Hello everyone! I hope you all are well :) I had an absolutely amazing time in South Africa and I wanted to share some of the pictures and stories with you! I got a new camera as a graduation gift from one of my best friends (and second dad) John.
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| The Nikon D3000! So exciting! |
I was just starting to get the hang of it on the trip so some of the pics didn't come out quite like I hoped. Hopefully they're good enough to share a little bit of the experience with you!
We had a lot of travel time ( our longest flight was about 13 hours) but I'm getting used to it at this point ;) We flew into Johannesburg and then had about a 3 1/2 hour drive to Badplaas. It was dark when we got there, so we weren't able to see our surroundings at all. We ate dinner, settled in and passed out! When we woke up in the morning, we were in awe. The mountains were breathtaking!
We ate breakfast and then spent a while exploring our surroundings before heading to the church!
I almost started crying when I saw the kiddos! I was so happy to see little African children again! The church has a daycare there during the week, so there certainly wasn't a shortage of them! :)
Our project for the first three days was construction. It was a lot of hard work, but I think Haiti prepared me pretty well! ;) The cool part was we got to see so much of our hard work pay off and we actually finished all of our projects! We did a lot of painting, door hanging, and plumbing work. I took to laying the pipes for the toilets- and surprisingly, I enjoyed it!
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| This was only part of it... there was another one that went across the whole yard. |
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| Inside the church! |
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In the evenings, we went back to this church to do "youth" meetings. In most other cultures youth means anywhere from teenagers to people who haven't gotten married yet. We did testimonies, skits, worship, games and preaching!
After our construction was finished, we began going into local schools. We would play games, do our skits, worship and spent quality time with the kiddos! It was awesome really getting to dive into the culture and see what life in South Africa is really like!
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| The girls beating up Christian for the Good Samaritan skit :p |
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| Where's Joshua?? |
In the evenings, we went to small farm churches to minster to the people there. It was a really cool experience for us all! We even visited a flower farm! That's my favorite kind- no animals!! :) We also did blanket ministry, which might have been my favorite part of the trip. Since South Africa is below the equator, it was winter while we were there (that's why everyone is wearing hats and jackets). It warms up pretty well during the day, but once the sun goes down, it's freezing! There are a lot of mountains around and a lot of wind! The houses that the people live in are not heated, or insulated for that matter. Some of the money raised for the trip went towards blessing the people in the area with blankets. We were able to go in their homes, hear their amazing stories and give them blankets.
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| Twin 1 |
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| This amazing lady took in all of these children! It's uncommon for people to take in kids that aren't related to them. The sweet woman also donated the land that the pastor's (behind the couch) house is being built on! |
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| Twin 2 |
The stories were so touching! The twin babies pictured above are orphans ( all of the children that received blankets were). We were also able to bless some sweet ladies who had lost there husbands and were in bad health (they live by themselves). It was so grounding to see how grateful these people were to receive the blankets! Something that we take for granite everyday, brings so much joy to them. In one of the houses, there were two orphan children. The little girl was about 11 and she stood up and told us how much it meant to her and how thankful she was for us. She was the sweetest girl, with the sweetest smile and she made me cry like a baby!
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| Josh and Jordan (center and left) had just come from the hot pool. Can you tell? |
For our downtime we got to do some pretty awesome stuff! The first weekend, we got to take a break and go to the hot springs. It was the craziest thing! There were three pools- one freezing, one about bathwater temp and one about 150 degrees! The point was to go back and forth between the freezing and the hot to relax your muscles- and boy did it work! It took us a bit to figure out the trick of standing the hot pool, but we got it :) We felt like absolute jell-o when we were done :)
The following Thursday, we got to go to Kruger! Definitely an experience I will NEVER forget!
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| Impala- the "walking McDonald's" - everything eats them and it looks like they have an 'M' on their butt. We ate them for dinner one night... |
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| Zebra! |
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| One legged bird that hangs out at the picnic site. |
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| Zazu! |
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| Zazu vs. Josh- they have no boundaries when it comes to stealing your food! |
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| Croc |
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| Monitor lizard |
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| Giraffe! It got so close we could almost touch it! |
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| Baboon! |
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| Elephants! |
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| These guys got pretty close too! |
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| Momma and baby! So cute when the babies hold the momma's tail! |
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| Rhino! |
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| Safari vehicle :) | | |
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Here are some more miscellaneous pics-
These were our friends from a South African church about an hour and a half away (Minus Mongy). They did all the ministry/ construction with us and it was such a blessing to have them! We were able to ask them a lot of questions about culture, etc. that we wouldn't have been comfortable asking otherwise. We got a much better understanding of things having them there! It was the hardest thing in the world to say goodbye to them after two weeks- they are family!
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| Sydwell |
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| Pumi |
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| Pumi and Pindelle |
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| The Rondawel that little Megan, Kinzie and I shared during the first week :) |
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| Feeding a puppy at the church! In South Africa, all the doggies were pretty fat and happy. It sure made the trip a lot easier on me! |
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| Fire right next to Prayer Mountain! It was a lot closer than it looks. They are very common. Some are controlled and some are arson. |
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| Megan and Mags with a fire in the background. |
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| The dining area :) |
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| Prayer Mountain |
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| Hiking Prayer Mountain on the last day. |
This trip was such an amazing experience. I can't express how blessed I feel to have had the privilege to be a part. The missions trips have effected so much of who I am today and I am so grateful for that. I wish words were enough to express the thanks I have to each and every person who has supported me. None of this would be possible without you and I hope you get to share in a little of the blessings to see the pics and stories :) As for the future, I have no idea! I start nursing school in August and I guess I will see where God leads me from there! ( Maybe medical missions?? ;) )
