TINA

This Is Not America. TINA. Haha. Just a little joke some of the Americans have going. Thought I would share.
Whew. The past 3 days have been CRAZY! This update is probably going to be long. Fair warning :)
Sunday, I got to go to Capricorn Community Church which, obviously, meets in the community of Capricorn where I am working. It was a WONDERFUL body of believers and I really hope that I am allowed to go back. Living Hope Volunteers are supposed to go to King of Kings Baptist every Sunday which is a fantastic church, but I am hoping to be able to go to Capricorn simply because it's so different than the States and it is, like I said, in the community I work in. I'll be sure to let you know what happens with that. I wrote down what I was thinking during the service just so I could remember the experience well. Let me tell you what I saw in this church.:
1) The people LOVE to sing loud. There were maybe 35-40 people there and I could probably hear every voice. They LOVED singing. They truly meant it too. You could tell.
2) They love to talk to their God. Prayer, I have noticed, is such a huge part of faith here. In every service I have been to we prayed 9-10 times, maybe more. It didn't have to be the time in the bulletin set aside for prayer. And they didn't pray in between two songs that are in different keys to allow the guitarist to move his capo. I'm not bashing these things. I am just saying, prayer is different here. It happens sporadically and often. And I love that they pray for a long time. Sometimes, everyone in the congregation prays out loud. What a powerful thing! I loved when the pastor laid hands on the offering AFTER it had been passed. Two small baskets full of whatever people could give and he blessed it. It was different. And I loved it.
It blessed my heart when the Capricorn pastor brought two of the long-term American volunteers up and asked for people to pray over them. Two men immediately shot up from their seats and you could see it in their faces, they could not wait to intercede on behalf of those two women. It was incredible and I truly felt the Spirit in that place. South Africans LOVE to pray.

After church, Kendra (my roommate here, former Belmont grad, fantastic singer/musician, and a Glee fanatic...yea we aren't much alike at all are we?), a sweet local named Lauren, and myself went to eat at a restaurant called Dixie's. Delicious food, wonderful conversation, and friendships formed. It was a FANTASTIC lunch to say the least. As soon as I got back to the house, I hopped right into another car to head downtown for two reasons. Reason numero uno? Starbucks. There is only ONE starbucks in the whole Cape Town area so some of the volunteers who have been here for quite a while and are also avid coffee drinkers were ecstatic when this starbucks opened up. So we went.
Reason numero dos for going downtown?...Hillsong Church. :) Yep. You read that right. There is a Hillsong plant here in Cape Town that one of the volunteers, Ronnie, goes to every week. So some of us decided to tag along. Joel Houston (songwriter and worship leader for Hillsong Sydney) is here for the week leading worship at a conference and we thought he would be leading, but he isn't until next Sunday. Oh well. I am going to keep my opinions and thoughts on Hillsong Church to myself and simply say that it was an experience. I am glad that I went, but probably will not again.

MONDAY! The first day of Holiday Club and my first day on sight with the children of Capricorn! What a wonderful week it has been. The children are precious and I just want to take them all home with me! Some were really shy at first, but it has been so great to watch them open up and begin to trust us. Others don't speak for other reasons, like language barrier. Some of the children can only speak Afrikaans and very little English, so that has been interesting. I work with the younger children ages 1-7 :) I absolutely LOVE my job. They love learning the songs and Bible stories. In fact, the children are much better than the teenagers about remembering what we learned that day from The Word. The volunteers rotate jobs every day. We all take turns doing games, teaching the memory verse, telling (sometimes acting out...haha) the Bible Stories, and teaching songs. At the end of the day, the children are fed a meal for free. For some of them, this might be the only time they eat all day. Living Hope finds a woman in each community to make the meals everyday and Living Hope provides them the funds to do so. Whatever is leftover (which is usually a lot) she gets to take back to her family. Like I said in an earlier entry, Living Hope is wonderful and pretty much thinks of EVERYTHING. Go to my facebook page to see the pictures I took this week of these precious kids. Hopefully some videos will be up soon as well! 

Coloured's and Blacks during apartheid and even since then. This is the first time I have heard someone talk about it. I just learned so much. We talked about missions and what it looks like to go into communities that have so much need, not just for tangible things, but the Gospel; the rough communities, the dangerous communities. We talked about Memphis. Yea. They knew all about Memphis. That hit me hard. We talked about the similarities between  Memphis and Cape Town and there are a lot. "The harvest is plenty but the workers are few." Yes? But these are thoughts for another day.

Thank you all so much for your prayers and encouraging words on here and Facebook! Sorry this entry was so long.

Tonight is another big game for South Africa! Bafana Bafana!!! 

Praying for YOU,
AC