The building is open . . .

Today is Saturday and today we dedicated the building that we have been working on all week.  Dan led us in prayer and then we all split up and went to different areas of the building and either put our hands on the floor or the walls and just prayed.  I felt overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed by the circumstances that these children face every day.  Overwhelmed by the feeling that God knew that this building would be used for these children on the day the first brick was put in place decades ago.  Overwhelmed with gratitude that when these children walk into this building they will feel safe and feel God's loving arms protecting them.  Overwhelmed by the enormous responsibility Key of Hope has to teach these little ones about God, and about how to better their lives.  So many emotions overpowered me.  It was just such an amazing experience knowing that everyone else was praying the same sort of things, dedicating this simple building for great things.  Things I can't even imagine that God can accomplish with the help of this simple dirty building that we worked on all week.  It is something I hope I never forget.

At about 9:20 vans started arriving, delivering children to come to the building for the program.  This was all new to them as they were used to meeting in a tent in a field.  So there were a lot of big eyes and lots of happy, excited smiles.  I stayed outside and took pictures of these vans arriving and the unloading of children.  It went so smoothly considering it was the first time they had done this.  I'll never forget one van had 45 children packed into it.  Only God can fit 45 children into one small van.  Truly a miracle!  The final count was 323 children.  We had 75 come from Effingham which is where we had our VBS, so that was totally thrilling!  I sat with the boys, one little guy about 3 years old in my lap.  I just felt at home, like I was exactly where I needed to be.  You know when I see these children I just see children.  I don't see the dirtiness.  I don't see the weird assortment of clothing, or rips or mud.  I don't see HIV, in fact most of the time I forget that a lot of them have HIV.   I don't see orphans.  I simply see children that need love and attention.  I heard someone remark the other day about how bad some of the children smell, and I thought it was funny because I just hadn't noticed.  It's hard to remember that behind those bright engaging smiles is a child who quite possibly has been raped (perhaps more than once), who quite possibly has HIV, who quite possibly has no mother or father, a child who doesn't know anything about safety except for the safety that Key of Hope provides. 
The program went fabulously.  The lesson was on Zaccheus.  They even used John as the tree and put one of the little boys up on his shoulders as Zaccheus trying to see Jesus.  We also did our dental hygiene to day.  Krisie and Emily were fantastic teaching the kids how to properly brush their teeth, and how to care for their toothbrushes.  We were each given a group of kids and we gave our group toothbrushes and little mirrors and helped them see their teeth and brush them the right way.  It was a lot of fun seeing all those cute smiles as they showed off their clean teeth! 
Dan gave such a great message to the kids at the end.  He has such an incredible gift in how he interacts with them.  It is really amazing to think he has only been there in South Africa for three years!  After that the vans started to arrive to take the kids back home.  It was sad to see them go, knowing we might not ever see them again. 
When all the children were gone, we cleaned up and went to McDonalds!  Yes they have McDonalds here!  Some of the team have been going to McDonalds every night after dinner.  This was my first time though, and amazingly it tasted the same as in the US.  I have to say it was incredible.  I was starving. lol!  After that we went back to our rooms and changed clothes.  We then traveled to the world cup stadium in Durban, and the beach that was within walking distance from it.  John and I took the tram thing up to the top of the arch above the stadium.  Dee and Fabian went with us.  The view was incredible.  Everyone else went to the beach.  Jake, Matt and Nick went swimming in the ocean.  By the time we got to the beach it was getting pretty dark, and the swimmers were freezing. lol!  We stopped at the grocery store on the way back to our rooms to pick up meat to cook for dinner.  We had a Brie?  Not sure about the spelling of it, but essentially we had a bbq.  Lots of yummy sausages, chicken, and Ostrich burgers and steaks.  Afterwards we sat around and talked about the whole week, the highlights and such.
What a great day.  I'm sad that everyone is leaving tomorrow, but glad John and I are staying a couple more days.  It's been so much fun getting to know Dan and Rachel better over this past week and I really wish I could spend more time with them and not have to leave so soon.  They are such an inspiration to me. 
Alright I have got to sign off now.  It is now officially Sunday (12:01am) and we are having a sunrise service on the beach in the morning so I had better get to sleep.  I have tons of pictures from today but as you can see, just no time to get them up here.  I promise they will be coming though.  :)

Thursday . . .

