Friday Thoughts

There is no general point to this blog besides the fact that I feel like writing something and since my novella has hit a 2 month wall of no progress, I might as well try and keep up with other outlets.

So I did something this morning for the very first time. I went running all by myself this morning. and guess what? it was great.

I've been struggling with body image this whole time we're been here. Africans love their starches and since I haven't been in a regular exercise routine, I've gained a little bit of weight. Not a lot, but enough to make me frustrated at myself. so being able to convince myself to actually get out of bed this morning ( I am pretty sure I hit my snooze button consistently about 10 times) was a great thing. and now that I been able to go by myself and be okay with, I am hoping to do this consistently until we leave.

Today is not an internet day but since it's the last day of the month, we are trying to use up the rest of our gigs. It's great. So another plus side of getting up early to run is the ability to actually have a "morning" before we have to rush off to church. My favorite times of the day are when I am sitting in the kitchen, alone, with the peace of the house, drinking my tea and oatmeal raisin muffin, and generally just being.

I found out this morning that A Rocha was canceled for today, which is fine but I was kind of looking forward to getting off campus. I haven't been to A rocha since the end of March thanks to Convention and Cape Town stuff. crazy. The little kids in my Friday group are also my favorite, especially Matthew who, the first time I met him was eating this huge thing of fries and said. "I love chips. Mr. Chips. Call me Mr. Chips." great stuff.

But since there is no A rocha this morning, I may or may not be mowing the lawn today. I enjoy mowing but this a fairly frustrating thing I am volunteering for since my definition of cut grass is different here. (People love their lawns short) Sometimes the blade gets caught on the ground. shame

Anyway, these are all the thoughts I have as of now...

Cape Town: We’re going places

Prepare yourselves. This is going to be a super long blog.

On Thursday, 15 April, my teammates and I left PMB and headed off into the great unknown. Well, that is to say, we were making our way to Cape Town some 16 hours away. The trip got off to a weird start. We were supposed to leave first thing in the morning on Thursday in order to make it to Bloemfontain (our pit stop for the night) to hang out with the NZMI pastor's family there. However, due to some unfortunate events (the car was in the shop forever), we didn't end up leaving until roughly 2:30 with a six hour drive ahead of us and only a few hours of sunlight remaining. Praying that our bumper would stay on, I was just glad to get away from the fleas and bugs that have been rapidly raiding the manse as we finally (finally!) headed out on our Cape Town journey.

After a restless night, we said goodbye Pastor Irvin and his family and headed out (a little bit disappointed that we couldn't stay in Bloem longer since the place looks beautiful, places are actually open past 6 and we can't really remember very much of it since we were so jetlag the last time we were there for convention in September). 10 hours is a long time for the five of us to be jammed into the ballade, even if it is a champion of a car. We drove through some pretty arid areas (which reminded me of the part of Colorado, right before you get to the Rocky Mountains) before we reached the looming mountains and lush vineyards of the Western Cape. It was long but it was beautiful.

We arrived just in time to go to the NZMI church's youth that Friday evening, which is way tinier than our church's youth (since New Zion is only 12 years old) but it was so nice. It felt more "youth group-ish." like what I went to back in the day.

The next day, we had no idea what they had in store for us. During the planning stages of this trip, we had asked the NZMI church if we could come and be with them for a weekend (in order to turn this "holiday" into a work-cation in order to "justify" it. So we had no idea if they were going to put us to work or what. Originally the plan had been that on Saturday we were going to help someone with some type of "sports outreach" (internal groan - I am terrible at all things sports) but that is all we knew. I don't know if Pastor Hilton had anything to do with this or not (since he did tell us that we should just relax in Cape Town) but we woke up on Saturday morning (late) and discovered that nope, we weren't going to be working at all.  The morning was interesting since Ps. Hilton and Mama Rhoda took us to the arcade in the mall. Afterwards, the Youth pastor and a bunch of people from the church were going to take us around the city instead. (Apparently Cape Town is insanely chill. It's awesome. Unlike PMB where it's culturally appropriate to get up at like 5 or 6 since sleeping in can be seen as being "lazy," Cape Townians apparently like to stay up late and sleep in longer. Finally). It was so nice. They took us to Hout bay first where they bought us ice cream (which is always a win with me for sure), took us along the Atlantic cost, and eventually ended up at the V and A waterfront, which is this insanely large mall(s) area where we had fish and chips (at, unfortunately, a chain restaurant). The whole was great. It was really nice of them.

