Hello Julle, dit is lekker hier in Kaapstad!

The Suspicious View

Bakin' Cookies

So I need your opinion. What would you do if armed forces (the South African Police) pulled up next to you and asked for identification, when all you were doing was taking a scenic walk? Yeah that was my problem too…

My friends and I decided one evening to walk to a scenic point, because some of the other students told us about a great view. Racism is a big problem here, especially when you have African Americans walking in a white neighborhood. They are immediately condemned as robbers or suspicious. Well, as we were walking through this neighborhood a family drove by and saw two of my friends, who are African American and gave them this look and kept on driving. My friend, Clever, then informed us that in less than five minutes we would have armed forces coming to see us. And like if he had timed it perfectly, five minutes later a policeman drove up and started asking us questions. The policeman was very nice and just asked us what we were doing. Once he realized that two of the “suspicious characters” were from America, he told us have a nice evening and kept on his way. It wasn’t a monumental situation or anything, but had my friends Clever and Sakhile been alone, they would have been asked for identification, been photographed, and asked to leave the neighborhood immediately.  Well, all in all we saw a beautiful view and met a nice cop, but it was just interesting to experience the distrust that is still extremely apparent here.

This past week has been a great one though! We are learning so much in our classes. The International Leadership team came in and shared about their lives and awesome work that the Lord is doing in different areas of the world, which was a special treat because the team only meets here every six years. However, the main focus in class was church movements and how to disciple. The way they plant churches here is quite different from how American churches work. In America, we have the pastor and the people come and here him speak, however here they encourage everyone to “pastor” his own church. They are called Discovery Bible Studies or DBS, they are like a small group. The process goes that one-person disciples 6-15 other people and then those people are sent out to disciple others. Many people have come to know Christ and they told us about one movement that took place in China, where two young girls started a movement and in 7 years nearly 2 million people came to Christ. I had never thought of church this way, but throughout the world this type of church planting is quite popular.

We started our simple church this week and headed to Ocean View for our first official outreach. The rest of the two months I am in Capetown, Ocean View will be the area I go and spend time in. It is so beautiful there. The children are so sweet and the people are friendly and open to talk. I met a lot of people this past visit and surprisingly, I made some connections through music. The people here love dancing and music, which is quite exciting for me. One of my other group members are hoping to start an after school dance program for all the kids. Drugs is a big issue here and we are hoping to provide an after school activity that will distract them from the kids selling drugs and at the same time sharing Christ. Tomorrow we will head back there and hopefully will get to talk to some of the elders in the Rastafarian community. Hopefully God will open some doors there for us. This week has been good and I am learning so much, God is definitely stretching me, but its great!

To finish out the week, we walked about 7 miles to visit a different beach, Nooerdhoek, and we stopped and ate at this amazing little café in Farm Village. The food is exquisite here, so fresh and delicious! Speaking about food, I tried Pop for the first time. Pop is made out of corn maize and is a staple food for many of the local’s diets. It doesn’t take like much but its pretty good with different seasonings. After our long walk, we came back to Africa House then got changed and headed to the main part of Capetown to hike up Table Mountain. It was a beautiful hike. Once we reached the top we watched the sunset and then the full moon rise over the city. It was beautiful! This next week is going to be a busy one, but again fun! I can’t wait to see what the Lord shows us this week!