Thursday started with devotions at 7:30 am.  Krisie got to lead us.  We have gone all this time with no laundry being done, and it was supposed to be dropped off at a laundromat Wednesday but somehow it stayed in the back of the van instead (miscommunication problem).  So that was top priority today as most people have little clothing left that isn't wet and muddy.  We did tons of painting today at the building.  I think we have given up on the sprayer and are just doing it all by hand now.  I should mention that the sun finally appeared today.  We were able to warm up a bit and it felt so wonderful to feel the sun!!  So we were able to have people painting outside and inside.  We got a lot done, but still had a lot to do by the time we stopped for lunch and then packed up for VBS.  This is our last VBS.  The plan is to go along with Dan tomorrow for home visits.  This is where he visits with children in their shacks that have been coming to his Saturday program.  He checks to see how things are going with their families and brings food etc. 

Thankfully because of the sun, we were able to hold VBS on a dryer patch of land with less mud.  It went fabulously.  We had 140 kids.  They are starting to learn the rules about sitting quietly which is good.  We played a game where we put spray whipped cream all over one kids face and two others had to throw "cheetos" and try to get them to stick to his face.  It was so funny!  The kids just wanted to eat the "cheetos" though instead of throwing them.  Poor kids!   We did a bigger skit with the puppets today all about heaven and how you get in there.  You can't buy your way into heaven, you can't earn your way into heaven by being a good person, and can't force your way with your strength.  There is only one way, Jesus.  He has a ticket to heaven that he wants to give everyone, but we have to ask for it etc.  So good!  We also did the salvation bracelets today.  We broke everyone into smaller groups of like 10-12 kids and spread out and sat with our group of kids and helped them put them together.  They loved it and it was so fun to have some more individual time with them.  I loved this!

After VBS we had to go back to the building and unload the tent and equiptment, and pick us Bill who always stays behind to keep working on the building.  Then we raced home to get cleaned up for dinner.  Rachel and Dan took us out to a fish restaurant tonight for dinner.  It was really good.  Then we raced back home and five of us changed back into our dirty work clothes and went back to the building to work.  I think we got there around 10pm.  John, Matt, and Jake worked on the floors while Nick and I finished up some painting.  We worked until 2am and then headed home.  Not far from the building we stopped to get gas.  John told the attendant (you don't pump your own gas here) that he wanted Diesel and to fill it up.  A minute later the guy asked him again, diesel?  John said yes, fill it up all the way with just diesel.  SO the guy did very obediently.  I should note that this is the first time we have had to get any gas for this rental car.  We paid our bill and left a generous tip.  At 2am there is no one on the roads here.  It is just deserted.  We managed to go almost a mile before the engine completely died.  I mentioned that if the car took gasoline that could be why it just died on us.  One of the guys ran around to the gas cap and sure enough we had a gasoline engine that we just filled up with 36 liters of diesel fuel.  Oh no!  So I called Ross on my cell phone and explained what had happened.  We woke him up, and I felt bad about that.  We said we would push the car back to the gas station (we didn't realize that we had gotten so far) and if he could just meet us there.  So I hopped into the drivers seat and took over the steering while all the guys pushed and pushed and pushed.  We had only been going about a minute before a security truck came by.  He stopped and asked if we needed help.  We explained what we had done, and where we were going, so he went back to the station to see if they had a pump to get the diesel fuel out.  He raced back to us and said that no they didn't have one.  We didn't really care, we just needed to go there.  So he proceeds to tell us that we are in a very bad area and that men will hide in the bushes along the road here and jump out and attack you.  So he said he would stay with us.  He did too.  He stayed with us the whole time until the station was in sight.  Mind you that took a lot longer than we thought it would.  I have never laughed so much in my life though at how crazy the whole situation was.  We were all dying with laughter at how stupid we were.  Ross caught us with us just before we reached the station.  At the station he was able to get them to agree to pump out the diesel fuel Friday morning.  So we left the car there and Ross took us home.  I think it was about 3:30 ish by the time we crawled into bed.  What a day!!  More great stories to add to our adventure.  I really can't get over how on a deserted road, God sent a security guard to watch over us.  Isn't God good?!! 
I do have some pictures from today, but no time to get them up here.  I know you all understand and will patiently wait.  lol! 