On Sunday, we got to experience life again when church was over before lunch. Stellar.

The next two days were filled with our own adventures (even though we ended up staying with the Tooheys the whole time). On Monday we drove down the Indian Ocean side down to Simon's bay to see penguins!!! It was awesome, even if we had to pay to see them. Boo. Then we had lunch at a cute café and drove down to Cape Point National Park where we proceeded to hike up to a lighthouse at Cape Point before we headed down another trail to the Cape of Good Hope. Wow. I can't even begin to describe how unreal the beauty of Cape Point is. All I know that as I looked down on both the Indian and Atlantic ocean, I knew that God was near. Unbelievable. After the park we drove up the Atlantic side and were able to park and watch the sunset before we found a nice pizzeria for supper. :-)

Tuesday brought about a very similar day – but way more chill. Instead of climbing a mountain, we decided to head back down to the False Bay area and just find a coffee shop and chill, which we did. That is what I love – conversations over coffee and great slices of quiche.

We rolled out of Cape Town on Wednesday morning. We stopped at backpackers in Jeffrey's Bay (which is a surfing town right on the coast). I wish we could've stayed there longer. The ocean was a block away from our flat. Awesome.

We spent the rest of our time in Mthatha, where we were going to hang out with Sawatzky's again but found out at the last minute that they forget that they were going to be away. But they still invited us to come and chill. So we did. We barely did anything for three days. It was awesome. It was also cold so most of the time was spent drinking large quantities of tea, reading, or being bundled up on the couch watching Dvds. Amazing.

And now we're back. And it's hard to get over that. Cape Town was probably the most beautiful place I've ever been too. Plus, Mthatha was great too. We definitely needed that type of getaway.

I am glad to be out of the car though. Wow. It was a lot of driving. But it was still all worth it (especially as our ballade wove in and out of a pack of baboons in the middle of the road).

Now, I just have to gear up for the last stretch of life in Pietermaritzburg. Aybo.

(Side note: One of my favorite things to do during our many road adventures was to watch out for the "animal crossing" signs. They were great. We saw the typical deer ones – although here that means impala or something along that family line, but we did see tons of pothole warnings, high accident zones (including a sign that said Days accident free:0, Record without accident: 11), but my favorites included a sign with a cow on it, (but underneath it, it had a random phone number. So it looked as if you could call the cow. Awesome.), penguins, baboons and my absolute fav: an airplane. That was somewhere near Mthatha. Was the road a landing strip also? Nobody knows. Regardless, it was still hilarious.)

Dee-Dah Day things

This blog is for you, Leah

My sister has this phrase. Well actually she borrowed it from a book that I never brought myself to read. Nevertheless, I am going to use it for this blog. I don't even remember what the book is called right now but there is this part (that she told me about) where it talks about learning to celebrate God by celebrating the ordinary joys in life. So instead of being really frustrated and using this blog an outlet for my stress and tears (which it tends on being) I decided to point out some dee-dah day type of things because I know I need to appreciate South African life instead of aimlessly counting down the days…

On Wednesday, Gabby, Connie and I went on a walk after work in order to try and have a more active lifestyle (so far that is not going so well). Anyway, when we returned we found that Marco and Melanie Voller (the people who we spent Christmas with) had dropped off a ton of groceries for us – including oreo cookies, which are my favorite things ever! As we stood in the kitchen, unpacking the six bags of groceries, I was amazed at how much of a blessing they have been to us even though we don't know them very well.

We spent a lot of time with people this week and our one friend, Michele, who to university far from here, was here for the holiday. I was blessed by her gentle spirit and instantaneous friendship. Also, I found out that she loves Palestine, which made my heart soar. This particular evening (Wednesday) we were at our friend's (Abie's) house and discovered that his parents are amazing people. His mother was especially wonderful and gave us lots of tips about our upcoming Cape Town trip. I was blessed to know her.

We have had no church activities this post-convention week.  So on Friday night I did nothing. Instead of going to Kids Klub and half night of prayer, I sat on the couch and soaked in the nothingness of the evening. Since I am still recovering from convention, this was definitely needed.

