Wrapping It Up

Well, I've made it back to the States and I'm in full swing back at the church.  I wish I would have had more opportunities to blog while on my adventure, but I'm sure that I will be sharing a lot of my stories and photos with all of you in the next couple of months.  I wanted to thank everyone that supported me in my journey to South Africa whether it be monetarily or through your prayers and encouragement.  I met many wonderful people, saw many beautiful things that only our creator could have sculpted, and most importantly found some rest in God during this sabbatical time.  I want to encourage everyone to seek out your sabbatical time, no matter how long or short it is, to find your rest in God.  I want to thank everyone again for your support and I'll be trying to keep my blog updated as much as possible as I move through the different place in my walk.  God bless and have a good week.

Happy South African Thanksgiving

Hey everyone.  Sorry it's been so long since my last post.  It seems that par for the course here is that the internet, wherever I go, is either bad, really expensive or non-existent all together.  I finally set myself up to use the internet that I get through my phone, but it's still pretty slow.  Anyway, I took a little time for myself and made a trip to the southern tip of Africa to a place called Cape Town.  I stopped at several places on the way and met a ton of people from all over the world traveling down the coast.  There is a lot of beautiful country as you head south and hopefully I'll be able to post my pics of it on my Facebook soon.  It's interesting to see the economic changes the further south you travel in this country.  The closer to Cape Town that I got the more modern and European everything becomes.  There seems to be more agriculture and more wealth in the bigger cities, but there is still the problems of abject poverty outside of the city limits and in certain parts of the cities.  I've since made it back to White River and have been hanging out with the staff here and spend some time helping with the feeding programs in the villages.  It's been a good trip and I've both heard several things from God and been given more questions at the same time.  Most of us here on the base are American and so we decided to have us a Thanksgiving African style.  No turkeys aided in the feedings this year for us but we had a good time in fellowship and watching some American football (For once it came on at a decent hour).  Anyway, that's pretty much what's been going on around here.  I'll have plenty more stories for everyone when I make it back.  Be checking my Facebook for pics and everyone have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Mbonisweni & Dwaleni

Well, it's been a crazy but good week this week.  I wrote earlier about the situation in Kabokweni and the situation is very much the same in the other communities that I've visited and worked in this week.  We've been helping with feeding programs in all of the communities of Kabokweni, Mbonisweni, and Dwaleni this week.  The kids are great.  We've been having a lot of fun hanging out and playing with them.  Many of the kids and people in the village speak some English, and all of them either speak Afrikaans or their native language of Seswati (hope I spelled that right).  So, I've been working on my Seswati some so I can understand what some of them are saying and I must say that it's considerably different than English or Spanish so I've had a difficult time getting it.  It's been fun learning though.  Most of the kids are fascinated with my beard.  They've been calling me and one of the other guys with me Indrebe which means beard in Seswati.  They've also been rubbing on my arms a lot because they're intrigued by the hair on them.  I guess they're not entirely used to seeing people like me around.  The relationships that they have with the local church in Mbonisweni and Dwaleni are very good and I hope that we'll be able to spend some more time getting to know that pastor and the rest of the church.  Other than working this week I was able to spend some time in Kruger Park on a night safari with a few people from one of the missions teams.  I think I'm addicted.  It's not every day that you can just drive into a park and see lions, leopards, and baboons.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to spend some more time in the park seeing some more of the wildlife.  That's pretty much what's going on right now.  I'm gearing up to take a trip down to Cape Town next week to see some more of the country side before coming back and doing more work in the villages.  If you haven't been seeing my posts on Facebook you should go check out my photos.  I've been taking a ton of them so everyone can follow what I've been seeing here too.

Kabokweni

I can't believe that it's already been a full week since I left the states.  I knew this time would go by quickly but I had no idea it would go this fast.  The last week or so I have kind of kept to myself.  The 2 missionary teams that were already here were in the middle of their work weeks so I decided to just spend some time getting over my jet lag an spending some time to myself.  I've been reading quite a bit and just relaxing some over the weekend.  In case some of you missed my Facebook post, I started driving here two days after I made it to the base (yes, they drive on the left side of the road and yes it's hard to shift gears left handed).  Needless to say that's been an adventure in itself.

I've decided to spend most of my time this week working with the missions teams in the local villages and getting a feel for what the ministry here does and what a typical work week looks like.  Today we went to a village called Kabokweni.  The ministry here partners with a woman there named Elizabeth and her husband Nicholas.  They started a feeding program there for the orphaned children of the village.  This village has around 200,000 people in it (a little smaller than Lubbock) and sadly a vast majority of the population are orphaned children.  There are literally 13 year old children, and quite possibly younger, that are taking care of 3 or 4 siblings without any parental guidance.  Typically there are over a hundred children fed out of Elizabeth and Nicholas' home 6 days out of the week.  For most of the children this is the only meal that they get during the day.  One meal a day is typical for them, two is a blessing, and none of them ever have three because they don't want their stomachs to get used to having that much food.  Water is also a big problem for this area.  If it doesn't rain enough water has to be bought in town and that can only be done if there is enough money and if they can find something to transport the water back to the village.  This is a village of much need and I hear that the other two villages that I will be visiting are in the same condition.  Elizabeth has encouraged me to come and hang out some in the village with them and see the living conditions that many of these children are in.  She says that many of the home there have major holes in the roof, they have dirt floors, and many of the children don't even have blankets or pillows to sleep on.  The base ministry that I'm staying with, Ten Thousand Homes (www.tenthousandhomes.org), is working both to build homes for these orphans and help with the daily meals.  I will let you all know how you might help out with these ministries during my trip and when I return home.

So far this has been both a relaxing and perception changing trip, as most trips are to a third world country.  I hope to have more news for everyone as I spend some time in the other villages this week.  You can also see some of my pics from the trip on my Facebook page.  Tomorrow I'll be visiting an area of Mpumalanga called God's Window.  I'll try to post pics of it as soon as I can.  Have a good week everyone.

White River, Mpumalanga, South Africa (say that five times fast)

Well, after over 24+ hours of travel time I finally made it to SA yesterday.  My jet lag isn't near as bad as I thought it would be, but I'm still working a little to get on SA time.  We're 8 hours ahead here.  So far things have been uneventful for me.  Mostly reading and spending time with one of the teams that is here on their mission trip.  Next week there is a team from Germany coming in that I will be trying to spend some time with in the villages doing work.  The weather hasn't been bad.  It's the beginning of the rainy season here so the rains at night have been keeping the temperatures cooler during the day.  It's actually considerably cooler then back home right now.  I'm beginning to read "Life Together" one of Deitrich Bonhoeffer's works and I should have a few things to post about it in the next couple of days.

Hopefully I will be able to post every few days or so.  The internet is somewhat slow and expensive.  Interesting fact - It costs almost $50 for a GB of internet here.  The average American uses around 30GB worth of internet per day.  So for those of you doing the math at home that means that it would cost you around $1,500 a day to do what you normally do on the internet.  That's a round trip ticket from Lubbock to South Africa.  So, needless to say I'll be posting when I can but it may be several days apart.  That's it from SA right now.  Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Africa Bound

This is just a blog that I have set up to let everyone know what's going on with me in my travels to Africa.  Some of it will be a journal of where I'm at and what I'm getting myself into, and some will be random thoughts on God, Christianity, or just life in general.  This blog was an idea to let everyone know about the things I'm involved with during my sabbatical time, but hopefully I'll be able to keep the creative juices flowing afterward and continue to post about what's happening in my life.  Anyway, hope everyone enjoys and I'll try my best to post as often as the urge hits me.

Wiggs