A New Beginning

Tomorrow is another new beginning for me. I will start working at Coyote Hill Christian Children's Home as a Therapist and Case Manager. I am excited to love these kids. I'm excited to be a part of a ministry which instills in children their value in Christ. But I'm also nervous to start something new, change is not usually something I am good with. I'm scared I'll do something wrong or not be helpful at all. But I also believe that Christ has brought me to this place and He will see me through. I pray for the wisdom, love, and understanding to do my best. I pray that I can see each child or home parent as the precious child of God that they are, created in His image.

But my heart is also some where else. In SA. I've missed those kids a lot. Before I left SA I never really thought I would really miss the kids. I don't know why but the thought never occurred to me. I miss being able to hug them and hear their laughs. I miss being a part of something that was so life changing for these kids. In just a few weeks 27 of the kids will start attending a new school which will hopefully give them a better shot in this world. And all I can do is praise Him for what He used me for in SA and where He is taking me now. The kids at Coyote Hill need just as much love and attention as the kids in SA. Their emotional needs are very much similar no matter what country. So if you would like, you may join me in this new ministry at Coyote Hill by praying with me for the children, the job, and an increase in understanding, love, and wisdom.

Home

After 3 flights to get home, I am home. Lots of thoughts are running through my head that include looking for a job, getting my school loan situation sorted, writing my last newsletter, unpacking, processing what I have experienced that last 4 months, and fitting in to a different culture again. And all I really feel like doing is nothing.
My last 10 days I spent with a team that came over from the States from Westside Family Church and Church of the resurrection, both located in Kansas. Before meeting the team, I debated if this is how I wanted to spend my last 10 days. If I didn't go with the team I would be able to spend more time with the kids in Alex. But I am glad I went as I feel I got to make some great friends and as the team processed stuff it helped me to process as well. With the team we went to the Transkai, the most beautiful place I have ever been to. Oceans supports many soup clubs there so we celebrated Christmas with each soup club we visited. We played games with the kids, shared the story of Jesus' birth and why Christmas is important, and gave each soup club a soccer ball and netball. From hearing the importance of Jesus, many gave their lives to Christ. We also stopped by JJ, which was my last time to see the kids. It was hard. I am really going to miss those kids. At the end of the time the team was here, we went to a game reserve and went on a day and night safari. It was amazing to once again see the wildlife, including lions this time.
I would love to share my experiences and let people know what is going on in South Africa so if you or someone you know would like me to come share, let me know.
Thanks again for all your support!

Myself with the teachers and principal of the Christian school the JJ kids will be attending. Although these won't be the JJ kids' teachers, Americans are coming over to be their teachers

Myself with the board members and principal of Alexandria High School, which the kids currently attend

Transkai, full of beautiful rolling hills

At one of the soup clubs. 

This graveyard goes on for what seems like forever. It is the graveyard for one area of Port Elizabeth. Over half of the graveyard is children who have died from HIV/AIDS.

The king lion at a game reserve we visited called Scotia.

An update, but its all coming to a close

This past week was my last week in Alexandria. In my mind I thought I was going to just be able to spend tons of time hanging out with the kids, and while I was able to do some of that, I spent most of my time running around trying to get one thing or another done before I left. I got everything done, but it was more chaotic than I would have liked. In the end, it was still good. Im now going to be traveling with a team coming from the States with Oceans of Mercy until about Nov. 30 and then I leave Dec. 1. While the team is here we will be traveling around to the various places Oceans supports, including JJ. So I will be able to see the kids one last time before I actually leave SA. Leaving is mostly bittersweet. Im excited to see what God has for me when I get back but I am sad to leave the kids and the people I have grown closest with in the community. They all will always have a special place in my  heart. Enjoy the photos!

Dinner with the families I got closest with in Alexandria

Cape Town

At the Cape of Good Hope...almost the most southern part of South Africa

She braided my hair! It took 4 hours! But it is nice to have done as it is so much easier to take care of! She is very good with hair as you can tell!

Pia, JJ's social worker and myself

Reading Camp and ETV

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't been great at keeping up this blog but things are busy and going well!
Last week I and Oceans of Mercy's social work Sue-Ann took 6 of the kids to a reading camp in Jeffrey's Bay during their school break. Many of the children cannot read or are not up to their reading level so Oceans of Mercy has partnered with an organization called Global Challenge to put on this reading camp. The kids practiced reading, comprehension, spelling, and did mind strategy games. They also gained confidence in their reading and writing. They all made progress and we are hoping to do it again in December. I really enjoyed the kids and getting to spend this time with them in a smaller group. We also wanted it to be fun for them because after all they were on their break from school so we went to the beach a couple of times, took walks and one night went out for a nice dinner.
This week, a tv channel called ETV has been here doing interviews and taking video of what happens at JJ. They do segments called "Stories of Hope." The hope is that when people see the segments they will want to help support what happens at JJ. Please pray that God would move in the hearts of those who see the segments and want to be a support to Molly & Neels. If there is an online link to the segments I will be sure to post them on here so you can see them also.
Thank you for all your support and prayers. You are as much a part of this as anyone else!
Blessings!