Wednesday . . .

I tried really hard to get video's I took of today to post, but the connection is too slow and it didn't work.  Sorry!

(It is now Friday, and I finally have a spare minute to tell you what these photos are of! lol!  Sorry to leave you hanging!! )

This is the sock puppets that were made the first day of VBS.  I wasn't actually there that day, I stayed behind at the building to paint.  The puppeteer is CeCe, Dan and Rachel's youngest daughter.  Rachel picked Jackie and I up Wednesday morning and took us to the grocery store to shop for what we needed to make lunch for the team.  CeCe came along. 

Isn't she as cute as a button?  :)

We go through about 5- 2 liters every dinner.  Since Rachel was shopping for the dinner she was making for us, and we were doing a cooked lunch (our only cooked lunch while here) we had 10 bottles of pop.

Surprisingly we were able to find everything we needed to make two kinds of soup for the team.

The b&b where we are staying has a rather large kitchen that is well equipted.  They have a large gas stove, but unfortuantely had no idea how to use it!  It took 1 hour to get the stove working.  Mind you we were making lunch, not dinner!!  Yes Jackie and I were panicing!! Raw chicken, onions and potatoes are not appetizing!!

 I had Denae (who is staying at my house watching my dog) hunt down my recipes a day before and post them on Facebook for me.  So I was able to use my phone to view the recipes and stay on track.  What a mess I made though!!  I had Jackie peeling onions for the first time in her life.  She was crying so hard tears were running down her cheeks!  So funny!  Actually we were both crying like crazy.  I should note that all the produce here is like 1/4 to 1/2 the size of what we have in the US.  It's like the US produce is on steroids! 

This is the chicken soup cooking.  Actually it's really just chickens cooking so that we had broth and meat for our chicken rice soup.

This is the potato ham soup.  Though it was just started and is really just butter and potatoes so far. lol!

We finally got everything made and transported (very carefully with Jackie in the back of the truck watching our pots) to the building around 1:15pm.  The soups were all still hot which was great.  All our dinners so far the food has been cold by the time we get to eat it, and with it being so rainy and cold, it was good to have hot soup.  This is Bill getting some soup.  He went bananas over it.  He has been working every day, all day on the building.  As you can see he had been fighting with the paint sprayer on Wednesday, thus all the black paint all over him.  We are spraying the ceiling black.

Some of the guys eating lunch.  The little boy is a boy that comes to Dan's Saturday program.  His school uniform was dirty so he couldn't go to school on Wednesday.  So Dan picked him up and he came and worked with us all day.  Such a bright, good kid, who happens to live in a shack in one of the settlements.  He has been such a great help with our VBS every day.

Two big pots of soup, and two little pots of soup.  Mikki is a vegetarian, so I made a meatless version of both soups for her.

I think I mentioned the other day that everything is covered with razor wire here and walls, electic fencing etc.  So here is a picture of a very typical compound.  Rolled razor wire and electric fencing.  There are always security company signs on every wall also.  This happens to be where Key of Hope's offices are and where the building we are working on is.  There is a locked gate and a guard there 24 hours a day.  Every home has the same deal, though not the guard. 

So extremely different from the US.

Here is a home close to where we do our VBS. 

This is where we do our VBS.  As you can see I have circled the settlement where the kids are coming from.  It's really not as far away as it looks, and you should zoom in and really look closer.  This is a neighborhood with large nice homes, but right in their backyard is shack after shack.

Ah the rain and mud.  On Tuesday, this truck was stuck up to it's axle's in the mud at this location.  The team got all around it and lifted it up out of the mud to free it.  The kids have been so dirty and muddy, and the whole team has been covered with the mud.  It's been hard to have VBS in mud puddles.

