Hello everyone! Okay, so I have a HUGE Zulu final this week that I need to study for, but I had to post about my day today at Ethembeni. Well, let me start with yesterday:
We went to Ethembeni yesterday and the whole day was dedicated to Easter. In the morning, we made little bags of candy to hand out to the kids, which, if you’ve ever been around kids for more than 5 seconds, you’d know they loved it. Most of them had eaten the entire bag within the hour. Then in the afternoon, we did an Easter egg scavenger hunt all around Mpophomeni! It was so fun, and such a joy to see how excited the kids were about it. Oh, and did I mention that all day Monday, we had a group of about 15 Canadian volunteers come? :) It was nice that they wanted to help, but it kind of threw off the entire vibe of our day there. I don’t know…maybe I’m just being territorial of those precious kids but I was glad they were only there for a day. ;)
And today! God is so good. We spent the morning working in the garden, which for me meant pulling weeds for about an hour and a half. Then I got to take a break and with Claire into town to buy gloves for the boys, who were doing the harder labor. I loved this so much because I got an hour to just talk to Claire. I heard about her job, how she feels about us as volunteers, her perspective on the problems in Mpophomeni…it was just great being able to talk to her one on one. I really, really enjoyed it. I’m so incredibly thankful for her and the role she plays in our ministry there. God is going to take that woman to amazing places and use her as a mighty vessel for His name. And I feel so honored to have gotten to spend this month getting to know her.
When we came back, we spent a few hours with the kids again, taking pictures with them all as we anticipate our last day there. And then!! (This is the exciting part). Our group put together this very simple, short skit presenting the Gospel to the kids. One girl read it while the rest of us acted it out. It took about 5 minutes and at the end, we told the kids that we would all be in the back room if they wanted to ask questions. Honestly, I was not expecting any of the kids to show up. Or maybe one or two would. But God blew my mind when about 15 kids, ages 13-17, walked in with questions. Such a blessing! Another amazing blessing is one of the mentors on staff, Hlaka, who translated for us for nearly two hours. He is AMAZING at what he does, and as one girl pointed on our team pointed out, having him help us answer the questions gives him the ability to become the kids “go-to” if they have questions in the future.
And these kids asked incredible questions. Because of the language barrier, we don’t often get to have deep conversations with them so it was wonderful to hear their thoughts. They asked so many great questions: How was God up in heaven and on earth as Jesus? How did he raise himself from the dead? What does it mean that created us? How did he do it? If people don’t obey God, what happens? It was so encouraging to see that this simple skit could spark all these questions, and many of the questions you could tell were based off of things they had already learned so it was awesome to know that some of these kids are going to church and have heard the message of the Gospel before.
Towards the end of the conversation, we started talking about sin and how that causes separation from God. They began to ask about specific sin, premarital sex in particular. It’s a very prominent and common thing for them so it was very hard to grasp that it was a sin. It took a few minutes to explain that having a baby isn’t a sin; it’s the act of having sex. They kept talking about “the sinful baby” which was sad to me. One of the last questions a teenage boy asked was really heart breaking to me. We were explaining that sex inside of marriage is great, but outside of marriage is going against God’s will and this boy asked “What if there’s a really beautiful girl who has a lot of money and cars, and she wants to have sex with me? Is that okay?” He believed that if this girl had all those things, then somehow it would make it not a sin anymore. It was just so sad to me how skewed their beliefs are on this. They have been raised in such a different environment and taught so many wrong things. BUT! The great news is that they all want to do this again tomorrow! So we’re setting aside an hour or two tomorrow to sit with these teenagers and talk more about this. Just the fact that they wanted to continue discussing it was so encouraging and humbling. God completely ordained that whole conversation and it was so cool!!! I was so incredibly thankful.
But anyways, the reason I wanted to post about this tonight is to ask you to PLEASE pray for our time tomorrow!! First, for that conversation. Just that their hearts and minds would be open to what we have to say, and that the things we say would be the Lord’s words and not our own. And also, tomorrow is our last day at Ethembeni and I have no idea how hard or emotional it will be. But please pray that above all else, these people would know we love them. We are buying some pizzas and a bunch of snacks to celebrate with them, and to allow the staff a break from cooking lunch for 50+ kids, and we hope that it somehow conveys how much we love them and how precious they are to us. So please pray for that! Thank you so, so much!
With love from South Africa,
Alex
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