the name of...

Hello Everybody

So it feels like I haven’t blogged for ages!
And I really am not too sure of where to start.

So as many of you may know in the footprints program, you spent 10 weeks of cultural training in south Africa and then they send you out to a different country in Africa to do your “out reach” before I left we still where sure of where my outreach was going to be or what program I was going to be a part of.
That has recently been decided. My outreach will be all the way to…South Africa! Ha-ha, at first I wasn’t stoked and I thought I was getting held back maybe because of my lack of life experience or something but the more we talk about it and the more I think about it this is absolutely amazing!
See getting sent out for the other girls in the program works, because they are good friends and know each other well and know how to be a support to each other and all that stuff, when you are sent out your partner has to be a really good friend because they are basically your only other person that can completely relate and stuff.
If I where to be sent out I would be sent with callan and callan is great I promise you this but at this point I don’t think we are right to work with each other as a team or to support each other. So to stay in South Africa I will have the support of all the hands at work staff and I will have independence in my work. We are still working out exactly what I will be doing but there are three things that I want to be involved with for sure, the first would be the youth program, right now the big boss, levy is slowly pulling out to give the community more ownership, so the new leaders are two really cool guys named Stanley and sydwell, as levy steps back callan and I will both probably fill in some gaps and just help the guys with organizing and administration skills and stuff like that, I am really excited, the second opportunity is very similar, I will be helping with the young mum’s program, Busi who is the big boss of young mums is going to be doing some traveling and stuff to bring the program to different countries and Linkie will be the one to step in, Linkie is nervous about her English and about being in charge, so I would work with her to build up her confidence and just be there to bounce her ideas off.
The third situation I am not really positive of how it will work but I would really like it to happen, hands at work has a goal to reach 100,000 OVCs (orphanages and vulnerable children) by 2010, so part of that is OVC visits along with home base care, I would like to work at least once or twice a week doing the OVC visits.

So yeah I am really really excited about this.
earlier this week we spent time with George synman (who is the founder of hands at work) and he asked me if I was enjoying my time here, and I was telling him that I am overjoyed to be here and I know this is the right place for me to be and I almost started crying and I don’t even know why.
Whats happening in my life and what’s happening in Africa now is INCREDIABLE and I thank God ever day that I get to be a part of it.
Often I think of home and I just wished my family and friends could see this place, this incredible place that the rest of the world and church has kind of turned its back to.
When I was speaking with Carly, she was telling me that she thought this was going to be one of the best years of my life and I have the same feeling, I know some of the things of what’s going to happen this year are going to be hard and barely bearable but “Bring it on”…this is a classroom that I completely willingly enter.

I think of everyone often and you are all in my prayers.
Ngi yaku tsandza

the good left undone

whew
okay i have a few points to make before i really get into this blog,
i just uploaded a few pictures on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=100624&l=18147&id=567405623
i am also extremely sunburned and kinda of frustrated cause the payphones arent working properly
and the battery is almost dead on this lap top :(

okay i have alot to talk about in the blog.

We've been doing alot of trainging and workshops with hands at work and the more i hear about this organization the more happy i am that i get to be a part of it, they are absolutely incrediable it the way things are done and all that stuff,

in our training we've had the oppurntinty to be apart of some the the programs, we went to cork and belfast and where a part of the home visits to sick patients and orphanges/valnurable children
i saw the first person that i've ever been sure of dying of aids and i watched the worker give her a bath while i sat in shock. Alot of these trainings has really left me wondering what my place here, like God brought me here for a reason im just not sure exactly what im suppost to do yet.
after we visited that patient we went to a house where 3 girls lived , 15. 9 and 4, there mother abanded them and there father is dead, they aren't allowed to have money from the government because there parents are from Mozambique, they didn't had food, we didn't have anything to give them,all i could do was help them wash there clothes and sweep there floor.
i left there feeling numb

that night i found a really really good Bible verse that gave me a amazing amount of hope though
psalms 9:18
The names of the poor will not be forgotten


God has a plan for these kids just like he has plan for north Americans, but i think a part of their plan, is the global church realizing that we need to build these people up.
i wrote this in my journal the other day
"Africa truly truly is a continent of hope where things can and will be changed but i don't think it will change in the western world wants it to...like it wont change right away or quickly, Africa is a wound that will take time to heal and a tree that is going to take time to grow, i am so blessed and absolutely overjoyed that God has allowed me to be apart of this"

so yeah today we went to a youth group annnnd i had to preach a sermon....oh boy....that was really weird and hard for me....and i messed it up pretty hard, like forgetting that the translator had to translate and i just kept talking so he had to try and remember everything i said and the end.
good-ness not good.
i think im going to leave it at that right now

is a magic number

Hello Children

this will be my third post from south africa and it will probably be the most boring post of them all.

Im doing well but our program is going slow at the moment and im finding myself with alot of free time and not alot of stuff to fill it with.

I think my spirituality and the views i have of christians are going to be very challenged here and i think i am definanity going to be molded, i already feel myself changing a little bit, not in a bad way but just in a way where i have to think a whole lot more about christianity and how to own my faith.

hmmm what can i tell you? on friday all the footprinters went on a feild trip to a place called "God's window" and it was really beauitful, i will post the pictures...soon? when i figure out how im going to do that.
and this weekend we havent done alot we drove to a town near by to do some grocery shopping and went for sushi? yeah it was weird sushi in africa.

