Home visits…

Bear with me as I write down some things that I have seen in the last few weeks.
In the last week and a half we have visited with several families. As mentioned in my previous post, right now we are visiting the families of the children to bring their paper work up to date. At first we did not know how the families would react to us, but the paper work has given us a nice excuse to be invited into their homes. Most of the families have been welcoming and open about their situations.
The children who attend CHS come from various home situations. Some of them live with both parents, some of them with only one parent, and some with a different relative. Some live in brick homes with windows, beds and doors, others live in tin shacks with little or no necessities. All of the homes we have visited so far have a limited number of beds and many people living in the house. So I think that there are people who sleep with at least five other people on the bed, but I suspect that most of the children probably sleep on the floor.
Most of the homes that we have visited so far are the homes of children who live with their grandmothers. The grandmothers of this township are the true mothers of Katatura. When a mother dies, it is common for a child to go and live with their grandmother, and sometimes the parents abandon their children and they end up living with their grandmothers. I have met women who are in their late eighties, they are blind from diabetes, their backs are bent over from years of work, and their limbs complain with pain whenever they move, but they have several grandchildren to take care of. One lady has 4 grandchildren, and two children living with her, the only money she makes is from her tiny pension and a token amount from the government for orphans. She lives on less than $150 a month.
Some children go home to filthy shacks, and drunk parents. Some go home to a mother who is laying in bed sick with HIV. Many do not eat at all when they are at home, as any  money that comes in is spent on alcohol.
The more time we spend in the community, the more we realize how important Community Hope School is. Even though the children from Katutura have so many different home situations, they do have one thing in common, they all go home to homes where there is no hope, and CHS exists to change that. Please continue to pray for us, and to pray for the 88 students of Community Hope School.

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!

Today…

Hi all, today I made it to an internet cafe. The connection is terribly slow, we hope to have more reliable internet when we move onto our own place on the first of June. We found an apartment after looking all over the city, I will post later on what an amazing story it is. Let’s just say we were inline behind 40 other families desperate for a place to stay.
We have been in Windhoek for 3 weeks now, we have still not seen the school that we will be working with, as it is school break. We have spent the last three weeks going around the city buying the furniture and things we will need to make our new apartment a home.Thank you so much for all the support and prayers!
Adam and Sara still need $650 a month, but I think they are planning on buying their tickets soon. We look forward to having them here, is is weird only having half of the team.
We have been living at a YWAM base 25 minutes out of the city (the same YWAM base where we met each other 8 years ago). It is a farm situated in the middle of nowhere, we wake up to the sound of fish eagles and baboons every day, it has been great to be this close to nature. We have had time to just breath and think about all God has done to bring us to this point.
Please keep praying for us and keep an eye on this space.
There will be more updates soon!

What a chop…

We finally got the Toyota Hilux that we have been dreaming about. Right now in South Africa this Toyota commercial is pretty popular, I thought it would be fun to share with all of you who are not fortunate enough to enjoy South African tv. If you are viewing this on facebook  click here to see the ad. We leave for Namibia in a few days! Keep praying and watch this spot for more updates.

As promised, some monkey pictures…

Finally an update!

We have been in South Africa for almost two weeks now, the weather has been beautiful and it has been great to spend some time with the family here. We spent the first few days getting over jet-lag and getting used to the extreme weather change (It was snowing in Denver when we left, and it was very hot when we got off the airplane in JHB). The flight was uneventful, I took some footage of the trip, and I was intending to make a short video showing the trip from Denver to JHB, but I ended up using my IPOD (the camcorder is on my ipod) as a book light and I killed the battery. So I may put up some footage of Denver to Germany 🙂 Forgive the lack of communication, the internet the we have right now is very expensive and we only het on line for a few minutes a day. It will definitely get better once we get to Namibia.
The most difficult adjustment has been to the level of crime out here. We now have a system of keys and gates that we have to get used to, and one always has to be aware of what is going on around the house. Case and point, last night while we were sleeping some criminals bent the palisade fence and stole expensive car parts out of my parent’s yard. This is the eighth break in they have had. It has been a somewhat scary time as the country is going through an explosive racial turbulent time right now. Please pray for peace and safety in South Africa!
We have been able to get some preparation done for the school that we will be working with, including working on the CHE curriculum. This curriculum includes Bible, health, discipleship, development, and storytelling lessons.
We also made our first purchase for our new home out here, we bought an iron! There is so much to look forward to once we get to Namibia from finding and making a new home to discipling young Namibians. The future looks bright, thanks for all the prayers and support!

Made it

We made it to South Africa. Right now we don’t have the best internet connection so the blog posts may be short and far between for a few weeks. We are getting settled in and trying to get over the jet lag right now. It is great to be back home, the weather has been fantastic, and my parents are really happy to have us around for a few weeks. That’s it for now, hope you all are doing great!

Holiness.

This is one of my favorite song (if you are viewing this on facebook click here). It is about holiness. Tonight I have a question.
What do you think it means to be Holy?

What is holiness?

How do you try to be Holy in your life?

When I was child attending Sunday school and we used to sing songs containing words like “I lift my holy hands to you” I would throw my hands up without giving it a second thought. I think today it is more difficult for me to do that. I feel like it would almost be obscene for me to raise my hands and claim that they are HOLY. I know my heart and the attitudes behaviors that I deal with. One of my favorite “scenes” from the Bible is where God tell Moses to take his shoes off for he is standing on holy ground. That image gives me goosebumps. It reminds me that our God is Holy and that holiness is sacred. I also know from Hebrews that the blood of Christ is enough, that through Him we are made Holy. I am not sure that I have a point here, just that in listening to this song tonight I spent some time reflecting on holiness and what it means.
What are your thoughts?

5 days left….

Five days, yes only five days remain until we get on a plane and move back to the dark continent. So far as many things have gone wrong as have gone right. Our taxes are finally done (thank you Cindy Marvin!!), and we have hit our one time support goal. On the other side our application for a HI account in Colorado has been rejected, so as of right now we are unable to cash or deposit any checks that are made out to HI. So right now we are reapplying to the secretary of state, the application takes 7 to 10 days and then after that (if the application is approved) we should be able to receive our support. We also still are trying to sign up for health insurance, and that also is turning out to be more tricky than we originally thought it would be.

Please take a moment right now to pray for the situation with the bank account, and for all the rest of the things that we need to get done in the next few days.