Living Grace

Hello to everyone who actually reads this little blog, thanks so much for checking it out once again! The past week has been such a blessing and I’m looking forward to sharing just a little bit of it with you over the next couple of paragraphs.

Now that our four week “holiday club” is finally over, things are a lot less stressful! Instead of spending about 5-6 hours a day with the kids, whether playing soccer or doing crafts and stories, we only meet from about 3-5 everyday. The kids are now back in school and it is a nice change to have a little more time to be apart of other forms of ministry while down here. This past week, and for the rest of my time here, I have been assigned to work for Living Grace. Living Grace is a homeless center here just outside of Cape Town. My day consists of waking up at around 6:45, grabbing a shower then heading over to the center where we start singing and devotions at around 8:15. After finishing up at Living Grace we grab lunch and then head over to Ocean View where I get to spend more time with the awesome kids there.

When I started this past Tuesday, I was surprised to see and hear all of these homeless people singing hymns and praising God before their breakfast. I’m sure that the main reason any of these men and women come to the homeless shelter is because of the free food, but who can blame them? But the thing is they don’t have to sing, yet many of them choose to and boy do they sing. It surely isn’t the best singing you’ve ever heard but it is certainly entertaining. We have about 25-35 people that join us in the morning for devotions and breakfast, then about 50 people that join us for lunch. In between serving the people breakfast and then serving them lunch, much of the time we spend preparing the food for lunch. I am getting so very good at chopping up onions, potatoes, meat, you name it! I am pretty much the only guy volunteer working at Living Grace that the men can talk to, so I’m usually the guy they talk to if they need someone to talk to. I have certainly had some interesting conversations ranging from the spiritual to the down right crazy (not everyone is 100% here mentally).

My first morning at Living Grace I got to pray with one man. It was one of the first times this trip I had the opportunity to pray with another man who could actually understand what I was saying (at least it felt like many of the kids did not understand!). What a blessing it is that I am even able to pray for others and to have God work through my speech to heal and encourage many who are in fairly desperate situations. I am just so thankful I have had this opportunity. This morning I got to speak to all of the homeless people there as part of the morning devotion. I got completely lost in my notes and basically rambled for 10-15 minutes but I trust that God can and did use all my mess ups and lapses of memory to communicate something important and encouraging to some of those people. This past week at Living Grace has been all about building relationships with the men and women who volunteer, work, or simply visit Living Grace everyday. It has really been such a wonderful thing to be a part of and I look forward to developing many of these relationships over the next couple of weeks that I have left here.

Please pray that God presents opportunities for His word to be shared with the people at Living Grace and that He can find a way to use my ministry to the betterment of His commission. Thank you once again for all of your prayer and support!

Jshep