3-14-15. Pie day!

Hello again as promised yesterday, there is a little more time this afternoon to do some typing and recounting of recent events. This week we had a volunteer team come from the States and work in the different parts of Joburg to see what differing long-term teams do here on a daily basis. The team was large enough to split into several groups so that we only had a handful or so each day.

For the classes, we had the volunteers engage with the students to get a feel for what the teaching was like. The students loved being able to interact with other Merikinkias (Somali for Americans), and to show what they had been able to learn. One of the students that I usually teach has started to ask questions about what we as the teachers believe, in order to classify us I suppose, my answers are totally truthful and said in a way that uses culturally appropriate wording. I am glad that he has begun to question and want to talk, when I tell him where I stand in my beliefs he usually has been puzzled.  This young man realizes that I serve the creator, but I don’t seek the creator through the same path as him. I am hoping that these little comments are the beginning of a deeper seeking that is working within him. Please pr@y for dreams and visions, burning desire for the truth, clarity and the right words and actions to be used. The opportunities that are beginning to present themselves would be wonderful ones to develop further for the growth of the k!ngdom.

This week during the language study time that we had, the volunteer teams went out into the area of Mayfair and Fordsburg to do pr@yerw@lking as well as to interact with the people from all the races and countries that live in those parts of Joburg. We, the students here for six months, are somewhere around 50 hours of quality language study so far. At this stage of learning we are now to start speaking a bit….and boy oh boy is speaking the tongue twisting part! While language learning is mentally and physically exhausting, it is incredibly rewarding to see the reaction when you greet or answer a question in someone’s heart language.

As most people who really know me, know that I have a slight coffee addiction, and I have a weakness of sorts for really good coffees. The place near downtown where we have tended to buy our coffee was a destination that was requested by the visiting team. While there this week I was looking through empty bags that are used to ship the raw coffee from the farms to the roasters, when one of the employees who helps to roast the coffee as well as to make the drinks told me to come back to the area where the raw beans were stored. The man gave me an empty coffee bag from every coffee producing country that they are buying from and currently roasting! Enough bags to decorate a whole room in a house, and completely for free, ha ha! While this story is not important in the grand scheme of our work here, I thought it was necessary to share because it is one of the many little things that I can be excited about.

For the finale of sorts, concerning the post from yesterday, we got the opportunity to tag along with the college team as they went to a nearby animal park. While this park was really neat, it is definitely not one of the game reserves that you see on TV or such! A better description would be one of a farm that is over 3000 acres of pastureland with blocks sectioned off for the predators, but all of the antelope rhinos and wildebeest giraffes and such roam the rest of the farm. There are areas where the most exotic of the predators and herbivores are kept for controlled breeding purposes. I am sure that the place is a privately owned establishment, but they are working to breed endangered species for reserves and zoos around the world. Pretty cool stuff, I find it exciting having worked at a large animal veterinary clinic until just recently. I think that the only critters that were there but we didn’t see them, were the Cape buffalo.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for keeping us in your pr@yers.

Ethan.