Every Life Is Precious

It has been a wonderful first week back in South Africa. I've been keeping busy with a number of different activities - spending time with the children that play at the base every day, talking to the street kids, cleaning, cooking - I even painted a cupboard! I've been getting to know the new staff members here, who are just absolutely wonderful people. Something that I love about being involved with YWAM is that I am constantly meeting people from different nations and cultures. I've spent a lot of time this last week with Rosany from Brazil, Fernando from Mozambique, and my new roommate Gloria from South Korea. YWAM JBAY has staff and students from all over the place - Nigeria, Australia, the U.S., Germany. Even though we're all from different places and have different backgrounds, we're all passionate about the same God.

The highlight of my week was Saturday morning, when I was among about 70 children and adults marching around town yelling "Every Life is Precious! I Am Precious!" The march marked the end of Child Protection Week, where a local Christian organization put together three different assemblies for elementary schools to raise awareness about child abuse. The assemblies featured speakers, testimonies, skits, puppet shows, songs, activities, and prayer. The organizers tried their best to make it very clear that children have the right to say NO to abuse - physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual - and that children have the right to speak up and tell someone if they're being abused. I believe that the week was very effective, and I was proud to be a part of it.

This week we had a couple of meetings with the Arts DTS staff. It really got me pumped for being a part of the staff, and for the DTS to start. The school leader's name is Marcus who is from Germany - and the other staff members are Augusto, from Mozambique, Veronica, Billy, and Winna, from South Africa. One of our meetings was held at Marcus' house. His wife, Lee-Marley, from South Africa, is an excellent cook and made us the most delicious supper. It was great to spend time with everyone and I'm really excited about working with these people.

I attended church today at the AOG(Assemblies of God), where my DTS outreach team led kids' programs and Sunday and evening services. It was awesome. During Pastor Robin's sermon he started calling people up to the front, and among them were me and my friends Ashley(U.S.) and Nina(Austria). He started talking about how in Jeffrey's Bay there were lots of churches, but most of them were segregated - they have "white churches", "coloured churches", and "black churches." He brought up people from the congregation to show that this isn't the way that it should be. There was a good mix of people in that church, and it meant so much to me that Pastor Robin pointed out that Jesus is our hope, and we all have the responsibility to bring that hope to others, no matter what our colour or culture. Afterwards, he sat down with us and chatted about how he'd like us to help him make brochures and videos and even help plant a church in a neighbouring community. He asked if I could take pictures for the brochure, which I was excited about, of course! He also would like to start a children's program during church that I would help organize.

Ministry is not hard to find here!

I'm in the process of uploading photos on facebook... hopefully they'll be up soon!!

Take care everyone - I'd love to hear from you, just leave me a comment or write me an email. Love you all! Thanks for reading. :)

Lindsay