place they are not supposed to be, doing things they normally don’t do, and stories happen. Stirring, mind-boggling stories.Some are funny–like our teammember who, while staying with his host family, got up in the middle of the night to use the restroom and, due to some cultural communication problems, peed in the sink.
Some are sobering–like the young child, who appears to be 3 years old but is actually 6, and admits to one of our teammembers that he has “the disease” (He means HIV).
All are why we are here.
Our gardening teams are at the center of many of these great stories:
On the way to her work site this morning, one of our teammembers saw a home (shack) she planted a vegetable garden in last year. She remembered the home because the woman who lived there had the same name. She stopped her taxi and ran to the home. The woman was still there. They both cried as they recapped the number of times they had thought and prayed about each other over the past year. Our teammember looked for last year’s garden and couldn’t find it. She asked if it was gone and the South African woman walked her around the back of her home. Her son had moved the garden and it had doubled.
In one of the gardening neighborhoods, a South African mom taught one of our moms how to carry a baby on her back. The South African mom had two babies, and both moms walked around together with babies on their backs.
Yesterday, the police stopped by one of our gardening sites to see what was going on. It seems Americans in the township raise some eyebrows and questions. Within a couple of minutes, they grabbed shovels from our team and started digging a hole.
One gardening team is planting in a neighborhood next to the power plant. A large angry white employee at the plant has walked out to the edge of the plants property every day and yelled at the team, “What are you doing?!” He has watched and insulted them. The gardeners have prayed he will walk over to get a better look.
In both the construction and gardening neighborhoods, South Africans are coming out of their homes with pictures and asking, “Is my American friend here?” To those who came in ’06, know this: Your friends remember you. They still have the pictures, the cards and the love you gave them. They miss you and are sending their love with us.
Finally, yesterday’s blog started a story about a young boy named Cecil who was desperately ill and was taken to the hospital by our medical SWAT team. Today, some of our leaders visited Cecil and his mom in Mamelodi Hospital. Cecil had not eaten in weeks, had a stomach infection, and has HIV. He is 3. After one day in the hospital, Cecil is smiling and on anti-retroviral drugs that allow people to live with the disease. The doctor said Cecil could have died within a week had our team not brought him to the hospital.
The stories will continue to develop, and with over 500 people in Mamelodi sometime during this week and next week, many of them haven’t yet been told.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
In Dependence
Tonight we ate cheeseburgers (though we don’t think it was beef), waved sparklers, and listened to a guest speaker from the US embassy commend our partnership with Charity & Faith. Then we gathered around a screen with popcorn, Pringles and Kit-Kats and watched Will Smith punch an alien in the face in Independence Day. It was a very cool, VERY odd 4th of July celebration. It wasn’t weird because we are celebrating independence about 8,000 miles away from our home, but more because our new South African friends are teaching us the importance of dependence on God. And we like it.The people of Mamelodi don’t just rely on God for inspiration or salvation, they rely on God for their next meal. Many have no jobs, and without God providing for them they would die. This type of dependence is not a lesson many of us learn back home. The Charity & Faith members pray every free second of their lives and they depend on God to get them through their day. For example, on Sunday evening when one of our hosts picked up her guests, she prayed for a safe ride home when they climbed in the car, and then when they arrived safely, she thanked God for protecting them on the journey. This type of prayer happens all the time around here, and it seems that God is using us to answer some of them.
This morning, one of our medical doctors was working at a mobile clinic we set up in the township when he noticed a young boy running around with no shoes. The boy was mentally disabled. Our doc couldn’t bear to witness this any longer so he picked up the boy and washed his feet clean. With no shoes available for the young boy, our doc removed his socks and put them on the boy’s feet. God used our doctor to make this boy a little more comfortable.
Over the past couple of days, the preschool room at Charity got an Extreme Makeover by one of our teams. This morning, the kids experienced it for the first time. When they walked into their new room, decked out with seven learning centers full of things like plastic animals, books and dress-up stations, the kids, who normally can’t stop moving, froze. No one moved. The kids were stunned at the sight of a room prepared specifically for them. Just a year ago, we saw the same kids sitting on a concrete floor with NO toys for up to eight hours a day. The kids asked our team if they were allowed to go play with the new equipment. When they were told yes, they exploded into the room and spent the next couple of hours touching everything they could get their hands on. Their teachers, in their new, bright orange GO Mamelodi shirts, crawled on the floor with them and, with huge smiles on their faces, played. Today those kids got to see they were worth the best we had to offer. God used our team to teach that.
