Happy Birthday Adam...

You don't usually get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity more than a couple times.
Well, we got invited to be special guests of the Xhosa royal family at a cultural dinner this last weekend.
It was interesting, we had dinner and listened to a crazy preacher.

This preacher started the Twelve Apostles Church in Christ and claims that he is from a line of Apostles that has been passed down (secretly until the 1800s) since Peter. So he claims to be the Chief Apostle and has some pretty radical views- along with 3.1 million followers in Africa.

Anyway, one of his beliefs is that there were two different kinds of people.
He started by saying that Adam's birthday was October 26th, 4004 BC. But he said that science proves that people existed millions of years before that, so that there must have been people before that.
His biblical proof was this:
In John, there was Light and there was the one before the Light, Right?
He said that the other meaning of this besides being Jesus and John the baptist is that it also dealt with creation in that there was Light when God made the sun, but there was light before that, so he related that to humans and said that the Light was Adam and those before the light were the people who existed millions of years before.

He was hard to follow, but that's what he said.

He also had some other really weird points.

I don't understand why people listen to him.

Anyway, the next day we got to see the Xhosa king, which was pretty cool. He had his police escort and his entourage. Neat stuff.

Overall, it was actually pretty disappointing. I was expecting ornate ceremonies and tribal coolness. It was pretty "western" and lame.

But who gets to say that they were guests of a royal family?

Anyway, thought I'd share that.

Brittney's parents will be here for Christmas and they're bringing a bunch of things from the States, so It'll be fun.

Merry Christmas, everyone.
Love ya.

Finally...

Well, I'm finally updating this thing.
I've been wanting to, but I didn't know what to write about; so I'll start with last week.

Liz and I, through a series of events, ended up at a catholic care center right next to where we do our soup kitchen (which I haven't helped with in a while). At first I had other things on my mind and I kind of wanted to do what I came for and leave, but we ended up on a tour of the facilities and I have to say that I was very impressed.

Background:
A catholic nun from Ireland, Sister Ethel, was sent here about 20 years ago to an informal settlement inside Port Elizabeth called Missionvale. It has around 100,000 people living there and about 90 percent of them are unemployed and 70 percent are living with AIDS. Sister Ethel came here and she was offered a tree to use, and started teaching and checking the kids there.

Um, Foreground?:
Now they give families a certain amount of soup ingredients and bread per week and give them clothing once a year out of an enormous clothing warehouse that they have. They have a clinic that treat about 200 people a day and a small school.
Every day they run a day care kind-of-thing from ages 1 to 18ish, which started at 30 kids at the beginning of this year and now they have about 600 kids there everyday. They feed them lunch and just give them a safe place to play and have fun because these kids, for various reasons, aren't in school (obviously 1yr olds aren't in school anyway).

So hopefully I'll be going back there to help out. I made some friends and got some numbers. Oh, and I found out that Mother Teresa and the queen of England have both visited the care center. Pretty cool, maybe I'll meet both of them.

It amazes me what some people can eat, and others can't.
And it annoys me when practically everyone can eat something, but I can't.

Last night we were invited to eat at Uncle Ivan's (who reminds me of a mob boss leader and I want to make a movie with him) house and while I was walking up to his front door I knew I was in trouble.

I smelled fish.
Ivan had made fish curry.

Now, I hear some fish are nice to eat, but I hate the smell, texture, and taste of fish. And these fish, which I found out later were "just sardines," were not the "nice to eat" fish. I can usually deal with the smell of fish, unless I'm full.
I managed to only dish out the potatoes from the curry into my rice and I was pretty proud of myself, so I ate that and kept a low profile at the table. I decided to eat some bread and I mistakenly grabbed a fish cake, which surprised me but I wasn't full, yet, so I managed to choke down the bite and set it aside. I finally got normal bread and filled up on that and I was quite content.

Then Joey, remembering that I hate fish, waved a plate of fish patties in front of my nose.
I was in the middle of a sentence with him and I had to stop talking and try to breathe through my mouth. Joey just started laughing quietly; that laughter where you're not supposed to laugh, so it's a lot of short breaths and low moans.
I just had to wait it out and drink some juice and then laugh it off.

Anyway, thought I'd share that with you. Nothing significant, just a story.
Love you guys.

I promise...

I will update this thing; hopefully tonight.
For some reason, I've been avoiding doing it and I don't know why.
Anyways, today is the 11th, we'll see if it actually happens.

Not the trip story, yet...

Preface:
I just took 3 sleeping pills.
I'm not trying to kill myself, just trying to sleep.
Hopefully that'll excuse this post if it doesn't make any sense.

Sorry it's been a long time since I've updated this thing, we've been all over southern Africa the past couple of weeks.

But I'll write about that in a couple of days.

