African Paradis

As the title suggests I am updating for the sake of an update. It has been a while and in the words of my mother I must remind people that I am still alive. Although things seem busy around here there does not seem like there is as much to report. Since the end of the excitement of Olympian Games Day we have been working nearly non-stop on things for summer camp. I am kind sorta in charge of the games and other program aspects. The theme for Kids Camp is a wild west theme with the title "Spur One Another to Love" I am especially excited about this because I worked at the Word of Life Ranch and Ranger Camp for 2 summers and I love it there and am excited to try to bring the wild west to South Africa. As for teen camp the theme is game show with the title "I Survived a Word of Life Game Show" this was an idea from my director John and it will certainly be a new experience for me that I am excited to try out. Honestly language learning has been slow, I try to add ...

Sorry that there have not been many updates here recently but really we just have been doing some typical semi boring office work and I am trucking away at my last term of study. However there was one spectacular day called " OLYMPIAN GAMES DAY"  which basically was a solid day of setting up and running carnival style games for kids in primary school. It was a ton of fun but unfortunately there are not currently any pictures out from it. The kids ran from station to station filling up their score cards and at the end of the day the Gospel was given and the kids who had filled out their cards the most won prizes. However as there were many leaders there who could not play the games for prizes as they would easily dominate we had a leaders drawing where they could win some study Bibles, a free week of camp to give away to their kids or to cut my hair whatever way they wanted. I think it turned out quite nice, however I fixed it later due my limited self respect.

First in line on the first day at the new KFC

Although there have not been any recent camps run by Word of Life things have been pretty exciting around here. The local Bible College has been on holiday for 2 weeks so it has seemed empty at times here. Usually for dinner there are 14+ people and at times there was just 5 this past week! Yet we still pressed on with our work as we have an upcoming "Olympian Games Day" (an event where kids come and play carnival style games all day) which requires many phone calls and church visits. I have just now decided to compile a list of rules for people to follow while in a foreign land which I will interject at times which currently relates to the Olympian Games Day Rule #1: When traveling always have a native with you Clarification-Native as in one who is native to the country, not Native Americans Reason-Even if you think you know where you are going....you don't. Even if the native has never been there, they can get there better than you. Story: While on one of thes...

Because it was such a long time ago the details on the trip to Mozambique are a bit foggy. So especially for your reading pleasure i will RACK my brain to remember so that everyone can know about this trip. Mozambique was probably my favorite camp that I have had thus far into South Africa(sorry to all the other camps) and it also ranks high on my hypothetical list of favorite weeks of camp of all time. To start off our location was LITERALLY on the ocean. Sometimes you are on vacation and they say that the hotel is on the ocean and after driving for 30 min in heavy traffic you can finally see it. That my friend is not on the ocean. Those hotel people need to be convicted of their lying problem. When I slept at night I fell asleep HEARING the ocean, if I took a look out of my cabin window I could SEE the ocean, in under 100 steps I would be IN the ocean. That my friend is ON the ocean. On the Ocean Me teaching We arrived a day early and were able to have a relaxing time b...

As the title implies this is my latest newsletter. It is probably 3 weeks old by now though...but here it is anyways! Click on the image to make it bigger so you can read the itsy bitsy print

Lord willing in December I will be officially done with online classes! I am very excited about this and if you talk to me between now and then I will probably remind you of the fact that in December I will be done! Right now I am taking my 3rd Math class (3 math classes for a Bible major ?!?!??!), my 2nd English class, and a Creationism class. And starting October 24 I will begin a Bible class. These classes have a larger work load then most of the other classes that I have taken in the past and as you may have read in the past post I am working on my time management. If you could keep me and my classes in prayer that would be SUPER!

Well its been a long long time since I have posted on this here blog. And yes I realize how cliche this is for me to start off a blog post this way. The reason I suppose as to why I have not been posting is because I spend wayyy too much time on the computer and I am frankly quite sick of it. However I should not allow my precious blog to suffer on account of my laziness and fear of the machine. Nevertheless here is the grand reopening of the famous African Paradis. Lately I have been challenged immensely through God's Word and talking with friends. I realized that I was fearing man more than God, that I don't trust God enough and that I am awful at loving others. I am still working on these things but I would like to say that I have made some progress these past weeks. I have also been working on my time management as my responsibilities have been increasing, and I am still taking online classes. I discovered that if i don't have fun I will go crazy and if I don't...