There are so many more stories like these - little ways that God is caring for people in Mamelodi who depend on him. Dependence is a tough lesson for those from the western world to learn, but if we do learn it, we are seeing what is possible.
Trip Update: Tomorrow is our last day of work for week one’rs, followed by an end of week celebration at Charity & Faith with all of the people we have been working with and living with this past week. We will finish it off tomorrow night with a large community braii (BBQ) at Charity. Oh, and throughout the day over 200 people are leaving Crossroads to join us in South Africa!
Thursday, July 05, 2007
In Water
It actually rained today. The South Africans tell us that rain in July is a little unusual. It’s not supposed to rain until September. But it did. That doesn’t really mean anything except that things are a little unusual. But you know that if you’ve been reading this blog.Today we finished our work for week 1. Homes now look like homes. Gardens are ready to grow. Many township residents have seen a doctor or a dentist. The Charity adult education center is rewired and has already hosted computer-training classes. A children’s library is open. The new orphanage at Charity & Faith is ready for its grand opening on Monday with new landscaping and paint. And hundreds of kids feel loved because of their new American friends.
But there are more important things that happened this week. We’ve talked about many of them in this blog and there are so many more. It all culminated this evening at our end-of-the-week service at Charity & Faith where we opened the baptism pool in the church for anyone who wanted to publicly declare their faith. 43 Americans came forward (exactly 1 more than last year!) and 11 South Africans all to be baptized.
The magnitude of 54 people jumping in the water to be baptized increases exponentially if you understand that it was 35 degrees outside and there is no heat in the church! People could see their breath as they sang out-loud, praising God for what happened this week, but it didn’t prevent them from climbing in a pool of water. Thankfully, the baptism pool was heated to hot tub levels, but the wet walk from there to the changing rooms was still enough to prevent someone from taking the leap if they didn’t really want it.
We finished the day with a cookout in a large tent on the Charity property, where we once again shared a meal with our host families. We hugged and jumped on buses back to the hotel where tonight our week one’rs are packing up their stuff. Tomorrow morning we head to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, and then to the airport to finish up our shopping and hop on flights home. We will pass over 200 arriving Crossroaders in the airport, jealous of what they are about to experience.
What happened this week will take a long time to figure out, but we know it was strong, we know it was special, and we know it was different. Please ask us when we get home.
Friday, July 06, 2007
In Transit
Over 500 people in the Jo-burg airport at the same time. Whose idea was that?!Though it was nuts for a couple of hours earlier today, everyone is where they need to be. All our week 1 team is off for home, and as far as we know they are on-time. All our week 2 people (except for our CSM team) are safe in Pretoria and heading to bed to dispense with the jet-lag before tomorrow’s adventure. They again had a rousing greeting at the airport by singing and dancing Charity & Faith members, and have already experienced some of the love they are here to see.
Unfortunately, due to bus trouble in Ohio (of all places!), our CSM’ers missed their connecting flight in New York and have been working their way through the international air system to get to South Africa. They all made it to Dubai today, and are now trying hard to get on a flight from Dubai to Jo-burg so they make it to South Africa in time to go on the animal safari tomorrow. Everyone is doing great. They just need some prayer (and probably a shower).
Speaking of bus trouble, our two-weekers, who spent 3 days trying to get to South Africa last week, had a little bus trouble of their own this morning. Before we arrived at the airport, all our week 1 team got to experience the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, an extremely moving and educational stop. Our two-weekers also planned on visiting the museum today, however, their bus driver, after realizing he had drove the wrong way, decided to turn around through the highway median. Unfortunately, the bottom dropped out and the wheels got stuck in mid-air, so our two-weekers got to enjoy their lunch on the highway median while waiting for another bus to pick them up.
Lesson: Never travel with the two-weekers.
Tomorrow we are off to the African market and then to a safari in a game preserve. It’s a chance to receive some of South Africa’s beauty before we give back the rest of the week.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
In Preparation
As our week 1’ers arrive home, one thing they will confirm is that Sunday to Thursday of Go Mamelodi is more intense than a coating yourself in peanut butter and walking into an elephant herd. So, to prepare ourselves for the coming gale, we spend Saturday receiving some of the blessings South Africa has to offer before we have a chance to give back.Before we get to today, the good news about our CSM’ers is that 14 of them arrived in South Africa today and have joined our group. The not as good news is that the rest of the group is still in Dubai working hard to get on a flight to Jo-burg. The “a little better” news is that the CSM’ers who are here reported that their time in Dubai was a lot of fun. Leave it to a bunch of teenagers to make three days of travel a good time.