I've had a chance to talk to my family and a few friends which is really nice,
yesturday i also taped a bunch of pictures to my wall and i was thinking that you guys should mail me some pictures and notes that i can use to decorate my very plain room.(i will post the address on my facebook or to can contact my fam fam)

oh, Carly (the lady who is basically in charge of footprints) and i went for coffee on thursday afternoon and it was really good! i missed being a individual and loved not being surronded by all the people lived with (even though they are nice) and her and i talked a bit about our outreach and it sounds like Callan and i are going to be sent out together to zambia or we will stay in south africa, alot more discussion has to happen but those are pretty much the two plans, we'll see what happens.

hmm i dont have alot more to say...
i guess i should put it out there that i know my typing/spelling isnt amazing but everyones going to just have to deal with it. :)

soooo thats all for now
ps. everyone go see john butler trio for me in april, im pretty much heart broken tha i am missing that concert
bye now

being okay with shuffle

I really dont know how to start this blog. which is really weird cause i've been like thinking about what i was going to say all week.

oh my gosh this is hard!

okay since thursday myself and all the other footprinters where placed in a orphange headed house hold in the community of maysoi.
I lived in a sector called manzini with a lovely young mom named virgina, her birthday was on sunday and she just turned 18, she takes care of her two siblings who are twins and 16 years old, she also takes care of her 93 year old grandfather, she also has a daughter who is 3 years old who was concieved not through virigina's choice (if you understand what i mean..)

even after having today to debrief i still have alot of mixed feelings over what i just experiances and im still trying to process and understand what exactly just happened. So i will probably just write some facts rather then getting into it.

We each sepratly arrived at our host families homes on thurday evening after we had been working at K2 (which is basically a orphange day care) all day, I brought three bags of food, mazie meal, tomatos, onions, fish, cabbage etc, and my backpack with my stupid missinary skirts, her home is three seprate (small) buildings, i stayed with virigina in her room which had to beds so that was nice (better then dustin who had to share one bed with 3 people) south africans in the community sleep with the lights on and i think its gives them like a feelings of safty or something cause there is alot of crime.
they eat the mazie (when its cooked its called pap) at ever meal and its kind of like a very bland porriage and then the like cook up the beans of cabbage or something else to go with it.
They are very community orrientted and i swear i meant like 28314679543751234189327524365 people on my first night because everyone was very curious about a white person who would come to live with them.

on friday we went back to work at k2 and then the weekend back to our host families, the weekend, we didnt really do alot, there isnt really anything to do.
But i did learn that if a south african tells you something is close they mean they are going to take you on a hike....that happened to me twice!

so yeah saturday we just kind of hung around, virigna made chicken for dinner, and i kind of turned my eye to how it was stored cause i wanted to eat it (oh i should mentions that i wasnt really eating any of the food i guess because of ignorance)it was stored in a bowl of water just on the floor for a good half the day....but i didnt get sick so that was good.
then on saturday night we just sat in the yard with some neighbors and talked and eat boiled peanuts? they where good though....and they taught me ALOT of siswati which was really cool.
then on sunday we went to church (which they told me was close and it soooo wasnt)
and i guess i should explain about the water now, if your not use to it the well water in the comminity makes you really sick, so you have to boil it to make it okay to drink, but my hosts where okay to drink it, and because virigina cooks on a fire i felt bad asking to boil water, so i was like living on the 2 liters i brought from k2 but by sunday i was pretty much out so i hadnt drank any water and they took me on the hike to church i was mighty dehyrdrated, Dara one of the other girls who i am working with was there and she had some boiled water and let me have it which was good but when we got the the churh i needed more, so i decieded to risk getting sick and drank some of the bad water....well about 10 minutes later i started projectile vomitting outside the church with everyone watching me....it was not okay hahaha but thank God Dara was there.

um yeah then on monday i was back to K2 to paint, it was weird how happy all the footprinters where to see each other! everyone was so stoaked.
painting was really lame and we had to do it tuesday agaain.
then on tuesday we came back to our house which was so nice, a shower (cause in the community you take bucket baths) and food im used to, and a langues that i understand being spoken.

I had alot of confused feelings as i was living in the comminity, cause at first i was like "okay they have food and clothes they are okay right?" but like you can just feel that there is something so wrong there, in the community they are just surviving...they are just like physically living but there is a huge feelings of hopeless-ness, like they have food they have cloths but there is nothing past that, they dont have skills to have a job or anything....

but yeha i dont know any answers or anything like that
all i know was the past 5 days where a definatly a experiance that is going to bring me closer to empathy and it was amazing.

next time i will post pictures of my host familiy and of my team.

I miss everyone at home...its kind of weird cause i havent even been gone from 2 weeks but it feels like a very long time.
so yeah,

oh! okay this is juts a funny little. when i was younger my uncle brynn went to africa and all i remember about him talking about it or whatever was this picture of a frog in a toilet...this morning there was definatly a frog in our toilet and i totally took a picture.
hahah.

so yeah i think im going to leave it at that, but yeah that blog doesnt even begin to explain what africa is like...i just cant put it in to words, but its been awesome and i know im suppost to be here.