a small piece to a BIG PUZZLE

My deepest apologies to you all for how long it has been since we have updated you all with our time in South Africa. We have found internet somewhat difficult to come by. But enough dabbling with the excuses... I will do my best to give a proper update:

Since Themba's (Rob) last update there has be an amazing amount of life occurring here in KwaZulu-Natal (the S.A. province we are in). Between waking up at 8 AM for breakfast and devotions and soapies (soap operas), our full days from 9-4:30, cooking our team meal at the Family Centre and a 5 min walk back to our house... we spend the remainder of our evenings watching DVDs, reading from our massive and extremely intellectual collection of books, journaling, trying to extinguish our mouse problem, sipping on hot drink number 179, playing cards (preferrably, Rook) or sharing our hearts through meaningful conversation. "This isn't a sleep-over, this is life" we do together.

One of the most memorable moments since the last post... (as I contemplate sharing this)... was a robbery that occurred at our ikhaya (home) here in Mpophomeni while we were out one evening. The story is quite lengthy to give you a full explanation but by the end of our night, which ended around 3 AM, we had driven all over Mpophomeni, became further aquainted with the local police force, recovered all of our belongings and shared some of our racing thoughts and emotions with one another. To say it lightly... that was the worst night of sleep that I have gotten since being here. The perpetrator was actually the sister of our landlord, and her boyfriend, so the crime was not at all a random one. Evidently it had been part of their plan to use our home for an evening when they were certain we were out for a night. The whole night probably would not have happened if we had left on our lights on (a way of informing the people you will be back soon). Fortunately Ethembeni helped us respond accordingly to the event by providing us funding to replace the already broken windows and put up "body guards" (essentially, stylish metal fences welded in behind the windows). Though we were shaken from our misperception of the invinceable high horse we were on, we learned many valuable lessons from the experience. Asking God for a confirmation to continue our stay in the township, with safety in mind, we were extremely encouraged to find the protective attitude our staff took, the commradery the community took up, and the amazement for our desire to stay there from one of the local community church members (from a predominantly white congregation). It was enlightening to see how much of an impact our residency was making in the lives of the South Africans. May it be known that we feel very safe and protected by the preceding events and attitudes we observed. As put by Rob, "It was the best and most harmless wake-up call we could have received." There is a fine line between fear and awareness and that is a narrow path us Christians musn't be afraid to walk.

Most of our other excitement has come from a bit more harmless sources. We have dedicated a large majority of our time, food, and resources to help build our relationships with our friends, and local community members. We have been arranging a lot of weekly gatherings, whether it be with the local church pastor's home, using the Family Center to have isikhathi majitha (guy time) with our Zulu brothers, Monday morning breakfasts that we share with all of the staff and volunteers, or heading across the valley to visit our APU friends in their ministry. A huge lesson that God has been teaching me is the impact of your physical presence. Even without words, showing up and acknowledging your brother or sister can be one of the most powerful and validating acts we can do as members in this global community. One of my goals as I practice being present is to speak through action and behavior, rather than through words. With the magnifying glass that this culture serves as this is the moral standard that I continue to strive for: Words express what we know, but actions express what we feel and believe. After reading Philippians 2, and trying to exemplify that passage with this motto in mind puts to perspective the power that we have in acting in our faith and becoming the religion that we study. This is the good news.

(This next paragraph can be read with an English accent if the words are " ".) Since July 4, we have been joined by a "heap" of United Kingdom-ers. There are a total of 12 "quite" friendly "mates" that we have made "proper" friends with since their arrival. It appears that a majority of our time will be spent together so I'm sure that we will have much more relationship and experiences to share together. When we celebrated the 4th with 4 other Enlgish people, I knew that the our relationship was destined to be one that can transend their "pernickety" approach to our American tendencies. Probably one of the most ironic things that I have ever been a part of.

Our time has been flying by and I can't believe that there are only 3 more weeks here in Mpophomeni. In many ways, my special memories of this place have made it difficult to re-enter this ministry as such a small piece of the puzzle. My previous experience was very intentional and intimate with 6 fellow APU friends. Our role last time was a very relational and transactional on many levels of their ministry, almost as if we were helping to make the steam in their engine. This time around, my role, as "the short-term missionary", is a humbling and lowly one. I feel as though I am watching the train fly by. This ministry has picked up so much steam and momentum, that I often stand back and realize that the purpose God has called me back for is to see the strength and faith of people I came to hypothetically bring encouragement to. I will keep searching and striving to inject all of myself into this experience and relationships that I have here. There is no doubt that God has a purpose and plan in his movements through me. However, it is an important reminder to be confronted with the reality that God is in more control of revealing his puzzle than I; just a tiny piece in the mosaic of the "unkulu" Kingdom.