Today was a weird day. I just wanted to be by myself; I'm not mad at anyone, but it's been a while since I've just had time to myself.
Yesterday, I tried some time alone- went to a movie and walked around the mall- but on my way home, our already piece-of-junk car started overheating on the highway in the rain and I didn't have any minutes left on my phone. That really put me in a bad mood for some reason.
I'm still glad that we have a car that runs, albeit a piece of junk.
Then some other stuff happened, so I thought, "I'll just try again tomorrow."
Wrong.
We had a WBS thing at our house and I also had to be across town because we'll be starting a singing group. When I got home, I had to take some people back across town to their houses.

Anecdote:
The church here has a fair number of middle-aged single men who admit that they are too picky when it comes to women. I don't know that means, all I know is they can get pretty close to our AIM girls, so I make sure that I'm always there and they're never alone.
Anyway, I was taking two of these guys home today and all of a sudden, one of them brings up how American girls are better than South African girls (I think in a romantic way?)and tried to argue his point.
I thought it was funny because when I tried to disagree, he told me that I don't know South African women. I asked him what American women he knew, and he told me he had met a couple. So the other guy and I gave him a hard time about that being his main connection to the entire country. (We've had these same joking arguments before, so we both knew how hard we could push him before he'd get mad. So the other guy took him there.) It was fun.

When I got home, I had kids in my room playing games.

While I had fun in all, stuff still just really irritated me today.
I know I've heard Brandon say stuff about how when he has a certain way planned and it gets changed, he feels the same way.
I had my whole day planned (both days) and when they changed, I got really irritated and it put me in a bad mood all day. I kept having to choose to be happy.
I don't really know what my main point of all the stuff in this post is, I think I just wanted to sort it out, but being flexible is really hard when you're not willing to be.

Today, I just wasn't wanting to be flexible. I wanted to be selfish with my time and when things changed, I wasn't ready.

Anyway, just thought I'd let you know how I was doing.
I'll update about the trip we went on, it was amazing.
(That wasn't the update, by the way.)

Logan.

Meh...

I usually hold off updating this thing until I have something to write about.
I thought I'd break that pattern tonight, meaning I don't have anything meaningful to put on here.
(I should probably reword that last sentence.)

Anyway, last night I was watching a movie on my laptop in my room when Brittney came knocked on my door and asked me if I'd go down to the petrol station and buy some electricity.
I then realized that my laptop had been running off of battery and the power in the house was off. Ken had already walked down there I guess, because he was halfway there and he needed me to bring him the card with our electricity information on it.
It was useless to drive because the garage doors weren't going to open, so I checked the bikes and both of the front tires were flat. So, mildly annoyed, I started to walk. The walk was good, I had time to unwind and watch a pretty cool thunderstorm over the ocean and under a full moon. It was dark, and everything anyone's ever told me here is to not be alone at night. Good deal.
I meet up with Ken and he sends me with the card to the petrol station.
Change of plans; more walking.
On my way back from the petrol station I was just playing out all these terrible scenarios in my mind for fun and this scooter with two people on it catches my attention:
I was trying to keep an eye on traffic behind me, so I was aware of the scooter and when I turned around they made a sudden, seemingly unplanned turn onto another street and sped up really fast. I thought it was suspicious, but I kept playing out terrible scenarios involving other vehicles.
Anyway, I had plenty of time to ponder things while I walked by an empty field and when I got to the end of it, I heard the scooter again. I let them get pretty close before I turned to check on them, but when I did, their headlight was off and they were driving really slow.

Dramatical Aside: One thing that crosses cultures, I guess, is the throwing of food. Particularly eggs.

I could tell something was going to happen, so I was sort of ready for what happened: the kid on the back threw something at me, but with all of my yellow belt training I didn't even react. I don't think I flinched and I didn't jump, which really confused the passenger. They sped up for a second and then slowed down. The passenger made some confused noises and then they sped off around the corner.
Only then did I feel my back to find it very wet with yolk.

Anyway, that was fun. Just thought I'd let you guys know.
Love you.

Rugby Champions...

I know most of you don't follow rugby; I know I didn't.
Since I've been here, I've discovered that it is one of the coolest sports ever and South Africa has a really good team- The Springboks. South Africa is a part of the Tri-Nations Cup with Australia and New Zealand. In the rugby world, these teams are the corn. But as a Tri-Nations Cup member, South Africa has only won the world cup back in 1994.
The Springboks made it to the finals against England and we had a big party on Saturday. The game itself was actually not that good. No one scored any Tries- "Touchdowns"- but the final score was 15 to 6 in our favor.
It was a neat experience to be in this country for their second world cup win. The recent surge of pride in this country was interesting. We went to the main shopping mall in town and EVERYONE was wearing a Springbok jersey.

Just for your information; I know most people don't care about Rubgy. (By the way, I watched the USA play for about 10 minutes and had to turn it off. They lost to us really bad.)

