sports day 2006.

this is a picture of carl, the kid i talked about in my newsletter. behind him is a kid we call popsie (i am sure i spelled that wrong but i don't know how to spell it right). these two boys stand at the street light by capricorn each afternoon after school and collect money from cars. they know almost everyone that goes by, and most of the time you just see them waving here and there to all their familiar people!
they are both in my grade 4 class at christian-david, the afrikaans-speaking school across from capricorn that i LOVE to pieces. it's kinda like i still get to hang out with the kids from muizenberg/capricorn b/c most of the children at CD are kids i met in capricorn when visiting "my boys" (not really mine, but you know what i mean).
anways, today was sports day for some of the schools living hope works in, and we got to take 25 boys from our grade 4 class at CD. it was so fun hanging out with them. i love these kids, and as you know i have this specific love of hanging out with trouble boys! these two sweet faces qualify as TROUBLE!


here is our full class just before they competed in the soccer tournament.


here i am with some of the kids. aren't our yellow shirts attractive! i'm uncomfortably sick in this photo but tried being awake and coherent most of the day.


one observation: our CD kids were the most violent, the most rowdy, the most vulgar, BUT also the most sweet, polite, thankful, entertaining, and talented group there. interesting huh? they had a blast!!!

lessons from the sickbed.

learned especially on a day like today. if you could see this african day, if you could feel the perfect temperature settling all around you, if you could smell the flowers starting to bloom as summer approaches, if you could hear the waves crashing in perfect harmony upon the shore, then you'd hate it for me that i'm sick today.
i was up most of the night because i couldn't breathe out of my nose. then i had stomach cramps. so i decided to stay awake and managed to lie on my bed for a good hour, from about 3-4 a.m., holding a glass of mango juice in my hand without spilling it. by about 7:50 am, when it was time to be up for work, i fell asleep. i tried going to work and didn't do so well so i came home and watched mona lisa smile for the 3rd time this week. i really like that movie because it reminds me of life in america, and i want to be like julia roberts in that movie.
now i'm at a coffee shop trying to think of something interesting to say. i have nothing.

i've been emotionally and spiritually depleted lately. i've had a few illnesses back to back and visited some doctors who gave me a plethora of diagnoses, none of which i like or agree with. but i am feeling better, sort of.
i think the past 7 months are catching up with me. they've been totally intense and amazing and life-changing and difficult. i now know what it means to truly see the pain and ache of this world and be able to do nothing to "change" it. i have a new definition of hope and faith and perseverance. i believe god is a mighty healer of those who are afflicted. i believe christ is the only source of rehabilitation for addicts, abuse victims, abandoned children, and lonely souls.

the past few years, my spiritual journey has been very "academic". i've read tons of books since i believe i really understood what it should mean to be a christian--back about 4 years ago on an airplane to san diego when i realized that christ was all i had and all i ever really needed. i joined bible studies, i met with wise counsel here and there, i tried to be intellectually stimulated by and stimulating for the company i kept. my brain resided on this strange plane of thought that couldn't shut down, couldn't stop asking questions, couldn't stop thinking most of the time. i wrote in journals like a mad woman. i enjoyed wholesome music and tried to be cool enough to talk about different bands and songs. i spent most of my time with christians because that was what i needed to do to stay sober and sane and on track.

well, africa changed all that through my exposure to roughly 15 children from the community of capricorn who had made the suburb of muizenberg their temporary home. i stopped reading. my journal was my best friend for a while, then started collecting dust. my ipod stayed off for months. my brain was too overwhelmed, too tired, to shocked to try and really compartmentalize or make sense of the things i was seeing and hearing. i became incredibly critical of worldly things, even my coffee addiction got tackled. you likely heard little from me.

this was like the field trip for all the things i'd studied and read and heard about God over the last 4 years. it was like i got sent out into the bush and had to learn how to kill wild game and start fires and differentiate between poisonous and safe plants and insects. ok, that's a little dramatic, but so am i, so it's cool. basically, my world got flipped on it's hindside and i loved every minute of it.

but, god is calling me to a new place, and i'm actually really intimidated by it. i've been avoiding it for a few months now, but i think these crazy illnesses are part of god's way of opening my eyes to my weakness, my vincibility (if that's a word). in one word, this next season would be called "prayer". yes, it's something i do, sometimes i enjoy it, most of the time i feel guilty if i don't do it "like i should" or "enough". i remember i used to fall asleep praying and thought that was a bad thing. now i see it as a beautiful way to go out for the day, talking to my father and my God.
but this new season is going to be more intense than the book study, more heart-wrenching than the field trip. it's actually going to require more commitment, more perseverance and more faith than i've ever known before.

i look at it this way. god has blessed me beyond measure with life experiences, with journeys from indonesia to burma to moldova to south africa. god has always provided for my every need in this international life i've accepted as my "calling". i've met with buddhist monks and been accepted as their sister and daughter and friend. i've chased orphans around moldova and been miraculously present for the birth of their own children at the tender age of 16. i've walked tsunami-ravaged beaches where body parts and house parts were strewn across the shoreline. i've seen children hit with candlesticks by their drunk mothers. i've felt godly anger as i stared into the eyes of a 17 year old boy who's been raped by a dirty old paedophile. i've fallen in love with the people of the world--from kheminda and uttamasara to galina and tatiana to neiltjie and poem.

this is what i call RESPONSIBILITY. because the most important thing, the biggest change any of these people need is the model of jesus christ living in their hearts, giving purpose to their terribly difficult and trying existence, breathing hope and love into their lonely and drug-addcited hearts.

and i've failed miserably at doing my job of praying for these people.

but being sick has shown me that prayer = time, and i don't set time aside for prayer. i'm an action-oriented gal, but prayer is the most active thing i could do. calling on the name of the most high god and petitioning for his attention on behalf of a wounded generation of boys and girls--that's action more than sitting with them while they come off of crystal meth or sob over their abusive stepfather...although these are important actions as well.

so, can you pray for me, that i'd be a pray-er in the real sense of the word. that my prayer life would become primary in my life? if i don't start acting on this call, i might be sick for a long time!!!

zebron.

so, i have a new job here in south africa. on monday, tuesday and thursdays i go to various schools around the muizenberg area and assist a lady named sherna who teaches life skills for living hope. our school load is quite diverse. mondays we go to christian davids, the school across from capricorn, an afrikaans speaking school where kids have holes in their pants, some have no shoes, and trouble-makers like my little friend carl who smokes ganga in the bathroom. he's 10.
tuesday we are in nice, white, rich noordhoek private teaching classes of no more than eight (our grade 4 has 5 students), each with their own pencial sharperner and colored pencil set. kids with names like ANGUS, JEAN ERIC, STORM, and OLIVER STAPLETON-COTTON.
thursday we are in 4 classes at muizenberg primary. this is a variety school of white, black, colored, and seems to be a breeding ground for some real rebels. one kid, dylan, has caught my attention.
it is at muizenberg primary where a boy named zebron is in one of our grade 4 classes. and it is here where you will see just how cool god is in putting me with a co-worker whose heart beats like my own.

monday after we left christian davids and the mob-scene on the playground that occurs everytime i leave (because all the kids are from capricorn and i do spend lots of my free time in that community...ok, almost all my free time but that's beside the point), we were driving to st. james. we passed zebron on the road, and sherna automatically pulled over.

what followed was the kind of drama i live for--problem solving and intervention for those in need, and racing up and down main road--but i'll get to that later.

zebron had packed a tote bag full of pots and kitchen utensils for his experiment that day at school. somewhere between home, the train, and school, zebron lost the tote bag. when we stopped to see why he was walking in the opposite direction of his school, with tears in his eyes he told us that if he didn't find the bag, his mom was going to beat him.

sherna put him on the home-bound train and called his mom to explain the situation. we proceeded to go to our next school. well, st. james was out for a holiday so we returned quickly to the train station to see if zebron was still there so we could take him home and talk with his mom. he wasn't there. the conductor told us he took the wrong train and was heading to the southern tip of the peninsula rather than up into the flats he lives in.

this is where the frantic driving begins. sherna was so worried about this kid. we made a plan and i jumped out of the moving car at the next station, got the train stopped, only to find zebron wasn't there. no one had seen the boy.

we are severly worried at this point. sherna drives back to kalk bay, thinking maybe he was somewhere at that station. she found him curled into a ball sitting on the floor of the station, sobbing into his hands.

we proceeded to take him home, and all this time i am thinking about how much i love sherna and god for putting us in the same space and time here in africa so i could still live a little while doing this school work!

jho! we get to zebron's home and found that the bag was there. no beating necessary. we thanked god for the found pots and pans and realized we have much more to offer than life skills...we have a responsiblity to zebron brought to the surface by a missing tote bag.

oh africa!

The Addiction Problem: Need Mercenaries Not Missionaries

Written by Bethesda’s Director and Pastoral Addictions Counsellor: Colin Garnett.
Events are true, names and places are changed.

A Mom and Dad turned up at Bethesda this week with a 24-year old drug addicted daughter.
Mom and Dad had tears in their eyes, the daughter had attitude in hers. She did not speak to them, she spoke at them. Dad, a decent hard working guy, had so far been unable to say no to his little girl, she was (still) the apple of his eye. Her tone toward him was aggressive and bullying. Mom sat frozen in her emotions, afraid of her child. At the end of his tether, Dad hopelessly shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in despair. “This is it, I have had enough”.
The daughter coldly hit back: “I can control my drinking and I am not going to stop smoking weed”.

Both parents had watery eyes.
I asked if I could make a few suggestions.
All three of them sat silent.

To the parents I said: “Get yourselves into a parent support group and prepare yourselves for the worst. This girl is going to get passed around the drug culture like a blow up doll and will eventually end up face down in a ditch somewhere. It may take a few years, but the addiction is going to kill her. The more money you allow her to manipulate out of you the quicker that death will be. Stop now. Cut her off completely, as of now. Change your cell phone numbers. Change the locks on your doors at home. Get a court order around her that if she approaches your door or the door of your parents, she gets arrested and sectioned for 12-months. Expect her to be selling herself.

The daughter started to rage. “You have only known me for five minutes how can you ...”
I cut her off. “Five minutes? I have been working with arrogance like yours for over a decade. Look at your self, be really honest for once. You milk these guys for money with lies day after day, and if ever they should dare say ‘no’ to you, you honestly feel hard done to because of a twisted sense of entitlement that you carry within you”.

She started to cry.

“As soon as you are challenged you turn the tears on to order and expect sympathy from the people you bully. You mix with society’s low-life because you have no confidence other than the false confidence that you get from the chemical and you get your identity from people who have no identity of their own. You look for acceptance through behaving unacceptably and will go to any length to fit in with a sub-culture of miss-fits! You do not have one friend in the world, and yet you tell the world to go away”.

The crying turned to sobs.

She looked up and said; “let me think about it”.
I asked “think about what”?
“About coming to Bethesda”.
“Forget it” I said. “Get back on the street and suffer for a few more years, and then when you can use the word please, I might consider allowing you in”.
She attempted the victim approach; “But you have insulted me and hurt my feelings”.
“I have only spoken the truth to you, I cannot insult you with by pointing out the truth about you, if it hurts, it is because you do not like the truth about what you have become”.

I then invited her to leave the premises.

In closing I said to her: “When you smoke your next weed tonight or take your next drink, try not to think of me and of what you are walking away from right now. Now go”.

They left.
I went home feeling sorry for the parents but confident that I had totally sabotaged her drug using. I knew she would ring.

First thing the next morning she rang.

“Hi, how are you”?

“I got drunk last night and smoked weed, but I could not stop thinking about everything you said to me. I have been awake all night, thinking it all over and over”.
“And .........?” I enquired.
“And I want what you have. Can I come and stay at Bethesda please”?
“Of course you can, see you later”.

This young lady is now settling in at Bethesda and she has already seen; ‘there is something different here”.

Sometimes it takes the mercenary approach of inflicting as much damage as possible as quickly as possible to save lives. Get in behind enemy lines and fight your way out with hostages. This young lady was prisoner of her addiction.

This morning when she woke up sober, her face had even changed.

I think we might see a future addictions counsellor with this one.