Today (Saturday), the girls and I (and Tim who went for fear of being sucked into some type of BCI related work) went to the Suderman's to have a Zac Efron-athon with Karen. It. Was. Awesome. We watched High School Musical 3 and Hairspray and ate. Wow did we eat. We had banana bread in the morning. Chili for lunch. And peanut butter popcorn in the afternoon. Awesome!! The weather was cold and rainy too – perfect for sitting inside and doing nothing – well and watching the beauty that is Zac Efron. Musicals are the best. 

Currently, my hair has some type of Taylor Swift vibe going on. It's awesome. 

Also, I was feeling fairly frustrated about life tonight and then I got on facebook and got a wave of encouragement from my friend, Kare Knapp. It was perfect. I Praise God for her friendship.

And those, sister, are my Dee-Dah Day things from this week.

You Americans

It's really hard to sit there, unsure what to say, when people make generalizations right at you. This surprisingly hasn't happened a lot since we've been here, but earlier this week it seemed to come with full force. I was sitting in the office trying to work on BCA's annual report when someone came and started talking to me forever about how Americans are.

Uh…

Don't get me wrong, I am the first to admit that there are lots of things that have gone wrong in the States. After all, we have a lot of blood (and high fructose corn syrup) on our hands. Part of the reason I wanted to do this program as to get out of the United States for awhile. I have found that it's hard to explain that to people here, even if they don't like the US they are often surprised when I say that as whole, I do not either.

I've been struggling with this a lot since being here. I miss home, which means I miss the States. And that sounds weird and out of place to me. Yet, when I think about that, it's not that unnatural since what I love about the States comes down to people (well, and ice cream. Ha) – my family, friends, and people who have impacted my life (and that I'm tired of being far away from). When this someone told me that Americans (as in our Radical Journey group here) are more prone to stay in the states as oppose to the Canadians who are more open to it (I'm not sure where this guy got this from), I wanted to tell him that for me I guess that is true but it comes down to the fact that Barb, Sanford, Aaron, Janice, Titus, Michaela, Leah, Jeron, Kare, Jille, Drea, Laura, Krista, Steph, and Jills live there than easy access to cheap, corn feed and filled food.

Regardless, I get really frustrated when South Africans come up to me and tell me everything that is wrong with the States, especially when they loop me in with their generalizations. I find it very difficult to say anything in these situations. Sometimes, I wonder if would do anything if I spoke up for myself at all. After all, the States needs to be lectured on lots of things. Often, it is also that I don't even know what to say. How do you tell someone who tells you to your face that all Americans are materialistic and only care about clothes and make-up when hello! I'm right here in front of them with practically no make-up, my hair frizzy from the humidity, and the fact that I've been wearing the same pair of pants consistently for the past week.

I'm pretty bad at sticking up for myself, especially when I sometimes agree with everything they are saying. Still, I don't like to be lumped into the "you Americans" group, when I rather be lumped in with those environmental, pro-Palestinian, God's kingdom on earth, anti-corn syrup, anti-blind consumerism, jubilee economics, simple living, third way Jesus' shalom type of hippy freaks so would rather challenge the system they live in rather than become just like it or run from it. Obviously, I don't have these things down. But it's hard to express that there is so much more to me than being an America. Or that doesn't always have to mean the terrible connotations that it holds throughout the world. Maybe God has placed me there for a reason – to be a part of a movement that challenges what my government is doing with my tax dollars, that doesn't live with a blind eye to the world, but rather engages, yet never fully participates in order to bring about radical generosity and love to the places I find myself in.

I want to live in a way in which people are confused as to why I don't fit into their "you Americans" generalizations. Am I there yet? I am not sure…

March Burger-Goulet-Easter Madness

There was one thing that was getting us through convention: the hope of the final game of March Madness. This might sound weird (especially since I do like basketball but hardly ever follow it close enough) but it was more than just watching the game, it was the idea that by that time on Monday, convention would be over and our lives would slow down, if only for a brief moment.

These plans all started when we were with Joe and Anna in Mthatha. Joe, who is a big Kansas fan, told us that they were planning on coming to Maritzburg during the weekend of March Madness (which also happened to be Easter weekend, though we didn't realize it at the time). We left with "big plans" to meet up with them and the Sudermans, brackets in hand, to watch the final games.