Something Brandon posted about in his blog made me realize something that happened at a party on Father's day. I mentioned it just a little in this post.
But basically this man came up to us while we were cooking our meat; he had drool all over him and he could barely stand. He was so drunk and mixed his sentences with Afrikaans, I couldn't understand him but I could pick up enough to know that he was telling me that he is a horrible person.
The Christian man that we were with told us that he was just a street junkie and just kind of wrote him off, which looking back bothers me for various reasons.
He started confessing his sins to me and how he doesn't like doing the church thing.

I could see no light in his eyes; he looked so hopeless.

All I remember telling him is that God loves him anyway and He wants a relationship with him in spite of all that.
I either think he didn't understand me or he didn't like my answer but either way he didn't seem interested in what I had to say and he left.

Brandon mentions in his blog about running into a person who had no future with us in heaven. He was so deep in sin and a bad life that it seemed hopeless.

I have two thoughts; they're not profound, but two thoughts that just jumped.

1. What would Jesus have said to these people? I believe Jesus could have changed these men's life right there, instantly. I, dumb little me, said what little I could to just try to comfort him and get him on his way, I guess.

2. My opportunity is gone.
I believe that God gives us these glimpses into these people's lives to remind us why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing. I don't know much about this man or where he lives or anything and I had no clue what I could have even done, but I hope that our friend, who knows more, would want to share his life.

I hope I would want to.

Sick Again...

There's been something circulating around our house this past week.
No fun.

I've been out of commission for the past 3 days but I think I'm coming back into it.
*(I wrote that yesterday, but I've taken a turn for the worse and I'm not expected to sleep through the night. Pray for me, please.)

Last week, the kids at school invited us to their talent show on Monday. They kept going on and on about what they were going to do: singing, dancing, reading. I was really looking forward to going, even though we don't usually go on Mondays.

Johnathan, Liz, and I went to school early and just hung around the campus until right after the first break (we waited for about 2 hours). Everyone got together in the middle courtyard and one of the older ladies got up and started preaching in Afrikaans. From what we could understand, it was a lesson on how God has a telephone using Jeremiah 33:3. I'm pretty sure she had some pretty good jokes, at least I hope so because I laughed at what she said.

After she got down, a little girl came up and read from "Die Bybel" somewhere and then a little boy and his teacher got up and danced to a couple of kids songs in Afrikaans.

All of that lasted about 10 minutes.

The principal got up and started talking about the school's attendance problem and then chewed the kids out for their behavior at the assembly and dismissed everyone.
That was a bummer. Maybe they'll reschedule.

This weekend I made pizza puffs for some college kids and they really liked them, which made me happy, and we made a new friend, Kuda, who is an albino black guy and he's really cool.

Anyway, Love you guys.
Logan

Recruiting...

I've been working on a video to show the class since they'll be looking for fields and it's weird to start thinking about maybe having another group working with us. Hopefully I'll put the video on here soon, but it's about 15 minutes.
Our presentation is on Thursday and I think it will go well.

The other day we were invited to hang out with one of the single guys at his house, "Winston." He had some things he wanted to talk about and afterwards, he took us to a township in this really random spot in town. We didn't know where we were going, but it was exciting.

Winston is really good friends with the head of the township, Cheesy, because they grew up together. Cheesy has a lot of respect for Winston and it was cool to see the way they acted together. Anyway, we got there and I was a little nervous to start off with. It was our first real time in a real township; the houses were made of cardboard and tin, mostly things they just find. We talked for a while and were invited to spend a couple of nights sometime in the future, which sounded interesting. We got bored and started playing with the little kids that had gathered to see what we were doing in their town.

I went and sat with some guys under a tree and it turned out they were smoking marijuana. Bad times. But I hung out with them and we talked a little. But mainly we just sat and watched people in the township.

I had been in really poor areas before in other countries, but this was different. Before, no matter how poor the people were, they were always the happiest people. It seemed like most of the people here were either drunk or high. I watched people throw things at cuss at each other. It just seemed like they were generally unhappy. Sure they were poor and had basically nothing, but they were missing something.

Answer for yourself.

Cheesy told us that we should come over anytime that we can because the people saw something in us. They had had people come before, but they just came to "preach" at them. They didn't care about the people. Winston wants us to make that place our project on our own, like a learning experience. But I want him to do it with us for two reasons: I want him to learn, too, and I don't want this to be dependent on us because we'll be leaving and I want someone to be there who can keep something going.

Anyway...

Love,

Umphokoqo...

So the title is pronounced with a click. To say the "Q," you click your tongue.
If you're wondering what it means, it's a traditional Xhosa meal. It's probably the grossest thing I've ever seen...

Now, we're going back in time to set up the story.

Our friend, Peter (his real name is Monwabisi), has been wanting us to come over for some time to try this food. On Friday, we were planning on dropping some stuff by his house that he needed and also to deliver some medicine to his mother and he called to tell us to be there by 2 o'clock. You might remember Peter from People are empty fields, too. We were a little late, because I had to wait on the car while some of the team were surfing and it ended up being just Johnathan and me.