The last week or so of June I was able to go to the South Coast of South Africa (basically Antarctica :) ) and help put on a Holiday Bible Club (Vacation Bible School) with a church in a township in KwaZulu-Natal. We were about 5 minutes away from the Indian Ocean and we throughly enjoyed our time there. Our first few days we had some training classes on Personal Evangelism and on sharing your testimony. We had some people with us who had not been on mission trips before and even more who had not been on a trip to the DEEP Zulu region of South Africa. It was important to make sure that we were educated on the culture and customs of the region. This is the Backyard of the Church On Monday we held our first day of HBC. We were expecting about 70 kids and before we could even pull into the church there was over 100 kids waiting for us! While we were setting up more and more kids showed up and by the time our meeting started we had 233 kids! Praise God! I helped lead singing (YIKES)...

This past week I had the privilege of going to ZImbabwe for a missions trip. There is a particular church in Zimbabwe that did not have a building to meet in. So a group of people from Sandton Bible Church and Word of Life went up on Tuesday in order to put up a large tent where the people could meet. There was also a second group that left Thursday in order to put on a drama. Warp Speed I was part of the group that left on Thursday in order to preform the drama "Born Again to a Living Hope"    It is about 16 hours to the capital city of Harare where we were headed. On the first day we traveled for 10 hours total in the car. And we also waited an additional 5 hours waiting to cross the border. The reason it too so long to cross the border was because our man Charles was going to help us get across the border with ease. However he seemed to think that it was his job to make it more difficult for us.  About an hour after we crossed the border we stopped for the...

Here is the latest top of the line information about Kyle and South Africa! Click on the picture to make it bigger.

As the title implies this past weekend I was at CAMP! This camp was different from most camps that I have worked with because this time there was not just kids at camp, it was the whole family. Also because the parents were there instead of counseling the kids I was their Bible teacher/co-game runner with Desire. It was also a more relaxed atmosphere than what I was used to but it was a very good time. Right before the adults preacher was about to start all of the kids were dismissed. We then had about 45 minutes to tell them a Bible story and play some games with them. The kids were from ages 2-12 so it was challenging to find games that they all could play and give lessons that they all could understand. We eventually broke them up into tow groups and with the help of CJ and Chae we were able to all have a fun time.  View from near the top Warning sign at the trail head View right before we went down Since coming to Africa one thing that I have missed dearly is ...

Things have been getting into a bit of a routine here in South Africa. School is going on, so the kids are in school and therefore there is no camp right now. But we do not sit around and cry in South Africa when there is no camp. Instead we get other things done! During these past few weeks I have been working in the office of Brad Hawkins -a missionary here for the past 9 years- filling various roles. Currently another missionary Mike VanBruggen and his family are back in the US for furlough so John Cottier and I have been doing some of the things he usually does. I would go into great detail about all the things that I do on a day to day basis but that would be a very long post and no one would actually read it except for my Mom. So here is a nice list to skim through. 1. Call Churches to check up on clubs and things like that 2. Design newsletters/posters/flyers/any thing else made of paper for any upcoming event 3. Be a Olympian club leader on Fridays 4. Be a Teen club leader...

Here lies my newest new newsletter, this one is especially special because it is the VERY FIRST one that I have created in Africa. It has a lot of info in it and if you would like more details or pics check out my Facebook page or contact me. Also there are more detailed descriptions in previous blog posts. Click on the image to make it bigger!

This week for one reason or another there was no internet at our home in South Africa. I was able to get all of my school work done by Tuesday so praise God I did not fall behind on my studies. However when there is no internet you start doing useful things instead of wasting your time on the internet. I was able to focus on learning Portuguese and I learned quite a bit done this week. I was also able to help my friend and roommate Thobile with his Bible classes and with his English. We also spent more time getting to know each other instead of mindlessly staring at screens. However these days communication is centered around the internet. It is difficult to talk to people internationally with out it. Needless to say the internet is back on, I am back to work at my school and I can once again interact with people half the planet away.

This past week myself and 14 other individuals were privileged to travel to the provence of Free State and the City of Welkom (pronounced Velcome). While we were there our main goals were to tell people about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and have them make a connection with the church we were mostly working with Thabong Baptist. In the area there was many churches unfortunately most of them do not preach from the Bible. Instead they make up doctrine and basically create a cult. Thabong Baptist was the only church to our knowledge in the area that preached from the Word of God.  We arrived on Saturday and spent most of the day unloading and getting to know the people and the kids at the orphanage where we were staying. We had spent most of the morning and afternoon traveling so we just relaxed on Saturday Here is our group and most of the kids from the orphanage. Also click on any of the photos to enlarge Sunday we went to Thabong Baptist for the morning service and got to know ...