So much to thank God for.

I am officially 12 days in. In other terms of measurement this equates to:
- 3 showers
- Easily over 36 cups of rooibos/coffee
- Approximately 16 bowls of corn flakes
- 1 book read
Time seems to be doing anything but slowing down. Not that the pace of life is stressful or fast, it's not. I am actually finding plenty of time to "slow down" each evening. Working on maintaining a consistent journal. So much happens each day, it is a daunting task to even begin jotting things down. Staying motivated in that regard is crucial. I know the purpose of it is to one day be able to look back and see God's faithfulness... I desire that one day, now it just seems arduous. Nonetheless, God is definitely making Himself known daily here. In those small things, the smiles, the expansive sky, a loving touch. (definitely feeling the love these days considering touch is my love language.)
A touch can be such a humanizing thing and an incredible human expression of God's love. So many of the children have a deep longing for this acknowledgement, in physical form, that they no doubt deserve yet likely have been depraved of in their short lives. It's a desire that is innate in us. To touch and be touched. A Godly exchange in humanity. These are moments that I cherish, these are moments that I hope God will grant me increasing sensitivity, that I might take note of Him around me.
In other news, we have gotten together for our first time with the Howick Community Church youth, to begin some relationships with them with our ultimate hope to bridge understanding between them and the township youth. Be praying for God's direction and hand in this. Within ourselves we can do nothing. Which is a relief that we can place this in His hands and just make ourselves available.
In other requests, safety here in the township is a risk that we cannot ignore. So long as we keep our wits about us and stay street-wise, we are just fine. There have been some trip ups, so we could definitely use some prayer with that regard!
Major praise to acknowledge. The Mpophomeni Family Center ministry, it's staff, social workers, child care, are amazing! God's hand is upon this ministry, and boy is it apparent. It astounds me how perfectly each staffer fits their roles, the way their skills and passions match up to exactly what is expected of them! They are seriously some of the most incredible people I know. If there is one thing that I would love to emerge from this summer with, would be the knowledge that we provided these brothers and sisters in Christ an encouragement. Time to wrap it up, much love and peace to you all. Hopefully we can keep you updated a bit better this coming week! Sala Kahle!
-Themba

The whole family is here!

Hello dearest family and friends,
I (Rob) am writing you from the computer here at the Mpophomeni Family Centre. It is my 5th day here in Mpophomeni, and our 5th day of all of us finally being together. Alyssa and I adjusted quite quickly with regards to my sleep cycles. After that first night, I have slept during the normal hours and have had restful sleep which has been a blessing to hit the ground running with little to no exhaustion. Friday we took part in a staff retreat with approximately 30-40 combined staffworkers. It is exciting to see how God has grown and changed the ministry here in Mpophomeni. The Family Centre combined with the Ethembeni AIDS/HIV care centre is now the second largest employer in the township behind only the municipality which employs the police, and garbage disposal etc. That is a huge accomplishment for bringing the Kingdom here in the township considering that 80% of the township is unemployed. So much more growth and change is on it's way. Saturday we had a day in Durban since the Family Centre is closed on the weekends. Spent some time seeing old sites that we had seen in our previous time here. Being here is paired with interesting emotions, very different from last spring in good ways. Much less of a honeymoon experience and one more of real life exposure. It is a blessing and gift to wake up among the people that we desire to understand --> love --> work alongside. Who knows where God will take this 2 months,I just hope we will maintain an attentiveness to His direction and not our own, so that what HE desires for His people will be accomplished through people small such as our team. That would be a humbling experience to be a part of. I feel so much joy living in community with God's children young and old, black and white, HIV infected/not. Please pray for God's vision to continue to take over our eyes, hands and feet here. Sunday was a day of worship and rest @ Mpophomeni International Church. So much freedom for my heart was found there. Worshiping God uninhibited is a powerful thing to witness and be a part of. The service was approx 3 hours but felt like a bat of the eye. We had 50 guests from sister churches, as this was a commissioning Sunday of sorts. MCI had been worshiping in a tent outside of the Centre for several years, but recently due to growth needed a change. This Sunday was their first @ an old tavern. Taverns in the township are dangerous places of intoxication and also violence. Multiple muders had occured in this building and now we were claiming the building for God's Kingdom. Many brothers and sisters (bhutis and usisis)shared a great vision of restoration and reconcilliation. This is exemplified by the transformation of the building, but also the many hearts impacted.
With regards to accomodations/diet, (this is for you Ma.) the five of us are staying a five minutes walk away from the Centre in a home approximately the size of our living room and dining room combined @ Trillium. No oven, but a electric burner and microwave to heat food. My diet has been steadied by @ least 4 cups of coffee or Roibos tea each day. Cornflakes in the morning, pb and j @ noon, and then a more substantial meal at night such as mac and cheese, or grilled cheese etc.We have no heat or warm water, so that is deturrent enough not to take a shower, especially when the temps are in the mid thirties at night. It's okay though because during the day it barely scrapes 70 (quite comfortable actually) thus I don't sweat which is pleanant. We will manage to get to Howick (small community 10 minutes east of here) and Claire's cottage(the British missionary)and hot showers about once a week. Welp that is all for now. Time to get busy. I will hopefully have internet access twice weekly. Trusting God is sustaining and growing in you all where you are called this summer! Love you all.