We arrived at his house, dropped off the things and I wasn't planning on staying too long, but he told us to sit down because he had prepared some Umphokoqo. So we sat down in his living room and he told us that his friend would be stopping by soon.
He brought out 3 bowls which looked to be filled with a rice based porridge; kind of a chunky cream of wheat. I thought to myself, "I can do this, it doesn't look too bad." (I have a very sensitive, picky stomach with a quick gag reflex to foods). As I was reaching for the spoon, Johnathan, who has a very strong stomach, innocently asked, "How do you eat it?" Peter said, "Like this!" and then reached for a pitcher of liquid on the table. When he poured it on the porridge stuff, if splattered all in the bowl and on my arm, and then I was pretty sure I knew what it was. But just to reaffirm my suspicion, Johnathan asked what it was to which Peter answered "Sour Milk."

I started to get hot and nauseous. I didn't know how I was going to pull this off. Peter left the room for a second and while I was staring at my sour, chunky milk porridge I could see Johnathan trying it. I asked how it was and he didn't answer. So I looked up to find a horrified look on Johnathan's face. I didn't like that at all. This guy can and will eat almost anything. I dipped my finger into the milk and tried it. It tasted like sour cream, only to a more intense degree. I knew because of the texture, I would not be able to successfully (there's a bunch of double consonants in that word) eat this. I started feeling so sick, so I told his mother that I wasn't feeling well and maybe we could give my bowl to Peter's friend when he got there. She thought it was a good idea, so I was off the hook.
Peter's friend got there shortly after.
We quickly found out his agenda...
He had just acquired himself a share in an exciting business called AMWAY!
He wanted to tell us all about it. Luckily, Johnathan's parents used to be in Amway, so we got off the hook pretty quickly.

Naturally, the Amway presentation- as all Amway presentations do- turned into a bible study.

You see, Peter's friend was worried about Peter's spiritual life. So he was telling us about how Peter has fallen away, so he was trying to get Peter to repent. Well, Peter told us why he'd stopped coming to church: he felt too bad because of the things he had done and he felt like he wasn't good enough. He also thought people would look down on him because he's unemployed and can't dress nice; which is sad because they do that a lot here- more so than in the States.
We opened up our bibles and showed him all the scriptures and we could tell he was listening and really thinking about things. He decided to start changing, so his friend told him to just accept Jesus into his heart and asked us if we would lead Peter in a Sinner's Prayer. So we just prayed for Peter (we don't know the "Sinner's Prayer) and prayed that he would give his life to God. After his friend left, we mentioned baptism a little, but we had to be going. We told him to read and to pray and we'd see him soon.
I'm excited for him, because I can't always tell if we're making an impact on people. He made a comment about how I was the only person who understands where he comes from and his situation. He brought up things that had happened way back in August; things that I had forgotten about, but they meant so much to him.
I'm really glad he's thinking.
So pray for Peter.

And leave comments, I don't even know if anybody reads these!

Love you guys.
Logan

Slow...

I feel like the past couple of weeks have been pretty slow here. We were starting to go to a high school near the church, but they're taking exams. Johnathan and I are starting to get sick, so that also has something to do with it, I guess.
We had a "second wedding" in our back yard last week. The couple had asked Judy if they could and she couldn't say no. It was interesting; I was in charge of taking pictures and we served food and waited on people. We got all dressed up and we used fancy silverware and glasses which made everyone feel "fancy." We snuck out at sunset to go to the beach to take pictures and I think they turned out really nice.
Afterwards, I ended up taking some individual pictures on request and then was bombarded with "I want a copy of that"'s. So I guess I might be accidentally starting photography business.

On Monday, an overloaded taxi (26 people) was involved in a really bad wreck on the road to our school. The driver was speeding, lost control and flipped his taxi killing 6 kids that he was driving to school. Every day since, there have been groups that have prayer meetings where it happens and tomorrow they're having a memorial service there. It's been cool to see the community's reaction to this. The overloaded, speeding taxi's a real problem here and the community is fed up with it. The police usually don't do anything about it, but they've started cracking down due to some protests caused by this accident. It's been cool to drive by people gathered around in circles praying for these families and for the taxi drivers.

Anyway, keep them and us in your prayers.
Love you guys.
Logan

My Birthday

I decided I wanted to visit Kragga Kamma, which is a game park outside town that we hadn't been to yet. Their claim to fame is a 4 year old cheetah from the movie Duma. So after driving around the park, we got to play with Duma, which was pretty cool. She was like a spoiled cat because she would just roll over so you would pet her and she loved attention. Not much has been going on, it's been an off week.
Keep praying for us, love ya.

"Police Please Protect Our School..."

