...seek first His Kingdom....

I love it here : )

I am not a city girl at all but I have loved my week at the Joseph Project here in Jo-burg so far. In the mornings we have been working on preparing presentations about human trafficking to take to schools in the area. And then in the afternoons during the afterschool program, I am working in the "seedlings" class and I love it : ) Those kids are just great and its only been a few days. I can't think about saying bye to them in a week. It's crazy the difference when you can actually talk to the kids you are working with....

Today I signed up to do the devo for our family here. God really put it on my heart to talk about something He has been teaching me lately. For the past few weeks He has been showing me what it means to have a "Kingdom view." He has been challenging me to look beyong the physical, earthly world and see His kingdom.

God has called us all to bring His Kingdom to this world. Heaven isn't a world to look forward to...its a world in the here and now.

His Kingdom is fillled with laughter, joy, peace, love, grace, unity, fellowship....so that is what we are called to be makers of on this earth.

My heart has been breaking while preparing presenations to warn kids about human trafficking. It breaks even more when I think about the fact that many of the kids here that will be trafficked will have better living conditions than before they were trafficked. How sick and wrong can this world get? This world needs His kingdom desperately.

We need peace....and we need love...

We need hope.

I've fallen in love....

So my heart has been captured....

.....by some adorable and incredible children in Zambia : ) Yes, I was pretty much about to fit them into my suitcase but one of my leaders told us that kidnapping is against the rules- darn. They were some of the sweetest kids I have ever met. One little boy, who lived near a youth camp we ran, was known as "Kelly's boy" because he basically followed me every where I went and even looked from me at 6 AM the morning after I left : (

The past month was an amazing experience! In one month we helped run an orphan school, worked at a youth camp, painted pictures on classroom walls, took meals to prisoners in jail, prayed for people in a clinic, spent a night in a village only able to be accessed by boat, and climbed the SECOND longest waterfall in the continent of Africa!! It was so awesome and the lake where we stayed was one of the most beautiful places Ive ever been in my entire life.

Yesterday we got to Jo-burg where we will be for the next two weeks. Today we went for a prayer walk around the city and walked specifically around the stadium where the World Cup games will be held. I love the ministry here. It is going to be a great two weeks : )

I love you guys and miss you. Keep praying for me...I am praying for you : )

LECTURE PHASE IS OVER!!

Hey everyone : ) Here is some of whats been going on in this past week. I just want to let you all know that this is going to be my last blog for a while. Our team leaves on Tuesday for Zambia! Please keep us in your prayers for the next two months. I know God is going to do great things! I love you guys and have a great next two months!

April 8, 2010

It’s been a week of putting things into action…the beginning of taking the steps. This is our last week of lecture and after four days of class, our teacher, Fiona, still hasn’t opened up her class materials. Fiona told us at the beginning of the week that the material was us. She spent a lot of time looking over all the notes we’ve taken since we got her and she concluded that we have a lot of head knowledge. But we need to take it and put it into our hearts. Our class lives in isolation. We live in isolation but we long for unity and intimacy. We keep talking about it, but Fiona was the first to give us the nudges that we needed. We went from our normal class time of sitting in awkward silence when a teacher asks a question to all speaking out and sharing our thoughts. One word that really struck me in the beginning of the week was [speak]. We all have thoughts and we need to share. Again, we need to share. And I learned that need to open my mouth and share my thoughts.

This morning our leader Brittany told us all to pray about how we should start the morning. We prayed but then when Brittany asked us what we heard from God, we all sat and stared silently and awkwardly, saying that we heard nothing. Fiona then told us flat out that she didn’t believe us. She told us to pray again and that afterwards we were going to share. And next thing you know, we all were talking and sharing J And after that, we then had an over two hour time of worship, free communication with God- if that even explains it. God showed up and it rocked. And I don’t expect it to be the last time.

This week was also our last time to go to the communities L So yesterday I had to go to my home in Mbonisweni for the last time. But it was an incredible afternoon. I spent the afternoon with a small group of amazing young girls- one who I pretty much fell in love with. Her name was Sandra and she was just a beautiful girl J A few of us also did a song, skit, and then colored in small groups with the kids. It was great to feel even more involved and to have even more of a personal connection. So it was hard to have to say goodbye….but it means Zambia is coming!

April 9, 2010

So my lecture phase is officially over. But it ended in an awesome way J Last night we just had a time or processing and just responding to God. We had different symbols and a wooden cross in the middle of the room. We all individually prayed and asked God how He wanted us to respond to what he taught us this week. I think we all were definitely moved and convicted J Today we spent time leading our own worship time and then we had creative expression, making collages of what we look like. It was pretty sweet J Its been an awesome week but now we are all pretty restless for outreach!!!

