Published March 17, 2011 by in
Hello from Cape Town!
I’ll be brief here, because we’re at the home of some good friends, having a “critter braai” (a big, multi-part barbecue. We just had the first round of meat, which was smoked crocodile.) We just got access to internet for the first time, and saw how much everyone else has kept in touch this week, and wanted to say hello!
It has been a great week. We are really winding up here, even though we won’t be home for another two days!
We have been able to visit a lot of different ministries while we’ve been here, mostly around the Cape Town area. We visited a preschool and day care center called God’s Little Lighthouse, did a Bible lesson and craft, and played with the kids for a while. We also visited Miemie’s kitchen, where she feeds hundreds of children every day out of her own house in one of the townships called Khayelitsha. We also visited a safe house that is just being finished, where six orphan children will come to live with a house mother in another township, called Masephumelele. We also visited a center called Living Hope that works in prevention, treatment, and education about AIDS/HIV. Living Hope is extremely holistic, mutli-faceted, and does such great Christian ministry with the population living with HIV in the townships.
At each of the ministries, we left gift bags with toys and coloring books for each of the children, and we also left SOCKS! They are just entering autumn here and are in for a chilly winter. So many of the places we went said that socks are just the perfect thing for the kids to have in the coming months, and something that very few people think to bring.
We were also fortunate enough to be able to go on a safari and saw eland, springbok, hippos, zebras, ostriches, cape buffalo, elephants, gnu, cheetahs, and LIONS. Others have gone on these safaris and said that often it is very difficult to see the lions and they never come very close, but six of them came and walked right around our truck! We actually had to maneouver around them to go along the way.
Then we went to Tulbagh, to a children’s home called Steinthal, and painted their dining hall. It is a gorgeous house in the mountains that keeps 150 children that are taken from dangerous or troubled homes.
All along the way, Dane has been taking video and we’ve been talking to the directors and staff of the various missions, so keep an eye out for some great videos once we get back and are able to put them together!
God has been so faithful on this trip to keep us safe, and (after a small hiccup with Dane and me in the airport in DFW), everything has gone extremely well. Our guide/driver for the week, Pierre, has been so wonderful and is now cooking us about 15 kinds of meat. I can’t wait to tell you all about more of the work that he is doing here, and I hope we can be involved in LOTS of different ways in the future!