We went to school today and found out that someone had broken into one of the second grade classrooms and made off with a computer and some random things. The principal told us that they were going to focus the attention on promoting the school, instead of just trying to find the people. So each class made a poster to hang on the fence with messages about their education and community. We were just sent out to help the classes with their posters. They really didn't need us, so we shuffled around and eventually came up on the room where the "burglary" happened. While the kids were competing to design a poster for their class, we helped the teacher put the classroom back together and organize all of her books. It was cool to see the pride that they had in their school and their respect for their community. 2 of the kids from that classroom knew who it was and told the police when they came. Tomorrow the parents are getting together and discussing this problem to the community leaders to stop this problem.
Tomorrow is my birthday, so we might be doing something fun.
Keep praying for us, love ya.

Sunset Video Part 2

I heard that the video from the previous post was shown at Sunset and it went over really well. If you are here because of the video, I heard there were some questions: Yes, I took those pictures, and you can see them on the right side of the page under "My pictures." Lately, we've had an off period work-wise. We've finished up the first part of our current projects. I've taken 840 pictures of kids that I now have to "organise" and put into yearbook-form soon. Today, we had an area sing-along which was cool. I led singing this morning for worship and that was refreshing because I tried liven everyone up and I think it worked.
On my way to church this morning, I went to pick up Peter (which is actually 20 minutes past the church) to find that he was still asleep and he would be coming next week. I was a little sad. He really likes hanging out with us, he just wants to get out of his neighborhood.
By the way, we drive through his "neighbourhood" at least 8 times a week and one of the members from our church was hijacked a couple of weeks ago there. They blocked the road and pulled him out of his car. For some reason, the car died and wouldn't start, so they left the car and didn't beat him up. All they took was his cell phone because he forgot his wallet. As soon as they were gone, his car started.
It was just a reminder of how careful we have to be.
So, pray for us, please.
Love you guys

Our first video...

Been a while...

So, a couple of things have happened.
On Monday (1 week ago), we were invited to come speak at a high school here, so we went to it and Johnathan gave an introduction to the bible for the school. That was a pretty neat experience. Afterwards we went into the library and they sent classes to us and we got to know some of the kids. It was a lot of fun, but it was a very interesting experience. I was talking to this one kid and he looked me in the face and said "Look at this, I'm going to kill someone" and he pulled a knife out of his sleeve. I didn't really know what to do; i thought he was just trying to see what I would do so I just told him I didn't want to see that. After class he told Johnathan that he had a bong and a gun in his bag and that he was going to shoot his "enemies" and while we were walking away, he started yelling "life of death, life or death?" And then someone set the fire hose box on fire and there was a thick black cloud of smoke that filled up the courtyard outside our classroom. It was interesting.
We'll be going back once a week.
Then yesterday we had an open-air worship service in the part of town where we do the soup kitchen. We sang and had a lesson in Afrikaans, which sounds like German. The lesson sounded like Nazi propaganda over the loudspeaker.

Women's Day

In preparation for Thursday, Women's day, one of the local schools that we're connected with through the church had an assembly and they wanted us to do a "presentation" for the kids. We had no idea what to do or how to do it. So we sort of decided to make a video for the kids. Once we got there, we set up and got everything ready, introduced ourselves and showed the video. It was a complete failure. The lady in charge actually made us stop it early. There were two problems with our presentation: most of the kids didn't speak English, and the concept of the video went way over their heads.
So that wasn't cool.

I vowed right then and there that I would never have kids.

Anyway, all the schools didn't have school Thursday and Friday, so we've been off, too.
We have some of the youth hanging at our house pretty much all the time, now, so that's cool. Yesterday, we had 4 at the same time, but usually it's different kids off and on at different times.
Sometimes it's inconvenient, but I'm here for them so I have to get over myself.

Ken and Judy are out of the house for the weekend, so that's a nice little change.
Party.

Love you guys.

People are empty fields, too.

Today, after school, Joey and I went out to take Peter, one of the volunteers, out to run errands. We were talking and he started talking about his situation at home: he is living with his mom in government housing in a township near the school, he has no brothers or sisters to help him take care of his mother, he has a little daughter named Angel, and he's unemployed. The house they live in was free, but he has to buy electricity and water on top of buying food. He's trying to start a photography business, but by "American" standards, his attempt would be considered a joke. He started talking about how it's only important for his mom to eat, she's diabetic and he wants her to have food. He said he regularly goes three days without food and if he ever gets money, it goes to bread right away. While we were picking up some pictures I had helped him print, we got him a couple of things for him and his mom to stock in their pantry. He was so grateful, he invited us straight back to his house and he cooked us eggs and tomatoes. He apologized because he didn't have any silverware, but we told him we were more than fine using our hands. He really opened up to us and got really comfortable with us being around. I'm excited for him because he really wants to come worship with us (I couldn't really get him to tell me what me believed other than he knows that Jesus died for us) because he doesn't attend church anymore.
Anyway, I realized that I get caught up a lot in my convenience and it was really good to get into the townships, finally. We saw mounds of trash with kids searching through trying to find whatever they could and children begging for anything that we could give.
And then I hear Peter talking about being humble.
And how God is good to his people.
Ouch.
Most people could easily say, "How can you say that, look at your position!"
But one thing I noticed in that community, is to them, there's always someone that's worse off than they are.
But God is good.

