Rock Harbor South Africa

Its only been two days in South Africa, but God has been at work doing amazing things through our team! For the afternoon today, myself, Heather and Nicole got to spend 4 hours playing volleyball outside with the academy kids and i am not sure who enjoyed more, the kids or the three of us! The kids loved being outside learning a game that most of them have never played. As the groups came through our volleyball clinic, they were progressively getting better with the last group wanting to play against us 3. The highlight of the clinic was at the end when the Academy kids all came up to us and thanked us for teaching them volleyball and told us they had so much fun. Even though our days can become extremely long and tiring, hearing those kids tell us how much fun they had makes it all worth it.

Andrew

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We have such an amazing God that answers prayer in a big way. Today started out a little rough for Andrew and I. We have a great group of kids for our devotion group but we could not get them to participate and interact with us at all. Devotions are a forty-five minute discussion time that we have on the topics that the kids will be learning about later on in the day. After devotions, two of the team members get one grade to teach a series of lessons for a four hour period. As the teachers, it can be a daunting task to try to keep the students interested and interactive with our lessons. The lessons that Andrew and I teach are on respect and authority. Andrew and I were genuinely concerned about the day ahead of us because today was the day that we were scheduled to teach our devotion group for the four hour period. We could not even get them to participate for forty-five minutes, how in the world would we hold their attention for four hours?! Thankfully, we have a Big God that worries about the small things. After devotions, Wood prayed with Andrew and I about our upcoming class and it made such a big difference. When we began to teach the students, they all actively participated! We had volunteers to read, responses given, and questions asked. Apparently, the students were even telling other team members how much they learned in the authority class! It just shows that our God loves us so much. These students are such a blessing and my heart is filled with so much joy being back with them. So far this trip has been amazing and I can't wait to see the other ways that God is going to amaze and impress us. Thank you so much for all of your prayers and responses. It means the world to us to hear from everyone back home. Oh, and August team members that are reading this, I saw Eddie in Sweet Home yesterday. He's just as rambunctious as ever!! Thanks for all the love from everyone! We miss you!

Tanya

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Siobahnne here.

As you can see, it's been an amazing day for us today. By the end of yesterday we were feeling worn down. In our debrief time, we shared a lot of concerns about specific groups and kids and then really spent time praying as a group and on our own for a change. Already, these children have stolen pieces of our hearts, and we want to see them succeed and take to heart the purpose God has for them. Classes today seemed to go a lot better for everyone which was a true answer to prayer.

We also will have a bit of a treat for you when we get home. Today was the day that Jennifer and I taught a class on Poetry in the afternoon. I spent time putting together a packet of information on Biblical and Classical poetry forms as well as writing tips, but I also wanted to share some poetry with the kids. I picked four that really spoke to me and prayed the kids could see the beauty in them as well.

Each class was different. What ended up being so unexpected was the way that Jennifer and I reacted to the class. We've found in a lot of cases that the best way to get the kids to open up is to be willing to share things about yourself. As we went line by line through some of the poetry and what it means, it meant really opening up and sharing with the kids. There's a poem by John Donne about forgiveness. It talks of exposing layer after layer of sin, always waiting to hit upon the one sin where God just finally can't forgive us anymore. It required a lot of honesty, but the kids really understood and shared in that with us. It was incredible.

Each of the kids was then given a number that corresponded with what topic they would write about. They were given about 20 minutes at the end of the class to write a poem about a time they were angry at God, a time they praised God, a time they were in awe of God or a time they questioned God. The kids really opened up in their poetry and it was incredible the insight and the reflection we saw within their words. Their hearts are so amazingly big. While many of this kids kept their poems due to their personal nature, some willingly gave them to us to share with the team and to bring home to share with you. I know they will be treasured.

I think we all learned a lot about the kids today. There was so much laughter and so much joy... but we also learned of the pain behind the smile. Also, our Group One students wrote a poem they wanted to share with you!

We Love it Here at Bridges

We love it here where everyone smiles
Where the green grass goes on for miles

We love it because we get to swim
We also like to play in the gym

We can play on the trampoline with friends
The fun here never ends!

- Group One: Onele, Zimkhitha, Zintle, Nontando, Nomfundo, Zenande, Nongamso, and Asemahle.

Pretty awesome, right?

Thank you so much for all your prayers!

As always, keep praying to keep the spiders away! Pray for continued endurance and for God to reveal himself even more. We saw a lot of God in these kids today and I know we all ache to be even closer to our Heavenly Father. He's stretching us and growing us, so please pray that we are taking care and resting when we need to. Pray for health and please pray for these kids! They all have to go back home for the weekend on Friday, and we're praying they return safely on Monday to start their official first day back at school. Thank you for being our prayer warriors! You've helped bless us so much!