Greetings from Africa!

Hello from Africa!!!

The Gospel Girls at the beach in Jeffrey’s Bay

You guys, South Africa is absolutely incredible. Once again I am met by a country that is completely different than what I expected. We are staying in Jeffrey’s Bay with Global Leadership Academy, which is an organization that has a lot of ties to the early days of the World Race and AIM. (How cool is that?!) Our ministry work includes helping build a log home for future missionaries to stay in when they are hosted by GLA, working as teacher assistants at the Ithumba school across town, assisting in after school tutoring at Ithumba, and being extra hands for a ministry called Beats and Books that teaches kids music skills and instills Christian values.

The Gospel Girls are teamed up with another JSquad team this month, 1010 Fierce! We live upstairs in a house on the GLA school campus that is a school for younger children from 7:30am-3pm. We have to be out of the house at a certain time during the week since classes start early, but we are able to walk over to the older GLA school’s cafeteria to sit for quiet time with the Lord before we start work around 9am. I am part of the team that goes to the Ithumba school across town in the morning and afternoon. When I arrive, I go upstairs to a classroom of 4-5 year olds taught by Mrs. Bernadette. Although the kids in the class don’t know much English, I get to serve Bernadette by helping organize her class, reading to the kids, taking the kids to the bathroom, and playing with them at recess.

The school buildings we are living in this month

These kids are some of the most beautiful kids I’ve ever seen. Even though most of them have holes in their clothes and signs of malnourishment, the school’s mission is to take care of these kids in any way that they can. The principal and founder of the school, Ria Pieters, shared her vision for the school during our first day of orientation. The vision is to give every child a dream so that they can rise above the environment they are being raised in. The community in which these kids are living in are known as highly dangerous areas. In the week we have been here we have been told many times over about how unsafe it is to walk in the area, especially being people who are clearly not from the community. The principal shared about her personal experience of her sister dying in a carjacking and how that affected her. The event caused her to want to leave South Africa because of how tired she was of the crime, however a friend challenged her to stay and change the circumstances instead. So, inspired by her friend she started the Ithumba school for children in the area. She decided that instead of leaving her home in South Africa the way it is that she would stay and build up a better generation to rise above their circumstances. If every child can catch a dream, and be raised to have good character, then hopefully the crime statistics of South Africa can be changed for future generations to come.

A classroom from Ithumba

It has been such a blessing working at Ithumba. The kids we encounter are sweet, beautiful children, and the teachers are all people who want to fight to make a difference in their community. Any conversation that I have had with the teachers always ends up on the topic of how they want to better their community. They are proud of their heritage and culture, and because of that they want to fight for it to be better. These teachers and children are inspiring to get to meet. To see these kids work hard for their education or to just receive love and attention they don’t get at home is amazing. At time it is tempting to think about how the child playing with your hair just sneezed a snot rocket into their hand, or that the child holding your hand didn’t wash their hand after using the bathroom, but when the smile on their face goes from ear to ear there is no way to hold back anything from them. These are children that God is calling to Himself. These are the kids that the kingdom of heaven belongs to (Matt. 19:14). It’s heartbreaking to know these kids go home to very little, if they even have a home to go to, but they have a heavenly Father that desires to bring them into His home and family. It’s challenging to not be able to take each kid out of their circumstances, but this week God has been revealing His unending love for each one of these kids. Where many forget them, God has provided a school with teachers and staff that pour out God’s love every day for them. It’s absolutely beautiful.

Some of the teachers and kids from Ithumba