Our hopes were somewhat dashed when we got home and realized that BCI's convention was the same weekend. But thanks to the beauty of South African time, the final game actually was aired on Tuesday. But I am getting ahead of myself here.

The Monday after convention was our official day off and so we met up with the Sawatzky's at Essence Café. (This is the burger part of the celebration). While we were in Mthatha, we told Joe and Anna about our favorite PMB place – Essence Café, which, according to the boys has the best hamburgers maybe in the world. (We'll have to take their word for it now since I am trying to avoid red meat, so I had something else instead). It was great. Celebration 1.

Celebration 2: the Goulet award. So the Sawatzky's and the Suderman's have this ridiculous porcelain dog figurine that has somehow become known as the "Goulet Award" based off the Will Farrel SNL skit that we have been competing for ever since its beginnings. We have had it in our house since retreat (although we didn't win it per se since there was no official winner, so we just took it). But it was up for grabs again with the bracket pools. Andrew – the only one who picked Duke to win, is now the proud owner of the Goulet award.

Celebration part 3: On Tuesday after word, we all headed to the Suderman's house to watch the final game – Butler vs. Duke. We ate popcorn and yelled at the tv and had a lot of banter going on between all of us and Andrew, Karen and four year old Moses – the only Duke fans in the room. It was awesome.

Celebration part 4: After the game was over, we packed up all the food that had been cooking during the game and went up to Hilton where the Sawatzky's were staying and had Easter dinner together at like 9 at night. Yum.

Overall, all I can say is how grateful I was for this time to get away, to celebration convention being over, and to generally just chill in front of a good basketball game. I am so blessed to be a part of this community and it's times like this when I realize that. Since I can't be with my own family during the holidays being with the Sawatzkys and the Sudermans and the rest of our Mennonite connections here is definitely the next best thing.

Goulet.

The Brightside of Convention

(The last installment of the convention report 2010)

I am sitting on the couch in the lounge right now, feeling extremely tired, feeling like we've been through some type of hurricane. But I am so glad that all things convention are generally over. (We have a lot of cleanup work to do tomorrow). Even though I am glad that we plowed through convention, I decided to list some of the good things about convention instead of anymore headaches or complaints because I am sure no one really wants to read that (nor am I really comfortable posting them on the web for the world to see). Regardless, here are some good things…

Tired community: Even though being exhausted sucks a lot, people say and do lots of funny things when they are running on no sleep. Connie and I had a lot of great moments like this when were working in the tent on the production until 3:30 the night before convention. We watched some guys try and play cricket with a ball of type and huge round cardboard stick they found and laughed at pretty much everything, especially random things Christian said (who staysp in the tent to "guard" it from robbers).

Floyd McClung: This man was our guest speaker. He lives in South Africa but is actually from the States and is the guy who started YWAM apparently. He had a lot of good things to say.  I appreciated his theological depth

The arts: the NZMI churches have some pretty talented youth. It's cool to be in a church community that celebrates the arts and provides the time, space and talent in order to incorporate them into the worship services.

The production: See the blog about that – but I'll say it again. It was awesome to be able to participate in the convention in this way.

The youth Sports event: The youth spent Easter morning not in church, but rather playing sports and generally chilling at Carter High School. Okay, I was really apprehensive about this. The last sports thing the BCI had for the youth was awful, awful. But this time, they chose not to do tournaments but just made up teams them and let them play one another. I opted to be a part of "Team Tuck Shop" (aka working at the snack shop -South African style) instead of being forced to play. But even if I hadn't I doubt that I would've been forced to play soccer. So the morning turned into a fun time for sports fans and people who just wanted to chill on the grass all morning. It was nice.

I don't know what to call this one – but in the evening service on Sunday we sang the chorus of "How Great Thou Art" I practically started crying as about 1000 voices started singing this hymn with loud drums or bass. It was beautiful and practically a balm to my soul. And in that moment I was grateful to be a part of the church in the global south.

Being able to laugh: Lots of stressful and nerve-racking things happened this weekend and I am sure that I was not the best version of myself all the time. However, even now, just a day after the convention ended, we've been able to laugh. Christian and I especially like to quote the man who came in our house looking for our extra fridge in the back. Wow.