What to be apart of what is going on in South Africa?

Hello everyone. I hope you are all doing well. I hear it is beginning to get cold there, but here it is beginning to warm up!
The past few weeks I  have been working a lot with the educational part of the children's lives. Many of them are behind where they are supposed to be and through testing that we did last week, we have determined that basic math and reading is difficult for them. We thought this would be the case before the testing but now we know more of what level they are on. The main reason for the testing was to then help them enter into a self-paced system of learning to help fill in the gaps of what they do not already know and reinforce the foundation level material to give them a base to continue to build. Right now they attend the public school but the local christian school uses a self paced system that is willing to work with Oceans of Mercy and the public school to try to help these kids get caught up before we lose them. No one involved has done this before so we are all learning and there is no map for us to follow. It is exciting to be moving in a direction that is all for the benefit of the children. With all that being said, we are looking for others who might be willing to come here for at least a year and help teach the kids. You dont have to be a teacher, just someone who loves to work with kids and willing helping to educate. If you or someone you know might be interested, let me know and I would love to help them get connected.
In addition to this, I have continued to work with some of the kids on their life story books and they are looking awesome! They seem to really be enjoying the process of creating them and I'm excited to see how they turn out! I also got to hear, for the first time, some of the older girls sing last week. They have beautiful voices and I hope to be able to post a video at some point. They really love to sing!

Some of the kids at Jehovah Jireh (JJ). Some with nice faces and some with crazy faces :)

View from a farm a visited

Alex and I. She runs a preschool which 4 of the JJ kids attend. I help her in the mornings. But, more than that she and her family have been one of the major supports to me here.

Molly and I. Molly is the one who started JJ because God told her to. She is amazing and loves every one of her kids!

Darrell & Jennifer Agee (and some JJ kids). They served in South Africa with Oceans of Mercy for about 2 years.

Two of the JJ teen girls with a nanny.

Time to eat lunch at JJ. There is another long table to the left of this one! And they are always packed full!

Taking my practice shot before going hunting one weekend. I didnt get anything but I tried!

Hope you enjoy!

Brief Update

Hello! I've been in Alexandria since Thursday and have met some great people from the local church here. Alexandria is a small town so I have spent most of my time with them. Adjusting to South Africa has been a bit difficult for me. Many things are different here and not knowing so much has created anxiety in me, but this has made me all the more desperate for God and to cling to His word. Every day gets a little better and hopefully by the end I will love it. Last friday morning and this morning I helped a lady from the church, Alex, with the preschool she runs. Most of the children are from the township area so they have never really had any structure or opportunity to be stimulated in a learning environment. She just started about 5 weeks ago and can already see great improvement in many of the children. Then in the afternoons I go to the orphanage, JJ. Here I have helped get update photos and letters or pictures from the children to be sent to their sponsors in the States, On friday I also helped a girl with her homework. She is 13 and in the 3rd grade. Her homework was to convert cm to mm or mm to cm. She had great difficulty doing it but we made it through. Then we went to work on other math homework she had not completed yet which consisted of subtraction problems. After trying to figure out how she was taught to do subtraction, I came to realize that she was not even able to do 2 minus 1. So, I made some practice sheets for her to do over the weekend and told her I would go over them when I come back. It is sad to see her struggle to do something that most kids in the States can do when they are toddlers. I think a lot of what I will be doing here is homework help. That seems to be one of the greatest needs.
Sorry this is a bit of random happenings, but jsut wanted to give you some idea of what I have been up to lately.



The HUGE dog at JJ

This picture does not really do justice to how big this dog really is. It is more like pony size in real life.

I hope to post more pictures later. Thanks soooo much for all the prayers!

A few pictures

I thought I would put up some more pictures. I've driven by the ocean almost every day. The Indian ocean is about a 5 minutes walk from the Agee's home.

I went to church today with the Agee's. It was pretty much like an American Baptist church. It was good and the sermon was from Nahum. Afterwards we walked along an area close to the beach where you can get some authentic Africa jewelry or home decor, used books, food, etc. I enjoyed that. Then we went to eat at a restaurant by the beach. It was good. A few things I have learned about eating out are:
-that it always takes much longer to get drinks, menu's, order food, etc. here than we are used to in states.
-you have to ask for the bill otherwise you may never get it as it is considered rude for them to just bring it.

