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.