More pictures!!

Pictures from Afric

So, last week was full of Spiritual teachings, this week was full of EVERYTHING!!! I have been very, very busy this week. We are in the process of learning our second show and we must learn it all in two weeks! Wow, it’s been hectic! It’s fun though. The show we’re working on now is Homecoming, and I really like it. I think it’s going to be very moving.

Hmm….what can I tell you about South Africa??? …

Something that is very odd here is how diverse everything is. Today, I was thinking about how the area I’m living in is set up. If we drive about 10 minutes one direction, we will be in Pretoria, one of the nicest areas I’ve ever seen…these houses are amazingly beautiful. The landscaping is all nicely done, and everything is just gorgeous. If you take just a slight turn about 5 minutes from us is Mamelodi, the poorest area I’ve ever seen in real life. The politically correct term for this would be an “informal settlement.” It is very sad to drive by there because these people live in little, one room houses made with 4 big pieces of plastic serving as walls, and another on the top as the roof…normally the roof has several rocks on it to keep the “house” from blowing away. There is no electricity, no toilets, and people live so close to one another…this is a huge area like this. If you travel another direction 5 minutes…you’re in the “bush”…you are out in the wilderness of South Africa.

Tomorrow, we have our first “Day of Service” all day long. I am VERY excited! We will be going to a Church in a very poor area…not as poor as Mamelodi, they have real houses, as small and run down as they are. The Church we are working at is not a real building though; they have a big tent that serves as their Church building. We, along with some of the Church members will be disassembling the tent, washing it down inside and out, and reassembling it to make it stronger. The Black African culture is very inclusive and they really don’t care about getting things done in a time limit, so we have been told that as we do all this work we will also be socializing with many people in the neighborhood and will probably get some cool sharing opportunities.

Please be praying for us tomorrow, that we will be able to not only be able to minister to these people by serving their Church building, but also by serving their heart.

Thank you all for your prayers for the visas, all nine that went Tuesday got their visas with out any trouble. Please continue to pray though because we have another group going sometime (next week maybe…I don’t remember) to get theirs.

I love you all!!!

Hello everyone! I'm sorry, but this blog is going to have to be short, I don't have much time. This week has been an amazing week for me! I have learned so much and grown so much. We had a lot of Spiritual input this week (teachings that don't involve dance, music, or acting) and it has been really good...draining...but good.

I have a quick prayer request for all of you. Last week one of the board members for 13th Floor went to go get his visa to come to the states. He got his, but his wife and kids did not. The wife and kids tried again and still did not get it. This family now cannot go to the States. This worries us because apparently they deny visas for no reason often. We have 17 team members who still need to get their visas to go to the states, that's about half our team!!! It costs about the equivalent to 300 American dollars to even just try to get a visa so if they got denied once, they could not afford to try again. Without these team members we would not be able to tour. Six of the South Africans are going Tuesday for their interviews, please just pray that we will get the visas easily.

Thank you all for all of your prayers and comments!

Again, I’m sorry everyone for the delay in blogging. Remember what I said about the inconsistent internet? We just spent 2 weeks without any internet! Luckily, we went to an internet café last weekend to check our e-mail, I was glad to go and at least read some e-mails from everyone. Unfortunately, the internet here does not work like it does in America so it costs money to get online, I typed up my whole blog and right as I started to post, I ran out of internet! Very discouraging, but I got a new idea, now I’m typing my blogs on Word when I don’t have internet so that when I do have internet I can just copy and paste—good thinking Kelsey!

So anyway, just to fill you in on the past couple weeks…I have been VERY busy. We are constantly in rehearsals and teachings and what, what, what (that’s a South African phrase I have picked up). We have almost finished learning and rehearsing our first production, Kate & Terri. We Skyn (do our dress rehearsal) on Wednesday and then we will start learning the next one. Kate &Terri is about two sisters, the message is about broken dreams and about how things that have happened in your past don’t have to ruin the rest of your life. It’s a very intense show.