This morning we headed out to an African market and then on a game drive in Pilanesburg National Park. Here’s a report from one of our teammembers:
Going to the game park and seeing the beautiful, Lion King-like landscape is almost enough to make you forget about the problems in this land left over from apartheid and created by AIDS—poverty, sickness, unemployment. This is a country of great beauty and a country of great challenges—today we soaked in the beauty, and saw the challenges from a distance. Not a cloud in the sky as we rode around Pilanesberg National Park, soaked in the sunshine, saw rhinos, zebras and giraffe, mistook warthogs for lions at one point, and some of us watched two elephants in a scuffle. Within a few minutes of driving away from the game park, the scent of sweet smoke filled the air. Against a ruddy sunset, swirls of smoke rose up from homes dotting the countryside and melted into the twilight. I was encouraged by the fact that many houses were made of cement instead of tin, and you could see the glow of lights coming from inside them—so they had electricity. But the smell of smoke reminded me that they still have no heat, and they use the fires to cook their dinners and to warm themselves. I wondered how we could really make a difference with so many people in need. Perhaps we’re like the aloe plants growing unencumbered all over South Africa--some towering as tall as people. God has placed them here for a purpose, and gave them healing powers. So although we can’t touch everyone’s lives, we can plant ourselves where God has called us to be, let him work through us to touch the lives of the people in Mamelodi, and receive what these amazing people have to offer.
This evening, Pastor Titus, the founder of Charity & Faith Mission Church, joined us for dinner at the Manhattan Hotel to explain the history behind our partner church and to tell us his vision for this week and beyond. He explained his dream that our work here and our partnership with his church will become a model for churches across South Africa to adopt, and will be a catalyst to change the world. No pressure there.
Tomorrow we go to worship at Charity, and then to the homes of our host families for an evening of great hospitality, relationships and fun.
NOTE: Because we are staying in homes tomorrow evening, the next blog post will probably not happen until Monday evening.
Monday, July 09, 2007
In Tents
Strip away the trappings of a building and you also lose a muzzle. You don’t realize it until you are singing songs to God, kicking your knees up and down, and waving your arms in the air in a dirty tent in the middle of a plane of shacks. Suddenly you feel real passion.Yesterday morning, after Sunday church at Charity’s main building, we loaded up taxis and headed out to the many branch churches dispersed throughout the township. Most meet in tents. All are rousing and raw. It’s worship like it probably should be, and it was what we needed to really get things going this week. Our people danced, testified (yep, we said testified), played music, and became part of the community they thought they were just visiting.
After church, many of us spent the night with families in the township. They hosted parties for us, brought all of their neighbors to meet us, and showed us the kind of hospitality that made us not miss home (well, almost). Then this morning, Charity hosted an electrifying send-off service for our team that was attended by the Minister of Social Development for South Africa. This was BIG for the work that Charity is doing, as he is probably the second most important man in South Africa, behind the President, who can find sustainable funding for things like the hospice and the new orphanage (that also opened today!).
Post send-off, we finally started our work for week two – our opportunity to love people like God tells us to. Our construction team got back to work on the houses we started last week, our gardeners finished off the landscaping for the hospice and the new orphanage, our kids team spent their first couple hours with the hundreds of kids who are looking to be loved, and our SWAT teams all got their projects moving.
A quick summary from our Medical Team: earlier today, at the tent-based medical clinic, our radiologist stitched up a man with six stab wounds, and our dentist locked himself in the dental trailer. So they’re doing fine.
Finally, we are pleased to say that our entire CSM team made it to South Africa today. For some of them it was 90 hours from the Crossroads Annex to Pretoria, South Africa, but they are all here and smiling. Today they got to go on a game drive in Pilanesburg National Park and tomorrow they head to camp with the Charity teens.
It’s off to bed as we prepare for an early morning start in the townships tomorrow. Say a prayer for the people who don’t know we’re coming and that God will do some amazing things through our people. It’s been an intense couple of days…
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
In Anticipation
Last Friday there was a party in Extension 22.Extensions are basically neighborhoods that make up Mamelodi Township. Extension 22 is composed of hundreds of shack homes and is plagued with the standard township problems – extreme poverty, unemployment, AIDS and everything that comes with it.
Why a party? Because Friday was the day the Americans arrived.
It seems a woman named Violet, who lives in the extension, has a friend at the hospice on Charity’s campus. Nine months ago this friend told Violet that American doctors would be setting up a clinic in Extension 22 this week. Violet counted down every day on a calendar she made herself out of scrap paper, and told all her friends and neighbors that the Americans were coming to help. They didn’t believe her. But Violet saw us when our team was here last year and she believed we would come back as we said we would.
