I can’t believe it’s already July, the year is half way done already and yet I feel like I’ve barely begun. In my last post which was quite a while ago, I talked about how lockdown had started on March 26 and was suppose to last 26 days and then it got extended to another two weeks. I remember feeling like this lockdown was never going to end and it sucked. Now sometimes I forget we are in the middle of a pandemic. I counted up the days and today in South Africa we are on day 85 of lockdown. Day 85!!! Wow! I can’t even believe it, it honestly doesn’t even feel real. This lockdown has slowly worked its way into our lives and become the new normal. I’ve gotten into the routine of things, every time we get into the car someone yells “everyone got their masks” “alright let’s go”. Where getting comfortable with the deal we were handed and in some ways it’s a good thing and is some its a bad thing. This is partially why the case number here in South Africa is starting to rise. When we first went into lockdown we had very cases but the fear level was level 10, everyone was scared, there were no cars on the road and you made sure you had hand sanitizer ready in your bag. You went to the grocery store and back no more no less. Now that people are more comfortable with the hand we have been given we are seeing more cases and the fear level has gone way down.
Psalm 27:1
“The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?”
This past week I traveled out to the Oshoek Service Centre. Just a little reminder about what that is, this service centre is a couple hours away from the hub near the Eswatini boarder. The Oshoek Service Centre supports 5 care points out there. While I was out there I was able to visit a few of the care points and do some holy home visits.
This first home visit that I’m gonna talk about was in our beeskop community. To tell the truth I don’t know much about this family. They welcomed us into their home and we sat around the stove while the Gogo was hard at work picking the maize of the cob. While the service centre members where chatting away with the family I asked if we could help Gogo. She looked at us a little surprised as if she thought it would be to hard for us. So we got started picking them off one by one, and that stuff was a lot tougher than you would think. We finished what she had given us with a sense of accomplishment only to find her daughter bringing in another full bag, and another. HAHA. What would have taken Gogo maybe a couple of days was now finished in an hour. Gogo was thankful they prepared us some coffee and bread to express their gratitude. Even though I don’t know a whole lot about their situation from this one visit, I do know that Gogo and the family so appreciative and we have built a relationship. Sometimes our actions speak louder than words. The relationship that we built with the family now builds a stronger foundation to find out more about the family and their situation for future home visits.
While I was out in Osheok I was also able to revisit my homestay family. This was such a huge blessing to be reunited with them. Since my home stay at the beginning of the year, their house has gotten in much worse condition due to rainy weather and the wind that they experience. Houtbos is up in the mountains and gets very cold during the weather. And when I say cold I mean cold. This is coming from a Canadian who loves cold weather, it is cold!! There is no heaters in their houses at night, unless they sleep by the stoves. So, they need a new house to be built. We were able to raise enough money to build a two bedroom house. Words can even put the amount of excitement that they feel for this new house to be done and I can’t either. I was able to go and see how far they were on the house and it was about half way done and is even further now. I’m very excited for them and can’t wait for them to move in.