March 27, 2010

This week has changed incredibly since the beginning of the week. To be honest- it started with a lot of frustrations and irritation. We had a lot of tension and disunity within our group. But God is ironic- it was “relationship” week. For the first two days we watched a video series on relationships. It was good but nothing like the last three days when we had a speaker from the Texas team now on base. Our speaker was the man who is pastoral overseer of Ten Thousand Homes. He talked a lot about how incredibly important relationship and unity is to God. Yes…I have heard that many times before but it really changed my entire view. We know that love is how we show Christ but that means that our relationships with people and our unity within the Church show our relationship with Christ. We learned about being transparent to others, confronting others, and what forgiveness really means. And the amazing thing was that as we learned this week, I could see it all being put into practice J We went to Dwaleni this week for the last time L It was sad because we didn’t realize it was the last time until we had left so I didn’t really get to say goodbye to my friends. I made a great friend named Nolwazi who I spent time with each week and even wrote me notes every time that I came. Its getting sad to start having to say goodbye to people. Today we went to Iris for possibly the last time. It was a tough day. My little group of three dug about 20 holes for fence posts and then worked on the wire going on the fences. It was super hot and tiring but even with all that, I still had energy to play with the kids before we left J

April 1, 2010

I feel at home. This Sunday I went to Pastor Stambiso’s Church in Mbonisweni- where I lived for a week. Going back felt like going home. I love it there and I love the feeling of belonging. It’s a great feeling to know that your home can consist of more than one place- even on different continents. We have had an interesting week because our teaching was actually cancelled for the week. After all of the teaching on relationships, we as students and the staff were convicted of a lot and there were many things brought to our mind that we needed to confront. Our speaker for the week is staff here and he decided teaching us would mean he wouldn’t be giving his all because of that, so we have had a lot of down time- which has been very needed actually. Yesterday we had a “family meeting” where the staff and students just sat and talked about things that needed to get out in the open and be dealt with concerning our relationships with each other. So we sat in a giant circle and just talked for a couple hours. It felt really like a family meeting.

We have also had some closure this week. Monday night we had a bonfire to close off our Identity week from a long time ago that never worked out before. We each stood in front of everyone, threw our old masks in the fire, declared our new names and what God showed us in that week, and received a plaque with our names and a verse on it. I wish I could explain how amazed and proud I felt watching my family declare their new names and seeing even after a few weeks how they have really started to become them. I am proud of my family and so excited of what God is going to do in our outreach. We were able to share the bonfire and many other experiences with a team here from Texas. We are pretty much in love with their group J They made us a full out Texas breakfast this morning and have shared their pictures and experiences with us. It’s just so amazing how close you can feel to people after only two weeks. They also shared in our “giving night” last night. We had a night where we put up on a white board how much people still needed to pay for their outreach dues. Then we simply worshipped while praying and handing in pieces of paper with amounts we wanted to give and to whom. Over $3,500 was given! It was a humbling experience to see how much God can work when you take him out of the box we put Him in.

Many meals of pap, nights of leaky ceilings, and 500 giraffes later....

Meet my new sister and nephew : )

....and welcome to my house for the week.

Last week I spent six days and five nights with a family in the community of Mbonisweni. My family was made up of a father (I never really officially met him), a mother (Susan), their 21 year old daughter (Sandile), and her three year old son (Ryan). I was expecting an extremely challenging week of very tiring days, many confusing moments, and even many needed times of learning patience. While I did have some of that, more than any other feeling, I left with the overwhelming sense that I had a new sister who, although she was from an entirely different culture and way of living, was very much just like me…

It would be hard for me to write about everything that happened throughout the entire week so I am just going to just put up many pictures and list some of the random things that stuck out from my stay:

• My night of making 500 orange beaded giraffes from 7:00 PM until 2:00 the next afternoon at the Church consisting of: random sleeping on mattresses on the ground, having it rain so hard we were unable to hear each other and then having to move every table because streams of water were pouring through the roof, and doing all this while watching one of the guys pretty much propose to Kacy

After staying at the Church all night....not tired at all of course

...now imagine 500 of these

• Learning to become an African women:

o Fetching water and pushing the wheelbarrow back as my skirt falls off, making dinners of pap, pap, and more pap, eating chicken feet from a stand on the side of the road, watching “Generations”- the South African soap opera that the entire country stops to watch, walking 30 minutes each way to get potatoes from the stand off the road, learning to dance as an African by watching the same music videos over and over and over again, and learning to bathe African style with simply a tub of hot water…

My kitchen- notice our "stove" and lack of many things found in our kitchens

Our sink- similar to the tubs used for bathing

Our typical meal of chicken, beans, pap, and cabbage

Our walk to fetch water- the green tub off in the distance is where the water is

My bathroom- where many times I would be going to the bathroom while hearing and seeing through the door children right outside

• Playing with all the neighbors in the yard until it simply gets too dark to see anything and then everyone taking a quick break to eat dinner before they all came back to watch “Generations” in Sandile’s bedroom

The view from our backyard : )

• Being confused alot like...going to what we thought was a Church service Saturday morning only to be there for two hours and they say we are stopping for a break before we come back for the second session…..what?? Oh wait this is normal in Africa….

