Hi friends and family!
I just finished my first week in Africa and God has already worked in incredible ways!
I thought I would start by first sharing what ministry looks like. Our full squad consists of 19 people, 3 of which is our leaders. We are split up into different teams and I am on a team with 5 other people. Each team goes to a different ministry location and my team is assigned to Beats & Books. Beats & Books mission is to create enabling environments where children thrive musically, intellectually, and spiritually. Our team goes to Beats & Books every day Monday through Friday to worship with the kids, help them with their English spelling tests, writing sentences, and simply just playing with them. This past week I went on Tuesday and Wednesday and immediately fell in love with the kids. They are the absolute sweetest and so loving.
Cornelius who is in charge of Beats & Books drove us around in his car and showed us the area. Seeing these shacks that families lived in was definitely eye opening. They used metals, woods, sheets, and anything that they could find to build a place to live for their families. The land they lived on was “free” which is weird to say but that’s why the families built their homes here so that they could save as much money as they can for clean water, clothes, food, and education for their kids. They didn’t have locks for their homes, had 1 bed for their whole family of 6 to share, had to use communal bathrooms which looked like porta potty’s, etc. When I looked on the other side you could see gated communities with massive houses, boats in their driveways, cars, and many more. If you do some research on apartheid you can learn more which is very interesting. After seeing all of this is made me realize how ungrateful we can be sometimes. Whether that be complaining because your power went out of a couple hours, you don’t like the meal you’re having for dinner, the clothes you’re wearing, or not having hot water in the shower. It really put it into perspective that even the little things I take for granted I should be thankful for. Such as having a meal everyday, somewhere to sleep, clothes to put on my body, clean water to drink, a shower I can take, etc. We all need to be more thankful for the things that we have in our life and not focus so hard on what we still want.
On Monday through Friday 2 people choose to be a “house mom” or “house dad” and stay at the house for 2 days to cook and clean for everyone. I signed up for Thursday and Friday and while signing up I didn’t know that I had to stay at the house so I was a little disappointed that I could not go to ministry. Staying at the house I definitely learned a lot and got to connect more with our house mom named Wendy! We made muffins, sandwiches for lunches, corn chowder, and a chicken curry dish. We also got to go to grocery store and go for a coffee run. It was nice learning some cooking things I did not know, for example we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the next day and Wendy said to put butter on the piece of bread that the jelly would go on so the jelly did not make the bread soggy! When my team came home from ministry on Thursday they said one of the little girls said “Where is Alexis” and then she wrote me a letter! I thought that was so cute and it made me miss the kids even more!
On Saturday/Sunday we are able to have what we call “adventure days” and/or rest days. As a group we can choose what activity we want to do that day. Don’t worry you didn’t donate money to watch me go bungee jumping or see animals, it comes out of my pocket. This Saturday I decided that I wanted to jump off the tallest bridge in the southern hemisphere! I went BUNGEE JUMPING OFF A 709 FOOT BRIDGE! It was definitely nerve wracking seeing the bridge and telling myself I am jumping off of that. Fun Fact this bridge separates the Eastern and Western Cape. We got to the bridge and had to zipline to get to the middle of the bridge. Once we got to the middle of the bridge they started to tie our ankles together and this is when it became very real. I was the last one in our group to jump and the anticipation was building very fast. They called me up to the edge and I had to hop to the edge and looking down was CRAZY. They did a countdown and said “5,4,3,2,1….BUNGEE” and once they said bungee I jumped. It was scary jumping off the bridge but once my feet left the bridge It was the most blissful experience. After I stopped bouncing the guy slowly came down so I was hanging upside down for a little while which was definitely interesting. I would definitely go again though, it was absolutely insane and I loved every second of it!
On Sunday I got to attend my first church service here In Jefferys Bay! We sang lots of worship songs and even a song in Zulu. It was so fun getting to mingle with a bunch of people and pray for people that I just met for the first time! Before the service we all took a team photo because we all got dressed up!
See you guys next week!
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