Aquarium

These last few weeks have been busy planning/training/preparing for world cup ministry. During the 8 weeks of world cup, our team will be leading outreaches into 10 different communities in and around Cape Town and all up and down the country of South Africa. We are partnering with local churches and ministry teams from all around the world. We will reach out to the homeless, do evangelism on the streets of the city, serve in soup kitchens, run soccer clinics and tournaments, do children’s ministry programs and youth discipleship sessions. We will be doing outreach to prostitutes and screening soccer games on big screens in townships. We are excited to see what God does!

Before I start focusing in on world cup happenings, I wanted to share a quick story of a day I spent with Gloria, one of the women I have been visiting in Imizamo Yethu, a local township. Gloria lives in a compassion house for people who have disabilities and AIDS. She has a problem with walking and gets around using crutches. Gloria has had a crazy past and doesn’t have any contact with her family, who live in the rural north of South Africa. She had a relationship once, and a baby, but the child died at a young age because he didn’t have anything to eat. I always hear statistics of the thousands of children that die every day because they have no food, but it is a completely different feeling to look a mother of one of those children in the eye and hear her story. Every week, I love to come into Gloria’s room and look at the crafts she makes and clothing she knits in an effort to support herself. Her smile is contagious and I never see it leave her face.

On one of our days off, a group of us decided we would take Gloria to see the aquarium in Cape Town city. In all her years of living in the township, Gloria had never been to the city, and we were excited to show her around. We picked her up at the taxi stop and took a long, crowded ride to the waterfront. It was so cool to wheel Gloria around the aquarium and watch her eyes light up as she saw all the beautiful kinds of exotic fish and penguins and sharks. I felt like we could have spent days there and never run out of things to marvel over. Gloria was so excited and amazed at every little creature in every little exhibit. It reminded me of how God’s heart beats to take his people out of the broken worlds they live in and show them His glory, grace and everything excellent and amazing about himself—that’s the gospel—bringing people into a relationship with Him. After the aquarium, we stopped by a craft market, which Gloria went crazy over, and spent the rest of the evening scrambling around the city looking for a taxi that would take us home. Gloria told me that night that it was a day she will never forget, and she will always tell people her stories of spending the day with a bunch of crazy Americans in Cape Town.

I’ll try to keep the updates coming, but I’m gonna be on the road quite a bit. Please pray for the ministry we will be doing these next few weeks. We’re gonna be crazy busy and it’s a little overwhelming. But I know how excited God is to advance His kingdom during this time and I feel so humbled and privileged to be along for the ride and chosen to serve in South Africa “for such a time as this”.