One side of the beach from the restaurant

Indian Ocean

Bathroom stall in the mall I went to the other day. Only major difference is how the T.P. is pulled from the side rather than from top or bottom as we are used to. And then flushing is different also.

One of the strip malls close by

I will be leaving in the morning to visit Jehovah Jirah (JJ) Haven (the orphanage I will be at in Alexandria). From there I will go with Jennifer Agee and her daughter, Ali, to Port Elizabeth to visit another orphanage that Oceans of Mercy supports called Door of Hope. Tuesday is a national holiday here so we will go back to visit JJ in the morning and then have a pizza party with the kids at Door of Hope in the afternoon. On Wednesday or Thursday I will stay permanently in Alexandria. I'm not sure what kind of internet access I will have over the next few days and when I get to Alexandria so this will probably be my last post for a little while.

Update

The past few days have been a blur. Sleeping is still not going too well. I usually wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep for about 2 hours. I have seen 2 movie's, one in theaters and one at home. I have hung out with the South African social worker for Oceans, Sue Ann, and some of her friends for an evening. I've done some general running around to get a phone, outlet converter, and other things I didn't bring with me. I have also helped the Agee's sort some donated medicines and started gathering photos to be printed for the life story books for the kids.
So far, everything has gone pretty smooth and the Agee's have been a great help in helping me to get everything I need. Darrell gave me my first driving lesson today which went pretty well by God's grace. I also went to the mall today and it was basically like an American mall except that the stores are just different and you see more diversity in people. The things that I would say are the  most different for me here is the lack of independence and the feeling of being safe. Not feeling safe is a big one for me. I tend to be easily startled even in the States so it is on my mind more here to try and be calm and not let fear take over. I think the hardest part is coming though. Once I move to Alexandria, I will be living there for about 3 weeks on my own until a woman from Germany comes. When I have thought about living on my own I get pretty anxious. I have the option of staying at the orphanage if I really wanted, but I feel that this might be a good time for me to try and overcome these fears and depend on God even more. I don't want fear to be making decisions for me. Also, something that goes along with this and that I have been praying for is having greater discernment and wisdom to know when situations are truly dangerous and when situations are just different and nothing to be afraid of. Please pray for these things.

On another note, the weather here has been cool and rainy, about 65 degrees F. I wasn't expecting it to be this cool, but I am told that by the end of the month it will start to get increasingly warmer. I am looking forward to that!

I've learned some different ways of saying things around here. Here are a few:
bangs are called fringe
a bbq is called a braii
a normal 4-wheel drive truck is called a bukkie. A semi would be called a truck.
texting is called "smsing"

Please let me know if there is any way in particular I can be praying for you. Thanks sooo much for praying for me.

Can't Sleep

It is about 4 in the morning here and I can't sleep so I figured I would post a few pictures I had. I am 7 hours ahead of Missouri time.

For those of you who have not traveled long distances over seas, this is something I thought might be interesting to you. When you have long flights, you are fed well. I thought I was just going to get one meal on the 17.5 hour flight, but instead I got three. And, the meals are good and big. They always come with a main dish, side dish, a roll, something like crackers & cheese, and a dessert. Below is a picture of one of my meals. The main dish is tortellini with chicken and broccoli. I also had a breakfast meal with the main dish consisting of  eggs, sausage and potatoes and another dinner meal the main dish being chicken curry.

My 3rd meal on the long 17.5 hour flight from Washington D.C. to Johannesburg, SA

Also, this summer I was blessed to be a part of a Bible study with a group of women from Kearney, most of whom I had not known before. Throughout the summer they have been so supportive in praying for me and asking what I still needed before I left. I mentioned that I was going to get supplies to bring to make life story books with the kids, but if they wanted to donate supplies they are more than welcome. I figured whatever was needed once I got what they donated, I would just buy. Well, I did not end up needing to buy anything because they were so gracious in their donations.

As you can see, they gave a ton! And you might be wondering how I got this all there. I took 2 medium sized suit cases and filled each half full of the supplies to distribute the weight (United has a 50 lb. weight limit). I was not sure if I was going to be allowed 1 or 2 free bags so I also had another bag full of just supplies in case I got 2 free bags and then I would pay for the 3rd. I knew either way I would pay for at least one bag. It turned out that I only got 1 free bag and the 2nd was $50. The 3rd would have been about $200 so I left that one home and it will come with a group coming in a couple of months. Thanks for all the donations ladies!

This is just a glimpse into the generosity of everyone while I was support raising whether it has been financial donations or garage sale donations or supply donations. Everyone has been so supportive and I am so grateful.

 Tomorrow I will learn how to drive a stick. Please pray for that as I am super nervous mainly because I don't want to ruin their clutch. And on top of that, driving is opposite here so that will take some getting used to. The Mama at the orphanage is fully expecting to rely on me to help take the kids to school or to the hospital in emergencies so I really need to learn how to do this.

