Week 5 July 11-15
Monday.
This was supposed to be the first day of us running the coffee shop on Base but it didn’t work out. A bit frustrating but there’s not much we can do about it. I spent pretty much all day yesterday running diagnostic tests and trying to fix a friend’s macbook. He’s on staff and lives in one of the Granny cottages in the backyard. We were able to figure out that it was the hard drive and i’m suggesting a RAM upgrade too. The problem is finding affordable parts and repair. I don’t have any tools here to help him so we went to see a friend of his that works at a ministry called Beautiful Gates about a half hour drive from here.
Beautiful Gates was much bigger than I expected and super nice. I was impressed. Lunathi’s friend works in IT there and manages the computer room that the ministry has available for the people in the area. I’m really hoping Lunathi’s computer can get repaired.
We got back in to Muizenberg and we grabbed some lunch and took some fries to Norm and Allen, two homeless guys I’ve met while we’ve been here and visit now and then. We sat down with them for a little bit and chatted about wether or not it was going to rain and I gave them a brief history lesson on “The ship that won the war”, the LST. I have a tattoo of one on my left arm and Norman asked me what kind of ship it was.
We headed back to the house and spent time with the family and prepared for tomorrow’s happenings in Masi with Ithemba Woods, that’s “Shack Building Dave’s” organization, I just figured out that it had a name!
Tuesday.
The weather has been really nice the last few days. Looks like a cold front is coming mid week but we got one more nice day. Even though it was sunny and warmer today it was quite a bit windy so we couldn’t attach the last truss and roof to the 2 story shack. Instead, Vuyo and I made picture frames today. It was pretty fun. We started with going through the stacks of used wood finding appropriately sized pallet boards. We then stripped them down to the right width, ran them through the joiner, and planed them down the same thickness. That’s as far as we got before I had to leave. The first thing we did was finish up the frames that Vuyu started yesterday by running them through the underpinner machine. That was a cool experience, I’ve never used one of those before.
Dave was at another meeting the first half hour I was there. I was asking Vuyo if he has decided wether or not he wants to go through a DTS. He said he wasn’t sure so I asked him what would help him choose a yes or no because indecisiveness wouldn’t do him any favors. He told me he would apply if he could get a scholarship.
Just as soon as we finished our conversation about Vuyo and DTS Dave walked in with news! He told us that his friend that is leading the September DTS, whom Vuyo knows, was asking about him and wether or not Vuyo would like to have one of the three scholarships! God’s timing is impeccable! To top it off at 2pm today we had to go to the DTS and Admissions office to deliver their new table we finished up last week. Vuyo picked up an application. I know the enemy does not want Godly men raised up in Masiphumelele. So please keep him in your prayers as he begins to fill it out his application and wrestle with the enemy’s doubts and temptations that he will be throwing at Vuyo.
Wednesday.
Emily was back at Justice Dolls today and Vuyo, Dave, and I finished hanging the last rafter and attached the roof. Everleigh and River stay with me on Wednesdays while Eisley does her school work in the Justice Dolls workshop with Emily. Its fun to watch Everleigh and River run around and play while we work on the shacks. Today they practiced hammering nails, riding/racing their plastic motorcycles, and Dave gave them some large hand made African dollies(that were technically trash) that they ran around with and “nurtured”.
Thursday.
Back at Lavender Hill again today. There were over 200 kids this week. Also there were some other volunteers from a different organization today too. We split the kids up in to teams of roughly 20 and had a competitive time of field games such as sack racing, egg on a spoon, three legged race, etc. My team won again and Pastor Ivan is now suspicious of Emily and I more than ever, she was the judge again! HAHA, this time however I won out of pure luck. I had some of the older kids in my group that weren’t too cool to be competitive. They worked hard together as a team with hardly any input from me or the other leader in our group. Plus, this time Emily was just keeping a tally of the scores. I do believe we have a good case if we are subpoenaed. She’s 28 weeks pregnant now and looking it! I think Pastor Ivan feels bad for her so finds the responsible sit down jobs for her 🙂 We fed all 200 kids, which took a long time, helped clean up, then headed home. We ate a quick dinner and headed off to Base worship.
Friday.
Today we went back to Lavender Hill. It’s the last day off of the 3 week school break and Pastor Ivan has been feeding the kids everyday this week at 3pm. We went early and helped prepare the food and hung with the kids a little bit. I guess because Emily has been the judge the last couple weeks they are remembering her name and calling her by it. What’s funny about it is that it’s kids she doesn’t know and Emily is caught off guard when it happens. Interesting side note, culturally it’s disprectful for a boy to refer to an older male by their name including the surname. I get called uncle or teacher quite a bit because of it. 