Every morning we wake up and have a meeting with announcements etc. at 6:30 AM after that we have quite time, dance class, and then rehearsals and teachings all day, normally until about 11:00 or 11:30 PM. We get about 45 minutes for each delicious (sarcasm) meal and, if we are not a lead actor, we get most weekends off. Teachings are almost always very intense. You know when you go to a Bible Study or something where you just come to realize so many things that by the time you leave you are in tears. Whether it’s amazement at God, conviction, being humbled, or whatever, every single one of us feels so emotionally drained at some point in the day. It’s so good though, because we learn so much and God is constantly revealing himself to us is awesome ways.

One of my favorite things is every Monday we go out to where we can really see the sunset and we just sit and pray, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in pairs, and sometimes individually. It’s so cool…I absolutely love it (Amanda…you would absolutely love this part of the week).

Aside from the whole training thing, it has been really cool to be in their culture. I guess I thought that it would be more similar to our culture but it’s not. I have made a list (with the help of my American roommates) of some of the random culture differences:

Traffic lights are called “Robots.” Example: “Stop, the robot is red.”
Everyone always eats with a knife and fork, even if the food does not require cutting into pieces. They use the knife to push food onto their fork…believe it or not; this requires much coordination and takes a lot of practice! I’m learning!
Racism is still a really big issue here…REALLY big.
They drive of the other side of the road and they don’t drive automatics…only sticks…I would not be good at this.
Everyone uses military time…as I type this it is 17:47.
Band-Aids are called “plastics”
Gum is called “Chappy”
A lot of words that we would consider cuss words are not cuss words to them, but words like “Crap” are bad.
The drinking age is 18 but you have to be 21 to sign your own contracts.
People do not usually brew coffee in their homes, normally everyone makes instant coffee, but if you go out to coffee it’s always VERY nice. South Africans are even more addicted to coffee than Americans are!
Everything is so slow here…even at fast food restaurants you sit down to be waited on...there is very rarely a drive through.
Almost everyone speaks English when they are in public, but most people speak different languages at home. Afrikaans is by far the most common language, but there are 11 official languages in South Africa. On of our team members speaks 9 of them fluently. Everyone is very courteous when it comes to language though, if people know there is an American or someone who doesn’t speak their language around, they will almost always speak English even if they are talking to someone who does speak their language.
When they say “just now” they mean sometime today. Example: “Will you come talk to me just now?” (If you actually came then they would be really confused.
It is not uncommon to throw an Afrikaans word into an English sentence. We have learned quickly what most of these words means and have even gotten into the habit of saying them ourselves. Example: It’s a very lekker day today (Lekker doesn’t really have an English word with the same meaning…it can be put in place of good, nice, pretty, fun, exciting…it’s always a positive meaning).
There is no “no shirt, no shoes, no service” rules…people can walk around barefoot in the mall and go out to eat and even though it’s not a common thing it’s not completely weird. This is nice because none of us had enough room in our luggage to bring the amount of shoes we were hoping to bring, so when we don’t have shoes to match our outfits, we just don’t wear any.
There is a black culture, a white culture, and a colored culture…they are all different…DON’T get them confused…people will get angry.
Round-abouts are way more common than 4 way stops.
Black people (that’s not an offensive thing to say here) are at every stop light and they sell really random things (REALLY random) and they also carry trash bags you can throw your trash in. Normally these are homeless people and if you give them your trash you will also give them a few rands.
If you ask where the rest room is the people looks at you like you have 5 eyeballs…you have to ask where the toilets are.

There are a lot more, but that was already so many that you will probably not read through all of them.

By the way, extra information…We had a long weekend and I stayed with a host family…let me just tell you that I woke up to see 3 giraffes about 20 feet out side my window!!! I also saw about 6 zebra and a bunch of other animals…it was cool.

Well, I hope everyone is doing well, I love you all!