My time in South Africa is going incredibly well. We recently made the switch with our other team to Muizenberg-which is by Cape town, and are all doing well.
But first things first-Let me tell you about the first month that our team spent in Jeffreys Bay:
We arrived on the 1st of January, and proceeded to do a wide variety of ministry. The first few days were spent seeing the town and townships, getting accustommed to the town and getting over jetlag. With then dove right in to the ministry side and did a lot of street evangelism in town, as well as door to door ministry in the townships. By door to door ministry, I mean that we litterally went door to door in the township and went and talked to the people, asked them if they knew Jesus and praying for them. It was cool to see, because here people are much more open to talking about deeper and spiritual things, and are very hospitable-not hesitating to invite you into their homes. Here is a picture of what some of the areas we were ministering looked like:
One of the most easily noticed things was the division of the black and white communities. You moved from a fairly normal town to extremely contrasting slums very quickly. Most of the townships have concrete walls surrounding the sides closest to town to prevent further expansion inward, and expand out from the town for miles.
While we had services that we did for various churches, as well as multiple times we went and did street evangelism, the next week was spent primarily focused in one of the townships. While we were there we did a lot of door to door ministry, as well as kids programs every day and services at night. Here is a picture of me getting to play with some of the kids during one of the programs:
Kids here can get incredibly crazy, and loved to climb all over me. Sometimes I would be carrying around 4 even 5 kids on me! It really illustrates how starved for love the kids here are. They are desperate for attention, and may never know love except what we got to pour out into them. I was able to speak at the church where we did a lot of work. Here's a picture, but it's a little blurry:
During several of the services, I got to pray with several people-3 of whom came to Christ!
Some other things we got to do was work and minister to AIDS victims, visit clinics and hospitals and get to talk to and pray with people who were really in need. There was a woman in particular whose husband was in the terminal stages of AIDS and had Tuberculosis. He didn't have much life left in him and was going to be transported to the emergency hospital. One person on our team-Jessica, got to pray with the wife, who was in immense turmoil because of how lonely she was feeling. They had only been married 6 months.
We also were able to do a lot of practical work around the YWAM base, as well as in the townships some. Including digging up weeds for a garden, some cleanup(Some of which was the grossest work I've ever done in my life-rotting garbage and human feces were prominent). And fixing up/repairing and cleaning a playground for a kid's program center.
In short, we befriended many people in the community, the base and the city, and were extremely sad to leave JBay. And it is so true that when you come to Africa, you leave a part of your heart here. But our attention is now turned to Muizenberg, where we have had a rough start to say the least (i will elaborate further in my next post.) However, out of that came something beautiful, and we are incredibly pumped about getting to start ministry early tomorrow!
Please continue to pray! Myself and our team desperately desire your prayers!
Blessings and Love!
until ALL have heard!
-Nate
