My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? I often wonder what exactly Jesus meant by this as he gave up his spirit to his father. I am still not exactly sure but I kinda feel like asking God the same question now. As in, "Why God are you allowing continued strife and hardship in my life?" I know the answer to this question but knowing the answer does not make it any better. The past two weeks in particular have extraordinary, phenomenal, incredible, ridiculous, amazing and now sad. We are in our last week here at African Enterprise and it is beginning to hit me.
I am not ready to leave.
Even though we have exactly one month left here in Africa I have no desire to leave my church family, my African Enterprise family and my Walk in the Light family. We started service sites two weeks ago since we finished school then. I knew I would want to be at Walk in the Light simply because I heard about it before I even came here and somehow knew it's where I would be. We go to this ministry every single day except for weekends and some Mondays. This ministry is specifically for the people of Haniville, a community across the street who live in government provided housing. And by housing I mean mostly one to two room buildings made of sticks and mud. Some are made from brick and plaster.
Anyway, Walk in the Light has a church, a house for the pastor and his family, an office, a computer room and large amount of farming land. The land directly behind the building is gardened by the grannies (gogos) for food. There is an old storage building that had tons of junk and random stuff in it when we first arrived. That room has now been completely renovated. The nurses had to do a community project and they proposed that building be made into a care center. So we moved everything out, organized it, dumped the rubbish, tore out the carpet, helped lay the new cement floor and painted the walls. Hospital beds were brought in and some workers built a bathroom and did the majority of the flooring.
Starting here was difficult because, unlike other service sites, we did not have any direction or really any clue what we were doing. Bruce, the man in charge, is not good at communication and is only there for like 10 minutes some mornings. So we started out painting Karin and Wilfred's house where they will be staying. They are from Holland and have come to draw up plans for the new building which will be put it on top of the hill overlooking Haniville. So Bruce would come and say, "This is what you are doing today." But we wouldn't necessarily have supplies so we had to find a lot of things on our own. Then, tuesdays and thursdays the gogos come for a group meeting, which we didn't know about the first week. So that was frustrating. And we are supposed to implement community engagement tools we learned in our class during these meetings, but it didn't really work out the way we planned. We had a lot of troubles the first week and I got super frustrated along with my team.
However, God has proven himself to be very very faithful and during the times where we had no ideas, we would have to learn to go before the Lord in prayer and He would give us ideas for what to do. Fridays, the Sr. Youth of the town come for a meeting and Bible study. They meet every friday and anyway but they handed it over to us to run for the past two weeks and this week. It's been incredible knowing these people. They are college age like myself.
It's really hard to communicate what has been happening the past few weeks because I haven't had time to blog and there's just too much to write down. Plus, I don't have a computer so that makes it difficult as well. Anyway, know that the relationships we have there are very tight and beautiful. We went to their church this morning and it gave me such a great picture of what Heaven is sure to be like. The Zulus are very gifted with loudness and the ability to be great at singing. Seriously, the entire church service is singing and dancing and praying out loud. At one point, we were singing Hallelujah over and over again, and it was so so beautiful that it gave me that glimpse of Heaven.
We have been digging a 4 and a half foot deep by 3 ft wide hole for a septic tank. We have also been digging a 2 x 3 x 20 ft trench for the piping. It is going to connect the bathroom in the new care center. Seriously, I am on the verge of tears right now because it's so difficult to explain all the amazing and difficult things that have gone on the past two weeks. I am sorry I have not blogged in that time to keep you updated. I will miss this place so much. I will miss these people so much. We also delivered food packs to certain people within Haniville and got the opportunity to pray for them inside their homes. There is a lot of pain and hopelessness and hurt. But there is also a lot of joy and fellowship. This community really takes care of each other, something I don't see a lot in America. And I don't want to paint a picture of Africa being this place of endless hopelessness and darkness. It really isn't, there is a lot of great stuff going on. I severely dislike groups and people who come in on missions and with organizations with the mindset of, "My way of doing things is right and your way of living is wrong. You are poor so let me tell you the correct way to live." TERRIBLE
We have really tried to have a mindset that we wish to be taught and we are here to learn, not tell. We have these next 4 days to spend at Walk in the Light. I think I may cry every single day because we leave Sunday for Cape Town.