inKosi Mayibe Nawe (God bless you) Sala Kahle (Stay well)

Themba- Sipho -Njabulo VerWys

Willingness

Rob and I head out today!! There are so many different emotions flowing through me right now! I'm stressed out packing and figuring out last minute details, so ecstatic to be reunited with old friends, nervous about being the only girl on the team, and ready to see what God has in store for our time at the Family Centre. With all these different emotions all at once, the one thing I am sure of is that I am willing to go and do whatever God has for me and the team. This doesn't mean that I am or will be prepared for whatever is in store, its just that I am simply willing. I am trying to prepare myself, but how do you when you don't really know what is waiting around the corner? So I am focusing on preparing myself to have an open mind and heart and allowing myself to be uncomfortable. I need to be uncomfortable. I have been comfortable for too long and I need to feel whats its like to be out of my element and uncomfortable again.

I have been having ongoing conversations with Claire (a dear friend and wonderful British young woman who has committed three years to serving at the Family Centre) about what I can help her with during my time, and the boys have also been in conversation as Eli mentioned. Claire and I came up with a few things such as helping do more educational things with the children and helping her plan and run a Holiday Club (or VBS). My main passion for wanting to go back to South Africa in the first place is simply to encourage my friends in their ministry and aid them in whatever way they see fit to improve their ministry. The Mpophomeni Family Centre does so many wonderful things for their community, I want to remind my friends that what they are doing is incredible and needed. I want to remind them that all their hard work blesses many lives around them, including mine. I guess I want to give them a bit of a break and hold the crying baby or wash the dishes so they have a chance to sit and relax for a moment. My desire is to come alongside my friends and share some of their burden and share Christ's love with them as they share it with their community.

READY and WILLING,
Alyssa

Keeping you posted Umfowethu naUdadewethu (my Brother and sister)

Well where do I start!? Being back here is amazing! Everything my heart has needed. We are skipping the touristy feel of being here with the APU semester. We are staying in the township Mpophomeni, like I said, and that is just insanely awesome. It has to be like 40-45 degrees in the house every night bc the whole house is made of concrete. ha Fortunately we have thick blankets and a nice heater to keep us warm while we sit inside and watch movies or sleep. Lets just say... I will have had more hot coffee or rooibos in these two months than in all of my life. I am def going to walk away from this relating to the african people that much more recognizing how little they live with. 

Being at the family center is sooo great. We just had Chiraphone aka Jubulile (our World Missions director) come through for 4 days and she helped us get the ball rolling just a little bit faster. Her Zulu, cliche phrases and go getta attitude broke the ice even more for us. It was such a blessing to have her heart warming conversations and Zulu dance moves with us. I had a meeting with her, and 2 others from the Ethembeni team and I walked away with such hope.  Here is what it encompassed:

Being here for a week and a half now I have certainly noticed... a huge difference in the operation of the Family Center. It occurred to me last time here I felt like the steam in the engine for them. We gave them that extra spark... now... It is like watching the train fly by!!! Everyone has their role... everyone knows what they are doing... and there are programs set up for everything! Even down to making sure the children are empowered to learn life skills such as making their food and cleaning their dishes. There is so much life, so much color, and so much pride in what they are doing! It is amazing... but definitely an adaptation to what I was expecting based off of my last experience.

I was wondering where I was going to be making my time intentional these next 2 months... but the meeting I had with CK, and the 2 others really got my creative juices flowing. We are going to be doing some real counter cultural work. Very strategic, very tedious, and probably not very rewarding. We are going to attempt to tend to the wounds of Apartheid. Our story... APU's story... has been one of being, one of relationship, one of simply love and encouragement. This story of God honoring relationship has been a light to one of Ethembeni's director Grant Edkins (a white male S.A.'n) and he wants us to share that example of our meaningful relationships.