So...
Updates...
Another thing about South Africa is there's always something on fire.
We were driving to school yesterday, and that field from the last post was starting to catch on fire. Not too much of it was burnt.
They found the two kids. Nobody called the school to tell them they were going to be gone.
One of our friends in the youth group was stabbed in the chest out by where we do the soup kitchen. He's ok.
I'm not sick anymore.

Thanks for the comment-love.
Leave some more.
Thanks for the prayers.
Say some more.
Love you.

Sickly

For the past week or so, I've had some kind of cold that's kept me in the house for the better part of the week. I was only able to visit the school once last week, and today was our first day back. We were only there for about 15 minutes because, when we got there, the principal told us that he was dealing with a "mini-crisis." I didn't know what that meant, so we sat and waited. Liz and Johnathan went and looked for a classroom for their classes and came back. While I was in the hallway, I gathered (of course, I'm very perceptive) that something was wrong. And then the principal told me something was wrong. He was busy calling in students trying to find a couple of kids. He said they've been missing from the neighborhood since Thursday (today is Tuesday) and nobody knew where they were. The police were on their way and he told us we could leave.
I don't think any of us really know what to do about it. But ultimately it's our of our hands.

South Africa is, really, a filthy country as far as trash because it's everywhere.
Last week, on our way to the school I saw some people picking up trash on the side of the road. I thought to myself, "That's pointless, there's so much! They won't make any difference.
On our way back from the school on the same day, there were more than 40 bags of trash setting on the curb, waiting to be picked up. There was not a single piece of trash on the whole field.
I didn't see the potential, I just saw a trashy field that I'd probably get stabbed in.
What if Jesus had said "They're just fishermen. I can't use them" or "No, we'll never get 5 loaves to everyone?"
Just an empty field kicked me in the face that day.

Anyway, I hope everyone is well.
Please comment when you read this, it's encouraging to know who's reading this thing.
Love you.
Logan

Sapphire Primary School

On Tuesday, we finally got to get into the main school that we'll be working with--as the title gives away, Sapphire Primary School. It's a really neat school; the Principle just got back from Canada because he received an international award for the way his school does things.
The school itself is in between 3 or 4 townships, the really poor parts of towns with shacks and dirt roads, but it's in good shape because they take really good care of it.
Bruce, the Principle, begs and borrows for everything from Computers (donated from Germany) to whole bus shells that we'll convert into a place for the kids to play. I'm looking forward to gutting it and painting it and making into a cool place for the kids to play.
Bruce is the kind of guy that will try anything, even if it seems possible. So, right away he was asking us what our talents are and, as a result, Liz is going to start a music class; Johnathan will teach an art class with Brittney's help; and I will be helping teach the kids how to use computers, I'm going to take pictures and video for the school and work with Lindsay to teach the kids how to make yearbooks and I'll be making some promotional videos for Bruce so he can raise funds and stuff.
The others have split up to go to the other school we visited earlier.
We're going to use this school as a base to spread out and get our curriculum to other schools in our province.

Ok, so, I don't know if you've ever been around kids, en masse, who don't see camera's very often (or kids in general), but as soon as you get out a camera, they go crazy. I snuck off from the group to take pictures by myself and get to hang out with the kids and when I took the first picture I broke any kind of barrier that there could be between (in their eyes) a rich white person from America and a horde of little black children. In my first picture of that day, there's about ten kids, and it's a fairly candid picture. In my second picture: not candid, add 5 kids. Third picture: it's over. I took about 25 pictures as I retreated from my first position back to the door where it was safe and in each picture there's probably 5 more kids than the picture before. I don't know where they were coming from, but they kept coming and posing and pushing and yelling.
By the way, the school has about 1,400 kids between 1st and 6th grade in two buildings.

I'll be going to this school 5 days a week for now, until we start going to other schools, but I've been sick this week, so I've only been once.

This is my favorite picture from the day. This little girl kept asking for 1 more picture and I kind of had to ignore her request half the time, because everyone was asking for "one more picture," so she started hugging me, which might have been because everyone was pushing up against her and I was up against a chain length fence and couldn't move. So I took a picture. I'm gonna hang it up on my wall. It's a good'n.

The rest of the pictures are in "My Pictures" on the right side of the page.

Anyway, Please comment and then pray for us.
Or vice versa.
Love you guys.
Logan

Cape Town Trip

Well, we're home.
Hmm...

