walking downtown.

This week has been a little different... Different in a good way. We have been more active at least! Beginning Monday we had our cleaning day, plus a house meeting with Andre to give us the schedule for the upcoming week.

We started off on Tuesday going to see some of the projects in the hospital. We didn't get to go inside the pre- and post-abortion counseling facilities, but Anika (one of the international volunteers from Holland) gave us the entire history on YFC's involvement there and exactly what Options entails. Abortions are legal in South Africa, so it is difficult to prevent them. But with the pre-abortion counseling, some women choose to have their babies instead of getting an abortion. If they choose to go through with the abortion though, YFC is still there to pray for them and counsel them after the fact.

We also got to see the Kangaroo Mums. These are women who carry their premature babies in a swaddling wrap on their chest for weeks while they are recovering. The program there is just to help make these women comfortable, give them something to do and love on them while they are waiting for their babies to grow and get healthy.

We also got to go to the New Life house. This is a home where moms can go who want to give their babies up for adoption. It's a safe house for them, while they are pregnant, and for a few weeks following. They get to pick out the adoptive parents, and they get proper prenatal care. The women are so sweet and are also very bored, so they are very thankful for our involvement with them!

On Wednesday, we ventured downtown to a couple museums. The first being the District 6 museum and the second being the Slave Lodge, which has been converted into a museum. You left both places very humbled. If you don't know the history on the apartheid and how things were here in the past, even back to the early days of colonization, it would be something to Wikipedia. It's amazing to see how much this country and its people have gone through. And it wasn't a century ago that people were suffering... it was 1994. It is still now. The segregation, the oppression, the bitterness. It's all there. South Africa is truly an amazing and beautiful place, and you begin to notice that more as you look deeper, and learn about the progress. They still have a long way to go, but they have come so far!

We then proceeded to go to Company's Garden downtown. It's a beautiful little place with psychotic squirrels and pigeons, but that makes it all the more interesting. The squirrels will jump in your lap to eat your lunch if you're not careful. For lunch we had these sandwiches called "Gatsbies." Basically, it's the most unhealthy thing you could eat ever. It has everything on it... french fries, some sort of meat, cheese, cucumbers, straight grease... I mean, don't get me wrong, I ate it all. But I can safely say I didn't eat for a whole day following. Great meal replacement plan! It was definitely a South African experience that had to happen.

Thursday, we went to the farm... First in the morning to meet the young children and Oma, a sweet grandmother who is a good friend of the YFC interns. Later in the afternoon, we returned to play with all the kids who had come back from school. There are all ages who live there. The farm is literally a farm, where men are hired to work for a white wealthy farmer, and he gives them some property to live on. They don't have many resources to build their homes, so a lot of the houses resembled township shacks, but they work with what they have. These men bring their families, and families bring friends and aunts and grandmothers, and before you know it, there's a whole community of people! And puppies... There are probably as many dogs as people. The living situation isn't perfect, and oftentimes the workers get paid for their work in wine instead of money. On some mornings during the week, we run a creche with the little ones that don't go to school. It's pretty simple: we brush their teeth, wash their faces, and give them food and drink. Then we tell a bible story and sing songs with them and hang out for a while. In the afternoons we'll just show up and play soccer, cricket, or just love on the kids. They are starved for love and attention, because their home lives are so complicated. I love it at the farm... I love getting dirty and sweaty playing soccer, and then having a baby wipe his nose on my shirt. That's real ministry, and it's beautiful!

Friday is always staff meeting... I helped lead worship for the first time, and it was awesome. I just love that small group type worship setting. It's my favorite by far. I have been doing a bit with music since I've been here, but I definitely try to play guitar often, just to make sure I keep it up. And I have written a song already! It's easy to get frustrated sometimes with the random schedules and the amount of people you are living with, so it's nice to escape and just write a song. I will post the song soon on facebook somewhere. So keep an eye out!

Most of my posts won't be this long... There's just so much going on in these few weeks, and I want to get you acclimated to my schedule and what I do regularly, as well as the awesome things I'm learning in the process! Hope you all are doing well, and I miss you a ton!

Prayer requests: patience... big time. discernment - to know where I should be in the projects. for the people of South Africa in general - they have been through a lot and there is definitely more room for growth!

-Kristen