Tuesday, May 12, 2015


Week of 5-5-15
Hello again,
This week has finally arrived, and I was apprehensive for no good reason. This week is the week that my teammate and I have been drafted into service as child care members during a company meeting here in JoBurg. After arriving and helping with the bags of families arriving from all over the continent, I thought that the children might be wild acting or terrified of me, but as it turned out I couldn’t have been more wrong. I have found out that our ministry here as short term guys has many facets, one of those facets is to work with and do any task that is required here to streamline and make the career personnel’s work more beneficial and efficient. During the weekend I assisted in the carrying of refrigerators for a team that was in another part of town, he called my boss and asked if he could borrow our labor for a few hours (we are like loanable tools sometimes). So, while we do our work downtown, and it is really exciting, we are also here to serve the people who are living their lives, raising their children, and giving up their homeland to serve and reach the Lost of the world. I am saying this so that people don’t think we are wasting time or funds while “playing” with children for a week. We do what needs to be done, and sometimes that task is unattractive or seemingly less significant for our purpose here, but it may just mean that in this instance in particular, the parents may be equipped to better handle the rigors of the field because I took care of their screaming kids for a few hours. 
On Monday we supervised the children during the time that their parents were in seminars and meetings, the children’s game of dodgeball quickly morphed into “hit the big guy”. This lasted for several hours, during which I was captured, climbed, and turned into a personal steed many times. Man-o-man was I tired! When I woke up on Tuesday morning I could hardly walk and I thought I had slipped a disk during the night (I didn’t!) - My back was so sore, those kiddos wore me out! A pot of coffee and a few hours later all was loosened up and it was back to keeping the kiddos out of trouble and occupied.
At one point in the space of ten minutes I thought I might lose my job here. The age group that I am with for the most part is the teens/ youth, but during general recreational time all of the kids are running about playing as they wish. It was during this time that I saw one of the 5yr olds throw a football into the nose of another and knock the child back and down, I thought that there would be blood and thankfully there wasn’t. The next one happened as soon as the hurt boy was taken to his mother, the hurt boy’s next older brother (a year or so older) was knocked down by accident by the second oldest brother and almost bit through half of his tongue. The brother who had tripped and fell is somewhere around 12 and had gotten a black eye from one of the little girls here earlier. So far this has been three boys in one family, injured on my watch but with no intervention that I could have done. A little later, during snack time, another little 5yr old was kicking a soccer ball with us and eating skittles when he was roundhouse kicked in the face by the boy who had bitten his tongue, this time the boy was too focused on his skittles to even notice the kick to the face, he just kept on eating. Skittles, like many American candies, have to be brought over in luggage from the States, they cannot be bought here. So, obviously the kids really love it when volunteers from the States bring sweets. 
What a day! They kept me going until well after dark when, as a diversion for the parents, we showed a movie that the kids (and myself) love – Despicable Me 2. Some of the parents were requesting alone time and appreciated the time filler.  
Wednesday has been very windy, and out came a stack of Frisbees from the team for the kids to play with. That turned out to be a great idea, even the adults wanted to join in! In the afternoon and on Thursday and Friday we played Settlers of Catan with the 10 and up groups and they really had fun with the strategy games.
During the course of the week a few of the children made the decision to follow the way and accept Christ. This was an exciting development, and made for a great end to the week.
On Friday we were kept on our toes until after midnight, and had a great time fellowshipping with and learning form these apprentices. We also were drafted into helping to load all the bags and gather odds and ends around the camp. Once we made it home from the camp we crashed from all the running of the week.
In the upcoming week we should be able to go with our language teacher to some cultural places to learn more about the people as well as to help to use.

Ethan Smith

No comments:

Post a Comment