We had a lot of fun on our trip. On our way down, we stopped for a couple of nights in Oudtshoorn, which is the ostrich capital of the world in case you wanted to know. I got to ride an ostrich- not a lot of people get to say that.















And not a lot of people get to say that they have jumped the highest bungee jump in the world.


One of the main reasons for driving all the way down to Cape Town was to go to a family retreat that was hosted by Watershed, Free Indeed and One Spirit. It was really fun getting to hang out with those groups.


Then we were tourists for the rest of the time...

Our last night in Cape Town was Nelson Mandela's birthday. For his birthday there was a "Africa vs. World" soccer game where all the best players from all over Africa played some of the best players from around the world.
Before the game, we went out to Robben Island- where Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years. We saw all of the soccer players that were in town for the game and I got to take pictures of them all as they were getting off the ship before we got on.

Well, that's the extremely short version of our trip. I posted over 1000 pictures of it in my pictures section, so feel free to look at them.

Alright, well, leave a comment, please.
Love you guys.
Logan

Just a quick update...

Tomorrow, we're leaving for Cape Town for a couple of weeks, so I won't be able to update. Tomorrow, we're going to try and do the world's highest bungee jump. I hope everyone has an enjoyable two weeks.
Love you guys.
Logan

South African Schools

There's an older lady here from America here that is working with cancer patients and with schools in Port Elizabeth with her grandson who is about to start medical school so he can come work down here. She was on the beach praying for an army to come and help her as our coordinator's wife, Judy, was walking her direction.
Judy met this lady and found out about what she's doing here and invited them to dinner. They came to our house on Thursday night and we arranged for all of us to go to the school she's been working with on Friday.


We got there and were greeted by the kids and they started dancing. There was one girl who couldn't have been more than 3 years old who was dancing in the center of the group. She was so cute, so I started taking pictures of her.
At first, I was hesitant to get my camera out, because I'd been in this situation before. I knew if I got it out, I'd have to take pictures for them and show them the pictures right away. I wanted to take my own pictures as freely as I wanted.
But then I thought, "that's a jerk of you!" So I got my camera out and started the whole time-consuming process.



Before we left, we handed out blankets to all the kids because they come from a "squatter-camp" outside of a really nice beach front town called Seaview. I'll eventually have pictures of a squatter-camp, but they are basically whole towns built out of sheet metal and cardboard.
The kids were so glad to get the dog blankets that we were handing out to them because, even thought it's Africa, people do freeze to death here. Winter has just started here, and almost all of the houses in the country (ours included) do not have heaters.
As we were pulling away, they still wanted me to take pictures, even as I was trying to close the car door, but we told them we were coming back and they let us go.
It was a cool experience and I can't wait to go back in the future.
Ok, leave a comment and the rest of the pictures from the school are in "my pictures" on the right side of the page.
Love ya.
Logan

This week...

Father's Day was a different experience for me this year. Mainly because my father wasn't here. But also because for Sunday lunch we went to what they call a "Braai," which is basically a barbeque. As we were cooking the mutton, a "drunkie" came to me and started confessing his sins to me.
The people here go all out for their braais; for lunch, we had mutton, various salads, lamb kabobs, chicken kabobs, chicken legs, boerwors (which means farmers' sausage; it's good), and ostrich neck stew. The latter was not my favorite. It was cooked in a pot filled with vegetables and a gravy with chopped up parts of ostrich neck. It was different for me to pull out a lump of meat, and to recognize the neck bone, spinal cord, and a sliver of meat around it. It was a lot of work to get the meat and not the bone. If you've seen an ostrich, you know their necks aren't the meatiest part of their bodies. We washed all that down with some ice cream and Pepsi.

After lunch, we honored the dads in the group. Their kids presented them with gifts and showed them how much they have meant to them. It was pretty cool.


Tonight, we went to a cottage meeting (small group) for the first time and that was a cool experience. They didn't know that there were going to be extra people there tonight, so we kind of surprised them because there wasn't enough room for us all. I had to sit on a table. We talked about loving other people. They're just now getting hooked up with World Bible School tracts that they've been handing out, so they handed out more of those tonight.

The ladies that are in charge of taking us to the soup kitchen were there and we found out that we're going to go to the hospital tomorrow. This may be pretty interesting because the whole country has been in a huge strike for three weeks. The public service people are holding out for more money. This includes teachers, police, and people like garbage collectors. Schools have been closed for about 2 weeks and some hospitals are closing now. We tried to go to the hospital before to help out, but they told us it would be too dangerous. So we'll see what happens.

Also, please keep our team in your prayers because it's my turn to help cooking this week.

If you're reading this, please leave a comment. You don't have to sign up for anything, I think just give your email. You can also subscribe to this blog at the bottom, I think. This will automatically email you when I post a new blog, so you don't have to keep coming back to see if I've posted a new one.

