I've got a fire down in my soul...

...that I can't contain and I can't control.
I want more of you God. I want more of you God.

Its always difficult to put Africa into words. Even pictures don't explain the experience.  On Saturday last week (11th) the team went to work with Crossroads Street-boys Shelter in Pretoria. It was a long day that included painting, window cleaning, a football match that came down to penalties, and finished off with Nacho Libre. 

Sunday we rested and went to Echo church and picnicked at the Union Buildings (The SA White house).  Echo is a community of South Africans that have committed to the idea of Acts living.  Its incredible...absolutely mind blowing to see some of these communities of people literally share everything in common so that no one is in need.  Yep its communism but when Jesus is the cause and love is the motivator it works. Some of the notes I got from the sermon:

"Don't tell them Jesus loves them until you're ready to love them too."
"The best meal won't satisfy the deepest hunger."

"It's not that we don't care about the poor, it's that we don't know the poor." -Shane Claiborne

It was incredible to see the poverty gap in South Africa but it was even more incredible to see how much complacency has paralyzed the church there...not unlike America. It's easy to judge but what am I doing in Norman? Who am I reaching out to? This is what Echo was all about changing.

While we were staying in Pretoria we lived in two houses: a girls' house and a boys' house.  These homes were part of a movement of young adults called Intentional Living. Its purpose was to live together as Christians and intentionally reach out within their community to reach Pretoria for Jesus. It was awesome to see these guys & girls, all the same age as us, do something so real. I want that... A few of the guys on the team want that too. I'm excited to see what God will do in Norman.  Pray that we don't loose that fire.

Monday we departed early for the Hebron Rehabilitation Centre. This was located near Potchefstroom, a 2 hour drive from Pretoria. It was kinda funny when we arrived because we expected Hebron to be a small town but in reality it is 3 small buildings and a large barn in the middle of a huge field. Regardless of its size God was working and we were blessed to be part of it.  About a mile away is the home of the 70+ year old woman, Tanni Gretha, who built everything with her own hands and God's anointing. Around her home she has built a beautiful retreat center called Immanuel. She uses the funds from that to finance everything. Immediately next to the retreat center is an awesome little rocky hill with 700 verses written on all the different rocks. We climbed to the top on Wednesday night to worship and watch the lunar eclipse.

We started right after arriving on Monday with a tour of Hebron and throughout the evening we had some group discussions lead by our contact Adriaan Adams. Tuesday morning we started early with cleaning out the barn. Tanni Gretha regularly goes to auctions looking for inexpensive building supplies and she regularly receives donations of all kinds.  Overtime these built up in the barn creating a monster of a mess.  Some was rubbish while most just needed to be sorted out into piles.  From our sorting experience in Kwamhlanga we put ourselves to work and knocked out half of the barn in just a few hours.  While we did this the girls sorted through the mountain of donated clothes. Afterwards we shared a meal with the families at Hebron and I met Steven for the first time.

Steven was climbing in a tree acting like a monkey.  He was about 7 and knew about 2 words in English: Come and Stop. At first he was very shy and would barely look me in the eyes from his tree branch. That didn't last long and by Wednesday night we were best buddies playing tag, piggy back/racecar, looking for snakes outside with my flashlight and he even took me back to his family's room to show me his toys.  He spoke to me in Afrikaans like I knew what he was saying, but we made it work.  Sometimes I was lucky enough to have a random resident translate while we raced by but most of the time we just made do with his 2 words.  His energy reminded me of Nigel, it was hard to say goodbye. I sure miss my family. It feels good to know I will see them again in just a few hours.

Tuesday night we were invited to lead the weekly Bible study.  We teamed up with our co-team of Afrikaners and afterward we all split to pray and fellowship with our brothers and sisters staying at Hebron. As a leader it was incredible to see my team pursue relationships with the people at Hebron with very little prompting.  Everyone split up and just loved on these people.  We didn't have much time with these people but we made up for our lack of time with Christ's love and intentional conversations.

Wednesday we visited New Life Day Care and spent the entire morning with them.  It was located in one of the squatter camps just west of Potche. As we arrived we found out that there was miscommunication about our visit and they expected us to make breakfast for them?! We felt terrible and scrambled to make plans for a super special lunch for all 80 children in this tiny 2.5 room metal shack.  In the end it worked out even better and we were able to buy hot dogs for everyone! It was awesome.  We also spoke with the school master and she was telling us that parents pay 80R/month or about $12/month for school fees and many parents cannot afford that.  They struggle to buy enough food for the children.  So we went and bought 20kg of potatoes, 20kg of rice, and 5L of cooking oil.  2wks of supplies and it was less than $100.

Thursday we start for home...