Katatura…

Katatura literally means “the place we do not want to live.” It is the place where Community Hope School is located, and it is the place where we are doing most of our work. This is the week when we can finally start the schedule and ministry that we have signed up for. In the last few weeks we have been moving into our home and getting settled, we spent about ten days helping with a short term team that was visiting, and we have been working on some administrative things for the school. But this week we will finally begin our community survey. The first part of our survey is going to be a general information gathering for the school. We will be attempting to visit all the homes of children in the school. This way we will update the school’s records and the community will get to know our faces. Then in a month or so we will begin with a survey based on the book Agents of Transformation, this survey involves asking specific questions of the community in order to get a picture of what the community believes. We believe that in order to have a successful new church plant we have to first get to know the community and find people within the community who can be the driving force, or champions of the new church. This survey will take several months. Please keep us in your prayers, and be asking God for divine appointments with the people in the community that we will be meeting. It truly is an exciting day.

We also teach three classes in school. I teach a health class (based on some CHE materials and principles), David teaches a discipleship class (we will on occasion be splitting the class between boys and girls to talk about certain topics in discipleship), and we both teach two PE classes. We are using all these classes to teach the kids spiritual principles. I also am very excited about a dance class that I will be teaching soon.
In the future we hope to have night classes for some of the parents/guardians of the students, so that we can increase the impact that the school is having in the community.

The school itself is a place of light in the community of Katatura. The kids love the school, and the teachers and other staff really pour their hearts into the children.
Please keep us in your prayers!

Darkest day of the year :)

Here we are! Yesterday was the 21st of June, officially the shortest, and darkest day of the year here. It was a pretty dark day for us, as we experienced our first Namibian mugging. We were sitting in the car with Suzanne in the front seat, John had jumped out to pick up some last minute things to take to America (we were dropping them off at the airport.) David and I were in the back seats, the car was parked on the main street in town, the busiest place and one of the safest places in town, and it was about 9:30 am. All of a sudden my door opened and a man was standing there with his ha tin his hands, he put his hat in front of me and asked for two Namibian dollars, but before I could say anything another man opened Suzanne’s door then two more joined them and all four of them tried to get into the car. It was terrifying to be stuck there with four grown men trying to push their way into your car. They had their hands in my pockets and then two of them started grabbing at my neck, punching me in the face in the process. Afterward I realized they were probably trying to grab my necklace. At this point David had been leaning over me to try and fight them off, and he punched one in the face to try and get his hands off me. Then a fifth man opened the opposite front door of the car and took Suzanne’s purse, they all saw that and took off. David and Suzanne jumped out of the car, Suzanne with her cane as her knee is all messed up, she only sent a few steps. We thought that her passport was in her purse so David kept running after them, that was terrifying for me too as I could not see where he ran off to. He returned after a few  minutes, the men had dispersed into the crowd and disappeared. Luckily all they got was her writing pad, some pens, her make-up, and some jewelry (so unless they are a group of cross dressing book keepers the mission was a fail for them). The worst part is that there were hundreds of people standing around but no one helped us, everyone (including police officers) just stood there watching. Ridiculous.

We are all ok, my neck is stiff from tensing up, and when I close my eyes I can still feel their hands on me. Now we know to keep our car doors locked at all times and we are buying some pepper spray today. Please keep praying for us as we are working and living in this city!