Well, I think that's it. And today is resurrection Monday. Praise God for that.

It’s Friday – but Monday’s coming

(Due to the fact that I haven't had time to blog in ages, I am going to post these as separate items since. That way it is easier for you to actually read them).

For those of you who don't know, Pastor Russell put me in charge of the "production" for Easter for the first NZMI Breakthru Convention. The first time he mentioned it was just in passing and so I didn't really know what I was saying yes to. I believe that "conversation took place in February and I didn't really think too much about it until I finally was able to sit down with Ps. Russell at the beginning of March (right before we left for Mthatha) to find out what the heck this actually means. And all I really have to say is wow, it's definitely been a journey.

I don't really handle stress very well. I've known this. I like creating more drama then there needs to be. At school, this was especially true with basically every project. Crazy. But I don't think that I've ever been this stressed out about something in a long, long time. It was unbelievable. It kept me awake at night, it made my heart hurt (literally, which hasn't happened since jr. year of Bluffton when I was so stressed with so many things that the muscles around my heart actually hurt), and it made me cry a lot. Wow. I made a fool in front of a lot of people. Thankfully, everyone was pretty understanding about it.

Anyway, Good Friday was the big day. But the whole time leading up to this convention/production was really frustrating since we were so busy and I couldn't get people organized very well and stuff with the tent wasn't ready until practically the day before (or of) convention itself. So we were finally able to put the pieces of the production together an hour before the service started that evening. Oh man. That was not good for me at all.

I guess I should explain a little bit about this. Since the production was for Good Friday, I had it center around the crucifixion since it was Good Friday. So the title of this piece of works was "Prelude to a Resurrection" which features, audio, visuals, dance, drama and music in order to tell the story of Christ's crucifixion. Instead of being like a play or a musical or something insane like that I took pieces of the arts and placed them together. It all started off with a dance/mine to an audio track that Tim and I recorded using music, sounds, and pre-recorded voices to tell the story of creation, the fall, and a people crying out for the Messiah. This was actually my favorite, favorite, favorite part of the whole thing. Tim and I worked FOREVER on this thing – recording people's voices, re-recording them, placing music in the background, and finding the right sound effects. I think the whole thing was close to 4 minutes long but it took us probably about 24 hours total (if not more so) to complete it. But what was really fun and probably the most fun I've had at work here at BCI. Getting to hang out and be creative all day long is probably the best job any one could ever have. After that part came Yonela's poem (a friend from the senior youth leader's who is an amazing writer) which depicted the voice of Jesus. Third came Ntuthuko's rap (another senior leader) about the crucifixion itself. And then finally was the monologues I did with Ayanda and Nicole depicting three women that interacted with Jesus, telling the events leading up to his death. (Ayanda was Mary from Bethany who washed Jesus' feet with oil. Nicole was the adulterous woman who Jesus saved from stoning, expect this time she was a witness when Jesus was in front of Pilate and then I was one of the women at the cross).

All of it flowed together pretty well too thanks to the audio/visual transitions that we added in between each act. We recorded people's voices saying the Lord's prayer in French, English, Spanish, Afrikans, and Zulu as well as meshing of the Beatitudes with Jesus' words from the Lord's supper. It turned out really nice, especially thanks to Ps. Irvin (from Bloemfontain)'s Mac. I had actually spent a ton of time working on the powerpoints for these things. However, on Thursday, Ps. Irvin told s that we should reconstruct them in his Max movie whatever program, which was a very good thing but it also meant that on Thursday night before the convention started Connie and I stayed up until 3:30 in the morning (in the stupid tent) working on this. I am glad we did it thought because I think we might've had some major glitches if we didn't.

Overall, things were really hectic but it was definitely worth it I think. I know that all my dancers for the first part really enjoyed doing everything with the billows and the lights. (We can't wait to see the video). But it was also really exciting to see stuff that I had written and seen in my head come to life. It makes me very excited about the possibilities of exploring this type of things further, even though I don't really know what that means. All I know, if nothing else, I am grateful that BCI gave me the chance to do something big like this. It's definitely cool to be in a church where the arts are really important and focused on a lot.

And now it's all over. All that hard work has suddenly faded away. And all I know is that I am going to sleep very well tonight.