African Paradis

In April we drove many hours south of Johannesburg to visit the gorgeous Drakensberg mountains. Translated into English from Afrikaans meaning "dragon mountains" were formerly occupied by a swarm of dragons until the late 14th century when colonists drove them away using ivory swords. It seemed to us to be a good idea to go hike there and to recover some dragon fossils. Our group just before we began the hike As we stopped to replenish our supplies (aka get petrol(aka gasoline)) we saw a Ford GT40, which so happens to be my fathers favorite car. The pictures basically tell the story from here. Smooth drive for a while Our destination Happy little cloud Slippery and steep Super safe/fun/scary chain ladders The top was wide and flat Over a mile straight down PS- We did not find any dragons

Shortly after we returned from the South Coast trip we reloaded up the vans this time with 34 people and made ready to depart for Durban which is a city on the East coast of South Africa (about 6 hrs away from Johannesburg where I live) We were going there to help run 2 separate Holiday Bible Clubs (HBC) aka Vacation Bible School (VBS) as well as teach the youth of those churches the importance of evangelism and reading the Bible everyday. We spent the first night at a local church were we helped with the youth group and had a huge bonfire were students shared about how previous SMASH trips had impacted their lives. This was after the fire had been burning for quite a while My team went to a Zulu speaking church called Egukanyeni and we had nearly 200 kids each day of HBC. I worked with one of the youths from the church at running the games. In the afternoons we played soccer for a bit then had training sessions with them to teach them how to study God's Word and how imp

South Africa has a holiday called "Youth Day" and a pastor on the southern coast of South Africa (about 9hrs from my residence) decided to run a camp during this long weekend and needed our help. We happily agreed and had a van of 12 people trekking across the highways towards the south coast. The challenging part of this trip for me was that we went to a rural area where English is not as widely spoken. Also we were ministering to a area where camp mean many meetings and no games. Whereas camp means to WOL people many games. Spin your head on the bat relay race Many in South Africa tell me that flannel is for wearing to bed; not for wearing in public. Yet when they are cold the are willing to compromise!  So inorder to not scare anyone away we only played about 2 hours worth of games (plus a soccer tournament), had many meetings, and brought along quite a few Zulu speakers. The woman in the center insisted that she was my mom.  We were expecting peo

One of the best and worst things about being a missionary intern (at least in South Africa) is the waves. Now I am not speaking about literal waves in the ocean but rather the waves of work and ministry. Some weeks we are literally gone everyday from 6am-3:30pm and have preparations for the next days after that. Other weeks we are on trips and are actually never home because we are  teaching screaming children, playing soccer in ankle deep muddy clay, sitting in a van for 9 hours, or swatting mosquitoes that could be carrying malaria .  Those are the best times. Other weeks we sometimes do work in the office, and spend time yearning for something more exciting to do. Those days/weeks make me want to pull out my eyelashes. And yet this time is necessary as we rest from the intense trips and take care of the administrative side of things as well as assist in the local church ministries that we have. We had about a month of this peaceful " rest" before the storm of

This May we had our 2nd annual Oasis Camp for young adults. Often churches plan many events for kids, teens and families but neglect the young adult age group. So last year we had our first camp for them and it was a hit. The whole group We wanted to make a camp that appealed to young adults instead of teens so rather than pack the the schedule full of games and meetings we had lots of free time and a few loosely organized activities. On a hill for a Quiet Time hike   Soccer The fellowship and chill time was great. We look forward to this September when we will have another young adults camp where we will be tent camping!