Africa - Day Five

The Lord reigns, let the nations tremble;

He sits enthroned between the cherubim, let the earth shake.
Great is the Lord in Zion; He is exalted over all the nations.
Let them praise your great and awesome name — He is holy.

Psalm 99:1-3

Early morning this morning - we pulled away from Camp Eden around 6:30 a.m. I think. I was in such a daze I really couldn't tell you what time it was.

We swung by the Ext. 23 church to pick the up the J-Life guys and Sifiso was on top of the jungle gym that Joey and Randy just completed yesterday, praising Jesus . . . apparently oblivious to the fact that it was the crack of dawn and about 35 degrees outside. In the face of that kind of love and devotion I wonder why mine is so small.

We returned to the schools this morning, and they were fascinating once again. The only time we could get them to be quiet today was when I shared Joey's story. I never knew he would ever get to the place that he was open enough to share about his life, let alone that it would travel all the way to Africa and impact so many here.

We made "Power Bands" - the bracelets made of leather and colored beads that tell what we called the Wordless Story when I was little - with the small children today. Black stands for sin. Red is the blood of Christ. White is for our clean hearts. Blue is for baptism. Green is for growing in our relationship with Christ through reading our Bibles and praying. Yellow is for the streets of gold we will walk on when we get to Heaven.

The process was chaos, but it was wonderful all at the same time. The littlest kids don't understand English very well as most speak Zulu or Sutu instead. So they don't understand us and couldnt follow the meanings behind the beads. But they took home small slips of papers that explain it all. Most of the siblings and parents are fluent in English so we were excited about how many would be reaced by these small projects.

I had brought our MP3 player for this trip full of Christian music from home. When they found out that I had toby Mac, they asked if I would bring it to the church and let them play it for the group. It's cool that we could share the music and dancing this week. That's definitely a first for me on a mission trip.

During the service tonight, though, I felt impressed to give the MP3 player to Thabo which I'm sure will be shared with the rest of the team. It's crazy how appreciative they are for little things. I'm sure they'll get a lot more use out of it than we do. (I'm pretty sure it sat in a drawer for 11 out of the last 12 months.)

I feel such a bond with Thabo as does Joey. It's interesting how that works. All of the people we have worked with here have been great, yet you find yourself really drawn to some more than others. I don't really have an explanation for that.

Thabo has meshed so well with both of us that we all decided he and Joey must be long lost brothers! I hope one day Thabo (or we) can find the money for him to come visit America. I would love for him to stay with us and experience our culture the way we've experienced his. Even better, I would love to bless him in any way possible in return for the incredible blessing he has been to us this week.

Tonight during our debrief time before bed, the girls got weepy about leaving all the people they had bonded with here. I shared with them that it's my prayer that we will come back to

Africa one day to see them, or I would be thrilled if some of them were able to come to America. But if not, we will see them again. I can't wait to find out who they married, if they had kids, and what they ultimately did with their lives.

I look forward to the day when we will all see each other again at HOME.