I'm here.

Wow. So after a long time of waiting, I am finally here. It's the second day of my stay here in S.A., and things are fantastic. Uploads for photos are going to be tricky, because I found out that we only have a certain amount of bandwith space every week on the internet. This means that there's not a lot of any downloading or uploading I can do. But, there's a coffee place down the road a little that can do it. In the mean time, the new picture for the header of the blog is one that I took of a child today in a place called Red Hill.

To begin, I really enjoyed the plane ride to SA. Yes, it was about 10-12 hours long, but it was good. Yes, a lady blew humongous chunks a couple rows behind me, but it was still great. While everyone else was sleeping, I turned on my overhead light and read the Bible for a while. There were stories after stories. This was my favorite part of the flight. The rest of the cabin was silent, there was a blackness coming from the windows that I have never felt as we flew over a sleeping Africa. I listened to Matthew Perryman Jones' album a million times and I recommend getting it immediately.

At the airport, Jakes picked me up. She lives in SA and is very kind. One of the many friends I have already made here. I'm staying at a place called the Sundollar B&B. Well, after a few hours of talking, eating, and recouping from the flight, Mike, Pam and I went to a refugee camp because this is happening. I still can't fully explain what is going on, but there were many people that evacuated their homes and were gathered at a bunch of large tents that were put up by various volunteer groups including Living Hope. It was very very very interesting to say the least. Later on, Kirstin, Anna, Jakes and I went to Jakes' church. Her church was another "safe place" where there were close to a hundred refugees in the back. A lot of them came into the service and during one of the songs and because of this, there were 4 or 5 different languages represented. During one of the songs, people cheered and danced when the verse was sung in their language. Chills.

Today, I spent my first afternoon at a place called Red Hill. Living hope has a trailer there and we run a kids camp within the village. Red Hill is a extreme poverty area. Dirt floors and aluminum roofs. The kids there are crazy, but awesome and incredibly cute. I'm going to be working on a couple of videos in the next couple of weeks, which will be planned in a couple of days.

More later, but I'm going to bed due to jet lag.

be praying for the country of South Africa and the ministries of Living Hope.