Day 7--1/2/09

We woke up to a rather cool morning, but it turned into a rather hot day. Our bible study continues to be an amazing discussion that surprises me since they are so young. We continue to talk about the political situation and racism that is so obviously present. While many of the youth say they are not racist, comments that are made make me believe otherwise. It's going to take a long time for groups of people to get along in South Africa. I do have a lot of hope for the nation because of many of the youth that I have met here though.

In the afternoon we played a wonderful game of ultimate frisbee. It was nice and hot and lots of attempts at amazing diving catches. We also had our camp olympics which involved a pantyhose relay, searching through mud to find treasure, mummifying a teammate, putting together an impossible lego robot in the dark, and a water brigade relay. Lots of fun was had by all.

Daniel also taught me how to sokkie which is a dance step that is done at dances. It's fast and I'm quite uncordinated. At one point Daniel said, "You're a jock, aren't you?" Despite my lack of rhythm, Daniel was able to work with me and by the end we looked great. I think there's a video of it floating around somewhere...

Day 6--1/1/09

2009. In Africa. Today everyone was tired pretty much all day. I was still amazed at the depth of conversation we had in bible study. We met for over 2 hours and the kids were engaged pretty much the entire time.

At this point in the week tensions are mounting and people are starting to annoy one another--counselors and campers alike. I think it has to do with the lack of sleep.

Our midday meal was a celebration of sorts with a lamb roast. We got to eat one of those sheep that was sent to slaughter earlier in the week. It was lovely. The cut the meat with a table saw and also had many vegetables, salads, and breads as well. We tasted marmite (yeast extraction) and all decided that we could do without. I was also chastised for putting jam in my pap (cornmeal hot cereal kinda like cream of wheat). I should have eaten it with butter and sugar or better yet, butter and marmite.

We had a talent show after chapel where the kids did an amazing job with skits, songs, and dance. A bunch of kids did a drama to the Everything by Lifehouse which was very powerful. Andy and I did the "Sin--Don't touch" skit. Andy is a great actor and we had a blast. However, it was another late night...

Day 5--12/31/08

New Year's eve. The earliest I've ever celebrated.

I spent the morning at Pholoso with the VBS. What an awesome experience. There were about 40 kids there who were all black and from a very impoverished part of town. None spoke english so Bonny, who speaks 11 languages, translated the bible stories and directions for us. The lesson was the creation story so kids were drawing lots of animal pictures and making several crafts. We played lots of games and sang in both english and setswana. The kids loved getting their pictures taken and had beautiful smiles.

We were told these kids lived at a lower poverty level than the children at Deelpan. They lived in villages only a 5 minute drive away from the farm we were staying on and they came to the bible school via trailer attached to the back of a car or bucky--I found it amusing that they used the same trailer to transport the kids that they used for taking the sheep to the slaughter.

The afternoon was quite relaxing with more gimp and hanging out. In the late afternoon, the winds kicked up and an enormous brown cloud was coming toward us. It was a huge sandstorm. We tried to cover everything the best we could, but dust got into everything--including my contacts. After that the rain came but it didn't affect our activities too much. It's never a problem to be off schedule and kids don't mind time to relax and hang out and have a late dinner.

We had chapel where we once again talked about what we needed to leave in 2008 and what we would be praying for in 2009. We had about an hour until midnight so we played "Andrew's game" which involved running around in the dark trying to get the other team's glowsticks into your team's base. I found that it was difficult to see people running towards you until the very last second which results in excellent collisions. When Dean and I collided, I didn't know if we would both get up. We finally rang in the new year with a drumming circle which was full of energy. It was an excellent end to 2008.

Day 4--12/30/08

Today was the first full day of camp and it was quite eye-opening. During bible study we had a more in depth conversation with kids on day 1 than I have had with most american youth in 3 years. They are just so open to discussing and sharing whatever. We also opened our day with the "Get down" dance and that went over well. However, it's quite the quad workout.