This couple at church invited me to speak at their home group three weeks ago. Darrell and Dene are such awesome people within North Hills church. That entire body of Christ is my church family here in South Africa. They approached me separately on different occasions to come to their home group, which consists of about 15-20 people. They wanted me to share my heart and to share the passion I have for men and just God in general I think. Anyway, I went last week and didn't share because the entire home group ended up praying for me the whole time. Dene is a very strong prophet and so while we were worshiping she said she felt that someone was very discouraged in the room and that person should not be afraid to ask for prayer. Obviously it was me and that had just happened to be the most difficult day at Walk in the Light so I just blew out every single thing I was struggling with. And for the next hour or so everyone layed hands and prayed for me. The Lord granted many visions and words of wisdom and encouragement for me through the body. Then one of my dear friends Ruth, gave me a book called, Tell Your Heart to Beat Again by Dutch Sheets. I think it's mostly about giving everything over to the Father because I have trouble with giving things to God.
But everyone there signed it for me and wrote notes in it for me. But since I didn't get to share they invited me back the next week. And they said I could bring people also. So I asked my good friend Ashton if she wanted to come, and she said she knew that I was going to ask her. It's just crazy how God works. Weeks before that I felt I needed to go to a different church for some reason. And that day Ashton was the only other person going. That day at church the Lord led me to speak with two guys and learn about their stories and pray for one man specifically. Then I felt that I should ask Ashton to hear her life story, so we basically hung out the next two days and talked. I learned all about Ashton and her struggles etc.
I learned that she really missed her home group back in the states. Weeks later Dene told me to bring people. I just knew that Ashton needed to come. So we got picked up by Darrell and arrived at their house. The group is mostly older adults around 45 years old and then two of my really good college friends Kristen and Gina, oh and ashley too. So I spoke. And it was one of those times when I didn't even have to think about what to say because the spirit spoke straight through me. I told a bit of my life story, specifically about my calling to men, and the times when the Lord appeared to me. My struggle with pornography/masturbation and victory in Christ over them. Intermixed I would be led to incorporate scripture with what I was saying. And I just saw tears in the eyes of the people there, including dear Ashton. Seriously, it was perfect.
I then felt led to declare freedom from bondage and sin and everyone was in agreement. There was prayer and encouragement and truth in that place. I told them before I started speaking that I felt like the apostle Paul when he greets the churches in his letters. He loves and misses them so much and knows that he can go back and have a place to stay and food to eat. That's exactly how I feel about that church family. I have grown so close with them and know that when I go back to the states I will always have that family to return to and pray for. I know I will be in their prayers as well. I just love them so much. Dene is like a second mother to me and those people are amazing. Brett is another guy my age who I've become quite close with. I will miss them dearly. Then I got invited to speak at a men's breakfast this past saturday but it didn't happen because it was at 5am and we were going to uShaka Marine world that day, which was soo soo fun. You can literally do whatever you want on the waterslides. We had six people going down at once in huge trains, we were going down headfirst and doing all sorts of nonsense. It's also like a Sea World type place so there is a massive aquarium and dolphin shows etc. I won a dance contest and got a year round pass to uShaka. Haven't decided who I will give it to yet.
Well, this is quite long and I need a break. Sorry again but I have much much more to write. Hopefully I can write another tomorrow. I really just want to meet my wife and get over this last hurdle of patience and waiting. It was told to me that my story will be similar to Isaac's in that the Lord will provide my wife when the timing is right. The thing to note for me is that Isaac was busy working and living his life when he met Rachel. He wasn't looking around every single corner for her. I need to do the same, but I do have trouble with it. Watch. Wait. Listen.
And lekker boet means cool man in Afrikaans
Sawubona!
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