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Hey everyone! The last couple of weeks have been so busy. We have done so much. This week was our last week at our service sites. This week I had the opportunity to go to the local primary school with three other team members. We spoke to about 1000 students about substance abuse and HIV/AIDS. It was so good. We also brought 3 young adults that we were working with at Walk in the Light to talk to the students. One of them shared their story about drugs abuse. Chad talked about HIV/AIDS. There was a really cool moment where Chad was telling the kids if people would only have one partner AIDS would eventually go away. Alfred, one of the guys who came, stopped in the middle of translating and asked Chad if it was true. Such a cool moment.

I knew when we went there the kids would be super excited. They were. I was blown away. It took us fifteen minutes to get out of the school. I have never given so many high fives, hand shakes, and make eye contact with so many people. Beforehand I prepared myself for it. As strange as it was to be treated like a celebrity because I am white and I am an American, I realized that it is a big deal for white Americans to come to the school. I embraced it and tried to say hello, make eye contact, and shake as many hands as humanly possible. It was so cool.

A lot happened this week. Bruce liked the paintings Jessica was doing so much he kept having her do more and more. A significant portion of the building now has murals. One of my friends was extremely scared of cats. All semester we have been trying to get her to touch a cat. She finally touched a cat this week. We were not able to finish the mud kitchen ourselves, but it is very close and some of the people who work at Walk in the Light will finish it for us.

This week completely changed the way I view Walk in the Light. I am extremely thankful for Walk in the Light, Bruce, Phendile, & Neils. I have learned so much in such a short time. It was a great experience.

I made a video, hope you like it :)

Last Weekend we had the long awaited safari. It was absolutely incredible. I saw so many amimals extremely close.

I saw elephants, wart hogs, cape buffalo, white rhinos, monkeys, impalaz, nyalas, giraffes, zebras, spiders, incredible birds, mosquitoes, crocodiles, hippos, lions (well through binoculars), and more!

It was definitely an African Safari. We stayed in permanent tents within the park. One night an elephant actually came into our camp while we were sleeping. We were able to get extremely close to breeding herds of elephants.

The whole time I was in the park I could not stop relating things to Disney movies. I have never had this problem before, but now I do. I was extremely disappointed when I found out there were only Pumbas in the park and no Timons.

Unfortunately I had a crazy allergic reaction to something on the safari, I got a rash and my eyes itched and were extremely painful. I took out my contact hoping to get some relief, it did not work, the pain got even worse. Luckily my body is recovering. The rash is going away and my eyes are doing better.

Well enough talking, I will just show you the pictures!

I filmed this video!

I cannot believe 2 months ago TODAY I began this crazy adventure! South Africa has truly been such an incredible experience. I experienced a brief honeymoon stage followed by a long homesick stage. Now I am out of the homesick stage, but I still really do miss home. I am doing everything in my power to take advantage of every opportunity handed to me here in South Africa.

This week has been a huge learning and growing experience. I enjoyed my second week at my ministry site. We were a lot busier than last week and the weather was cooler. We got a lot done. I was frustrated because I felt underutilized again. I hate feeling like what I am doing does not matter. It bothers me when I spend the morning sitting down because there is nothing I can do. If I could take one lesson from that experience it would be to never let volunteers feel underutilized. If volunteers ask for more to do, give them more to do because they truly want to do more. If people feel underutilized it causes people to be devalued and they may not want to do ministry with that organization again.

On a better note, it has recently come to my attention how much I am learning here. Our campus pastor and his family from APU is here right now. It has been really good to get to know him and his family. It has helped me to see other people learning the same things we have been learning the past two months. I cannot believe how fast I have begun to forget the problems and issues here, it has been good to remember the needs of South Africa.

One of the things I am able to do in my service site is do home visits for people who are sick. I really enjoy my home visits and being able to hear people’s stories. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is such a huge problem with no end in sight. It is hard to see so many people suffer. I am learning to love people in a whole new way. I am learning to look past what kind of house people have and see people as children of God. This is a constant learning experience and I definitely do not have it mastered. I am just learning.

On Friday it was the National Day of Prayer for South Africa, it was incredible to have the opportunity to pray for this country. I have learned so much from these people; I am so thankful for this incredible experience

As much as I love life here in South Africa, I am counting down the days until I land at LAX.

Last week I found out that I am going to be an RA at school this fall! I am so excited! For all of you APU people I will be in The Village West! I am so excited for the incredible opportunity.

Here are some pics!!! :)

I am working at Walk in the Light for my community service. Walk in the Light works to serve the people in one of the local townships. In South Africa there are these townships, townships are for the most part impoverished areas were mostly Black people live because they were forced out of the cities during the Apartheid. Although the Apartheid has ended there are still many problems that need to be dealt with, one of them is poverty. Walk in the Light completely self-sustaining organization. They have about 200 acres of land and grow rose bushes. They remove the scent from the roses sell the cent so the scent can be placed in different things like air fresheners (I am not sure if Walk in the Light’s roses are actually used for air fresheners, but it is a good example).

They have done great things for the area. Everyday they take people who have HIV/AIDS to the local clinic to get medical care and do home visits to different people in the community. They also hold a church service on Sunday morning because there is no church in the township other than a Mosque. Each day some of us get to go into the township and meet some of the people. It was extremely moving to see the people in the township. We had a tour of the clinic, which is in no way up to American standards. There are so many people who suffer from HIV/AIDS here; from what I have been told it is the worst on the whole continent of Africa. My group had the opportunity to go into a couple homes and prayed for people who are infected with HIV.

There are 16 of us serving at Walk in the Light, so we get tasks done fast. This week our main responsibility was to paint pictures in the room they have church because the walls had nothing on them, they were just beige. Our token art major Jessica led the project and had all of us put base coats down while she added detail to the paintings. We were kind of frustrated because there was not enough work for us to do, but the workload will pick up next week. One major thing we learned is that we can serve by just being available, even if we don’t have something to do all of the time. Next week we are building a kitchen for a lady. It is cool to get out of our Luxury South African Vacation Retreat and do something to serve the people of South Africa.

On Sunday we went on a zip-line canopy tour. We soared on a series of about ten zip-lines through the second largest forest in South Africa. It was so much fun. It got a little tricky when the instructors told us to watch out for obstacles. My friend Kim missed this important pointer and ran into a tree. I had only done a zip line one other time in my life at camp. This was so much fun, I was not nervous at all.

At the end of the tour we had tea! This teatime had to be my favorite. We sat on a porch overlooking the forest and had grilled cheese sandwiches!!!!! This was extremely exciting. We spend a lot of time dreaming about food we miss and grilled cheese is something we dream about.