In the afternoon I got to hang out at the "American sports" elective with Karl and Andy. We played an excellent game of american football that kept reverting back into rugby. They couldn't seem to grasp that when you were on defense, you didn't get the ball back right away. I played hard but I didn't sweat. It was around 95 degrees but it's a dry heat. Maybe I should think about moving to more of a desert climate.

My elective was the gimp elective. Making random things out of flat plastic lacing is always a good time. What I like most about doing gimp is the time I get to just sit with people have good discussions.

Because of having all the older kids at camp, we decided to make the post-high school age students counselors in leadership training (CILT). A group of youth would help with the vacation bible school and then there would be at least one CILT with each youth bible study. Their job would be to help lead discussions and take more of a leadership role instead of a camper role. So far they have been doing a great job during bible study, activities, and chapel. It has been cool to see them move from camper to counselor.

Our evening activity was video making. Each group was given a genre and random props and had to film a 4 scene movie. Our group had the western genre and it was hilarious to hear South African kids try and talk in a western accent. Speaking of accents, several kids were trying to teach me how to pronounce afrikaans. It's quite difficult with lots of gutteral "g" sounds and rolling "r's."

After worship, I spent some time outside just checking out the sky. There is absolutely no light pollution so you can see so many stars. The milky way is also visible. We tried to find the Southern Cross and after much deliberation as to which stars made up this constellation, I think we finally got it.

Day 3--12/29/08

Most of the team went to Deelpan this morning for VBS. Rich, Kim, Aaron, and I stayed behind to make final camp preparations and to begin camper registration. Asbury had a VBS at Deelpan in previous years, so the kids were waiting for them since they knew "the americans were coming." We sent a team there on Monday and Tuesday. On Monday they started with 30 kids and ended with about 100. On Tuesday they had even more--this is thanks to the "bush telegraph."

Campers started arriving that afternoon and I quickly realized that most of the kids who were coming were older than normal camper age. I enjoyed meeting the people who we would spend the week with and getting to know the campers in my bible study group. We also broke ground for the cross that we would be building later in the week.

Day 2--12/28

We were all up with the sun on Sunday morning or up with the Haw-de-daw bird...I don't know which one woke me up. This was our first view of the farm in the daylight and the Price's had built/renovated several building so that we could hold a camp there. There was a dorm for girls and one for guys, a dining hall area, and a chapel.

We headed into Lichtenberg for church. Mindy was preaching and we all kind of had a role in the service. Keith, the regular pastor, was on holiday so we didn't get to meet him. Many of the church members knew Mindy from when she was at this church for a pulpit exchange in 2004. When we arrived, there were several kids that attended camp from previous years and it was obvious that relationships had been built with these kids since they were quite excited to see the Asbury members who had been to South Africa before.

The first thing that I noticed when I walked into the sanctuary was the definite split between the blacks and whites. They didn't sit with one another or interact in any way. However, the service was nice. Mindy preached on things to leave behind in 08 and what praises/blessings to carry into 09. There was a good bit of congregational sharing and our group led a few songs.

After church we went to the Wright's house for lunch. It was a relaxing time with excellent food. We went back to the farm and made some final preparations for the next day's camp and enjoyed each other's company until we headed to bed.

Day one--12/26-12/27

I met Mindy at her house on the morning of the 26th. There was much rushing around to be done as I hadn't really packed ahead of time. It turns out neither did Mindy. Mindy was already on "Africa time" and we ended up at the church about 15 minutes after we should have but the group ended up leaving Asbury at 11:30am. I got to ride in a very cramped van (first of many very cramped van rides) with Emily, her sister and dad, Rich, and Kim to JFK.

Our flight left New York at 5:45 PM and I was able to sleep the majority of ride. We landed in Senegal to refuel around midnight and continued on to Johannesburg. It turns out the African continent is quite large and it took much longer than I expected to get to the bottom of it. We landed in J-burg around 5pm local time where we met Bryan Price, Niels, Jarrod, and Sharon who would drive us and all of our luggage to their farm in Lichtenberg. 3 hours later we arrived at the farm, ate a light snack, took a look around, and headed to bed around midnight.