[This is the blog from September 21…] How’sit? (that’s South African for ‘how are you?’-- :D) This is the first time I’ve had internet in a week so I thought I would take this time to update all of you and let you know what’s going on and tell you just how much I miss all of you! :D This week has been pretty busy…but it’s been good. My team of 9 is still in Cape Town, SA doing outreach. We’re working with a church called Spirit of Grace Church in a suburb called Parkwood. It’s a little bit of a rougher neighborhood, especially at night but we’ve stayed safe and I’ve felt pretty secure the whole week, which is always good. ;D The area of Parkwood is 1.2 square miles and approximately 80,000 people live there. Needless to say, it’s packed with people. One of the men from the church told us that usually about 20 people live together in a one room apartment and about 30 are in a two room flat. I can’t even wrap my brain around that!! This area is pretty heavily burdened—we can actually feel a heaviness when we’re in the region. There is an excessive amount of drug and alcohol abuse in Parkwood especially with the young people—a lot of them drop out of school too. It’s sad, but it’s good to be here and to have my eyes opened even more to the things of the world.

We’re staying at the Pastor’s house in a small apartment he built in his garage. It’s definitely an interesting experience learning to live in such a small area with 8 other people—6 of them being boys… :S ha! We have one bathroom which sometimes gets interesting, especially with the shower situation. I guess I’m just thankful that everyone is actually showering!! Lol! We buy our own groceries and cook our own meals—we’ve had some pretty good dinners so far. Most days for lunch we pack cold meat sandwiches that we eat at the church. Tonight we actually got to have a brie (a SA barbeque) with the pastor’s family and a few friends. We had borewors (sausages), chicken and lamb chops—very good!

This week has consisted of a few different things—the church had their 10 year anniversary this weekend so they had a crusade which was basically a big celebration consisting of 3 different services on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We helped some this week with setting up for that—decorating the church, handing out fliers, etc. We did some street evangelism a couple of afternoons—just walking around Parkwood, talking to people. I had a couple of good conversations with people, got to pray for a couple of people, and played with lots of kids. It’s amazing how open and friendly the people are here—EVERYONE says hi to each other and they’re willing to invite you into their home even though they’ve only just met you 3 minutes ago…nothing like the States. :D There are a lot of Muslims around the Parkwood area so there have been a couple of good conversations there as well.
Wednesday and Thursday evenings, a local church was also having some type of crusade so we went to support them in that—I actually gave a testimony on Thursday about what God has been doing in my life throughout DTS, especially with trust and learning to turn everything over to Him. It was good to get up and speak—not really my favorite thing to do, but I’ll probably be doing that a lot during the next few months. ha.

The weather here has been warming up—spring has sprung! :D We got to take a little break on Saturday and make a trip to the beach. It was perfect!!-exactly what I needed. I can’t wait to show you pictures—I’ll try to get some up on Facebook next week. Hopefully it continues to warm up…by the time I get to Malaysia I’ll be complaining and sweating my pants off, but for right now… ;D.
God is continuing to show me things and reveal Himself to me which is amazing…I want that desire for Him always. I never want to stop seeking Him or wanting to know more—that’s my constant prayer. I’ll try to write next week again as we have lectures for a couple of weeks and should have a more stable/constant internet. Please keep me in your prayers as you are in mine…I love you all…may God bless you abundantly!

Rach

A scripture from my quiet time yesterday…something to think about… :D James 1:22-25