Love you guys.
Logan

Soup Kitchen

Today, we went to a soup kitchen out side town at the Missionvale Clinic. It was really an eye-opener to see how much these people just needed a couple slices of bread and a cup of soup. For some of the people who came, this would be their only meal for the day.

One of the encouraging things about the whole deal was that all the bread and soup was provided by 3 or 4 little ladies from our congregation. We stopped at their houses and picked them up on our way and put their paint-buckets full of soup into the back of our Condor.

On our way, we drove through the really poor part of town. We had to drive through groups of children playing soccer in the streets because the schools have been closed for 2 weeks due to a huge national strike. We waved at people as they gathered at the water pump by the road to pull out their water for the day.

As we drove up to the gate, I though we'd be in a little trouble because of the mass of people that had gathered at the entrance. We pulled into the gate, set up our soup buckets, and distributed the bread-bags to the AIMers with the warning to not let them have the bags after we were done because they use them to sniff glue.

They only let small groups into the gate at certain times so things wouldn't get out of hand. We prayed for the meal and started handing out the bread. While everyone was getting their food, Judy reminded me of a fact that I hadn't really thought about in a while. She reminded me that 1 out of about 3 that were there was HIV positive. It drove home the fact that, not only they didn't have food, they didn't have Jesus and they don't have much time left.

I did make a couple of friends. The boy in the bottom picture is the cutest boy I have seen in a while. I took a picture of him and he just stared at me, so I made a goofy face and waved at him and he turned into the happiest boy I have ever seen. He started giggling and hiding from me. He'd peek out and I'd take his picture. He actually got so occupied with me taking his picture, he tripped on his shoe and fell. He hit his head on a bench, started crying and ran inside.

I think we're going to make this soup kitchen a weekly stop. The plan now is to go there every Wednesday morning. So hopefully I can update you on the work that goes on there, too. I hope to start talking with the people more, and I really want to see my little friend again.

If you want to see all the pictures of today and some random pictures of South Africa, go to the right side of the page and click on my pictures.

First Impressions...

Well, I came to South Africa with basically no expectations. I came that way mostly so I wouldn't be disappointed but also because I didn't know what to expect. Before landing in Johannesburg, I started getting a little nervous about customs because I had to claim anything that I had that was worth over 3000 Rand ($500-ish). I was bringing a laptop, a really nice video camera, and a really nice digital camera in my carry-on and I had an xbox in my check-in luggage.
When we arrived, Brittney and I didn't arrive with our luggage. So we gave them our information and they said they'd deliver it to the house (It's Wednesday). Customs was easy, I had to go through the "red" line because I had things to claim, but they didn't even ask about them. So I walked right through. We were greeted by about 50 people in uniforms who wanted to help us with our bags, but you have to tip them, so I told them no. They're very tenacious; I ended up having to follow someone they were helping and pretend I was with him. Joey went up by himself to our next departure terminal, so I took Brittney and Liz to the domestic depatures- which is a long walk- that that was our first introduction into the culture.
When we were flying over Port Elizabeth, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was. I couldn't believe I would be living here.
That night, we went to the Gospel Chariot Meeting, which is a truck that drives around southern Africa and hosts week long campaigns. All of the colored people from the area came so we got to be immersed into the culture our first night.
My next point--
Basically, there are 3 "races" here: The White "Afrikaaners" which are for the most part very rude and rigid and unfriendly toward Americans, there are the Blacks, but within them they are still divided up by different tribes, and then there are the colored- the muts- they're the ones that don't fit into a category. Lots of Indians, but mostly people who are both Black and White, I guess. Some colored people are whiter than I am, and some are pretty much pure black, but the way you know that they're colored is by the way they act. They are the friendliest people I've ever met. And they're very loud. They're very touchy- it's common for the guys to kiss the girls (on the lips) as a greeting- which is cool.
So, we got here on a Wednesday, one of Brittney's bags came on Friday, and I had to live out of 2 pairs of clothes for 91 hours. I got my luggage on Sunday. Brittney's other bag came a couple of days later.
Hooray for world traveling.

Yesterday, we went to one of the parliament buildings in Bhisho and had a LONG meeting about what we'll be doing. We basically were creating a partnership with the government to build credibility when we go into a new school and at the same time, we were getting permission to go into schools. In our province, there are about 6000 schools, and we can go into vertually all of them.
What we offer the schools is a character building curriculum for 1st-6th grade. We teach them values and morals using the bible. The curriculum is not mandatory, but it is available for the teachers to use. We will be going into 3 pilot schools soon to teach them how to use the curriculum. It's not just the curriculum that will change this kids, so what we encourage the schools and communities to do is to have after school programs and show them how to practice concepts of "sharing" and "loving"-concepts that we take for granted, really, because we assume everyone knows them- by being examples.
There's a school here that has already implemented the curriculum, and now (probably not directly because of the curriculum) is a internationally recognized school. The principle is in Canada right now receiving an award for his school.