Words don’t explain it…welcome to where I was, where I am, and where I will forever be Part 3

While we were in Guguletu we did a good amount of serving the community. For every bit of serving we did I feel like we could have spent an entire day if not an entire week on it. The two big service projects we did were helping a woman named Pricilla with lunch and bringing toys for the kids and helping to clean up at a school for disabled kids (which is one of its kind in Guguletu and serves all of the other townships as well). Pricilla has a truly amazing story. When we met her my first impression was an older woman who has seen many things and she was simply tired. She was heading up a house hold of 11 children with only 4 being her own. She had taken in the other 7 who were impacted by AIDS and no longer had parents. Again, until you meet this woman I really can’t do her story justice. This service project really came out of no where. Edwin confronted Aaron about doing something and they came up with going over there and bringing some of the supplies we all brought and to make lunch for her and all of the children. After we were done I could really tell that it at least made their day. The ability for us to come in for a few hours and help out for one day really made me want to do that everyday.

Then we also did some things around Tembelthu (spelling?) such as cleaning up the basketball court, doing arts and crafts with some of the kids, cleaning up the preschool area and such. Through our entire time in Cape Town I have never seen people so happy to see us. When we first got there all of the kids were all over the place and just ecstatic. They had a little assembly to introduce us all and then their choir sang some songs. They were AMAZING! There was one girl in the front that really grabbed my attention because she had the most amazing smile and was a great singer. At this point I really had to try and hold it together. It was hard for me to see people with the biggest smiles on their faces even through all the struggle they’ve gone through to get where they are today. They amaze me. Nate, Brian, and I all went out side to clean up their basketball court. It amazed me that people could even play on it before. There wasn’t a single square foot of court that didn’t have glass or debris on it. We swept all the glass up off the court and bagged it to throw away. It was kind of a weird feeling as we were doing this because I was talking to Seiphemo as we were cleaning and really....I didn’t need to come 8000 miles around the world to do this. I could do this in Minneapolis, in Rochester, pretty much anywhere but I think it took a situation like that to really open my eyes and make me have that realization.

Another random thing we did which was not a service project by any means was to go visit some refugees who have been struggling with the xenophobic attacks in South Africa. We went and met with a handful that have been staying in a church just out side of Cape Town. These people also amazed me, much like everyone else I’ve met here. They were so happy just to see us and to see that we cared. As the group talked to some of the older people I met a new little friend. I don’t know her name, but I do know that she was amazing. She couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5 but she was one of the cutest kids I’ve ever seen.

One Love Always