Krisie helping set up the tent.  The kids are starting to arrive and playing in the lower part of the field or mud pit.  Soccer is so huge and so they love to play with the soccer balls that we brought with us.  Each day we have let them take some home, which is huge!!

Nick also helping to set up the muddy tent.

Most of the kids change clothes before they come out of their school uniforms.  The reason is that they only have one uniform and if it is dirty they cannot go to school.  Children learn to keep very clean.  These girls didn't change before coming and their uniforms are WHITE!!  Yikes.

Emily and Mikki

This cute little one is 2 years old.  He was brought to VBS strapped to the back of his 8 year old sister.

Kids all playing with various balls in the muddy field.  I mean completely slippery wet wet wet mud.

There are quite a few girls who bring their younger siblings strapped to their backs or in their arms.  These girls aren't very old either.

So we had 109 children at VBS Wednesday.  They learned about David and Goliath, and how they can have strength with God's help.  The craft was large foam cross necklaces that they stuck foam sticker to. 

Rachel made dinner for us Wednesday.  It was amazing and so good to have two homecooked meals in one day.  I think everyone really got filled up and warmed up finally. 

The building is coming along, but we have had so many problems with the leaking roof making the paint run, the paint just not drying because we are having so much rain, and the paint sprayer not working.  It was been quite an adventure but there is always something to keep us busy there.  God keeps sending people to help us with different equiptment, which is just amazing.

Tuesday . . .

Today started at 6:30am. We got up, got dressed and like all other mornings, made our lunch.  We are eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day for lunch.  Being that we don't have a table in our room, I made our sandwiches on our bed.  Doesn't this look like fun with a white duvet?  I actually did a good job and didn't get anything on it. Spreading out our dishcloth on the bed helped keep it clean.

After making the sandwiches we have funny plastic bags to put them in.  No ziplocks.  lol!

Then we pack up whatever we need for the entire day and go down the hill to where there is a nice patio area.  There is also an enclosed long hut there where we eat our dinners together.  Normally we would meet around those aluminum tables and chairs, but with the rain that we got yesterday and all day today we had to meet under the overhang to stay dry.  It has been pouring non-stop.

Here is Greg and John waiting in the overhang for everyone to show up.  We have bible study together each morning.  Today Matt led everyone.  Matt is one of our three youth on the trip.  I have to say that these youth are very impressive.  They have been doing such a great job and they are all so mature.  I'm so glad that they have come on this adventure!

After bible study and prayer, we head to the vehicles to drive over to the building we are working on.  This is the van we have been using.  We usually have to pack everyone in pretty tight in order to fit.  We were hoping to get a bigger van yesterday, but had no luck.  Supposedly we will get a bigger one tomorrow.  We shall see.  :)

We all arrived at the building this morning with no problems.  Thank you all for praying!!  As you can see it still pretty much looks the same as the other day that I took pictures.  We have been doing tons of scrapping and wire brushing.  We were hoping to get to start painting today.  We have run into all kinds of problems though with getting the paint sprayer to work.  We brought it with us, and it is brand new, but trying to hook into the electrical system here has proven to be quite difficult.  Apparently you need to use a transformer and the one we have was too small.

So we have been putting everyone to work doing more wire brushing and scrapping.  The boys got to go up into the rafters with a ladder on top of the scaffolding today.  I was just glad I didn't have to do that.  It was kind of scary looking.  Oh course they were fine.

Jake doing some work on a ladder.

Emily scrapping paint off the floor.  The floor has graffity all over it.  We have been scrapping it for two days.  John went this morning to find a chemical that would take it off the floor.  It took a few hours but he was finally able to find some good chemicals that would do the job.  Notice Emily's wet pants and wet shoes with bags over her feet.  Poor thing!  Funny story though.  She and Mikki brought shoes to donate to Dan so that he could give them to families that could use them.  He ended up bringing over a bag full of shoes and sweatshirts to us at the building since there were several people with wet shoes and clothes.  Emily and Mikki got to put on their shoes that they brought to donate because their shoes were soaking wet!!  I think God knew that they were going to need them, when He had them pack them for the trip to donate.  I love that!

