Wow, it’s been ages since I updated everyone about what’s been happening. Well, at least it feels like ages. Last you heard, we were about to mover to a tribal zulu village. Getting there was a lesson in African time!! African time goes a little bit like this: time?? what time?? we’ll get there when we’re ready! Everything in South Africa happens “just now” which basically means anything from in 5 minutes to 5 hours to 5 days to 5 years!! At first we thought we were supposed to leave on Tuesday morning, then we found out that we were actually leaving Wednesday morning! No biggie, it just meant we got to spend another day with the cool Umhlunga crew. So Wednesday morning dawned and we got up early to make sure that we were ready when the guy (Richie) came to pick us up at 9am. We found out at about 1pm that his car was broken and had to go in to be fixed. Oh well, we just hung out again with the young adults group we’d gotten to know so well and slept another night in Umhlunga. Richie said that his car would be ready at 11 or 12pm on Thursday….what time did we end up leaving?? 4pm on Thursday afternoon!!! Lol…love that African time.

So after a few days of sitting around restoring our energy ready for the coming week, we finally headed off to Wangu. Wangu is a village about an hours drive north of Durban (we actually stayed about a 10 minute drive away in a camp). There’s about 1000 people living in the village, but it’s really spread out so we still had to drive between the houses. We worked with a group called Impendulo (Zulu for the answer) which is run by a young guy called Richie. About 2 years ago, Richie was living in Johannesburg and felt called to work with a Zulu community in Durban, but other than that he had no idea what he was supposed to do. So he flew to Durban, hired a car and drove north. Long story short, he picked up a hitch hiker who was from this village and now he’s been working there for 18 months! He’s set up an awesome ministry using locals as his team and it was such a joy to work with him. This is what our program looked like:

Friday: we spent the morning and half the afternoon making a vegetable garden from scratch for one of the families. This was really really hard work, but so rewarding. And we know that it’s going to provide food for the family as well as for some of the AIDS orphans in the village. (One of Richie’s requirements for building a garden for a family is that they give a certain percentage of the vegetables to village orphans.) In the evening we performed a drama at the local store for about 10 men. That night we all stayed in the village with different families. An unforgettable experience!!

Saturday: Bible study with the Impendulo team. Then a performance by one of the dance groups (there are 2 in the village, one traditional and one more modern). Then kids club in the afternoon where we performed our dramas for 100 kids and played insane games with them all.

Sunday: church at the local Salvation Army church. I could listen to Zulu singing all day long! Then we played soccer with the kids on the local ‘oval’ (read: patch of grassy land without any trees). Well, the boys played soccer…I had my hair braided, learnt Zulu words and got told that I was a Zulu girl now.

Monday: 2 hours of awesome intercession for the village. Then we visited a few families around the village to pray through their houses and tell them about Jesus. In the afternoon we had kids club again. We watched the kids perform Zulu dances for us as well as learning them and being laughed at when we tried to do it. Then we had the awesome opportunity to share from our hearts with separate girls and boys groups. The kids need so much truth spoken into their lives and it was great to be able to be a part of that.

Tuesday: we packed up all our stuff and headed back to Durban.

It was totally a like changing week. I learnt so much about myself and about God’s heart for the world. There are so many children in the village who are ophans of AIDS or whose parents can’t afford to take care of them. We met one grandma (in Zulu they’re called Gogos) who was looking after her 10 grandchildren because the parents have either passed away or their off trying to find work. Richie was telling us that children who are ophans and live with relatives are usually treated really badly. He’s trying really hard to make a difference in these kids lives and he has so much love for them and they treat him like their father. There was one lady who impacted my life a lot. Her name was Mildred, but she’s basically the top Gogo in the village so we all called her Gogo. We bonded very quickly and Richie said she always welcomes visitors, but he’s never seen her bond with anyone as quickly as me and her did. Her ability to speak English well helped a lot. She has so much passion for God, life and the children of the village and she’s completely hilarious. So many times she had our team in fits of laughter because of things she said. Me and her had so many conversations about her desire to change her community. The kids really look up to her and respect her and she has so much influence on their lives. I’ll never forget her and I really hope that God will allow me and her to meet up again one day. When I told her that I wanted to bring her back to Australia, she told me that she couldn’t leave Wangu because then there’d be no one to look after the orphans. Even though she lives in a house with no electricity or running water and she’s getting older, she’s wants more than anything to stay right where she is so that she can change her world for God.

As of Wednesday last week we’re in Cape Town for the next 5 weeks. We’re staying on the YWAM base (which means 24 hour internet…yay) and they’ve planned a full schedule for us doing lots of prison ministry and working with a Xhosa (the west coast version of Zulu) township about 20 minutes drive away. We went to their youth group on Friday night and then their church service on Sunday morning. It’ll be good to be involved with the same people for 5 weeks and be able to build relationships and be able to really input into their lives.

Well, this email is long enough and I should head off to bed soon coz I’ve had a migraine for over 24 hour now and I’d love to be rid of it!! That’s something that’s been happening a bit here and I’m not sure why. I had a really bad one the night we stayed in the village, to the point where I was stuck in bed. I’d appreciate your prayers for it coz they stop me from being able to do ministry and stuff. I’ll probably go to the doctor tomorrow and see what they say.