Day to Day Life:
7:00-7:30 Breakfast/pack lunch
7:30-7:45 Devotions (we rotate doing this!)
7:45-8:00 Leave for daily projects
8:30-3:00 Living Grace Homeless Project
3:00-4:30 Kids Outreach Program in surrounding township.
5:00-6:30 Hopefully walk (it gets dark by 6:00 and is unsafe to walk after that)/shower.
6:30 Dinner (made by the ladies hired at the house)
At night, we seem to have a rotating list of things to do, but usually includes a game, TV, email, SKYPE etc.
Right now there are 13 of us, so life is community based. One common dining/living room where we all eat, email etc.
MINISTRY- Living Hope
Tuesday morning we took a tour of the various sites. Living Hope itself is a health care center for people with AIDS. They are given the Anti-retro-viral drugs and counselling (stigma surrounding AIDS is extremely high) and after a stay, will be discharged.
Living Way is a sewing program for that teaches women skills for both at home and for work. When the women graduate the class, they each receive their own sewing machine.
Then we toured the various kids programs. The city of Cape Town is surrounded by various townships, or settlements. Most of the homes are like shanty towns, with tin sides and roofs, with bricks on the top of then so the wind does not dismantle the home. Kids programs present activities based on biblical principals. Most of these take place in shipping containers (train containers) and have no resources. After songs, games and some teaching, the kids are given a sandwich (sardine on white bread) and half a glass of juice. This is usually the only meal they eat that day, and kids programs are only 1-4 days depending on the site.
The last place we went to was a town called Muizenburg, an area with a high number of homeless. There, across the beach shore, housed in a beautiful old white bank building, is Living Grace. Living Grace serves mostly men, many with the same problems of our homeless-alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental illness, but it is also likely that 40% of them are suffering from HIV.
First thing in the morning, a devotion/singing time is held, followed by serving coffee and a roll/biscuit. Some of the people stay after that, and help out, or just stay warm, so there are some opportunities to get to know them. We also chop vegetables and get lunch ready. Lunch is always bread and ‘stoup’, a cross between soup and stew, and made from whatever donated frozen food is available. Then, at 12:00, there is another time of singing/devotion before lunch is served. After that, we clean up, organized food for the next day etc. The man who just started running it worked for 18 years with the Salvation Army and his wife is a nurse at the health center.
At 3:00, we leave with a team to go to a nearby township, Capricorn. The team that leads kids club is an amazing group of local 20-somethings who work tirelessly for the kids. Many have moved to the site of the kids clubs in order to be more effective. The
community of Capricorn has a heavy presence of drugs and is largely controlled by gangs. About 100 kids come out, ages 3 and up.
No comments:
Post a Comment