And finally, although this has nothing much to do with South Africa, I think it is kind of funny. My 19 year old younger brother just had to try this before I left:

my brother Scott trying to raise me above his head

At home, Scott always likes to pick me up and swing me around until I'm falling over from dizziness. This time though, he just had to try and lift me above his head, but as you can see was not too successful.

If you have any questions for me over the next months, please ask. I love hearing from you!

Made it

I made it to South Africa today. Everything went great and the flights were all on time. Nothing major happened. For the first week I am staying with the Agee's in East London, a family of 4 from Shawnee, KS who have been here about 2 years now. They will help me get adjusted and get everything I need and then on the 10th I will go to St. Alexandria and live in a house about 2 blocks from the orphanage.
I will try to keep posting as much as I can as the days go. Thanks again for all the prayers!

Today is the day!

In a few short hours I will be stepping on the plane to go to South Africa. It's hard to believe this day is real and sometimes I wonder what I am getting myself into but I am trying to remind myself that God is in control and He is with me. Lots of feelings and/or emotions...happy to be doing something that I know will make me a better person but sad to be leaving what I know as familiar and leaving friends and family. Anxious and scared to walk into a world of uknowns, but at peace knowing God's will will be done.
Pray for safe travels and the patience to sit on a plane for 17.5 hours (and that just one leg). Pray for those I will be meeting soon. Pray that I would adjust quickly and make the most of every moment. Pray that God would grant me a divine understanding of the culture, people, and spiritual activities.
THANK YOU ALL SOOOOO MUCH!!! I can't say it enough as without you I would not be here.
All glory and praise to Him.

Test Results

By the grace of God I passed my test! Thanks for all the prayers! They were definitely felt. Now, its on to packing and getting everything together to leave. I will be leaving on Tuesday, August 2nd in the early morning. 

Friday is Testing Day

Welp, tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. (what a crappy time) I will be taking the BIG test to try and become a licensed social worker in Missouri. I have been studying since about March, taken a 2-day prep course in St. Louis, bought a useless study guide and spent nearly $500 for this thing so the pressure is on. I am so nervous. I'm not a good test taker. Please pray for me.
And you may be wondering what this has to do with South Africa. Well, one way is that while I have been studying I have been thinking about how I will/can apply various therapy techniques while working there, signs that may indicate abuse, or what is considered the most ethical way to handle certain situations. I'm excited to see how God will use the knowledge I have to serve there. Secondly, the *hope* is that when I get back and am looking for a job (and if  you know of any open social work jobs, please let me know) that already having my license will make me more marketable. Not every social work job requires a license but I have already benefited greatly from just reviewing what I learned in 2 years and I think having a license shows the public that you are being held to a higher standard in some ways.
So, any prayers you would like to say for me between 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. are greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
And if I don't pass that just means I have to take it again when I get back. Not the end of the world.

And the total is...

The garage sale was great! God totally blessed me and I hope others. Day 2 of the garage sale was slower than day 1 but still good. One lady prayed with me :) Day 3 was even slower but still good. Towards the end, I started giving stuff away for free...the less I have to pack up, the better. Right? Yes. So one lady took a bunch of clothes shoes and purses/bags. And then another lady came and she first asked about taking the rest of the games & puzzles. I said please do. She said that she and her daughter have 3 foster children and it would be great for them. It was good to hear that the items would be used for kids who need them. But, she didn't stop there. She also took a toddler wood bed frame, a kitchen play set, books, 2 boxes of clothes, a chair and a infant bathing tub. She was in a mini-van and by the time she left it was packed full to the roof! And I am very thankful.

And now the part many are wondering about...the total for all the days comes to: $1019.18!!!!!
Praise God! And thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who helped set up, donated items, prayed, baked goods, stopped by, and helped take down everything.

I still have a few boxes of clothes, various home decor items, books (and more books) and a entertainment center with a few shelves and a place for a T.V. If you or anyone you know might like these items (for free), let me know. Otherwise, everything will go to Salvation Army or Goodwill.

Garage Sale Day 1

Well, today was the first day of the big sale...and it went well. Everyone seemed to like the low prices, which meant lots of stuff went today. Total funds raised was about $700! Glory and praise be to God! And thanks to everyone who came out and shopped!

Preparing

This week is the big garage sale. Many have been so generous to donate items for me to sale to raise support. I appreciate that sooo much! I still have a lot of work to do for it, but I know in the end it will all come together. I'm praying that God brings the people and blesses this sale. I'm praying that the people God wants to come will come and others will be blessed and encouraged by the sale. So, please pray with me.

Also, I will officially be leaving August 2nd! That is just 3 weeks away! I have a lot to do before then, including being the Maid of Honor in my sisters wedding in 2 weeks.