The other night I went over to one of the female volunteer houses (there are 3 girl houses and our one guy house… highly outnumbered) where we had a Mexican feast of burritos. They even made their own tortillas from scratch; it was so good and made me feel at home. Mexican food in South Africa, who’d a thunk it. For all those who were worried about me losing weight here… don’t. My roommates and I find it hard to keep our fridge and pantry stocked cause we eat so much. Seriously, it must be being on my feet all the time, but I’m always hungry. We went out to eat on Sunday night after church and I ordered and finished 2 meals. Also on Wednesday nights for our volunteer Bible study we have a ‘bring-n-share’ dinner, which is basically just an unorganized pot luck, and it’s a feast every time. In fact, I started running in the morning to stay in shape. But I still need recipes…
In the last paragraph I mentioned 2 things I haven’t talked about before: church Sunday night and Bible study Wednesday night. First off, we take about 12 of the older kids to a Church of England service in Pietermaritzburg every Sunday night. It feels kind of like a church I would go to in the States, which is nice, but I’ve still been meaning to get to the local church in Mophela here. I hear the Mophela church breaks it down into dance mid worship… I’ll fit right in. I’ve also heard that any white male that shows up is expected to preach on the spot that day. Soooo, I’ll need to think of something I could talk about, I hear you don’t have to talk long though. Maybe I’ll just use the material from our Bible study the previous Wednesday, as we’re going over the best sermon ever given… Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We have the Bible study with all of us volunteers here and the manager of the orphanage. It’s a great time of fellowship. We start out by singing a few worship songs, which probably isn’t the most pleasant sounding thing. We have a few girls trying to learn guitar for the occasion, and they do their best, but are still pretty new to it, and then with only 13 people in a small living room, my terrible singing voice brings us down a few notches. After that we study the scripture and then pray for each other. I’ve heard the Sermon on the Mount a bunch of times, but it’s still a great read and spiritual health check. One verse I never really noticed before, but that blew me out of the water this time was Matthew 5:48 “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Wow! Talk about intense, what a call. That’s what God desires for us; thank goodness we have such a savior in Jesus Christ for all the times we fail and the Holy Spirit to work through us so we can be reaching for that goal. Please pray for the spiritual walk of each of the kids and volunteers here, including one of my roommates who isn’t a Christian but has been forced to be totally immersed in that culture. May the experience bring him to know Christ.
One thing I’m really excited about here is that on Monday we started taking Zulu classes! Some people from the community who have been touched by some of our projects and classes decided that in return they would like to help us out and teach us volunteers some Zulu. So yeah, I’ll be doing that 2 nights a week. It’s tough stuff! I hope to pick up on some useful words though. At least I can say hello now… Sanibona (that’s the plural variety)! I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to pronounce everything properly though with the weird clicks they sometimes use. Oh and its getting to that awkward time where I’ve been here long enough that when kids test me on their names, I feel terrible when I don’t know… it’s so hard, there are so many of them (114 to be exact)!
Alright, one more story to finish us off, and its one of my favorite moments so far. The other day I was hanging out in the office and Uncle John (oh yeah, male volunteers are called Uncle, so I’m Uncle Ben, and girls are Miss ____) came in with 6 of the little kids (age 3-5 prob). The kids are ridiculously cute, but like any little kids you have to watch them closely cause they want to pick up everything. Anyway, after a while John left and called the kids to come with him. All of the kids ran to the door except for one who hung back and stared at me. He then came up to me and held his thumb up. It’s a common thing in Zulu culture to rub thumbs together while in a ‘thumbs up’ position, or at the end of a handshake. So we did the little thumb tap and he still stood there, but this time puckered up cause he wanted a kiss. So I gave him a kiss and when all of the other kids saw this they came running back in to get their kisses. It was probably the most adorable thing I have ever seen. Oh, also, side note, almost every kid under the age of twelve has asked me what my leg and arm hair and my Adam’s apple is… I tell the boys they’ll hit puberty eventually.
Please pray for the direction of Lily as they are in the midst of a lot of changes right now, especially with some changes in management at the top levels and also a desire to grow across South Africa and beyond.
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