Mikki working on a wall.  Some of the walls had graffity on them also.  We tried to smooth out the surface so that when they were repainted you wouldn't see the words.

Debra working on the floor.

Jackie working outside on scrapping paint.

Kim getting ready to climb the ladder to scrap more paint outside.

She's wearing the pretty eye protection because all the chips were flying into her face.  We have gotten so much junk in our eyes it's crazy.

Around the side of the building we had a crew working on the walls, windows and railings.  There is tons of graffity out there.  It's in pretty rough shape.  I don't know if you can see right above the brick wall, the electric fencing?  Every house or building here, and I mean EVERY ONE has a wall of some kind and razor wire (think prison fencing) and electric fencing.  It is insane looking.  I will try to get a better picture of it tomorrow, because you really need to see what this looks like.

Greg and Fabian working together.

Greg working on the paint on the walls.

Dee, Fabian, and Greg working on the walls and windows.

Me working on wire brushing the window frames.

Greg and Dee showing how happy they are.  lol!

Greg working on the walls still.

So after lunch we actually started putting some paint on the walls.  We spent about an hour with everyone painting and got a lot of the lower level done.  Then most of the group went to Effingham to the squatter camp to do the VBS with the kids there.  Emily, Fabian, Billy, and I stayed to finish the painting.  So I don't have any pictures of the VBS from today.  This is how the building looked though when we were finished.  (we were finished because we ran out of time, not that we were done)

We did the lower half of the walls.  I did the cutting in at the top.  You can see the graffiti on the floor in this picture.  We will be using the chemical on it on Thursday, after most of the inside painting is done.

This is just another wall.  We still have lots of painting to do, but it is getting there.  You might notice the water on the floor in this picture.  The roof is still leaking even after repairs have been made.  So after the rain stops, more repairs will have to be made.  It was dripping on us constantly while we painted that area.

The VBS with the kids went amazing!  They said that there were about 49 kids that came even in the mud and pouring rain.  Everything went just as planned and the kids loved the puppet show, and got to make their own sock puppets for a craft.  Everyone said it was just incredible.  I'm sad I missed it, but I loved hearing their stories! 

Monday . . .

Well it has been such an adventure today.  We started our day with devotions at 7:30 am together.  So wonderful.  Then we were off to the building to start working. There were two vehicles.  John was driving a car with Matt, Jake, Greg, and Nick in it.  Ross was driving a van with everyone else in it.  The van was so full that Dee and I were sitting on a cooler in the back and several others were on laps or on the floor.  John was following Ross who was using a GPS to get us to the building.  Well the GPS is not always right on top of things, and at one point we had to make a fast exit with no signal, just at that same time John was trying to go around someone so that he could get back behind us.  Needless to say, we got seperated as we exited and John was stuck on the freeway.  I immediately knew we had trouble.  No one in their car had a phone, or knew where they were, or where they were going.  BIG PROBLEM!!  Ross however didn't realize that they didn't have a phone until we told him after he asked us to call them. lol!  We pulled over to the side of the freeway and waited for 15 minutes hoping they might be able to figure out how to turn around and come back the same way we went.  They never came, so Ross decided to go ahead and take us to the building and then go back and find the other car.  I think we were all praying that entire 15 minutes.  I know I was.  When we got to the building, we immediately went to work.  I got to climb up on scaffolding with Dee and work on scrapping paint off the beams.  It was hard work and our arms will probably hurt tomorrow.  Others were working on scrapping paint on the outside of the building and clearing a weedy area outside the building.  It started raining only a few minutes after we got there.  Pouring rain.  So everyone who was working outside got soaked through.  This is the first rain they have had in at least two months here!!  I think it was about 10 am before Ross came back after finding the other car.  After getting seperated they went a bit further before a nice lady flagged them down.  She said that she had been following us all and knew that they had gotten seperated.  She tried to give them directions as to how to get back to where we had gone.  They tried to follow her directions but just got more lost.  (Side note: the roads here are super confusing and insane.  Not only do they drive on the wrong side of the road but it is just all crazy.)  They stopped at several gas stations but no one knew Key of Hope or where it was located.  No one could really help them.  They tried following power lines, and train tracks. lol.  They found themselves in Effingham, which is where we were to go passing out flyers for our VBS this afternoon.  Somehow they made their way back to La Lucia which is where we are staying.  Ross was there when they got back to our bed and breakfast.  It was quite an adventure for them!

