A caption of the week:

Last week our team went to an Orphanage to help build a prayer tent, work on the jungle gym, and to play with the few kids. The hope of this orphanage is to place the kids in there that can't be placed into the community for any number of reasons. While we were there i of course played with the kids:) Although we have a language barrier because none of the kids spoke english, except one. His name is Pedro and he actually knows some Portuguese. All the other kids run around saying, "Como estas" it's cute. While we were there we played with several different kids, but two of them caught my attention. You could see so much pain behind their eyes and you just knew their life had been horrible beyond anything. Another girl and i talked to one of the head people and she kinda brought up what had happened to the two kids, which happened to be brother and sister. She said that the little boy had been abused, but the little girl, whom is 10 but looks 6 or 7, was sexually abused, raped, and just plain abused. The mother was a drunk and the dad was a drunk, an abuser, and a rapist. He had sexually abused and raped Tandeka, the little girl, and made the brother hold her legs for him. Tandeka was so abused that her bones have literally altered. I don't think i have ever had so many emotions run through my head. I wanted to cry. I was so angry to know that someone could ever do that! I would love for you all to pray for these two young children and all the others out there that are experiencing this same thing. It's horrible and really needs to be stopped, but how? Tandeka and her brother are kept at the orphanage and will not be released back into the community because it's too much of a risk. She has had court against her father, but with South Africa it's hard to know if anything will happen even though they have a ridiculous amount of evidence. The father keeps showing up at the school, which messes with the kids and their behavior. Just please pray the siblings and especially Tandeka. It's heart breaking to know there isn't much we can do.

Busi Malatji

Onto a little bit brighter things, every Thursday we go to a little community called Dwaleni to do a feeding and play with the children. This week there were sooooo many! It was the best ever! The little girls attack all of us with long hair and braid our hair. i seem to get cornrows everytime:) But as we were getting ready to go a young girl by the name of Busi Malatji came up to me and gave me a note. She said, "Please read and write back." I have never seen her any time that we went to Dwaleni, but she found me and gave me this note, which reads:

"Hi my friend,

I like to say with you welcome to

the new years day 2010!

I love you my friend

you are the one friend

with me.

you are the good friend.

i hope you love me and you hope i love you.

Remember Jesus loves you.

your friend,

Busi Malatji"

That was the sweetest note i've ever read. She's a very sweet girl, but with a lot of spunk. She kinda reminds me of Kim a little.

Purpose/Frans Cronje

Ok, so this last week our speaker was amazing! My team and i had the privilege of having Frans Cronje come as a speaker. Frans Cronje is the producer of "Faith Like Potatoes" and a couple other movies that still haven't been released to the US from South Africa. He use to be a professional cricket player, but later felt like God was calling him to produce movies and is working for Global Creations now. If any have been involved with watching cricket, his younger brother, Hansi Cronje, was the top captain of the South Africa cricket team, but died of a fatal plane crash on June 1, 2002. Frans' second movie is called "Hansi" and it's a story of his brothers life and the challenges and "desserts" he's gone through. This week he talked on Purpose. What is our purpose? How do we go about it?

"What you tell people you are is not important, it's how you live out who you are that's important."

Success-

1. Know your purpose

2. Fufil your purpose

3. it needs to make a difference to others; serve others.

Discover purpose-

1. what are you good at

2. how have you already changed peoples lives; helping

3. what would you do even if you didn't get paid? (passion)

When you start your journey of your purpose you are ALWAYS going to end up in some sort of dessert, trial, problem but always look forward. don't look behind and see "the ship sinking" because you are surly going to sing a long with it.

When you're in the dessert:

1. remember your purpose/calling

2. continue to do the right thing/or/repent of the wrong things.

3. plow-don't sit around and do nothing.

Frank Rautenbach

Frank is the main guy in Faith Like Potatoes. During this last week Frans video called him in the middle of class and we got to personally talk to him about his adventures and what he's done in his career. He said a quote that made so much sense to me, "you dont' have time to negotiate. don't give yourself even a second to talk yourself out of it." generally when we give ourself any time to think about things, we don't do it. just do it.

We touched on dreams. no dream is impossible. if it's for the glory of God, it's not impossible. You need the 3 P's.

Planning:

the conception stage. you need to dream, but it must not replace God's spirit. plan how you want it and have a couple different plans. things change, be open to plan b, c, d; etc.

Preperation:

prepare for the "birth". what do you need to make your dream come true?

Performance:

give birth to that idea! make it happen!