When Violet confirmed the day the clinic staff was flying in, she and her neighborhood threw a huge party. Violet proudly brought friends and family to the clinic over the last few days for folks to see for themselves…the Americans had come, just as they said they would. Violet then served us in an extraordinary way when she took her broom and swept clean the area (a dirt street corner) where our clinic tents were going to be set up.
That is the level of hope the South Africans have for our work.
More from the medical team:
We’ve learned that many residents of Extension 22 are refugees from Zimbabwe, South Africa’s desperately poor neighbor to the north. They face barriers to medical care in the South African medical system because they lack South African documents. In this corner of the world, God is using us to fill a gap in Mamelodi’s medical system for these refugees. We met a young woman, eight months pregnant, who is HIV+ and fears taking HIV medications because the friends she is living with will ostracize her. On the other hand, we met a mother who is HIV+ and today had a heart-to-heart talk with her daughter about HIV. We expect that tomorrow her daughter, who is quite malnourished at 42 pounds at 10 years of age, will be tested with hopes that if she is positive, she can start on medications that can give her hope and a future. We anticipate that God will do good work in the lives of people in this corner of the world.
All of our teams are doing their best to deliver on the promises we have made.
Our gardening teams spent all of today in the informal settlements planting food – without bathrooms anywhere in sight. Our construction teams pushed far towards completing the eight homes we are building. Our kids team again increased the number of kids they are loving (and somehow they have gone through over 100 soccer balls already!). And our business, IT and music teams all continued teaching classes to Mamelodi residents who want to uncover untried skills. The best attended class? Entrepreneurship.
The people of Mamelodi anticipate change because the Americans arrived. We anticipate changed lives because we know God is working through us. We asked him to.
Cincinnati should anticipate change because we came here.
CSM update: Earlier today our CSMers headed out to camp where they joined over sixty teens from Charity. Though there is no heat at the camp, the report is that everyone is having a blast. Worship time tonight was all acapella around a fire, and apparently between that time and running a grueling (in a good way) obstacle course, kids from two continents are sharing their lives with each other. Also, while many of our teens have been missing their bags for a couple of days now, 26 showed up today and the rest have made use of the local mall.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
In Awe
Each afternoon for the last two weeks, our kids team has held a three hour kids club at Charity. Hundreds of kids jump on taxis every day and come to sing songs, make crafts, play soccer and learn about God. The past couple of days, at the end of the kids club time, our team set up prayer booths throughout the room to pray for the kids who ask us to.Today, however, the prayer booth idea took a u-turn. The kids (most under the age of 12) pushed our volunteers out of the way and started running the booths themselves, grabbing our volunteers and praying for them.
On the other side of Mamelodi, one of our gardening teams met an older woman who was very sick and couldn’t walk. During their time with her they prayed for her health. When they were done, the woman said she felt better and thanked them for their prayers.
Today we got video of the older woman walking down the dirt road. Seriously.
Late yesterday, our construction team at Extension 5 was talking to the couple who is getting the new home. The husband was translating for his wife when she told the team that, while she was very grateful for the new home, her true wish was for some shoes for her young son, Moses, so he could play soccer. Our team felt they had to act. Even though they still had work to do to finish their job, the team jumped in their taxi and went to the local store. They pooled their money together and purchased Moses a pair of shoes. Because of their excursion, they missed the bus back to the hotel and, still dirty and tired from the workday, had to wait a long time for a ride home.
This morning the team presented young Moses with his new shoes. He was in shock. They asked Moses if he wanted to put them on to go play soccer. He shook his head no and told them he wanted to save them for church on Sunday.
This stuff keeps happening.
Tomorrow is our last full day in Mamelodi, and it is bittersweet. Only one more day to be with these people who have inspired us and loved us, and only one more day until we can take all of that love back home.
Friday, July 13, 2007
In Conclusion
Yesterday, our teams finished all their work.Yesterday,the CSM team returned from camp in one piece and even had the opportunity to spend some time out in the township with our gardening teams.
Yesterday, the staff for the South Africa Minister of Social Development came to Charity to meet with Pastor Titus and talk about how the government can get involved with what we are doing together in Mamelodi.
Yesterday, the management of our hotel in Pretoria stopped by Charity to see what all these Americans have been doing for two weeks. They said they want to get involved.
Yesterday, 62 people were baptized. 29 of them were South Africans. That's 116 baptisms since we've been here.
Yesterday, we said good-bye and hugged all our new friends.
Today we are heading home.
"They sought God eagerly, and He was found by them." - 2 Chronicles 15:15