• Sitting in our room for hours because we simply had no idea what was going on and what we were supposed to be doing…

• Laying in bed at night with Marcella and Sandile while eating yogurt, playing new games, watching soaps, and talking about life J

I went into my community stay with a stereotype in my mind about “African life.” And I realized at the end of the week that yes, we live differently and don’t do things the same but àlife is lifeß. My new sister Sandile had the same fears, desires, and dreams in a big picture way that I do. She was an only child who was lonely a lot of times and who wanted a friend, or as she got this past week, two sisters to listen to her and share with her. The week was nothing like I expected but God made it even better than my own expectations.

My new sisters : )

*This morning we are leaving for our community stays- we will be staying in pairs in a child-headed household from now (Tuesday) until Sunday. If you could just keep us in your prayers for the week : )

March 11, 2010

Yesterday was the first day of the feeding program at Mboisweni! We fed about 80 children and it was a really awesome and fun day J We waited for about an hour and a half for any kids to even show up-with our entire base at the Church. But when they started to come we swarmed them and showed them some fun! We had face paint, water balloons, and a sweet mural that we had the kids put their hand prints on. There might have been just as many of us with paint on our faces as kids and there might have been more water thrown between us than the kids but hey we had fun J Today we went to Dwaleni like usual. And…we had enough food for most of the kids to have seconds!! The past couple of weeks we have run out of food and it is heartbreaking to watch those children walk away hungry. So we were praying hard that there would be enough food this week and there was! Yay J

March 14, 2010

This week….I don’t really even know how to explain it. It was emotional, challenging, and basically rocked everything my life has been built on. It was identity week. After the masks, we also made outlines of our bodies and wrote on the outside all the lies and names that have been said to us that dictate who we have become. Then on the inside we wrote things that our family here told us- things that they see in us that we might not see. We hung our bodies up on the wall in our classroom- seen by our entire family here. In the middle of our bodies we drew a heart. And all week our heart was left empty. Thursday morning- supposed to be our last morning- we talked about how God loves and delights to give new names to his children. So we were told to go outside and ask God what name He wanted to give us. We were to ask Him what He looks at us and sees.

Then…the hot seat came. After hearing our new names we all came inside to our chairs in a circle with a pile of pillows in the middle. We were told that one by one we were to kneel in the circle, “reach out our hands,” and share our new name. There is a story of a man in need of healing who comes to Jesus and asks to be healed. But while he asks, he extends his hand to show his need and vulnerability. So we had to go one-by-one and reach out our hands. We were exposed and stripped from all the masks that we hide behind. And we sat vulnerable in the middle of the circle as we poured out our hearts and then listened to God through our family in the room. Soon our supposed to be one morning of the hot seat become three long mornings of tears and joy.

And it was really scary.

But it was really good.

We were made for glory and honor but it was stolen in that garden a long time ago. And ever since we have been looking for glory in other places. But there is freedom. And we have experienced that freedom this week.

We learned we can take off the masks and allow God to give us the true glory and acceptance that we deserve.

Living in Disneyland

I am tired.

I am so emotionally tired right now that my body just wants to collapse. This week has been tough so far. Our topic is “identity”- not easy stuff. We have been talking a lot about the masks we put on and the ways we are just living up to the identities that other people have given us. We have seen a vulnerability to us all that we haven’t seen yet. We all made masks and decorated them however we wanted- no directions at all. Yet even though we all said we didn’t think much about how we painted our masks and didn’t paint them to represent us, it was amazing to see how they all really showed the masks that we put on for others. We all were made to sit in the “hot seat” at the front of the room while our speaker asked us question after question about why we painted each thing and how it represents us…very convicting and hard. Today we sat outside in a circle- not having class- because our speaker refused to go any further with us unless we would open up ourselves and share why we are so afraid to speak out in our group. We are a group filled with fears and with walls built very high around us. So after sitting in awkward silence for a long time- we opened up. And it was good J Things aren’t automatically perfect but they are better and they are on the journey even more now to a stronger family. But the questions of who we all are are still here.

So usually I don’t put just one day up at a time but I just felt like asking you all-

Who are you?

What is your true identity- after the mask is taken off and the walls are broken down?

Our speaker has given us the metaphor of Disneyland- we have all the great, exciting, fun, and almost perfect appearance on the outside but on the inside of it all is the cheap, plastic, and hollow truth. What is your Disneyland?

I am struggling right now with these questions…we all have been told lies and “It doesn’t matter if a lie is true- what matters is if we believe it or not.” What lie are you believing right now and building your identity around?