June 13-17 2016
Monday.
We have officially started the outreach phase of the DTS. The two teams our class mates were split in to are still here. Both tentatively leave next week. One for Germany and the other for Thailand. Today we visited the YWAM Worcester base to see if there was opportunity for us to serve our Outreach there. It was a beautiful 2 hour drive, one way, through the mountains. We met the director and some other staff who seemed like great people. The living accommodations were pretty rough including community bathrooms and kitchen which would be difficult with three children and a pregnant wife. The opportunity was sparse as well.
We were supposed to be out of our current accommodation by the first of July and have had great difficulty finding somewhere else. That was part of the reason for exploring the Worcester option. The other reason was finding a ministry we could plug in to consistently for the next 8 weeks as a family so we can complete Outreach with much less stress. As it turns out missionaries leave SA in droves during the winter to go home visit family and raise financial support. So a single ministry for us to fit in to was no longer a possibility. Regardless of our remaining in Cape Town or Worcester we will have to be “patch working” our Outreach with serving wherever we can.
As it turns out the house we were in became available till August 15. Which is enough time for us to finish the Outreach phase by then and are able stay in one place and not have to uproot the kids as well. We will be needing to find a place to move to by August where we can settle in and have the home birth by the end of Sept/first of Oct.
Tuesday.
My and Emily’s “One on One” leaders are Miriam and Arun who are the founders and directors of Scape. Scape is the safe house for women who have been rescued out of sex trafficking. We spent today working at the safe house helping to prepare for the grand opening of their second home. Emily did lots of cleaning and I got to fix stuff! I had a lot of fun doing stuff with my hands again. We finished off the day back at the YWAM base in Muizenberg practicing for a skit about human trafficking that Everleigh gets to be in too.
Wednesday.
From the beginning it’s been really difficult to connect with our leaders. We really enjoyed them but they have all seemed quite distracted and disconnected. We started with 4 leaders and have since lost the main leader as well as another. Aside from personal issues just losing half the leadership creates crazy stress and doubles the amount of work for the remaining leaders. It’s been difficult for the students as well. Since outreach began, technically over last weekend, it’s been hard to feel like part of the team.
The whole school is spending the first 2 weeks of Outreach serving locally. Well, we showed up at the Base this morning to meet up and travel together to some place an hour away to do ministry with the team. The rain was unforgiving and the cold just as cruel. We wrestle all three kids into the car on a cold wet morning full of attitudes and spirited wills, snacks and packed lunches for all “6” of us and battling active, opinionated, miniature people to sit and finish their breakfast just to arrive at base, early mind you, to find out the team left with out us…
We were released by the leadership of the Base to go home and work on organizing a pile of donated clothes that Scape gave us Tuesday to give away at a nearby Township called Masi. We used the opportunity to take a drive in to the city and visit a coffee shop called Flat Mountain Roasters and have a nice hand brewed cup of locally roasted coffee. Perfect weather and timing for such a nice warm cup of hand crafted energy! We finished the day off getting most of our groceries for the week and being at home.
Thursday.
It was only a 30 minute drive today and we didn’t have to meet up until 9am. That was nice. It’s a school holiday today. We are serving along side a new ministry called P.A.C.T.(People Against Child Trafficking) in an area called Gugulethu. Just in the last few weeks a couple children in the area have gone missing. PACT was invited to spend the day doing a prevention and education presentation for the local children in the neighborhood. It was a fun time but I think we lost the kids attention after the first 3 hrs 😐 The local adults had a particular love for the wireless microphones and it was a task to get the mics back to finish the prevention material. You could tell that the kids were miles away. It became more about the 15 adults that were there than it did actually about the children and equipping them with the tools to protect themselves from evil men. Oh well, G.K. Chesterton said best. “If something is worth doing it’s worth doing poorly”. Everything is a learning experience. We were able to get through a lot of good stuff before we started losing their attention. I pray that the Holy Spirit brings those pieces of wisdom to the children that need it most.
Tonight is Base worship at a local Church in a neighborhood called Capricorn. Afterwards we might go to a going away party for a couple girls who have been here for a couple months to intern with P.A.C.T. It might be kind of late and we have a busy day tomorrow too. Not sure if the kids can handle the late night, early morning, stuff.
Oh yeah, I think our children were quite the novelty to some of the kids in Gugulethu, Everleigh in particular. They followed her everywhere and petted her like an 8 week old puppy! She was less than flattered but we all survived and she only had one or two unwanted kisses on the mouth from the other girls.
Friday.
Planes, Trains, and automobiles. Train evangelism. Yep, that’s what we did today. Anyone who knows me could tell you I would not be happy about this. I definitely have a disdain for impersonal public evangelism. The train was packed and we even had a battery powered PA system. It ended up not being quite what it would have been in America. We started out with just some worship songs then a team member would share a brief testimony and then we’d do some more worship songs; I played the djembe. Much to my surprise people were attentive, not offended, and even the ones who didn’t seem to listen much to the testimonies still tapped their feet to the music. I don’t think it would go over as well back at home as it did here.
We went to an area in the middle of Cape Town called Company Gardens and walked around. We split up in to small groups and were told to walk around and find people to pray for. Our little team was myself, Emily, our three kids, a guy named Shamma from Kenya, and a girl from Florida named Shelby. Were found ourselves parked on a bench when an older gentlemen walked by us and Shelby looked at me and said “there ya go!” I replied “Nope, there you go!”. By the time Shelby and I were done pointing fingers the man had long passed us by buy that didn’t stop Shamma for making up for lost time or missing chances. Shamma chased him down. As it turns out the gentleman was an elder at a local church and has been praying about visiting America to see a friend. So, naturally, Shamma lets him know he’s sitting with 6 Americans around the corner and they would love to pray over him and his journey! It was me that was supposed to be praying for him after all I suppose.
There was a Muslim guy, an Atheist, a Christian from Kenya, and a Christian white guy on a park bench…not a joke, just literally a scenario of Shamma and I later on at the Company Gardens. It started out as just the two friends, the muslim and atheist, we were later joined by two more of their friends. They all worked for the same construction company that just received new ownership and all of them were worried about wether or not they were going to be able to keep their jobs. We talked about their work situation and lives for a while and discussed some intellectual thoughts on faith and apologetic topics of Christianity. In the end they were happy for us to pray with them and let God reveal Himself after acknowledging that intellectualism only goes so far and they were in need of a practical God not simply theoretical.
To sum up, the day was not nearly as painful as I had anticipated it being when the leaders were poppin’ confetti and flyin’ streamers while dancing up and down singing “train evangelism, train evangelism, we’re going witnessing on a train!”. It’s been a good and fruitful week but we don’t yet what we’re doing this coming week. 
above picture: River and Eisley making friends at the PACT trafficking prevention day.