We have a very neutral position in both people groups and ability to relate to both parties... We don't know how we will begin to build this bridge but know that it can and will be done through God's grace. We will be targeting youth groups of white South African's and probably inviting them to come and work with us at the Family Center.... that is about all that we have thus far. Pray for strategy and discernment. We need deep insight into the hearts of S.A.'ns and more than anything a necklace of love to be our main adornment.   God's favor is upon us in this time.  

We Made it!

Sanibonani! Eli and I have made it and are getting settled down (settled down enough to remember to update our blog at least) in Mpophomeni. We have moved into our house and have been at the Family Centre for the past week. Activities and projects seem to come up spontaneously so there isn’t too much else planned at this moment just being at the Family Centre and hanging out with the children. We will keep you all updated as things come up but we are doing well and very excited to be here and at the Centre. Continue to pray for our relationships with the workers and children (and each other, Eli gets a little cranky when he doesn’t eat), safety, unity, discernment and guidance as well as our Zulu speaking skills. Talk to you all soon!

I would also like to share a quote with you that has been on my heart and mind for the past couple months in preparation for and while I have been here in South Africa. I think it describes beautifully, and in much better words than I could, the attitude one must have in doing work, namely God’s work. It has challenged and convicted me over the past few months and has begun to re-shape what I think even more so how I think.

“Precisely this becomes the contradiction in blessedness and terror: to have an omnipotent one as one’s co-worker. An omnipotent one cannot be your co-worker, a human being’s co-worker, without its signifying that you are able to do nothing at all; and on the other hand, if he is your co-worker, you are able to do everything. The strenuousness is that it is a contradiction or is simultaneous; thus you do not experience the one today and the other tomorrow. Moreover, the strenuousness is that this contradiction is not something you must be aware of once in a while but is something you must be aware of at all times. At the same moment it seems as if you are capable of everything—and a selfish thought will sneak in as if it were you who are capable—at the same moment all can be lost for you; and at the same moment the selfish thought surrenders, you can have everything again. But God is not seen, and therefore, as God uses this instrument into which a human being has made himself in self-denial, it seems as if it were the instrument that is able to do everything, and this tempts the instrument itself to understand it in that way—until he again is able to do nothing. It is hard enough to work with another human being, but to work together with the Omnipotent One! Well, in a certain sense it is quite easy, since what is he not capable of, so I can simply let him do it. The difficulty, therefore, is just that I am to work together with him, if not in any other way, then through the continual understanding that I am able to do nothing at all, something that is not understood once and for all. And it is difficult to understand this, to understand it not at the moment when one actually is unable to do anything, when one is sick, in low spirits, but to understand it at the moment when one seemingly is capable of doing everything.” Soren Kierkegaard Works of Love

The time has almost come for me now. Less than one week and I will be on my way out. Of course, I will be the one member of our team that gets the pleasure of enjoying those flights halfway across the world by myself. Hooray! Flying solo will surely have its downsides, but at least I will have plenty of time to think/pray before I arrive. It seems as if God has already been stirring in me considerably, and I haven't even left yet. As my thoughts shift to what lies ahead, I am almost immediately overwhelmed with how much there is to think about. But, what seems to be coming the the forefront above all else is a desire to have the hope of Christ remain at the center. Although there is no way of knowing what lies ahead of us, it can be said with fairly good certainty that there will be difficult parts of this trip. Living with people in their environment 24 hours a day, facing their problems alongside of them firsthand and trying to come alongside the work that God is already doing in this community inherently brings struggle. I pray that God will allow us to be relentless in this struggle. In those moments when we are empty, do not feel like loving one more day, cannot stand to hear about one more letdown, or whatever it may be, that God will sustain us. Not only to the point of surviving, but of being a source of life because we are connected to THE source of life. I desire to have a hope that does not succumb to the pressures of life, but rather is present smack dab in their midst. For I think this is where Jesus ultimately can aid us most. In the times that we are in over our heads, and there is no feasible solution because the situation is too broken, the power structures are too well-established, the diseases seem to only be multiplying.... It is precisely these moments that I think Jesus may be our hope. Literally. Because sometimes money, programs, time, and even our team will not be enough. If left up to us we likely will run out of options. So I pray that we are not our only choice. May we keep hope always. And may it not be about our team keeping hope, but rather about us and the community together reminding one another of Jesus in our midst. Because ultimately this trip is not about us. We too need to be reminded that we are not alone. So at the intersection of Emphohmeni, God, and our team, I hope that something beautiful will be found.

Much Love, Shaun Fossett c: