Happy Thanksgiving from Mamelodi!

Unfortunately, we will not be posting a video today.  Our last two full days here in South Africa are jammed with activity and it is going to be tough to get a video together.  We do hope to post at least one more before we leave.  We will hopefully get this up tomorrow (Thanksgiving day).

In the meantime, all our teams are hard at work.  Our gardening teams are still out in the community planting vegetable gardens in people’s yards, and they planted a community garden outside the hospice.  Our kids team is still loving hundreds of kids every day with all kinds of activities, including A LOT of soccer.  Our construction team is working to finish up the driveway outside the hospice and is building shacks for people who have no shelter whatsoever.  Our medical team is seeing hundreds of patients a day.  Our shoe team is continuing to wash the feet of dozens of children in the area and giving them brand new shoes.  Our music team is in its second week of teaching music classes.  And, various members of our team are visiting over 25 needy families a day to deliver them food parcels, spend some time with them and pray with them.

Tomorrow, we will have our final day of work and finish the week off with our celebration/baptism service.  And tonight, we all went to the Mamelodi Sundowns soccer game (they tied 0-0).

That’s it.  Things seem crazy around here, but we think we are making a difference.  More soon.

UPDATE: video from Day 9

Hey all,

Things are going great here in Mamelodi.  Still having Internet problems, but we hope to have some video up in the next day or so.  In the meantime, here’s the scoop:

Yesterday morning (Saturday) we all headed to the Apartheid Museum, and then to Pilanesburg National Park for a game drive.  The game drives this year haven’t been as fruitful on the Big 5 as past years.  Not a lot of elephants this year.  This is most likely because of the hot weather.  Regardless, it’s still beautiful to see the South African landscape with the occasional zebra, rhino and giraffe thrown in.

This morning we all headed to Charity for their Sunday morning worship service.  We then got to do something the week 1 folks didn’t get to do…go to Charity’s branch churches.  Most Charity members do not have access to transportation, so there are seven branch churches, most meeting in tents, throughout the community.  It was awesome to worship, and dance, with out South African friends under a tent within walking distance of their homes.  By tomorrow we hope to post some video of today’s services.

Tonight, everyone is spending the night with their host families in Mamelodi.  Some are probably at barbeques, some at community picnics, and some just hanging with their hosts in their living rooms.  This is always the best night of the trip.

And tomorrow morning at 8 am we start our week 2 work.

Thanks for following our trip!  Everyone is great and we’re ready to get moving.

Goodbye week one, HELLO week two!

Finally got this one uploaded.  Week 2 footage to come later.

Still having problems with Internet access.  You’d think we’re on the other side of the world.  More videos to come soon.

In the meantime:  All week 1 people are on their way home (Yahoo!!), all week 2 people have arrived in South Africa safely (Yahoo!!), and two-weekers are getting some much needed sleep (YAHOOOOOOO!!!!).