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!