T.I.A.

Hello again, thanks for checking out my blog, hope you are enjoying it! Well I thought I would tell you about my my last Friday of the Upwards Soccer week at Ocean View. There is a interesting and very true phrase often said here: T.I.A. = “This is Africa”

(Here is a good example - on the right- many children do not have tissues, as they are a rare thing, and just about every kids has a consistently running nose)->

- Thanks to Carley for letting me steal these two pics!

While its true that Cape Town is very modern there are still elements of the culture that are much different from the States. One of the mostprominent cultural differences is the value placed on time and planning. For those of you that know me, I am pretty chill about schedules and love to go with the flow and be spontaneous throughout life. But even for someone like me, it is quite an adjustment to this new concept of time or planning (or lack thereof)! Things here are often never planned out and often feel very randomized. God is certainly using this experience to teach me patience and humility. I do like to know what is going to happen in Kids Club the next day so I can adequately prepare for it but I am learning to adjust and do what is necessary when a need arises without any preparation. I’ll give you a couple examples:

Last week, Carley and I volunteered to do morning devotions for the volunteers in Ocean View. On Monday we were ready for it but due to other things those who had asked for the devotion never gave us the opportunity to share. On Tuesday however, they wanted a devotion to happen and thankfully I had the one for the previous day. The devotion was for about 10-15 staff members. Kevin, the guy in charge, asked me to make a devotion for Thursday for the whole of the volunteers. This number would be (and I’m guessing here) about 35 people. I spent about 2-3 hours working on it Wednesday to make sure I wouldn’t embarrass myself and to hopefully share something worthwhile to our mission. Despite all this Thursday came and no devotional time took place, Friday came and the case was the same as well. Oh well, I guess I have one I can pull out of my sleeve later on. This just goes to show that things don’t always go as planned and it is a test of my patience. I’m getting better though!

(Me on top of Table Mountain) --->

On Tuesday I was asked about 5 minutes before the kids devotional time to tell them the story of creation, I didn’t even have a Bible on me! Didn’t go very well honestly. Even still it is great practice and experience. On Thursday a similar thing happened and I was kind of put on the spot again to try to hold dozens of kids attention for 20 minutes in trying to communicate the fact that God is one. So I figured I would prepare really well for the kids devotion on Friday afternoon, and I thought I did. The purpose of the devotion was to essentially communicate the idea that Jesus is God’s Son to the kids. To show them that it is a free gift and that Jesus desires that relationship with every single one of them. The kids are supposed to get apples during devotional time so I planned on using the apples as the core of my devotion. I was going to use the apple as an analogy for Christ. I was going to point out that one may think about eating the apple, one can study it, one can talk about how big it looks or whether it is red or green, but he or she can not experience the apple and its taste until they accept it as a free gift. So therefore God is doing the same thing. His apple is Jesus Christ and all we have to do is accept it from Him. I would have been handing out the apples to them one at a time while explaining this. Sounded great in my head.

Well, the fruit didn’t arrive by the time devotions started and once again I was left standing there with no analogy, no story, and not much to say for 20 minutes. On top of all that the wind here is very loud and strong. I’m pretty sure that no kid heard anything I had to say today. It was certainly a struggle. All this goes to say that things here certainly don’t always go as planned and it is a good thing I am learning how to adjust and be flexible in these kinds of situations. To be honest I have no idea what we are doing on Monday as far as the kids program goes, but once again, I am learning to simply go with the flow. I am very much looking forward to seeing what God will do in Ocean View next week and I love the fact that I get to be a small part of it! When I was getting ready to do the devotion for the kids today a couple of the kids ran up to me and told me the Bible verse from the previous day! They had been listening! They had understood! And they may even be able to apply it in the future!

(Tried to take some artsy pictures with a very average camera) --

Another day, another week gone by. Looking forward to get to sleep in tonight and tomorrow morning! Until next time...

Josh Sheppard