This is a journal I wrote while I was on a week long mission trip in South Africa.
You'll read stories about my adventure to South Africa, interactions with the locals, the amazing food, and most importantly how God used that week to transform me, t...
Ephesians 2:10: (For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.)
My body is gradually adjusting to the seven-hour time change. As I sit here and write this, my thoughts go to my family and church family back home, which their day is over while mine is just starting which is crazy to think of.
Morning began with Ryan & I waking up to our neighbors who are care takers of the campsite, playing Michael W. Smith and she was jamming out with the volume cranked all the way up to eleven. I spend a few hours after breakfast walking around the Maranatha Camp Compound snapping a few pictures of the beautiful architecture and plants found around the camp. During my walk, I went to the edge of the cliff on the north side of the compound and unlike the view the previous morning through our bedroom window; I was treated of a view of the city all throughout the valley it rested in and it is staggering. On my way back, I noticed a guard station on the opposite side of the street and a sign was mounted on the building with big bold letters saying, “armed quick response team” and the seriousness of security became even more real. In America we feel so safe and secure, which is not the case here.
As we made our way through Johannesburg, the neighborhoods drastically changed from well to do gated communities to more unestablished settlements. Lean-to’s with plywood walls and corrugated tin roofs. On one intersection on a main highway we saw a black man kneeling on the median. Ruth pulled up next to him, rolled down her window and asked,
“How are you doing?
“Are you feeling better?”
“How is your leg?”
He faintly replied, “Yes, much better, thank you!”
And he followed answering with bowing his chest to the pavement. After hearing this exchange I was going to ask Ruth what this man had gone through, but before I could, Ruth turned back to us and said,
“Someone ran him over with their car and just left him on the road.”
I looked at this man and his gaze met mine and my heart ached for him. What possesses a human to do that to another human? It baffles me.
We continued on our way out of Johannesburg and on the freeway towards Soweto. As drove deeper into Soweto we passed by a football stadium on the outskirts of the township, and just down the street from it unestablished settlements populated the horizon. It’s unreal to see such great wealth and huge buildings then a bit farther down the road see poverty and unrest. But, such is Africa.
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