If you missed Part 1, you might want to go back and read up on how I ended up in South Africa in 2009. Don’t feel like it? No big. I won’t tell.
So…more on this Holiday Club…
We hosted a Vacation Bible School program for one week called “Holiday Club” in a transitional housing neighborhood. One of the things that made me “hotter than a pot of neck bones” as my mama would say (if you don’t know about eating neck bones, that just probably means that you ain’ grow up in the country. That’s cool. The phrase just means that someone was really MAD…cuz a pot of neck bones is HOT!)…was that the people who lived in this neighborhood lived in run-down shacks. They were displaced after a flood and the government apparently set them up here while they were working to restore their neighborhood…Well, people had been living there for years! What was taking so long??? Little did I know, getting angry about situations of injustice like this would lead me to want to fight for justice…That’s a topic for another day.
Even though it was summer in the USA, it was winter in South Africa and the students were out of school during that week for a sort of “Winter Break.” We would walk through the neighborhood each morning to gather the kids. Below is a picture of kids running beside our vans and waving at us as we left each day.
We visited an orphanage to drop off clothing items we brought with us from the States and our gracious hosts fed us! While this looks like mashed potatoes, carrots, and chicken…it was not. The “potatoes” were a food that had the texture of grits but were very different. I never could seem to remember what these items were called but they filled the hunger spot!
We spent quite a bit of time at the University of the Western Cape where there was a local Impact chapter. During one of our afternoons at the University of the Western Cape, some of our teammates put on a mini-step show for the students who gathered around the square (there are many students watching the performance behind the view of the camera). The step show was a teaser to grab students’ interest so that we could invite them to an Impact large group meeting – a gathering where students could mingle, sing worship songs with us, hear a rap and a spoken word performance, and hear a message of hope about Jesus.
Each Sunday morning, we worshiped with a different church so that we could see the diversity of the churches in the area. Here’s a photo from one of the churches. This particular church was made up of people who were “colored,” or biracial. In South Africa there are 4 main racial groups: Black (native Africans), colored (people who were biracial), Afrikaans (white South Africans of mainly Dutch descent), and Indian (from India). I LOVE talking about race, so it was fascinating to me to interact with the different racial groups. We’ll probably delve more into my love for talking about race later.
On another of our free days, we decided to climb Table Mountain. After a three hour trek up the mountain, I took a seat for this photo. It was amazing to consider God’s faithfulness as I hiked and to stand in awe of His creation once I took in the view from the top of the mountain.
South Africa will pop up in at least one more post. I got more stories per usual! Want to read more about my time there? Click on the “South Africa” category tag for future posts. Missed Part 1 of this story? Click here.