After lunch and a bit more work on the building, we prepared to go out to the Effingham squatter camp.  In the pouring rain.  We were broken up into 3 groups and went forth to go door to door, one shack to the next shack, telling people about our VBS that starts tomorrow.  I wish I had pictures to show you what it looked like.  I don't think I will ever forget it.  Rivers of mud everywhere, slipping and sliding. What a mess we must have looked like.  We were all soaked through every layer within minutes.  These huts are all on the sides of a hill, so it was a lot of climbing and slipping to go to each one.  They were made out of every material imaginable.  I couldn't help but think how I hated to go camping in the rain, and here these people were living in it.  Yet every bed was made perfectly.  Their floors were swept clean.  We got friendly yet bewildered welcomes at every door.  I'm sure they thought we were all completely crazy!!  We worked on this for about 2 hours.  We were completely frozen by the time we got done and back to our cars.  Greg fell about 6 times and was covered in mud.  Cheryl fell at least 3 times and was covered in mud.  Nick fell twice I think and was pretty muddy.  I think everyone else managed to stay on their feet, but everyone was cold, and soaked.  Everyone was muddy.  It was about 5:30 before we got back to our B&B.  We are now showered (I can't tell you how amazing the hot water felt) and waiting for dinner. 

What a day.  I think it is not a coincidence that today it rained for the first time in two months.  I think God wanted to see how we might handle doing something that most would not want to do.  You know, a little test.  I think our faith is a bit stronger tonight, and our determination also!!  Tomorrow we will work more on the building and then we will start our VBS with the kids from Effingham in the afternoon.  I am praying that lots of kids show up.  I can't wait to meet them all and share God's love with them.  Thank you all for your prayers, don't stop.  If you wake up in the middle of the night for no reason, pray for us.  We are six hours ahead of most of you, so you never know, we might be needing your prayers right then!!  I love you all!

ps- sorry there are no pictures.  I was working on scaffolding and didn't have access to my camera, and then it was pouring and I didn't want to get the camera muddy and wet.  :(  Some others had camera's so I will see if I can get pictures from them later.

Sunday . . .

This morning we went to a Zulu church with Dan and his family.  We were greeted so warmly with smiles, handshakes and hugs all around.  We were the only white people, but it didn't matter.  The music was very loud and so amazing.  We were instructed to follow the movements and keep moving so that we wouldn't offend them.  lol!  It was so funny our awkward movements and uncoordination.   Everything was in Zulu but every once and a while they would throw in some english for our benefit.  The sermon was taken from Genesis and Luke.  After the service we went to the mall, that happens to be the largest in the southern hemisphere.  We ate there.  Next we went to north beach, where they had lots of outside vendors selling more traditional items, like beadwork, masks, etc.  That was a lot of fun. 

Sunday morning before church some of us went for a walk on the beach which is literally only a short walk from the place where we are staying.  Another small group of us went for a run along the road by the beach.  I was in the group that walked on the beach.  It was so beautiful and amazing how strong the waves were.  They were huge.  I think I understand why no one swims in this ocean.  There were lots of fishermen there, fishing for Shad. 

A fisherman.

Greg walking on the beach.  Check out that surf!

John checking out the waves.

John running away from the waves.

Look how powerful these are!!

John videoing the ocean.

Me.  Sorry for the terrible hair.  It was windy and it was early so I hadn't done my hair or make-up. lol!

John on the beach.

John and I.

On the way back we saw this tree full of birds nests.  They were very cool!

This is a better picture of these nests.  The tree was just full of them.